of her secrets. I certainly struck a nerve when I brought up Andie’s dad; is there a story there?
I just read the transcript another few times and . . . maybe there’s something else hidden here. When I asked Chloe who Andie was sleeping with, what I’d meant to ask was who Andie had slept with before Sal, any past relationships. But I accidentally phrased it in the past continuous: ‘who was she sleeping with?’ This, in context, means that what I accidentally asked was: who else was Andie sleeping with at the same time as her relationship with Sal? But Chloe didn’t correct me. She just said she didn’t know.
I’m grasping at straws, I know. Of course, Chloe could have been answering the question I’d meant to ask. This could be nothing. I know I can’t solve this case by being particular about grammar, that’s not how the real world works unfortunately.
But now I’ve got the scent of it, I can’t let it go. Was Andie secretly seeing someone else? Did Sal find out and that’s why they were arguing? Does this explain Sal’s last text to Andie before she disappeared: im not talking to you till youve stopped ?
I’m not a police officer, this is still just a school project, so I can’t make them tell me anything. And these are the kinds of secrets you only share with your best friends, not some random girl doing her EPQ.
Oh My God. I’ve just had a horrible but maybe brilliant idea. Horrible and certainly immoral and probably stupid. And definitely, definitely wrong. And even so, I think I should do it. I can’t come out of this thing entirely squeaky clean if I actually want to find out what happened to Andie and Sal.
I’m going to catfish Emma, pretending to be Chloe.
I have that pay-as-you-go SIM I used on holiday last year. If I put that in my phone, I can text Emma pretending that I’m Chloe with a new number. It might work; Emma said they lost contact so she might not realize. And it might not work. But I have nothing to lose, and maybe secrets to gain and a killer to find.
Holy pepperoni.
I have never sweated so much in my whole damn life. I’m in shock that I managed to pull that off. I almost lost it a couple of times but . . . I actually did it.
I do feel bad, though. Emma is so nice and trusting. But it’s good that I feel guilty; it shows I haven’t quite lost my moral compass. I might still be a good girl yet . . .
And just like that, we have two more leads.
Jason Bell was already on the persons of interest list, but now he goes on in bold as number-one suspect. He was having an affair and Andie knew about it. More so than that, Jason knew that Andie knew. She must have approached him about it, or maybe she’s the one who caught him. That’s definitely filled in some of the gaps about why their relationship was strained.
And, now I think about it, was all this secret money Andie had given to her by her dad BECAUSE she knew? Was she, maybe, blackmailing him? No, that’s pure conjecture; I need to consider the money as separate intel until I can confirm where it came from.
The second lead and the biggest reveal of the night then: Andie was secretly seeing an older man during her relationship with Sal. So secret that she never told her friends who it was, only that she could ruin him. My mind goes immediately to that place: a married man. Could he have been the source of the secret money? I have a new suspect. One who would certainly have motive to silence Andie for good.
This is not the Andie I expected to find in my investigation, so removed from that public image of a beautiful blonde victim. A victim loved by her family, a victim adored by her friends, a victim who was taken too soon by her ‘cruel, murderous ’ boyfriend. Maybe that Andie was a fictional character all along, designed to bucket-collect people’s sympathy, to exchange their coins for newspapers. And now that I’m scratching, that image is starting to peel away at the corners.
I need to call Ravi.
Persons of Interest
Jason Bell
Naomi Ward
Secret Older Guy (how much older?)
Ten
‘I hate camping,’ Lauren grunted, tripping over the crumpled canvas.
‘Yeah, well, it’s my birthday and I like it,’ Cara