It was her second day back at school after Barney died, and her friends were still looking at her like she would shatter, never once mentioning him, talking around it in wide circles. Lauren let Pip have her last Oreo, and Connor gave up his middle seat at the cafeteria table for her. Cara didn’t leave her side, knowing just when to talk to her and when to stay quiet.
Pip spent most of the day working on her personal essay, trying to push everything else out of her head. She’d just have to write about the time she visited her grandparents in Berlin. Did that explain who she was, what made Pip, Pip? Well, no. But she was almost out of time and it would have to do.
Mrs. Morgan cornered her in the hall at the end of the day, her pudgy face stern as she listed the reasons why it wasn’t really possible to change a capstone project topic this late. Pip just mumbled “OK” and drifted away, hearing Mrs. Morgan tut “Teenagers” under her breath.
As soon as she got home from school, she went straight to her desk and opened up Ravi’s laptop. She would finish writing her essay later, after dinner and well into the night if she had to. Her mom thought she wasn’t sleeping because of Barney. But she wasn’t sleeping because there wasn’t time to.
Pip opened the browser and pulled up the TripAdvisor page for the Ivy House Inn. This was her designated lead; Ravi was working on the phone number scribble from the planner. Pip had already messaged some Ivy House reviewers who’d posted around March and April 2014, asking if they remembered seeing a blond girl there. No responses yet.
She navigated to the website that had actually processed the reservations for Ivy House and found their phone number on the “Contact Us” page. Maybe she could pretend to be a relative of the old woman who owned the place and see if she could access their old booking information. Probably not, but worth a try. Secret Older Guy’s identity could be at the end of the line.
She unlocked her cell and clicked on to the phone app. It opened to her recent calls list. She pressed over to the keypad and started to type in the company’s number, then her thumbs slackened and stopped. She stared down at the screen, her head whirring as the thought became conscious.
“Wait,” she said aloud, going back to her recent calls list.
She looked at the entry right at the top, from when Naomi called her yesterday. Her temporary number. Pip’s eyes traced the digits, a feeling of dread curdling in her chest.
She jumped out of her chair so fast that it whirled and crashed into the desk. With her phone in hand, she dropped to her knees and pulled the murder board out from its hiding place under her bed. Her eyes darted straight to the Andie section, to the printed pages around her smiling face.
She found it. The page from Andie’s school planner. The scribbled-out phone number and her log entry beside it. She held out her phone, looking from Naomi’s temporary number to the scribble.
475-555-0146.
It wasn’t one of the nine combinations she had written out. But it very nearly was. She’d thought that the second-to-last digit had to be a 7 or a 1 or a 9. But what if that was just a loopy scribble? What if it was really a 4?
She slumped back. There was no way to be absolutely certain, no way to unscribble the number and see it for what it was. But it would be one unbelievable pigs-flying, hell-freezing-over coincidence if Naomi’s old SIM card just happened to have a number that similar to the one Andie wrote in her planner. It had to be the same number.
What did that mean, if anything? Was this an irrelevant lead; just Andie copying down the phone number of her boyfriend’s best friend? Could Pip discard it as a clue?
But then why did she have a sinking feeling in her gut?
Because if Max was a strong contender, then Naomi was even more so. Naomi knew about the hit-and-run. Naomi had access to the phone numbers of Max, Millie, and Jake. Naomi had Pip’s number. Naomi could have left Max’s house while Millie slept and intercepted Andie before 12:45. Naomi had been the closest to Sal. Naomi knew where Pip and Cara were camping. Naomi knew which woods Pip walked Barney in—the same ones Sal died in.
Naomi already had a lot to lose because of the truths Pip had uncovered. But what if there was more to it than that? What if she was actually involved in Andie’s and Sal’s deaths?
Pip was getting ahead of herself, her tired brain running off and tripping her up. It was just a phone number Andie wrote down; it didn’t tie Naomi to anything else. But there was something that could, she realized.
Since taking Naomi off the persons of interest list, she’d received another printed note from the killer: the one in her locker. At the start of the semester, Pip had set up Cara’s laptop to record everything that came through the Wards’ printer.
If Naomi was involved in this, Pip now had a sure way to find out.