A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1) - Holly Jackson Page 0,61
university applications; I have about a week to finish off my personal statement before the deadline for Cambridge. Just a small break right now from tooting my horn and shaking my tail feathers at admissions officers.
So Howie Bowers doesn’t have an alibi for the night Andie disappeared. By his own admission he was ‘passed out drunk’ at his house. Without corroboration, this could be a total fabrication. He is an older guy and Andie could have ruined him by turning him in to the police for dealing. His relationship with Andie had criminal foundations and, judging by his defensive reaction, possibly some sexual undertones. And her car – the car that police believe was driven with her body in the boot – was found on his street.
I know Max has an alibi for the night Andie disappeared, the same alibi Sal asked his friends to give him. But let me think out loud here. Andie’s abduction window was between 10:40 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. There is a possibility that Max could have worked with the upper limit of that time frame. His parents were away, Jake and Sal had left his house and Millie and Naomi went to sleep in the spare room ‘a bit before half twelve’. Max could have left the house at that time without anyone knowing. Maybe Naomi could have too. Or together?
Max has a naked picture of a murder victim he claims he was never romantically involved with. He is technically an older guy. He was involved in Andie’s drug dealing and regularly bought roofies from her. Posh ol’ Max Hastings isn’t looking so wholesome any more. Maybe I need to follow this Rohypnol line of intel, see if there is any other evidence of what I’m starting to suspect. (How could I not? He was buying roofies for crying out loud).
Though they are both looking simultaneously suspicious, there’s no Max/Howie tag team going on here. Max only bought drugs in Kilton through Andie, and Howie only knew vaguely of Max and his buying habits via Andie.
But I think the most important lead we got from Howie is Andie’s second burner phone. That is priority number one . That second phone most likely has all the details of the people she was selling drugs to. Maybe confirmation of the nature of her relationship with Howie. And if Howie wasn’t the Secret Older Guy, maybe Andie was using her burner phone to contact this man, to keep it secret. The police had Andie’s actual phone after they found Sal’s body; if there were any evidence of a secret relationship on it, the police would have followed it up.
If we find that phone, maybe we find her secret older guy, maybe we find her killer and this will all be over. As it stands, there are three possible candidates for Secret Older Guy: Max, Howie or Daniel da Silva (italicized on POI list). If the burner phone confirms any one of them, I think we’d have enough to go to the police.
Or it could be someone we haven’t found yet, someone waiting in the wings, preparing for their starring role in this project. Someone like Stanley Forbes, maybe? I know there’s no direct link between him and Andie so he doesn’t make the POI list. But doesn’t it seem a little fluky that he’s the journalist who wrote scathing articles about Andie’s ‘killer boyfriend’ and now he’s dating her little sister and I saw him giving money to the same drug dealer who had supplied Andie? Or are these coincidences? I don’t trust coincidences.
Persons of Interest
Jason Bell
Naomi Ward
Secret Older Guy
Nat da Silva
Daniel da Silva
Max Hastings
Howie Bowers
Twenty-One
‘Barney-Barney-Barney plops,’ Pip sang, both the dog’s front paws in her hands as they danced around the dining table. Then her mum’s old CD got stuck in a surface scratch, telling them to hit the road, Ja-Ja-Ja-Ja-Ja . . .
‘Awful sound.’ Pip’s mum, Leanne, entered with a dish of roasted potatoes, placing them on a trivet on the table. ‘Skip to the next one, Pips,’ she said, leaving the room again.
Pip set Barney down and prodded the button on the CD player; that last relic of the twentieth century that her mum was not ready to give up for touch screens and Bluetooth speakers. Fair enough; even watching her use the TV remote was painful.
‘Have you carved, Vic?’ Leanne shouted, backing into the room with a bowl of steaming broccoli and peas, a small knob of butter melting on top.