The Book Cellar stood out along Main Street. It always had, as far back as Pip could remember. And not just because it had been her favorite place to go, dragging her mom in by the arm when she needed just one more book.
But quite literally: the owner had painted the outside of the store a bright, cheerful purple, where the rest of the street was uniform in its clean white painted facades and redbrick walls. Apparently, it had caused a major uproar thirteen years ago.
Connor was lagging behind Pip on the sidewalk. He still wasn’t on board with this whole catfish theory, as he’d phrased it. Even when she pointed out that, in Connor’s own words, Jamie had been on his phone all the time in recent weeks.
“It fits everything we know so far,” Pip continued, eyeing the bookstore up ahead. “Late-night phone calls. And Jamie’s been protective about no one seeing his screen, which makes me think that his relationship with this Leila, this catfish, is a romantic one. Jamie was probably feeling vulnerable after the whole Nat da Silva situation, so it’s easy to see how he might fall for someone online. Especially someone using Stella Chapman’s photos.”
“I guess. Just not what I expected.” Connor dipped his head into his shoulder, a gesture that could either have been a nod or a shrug.
It wasn’t the same, doing this with Connor. Ravi knew just what to say, what to pick out, how to push her into thinking clearly. And he jumped with
her, hand in hand, into even her wildest conclusions. They just worked like that, teased out the best in each other, knowing when to talk and when to just be there. Ravi was still at the courthouse, but Pip had called him earlier, after Stella’s interview. He’d been waiting around for Max’s defense to start because the prosecution had just rested, and they’d talked through everything together—Jamie, Leila—until it all fit. But this was the third time she’d run the explanation by Connor, and each time he’d shrugged, making the doubts creep into Pip’s mind. There wasn’t time for doubts, so she tried to outrun them, hurrying along the sidewalk as Connor struggled to keep up.
“It’s the only explanation that fits the evidence we have,” Pip said.
“Hunches have to follow the evidence, that’s how this works.” She turned her attention back to The Book Cellar, coming to a stop in front of the door.
“When we’re finished here with this potential sighting, we’ll go back to my house and see if we can find this Leila online and confirm the theory. Oh”— she turned to Connor—“and let me do the talking, please. It works better that way.”
“Yeah, fine,” he said. “I said sorry about the Stella thing.”
“I know. And I know you’re just worried.” She softened her face. “Just leave it to me. That’s what I’m here for.”
A bell jangled above the glass door as Pip pushed her way inside. She loved the smell here, an ancient kind of smell, stale and timeless. You could get lost in the labyrinth of dark mahogany bookshelves labeled with shining gold metal letters. Even as a child, she’d always found herself in front of the Crime shelves.
“Hi,” came a deep voice from behind the counter. And then: “Oh, it’s you.
Hi.”
The guy at the register sidestepped the counter and moved toward them across the store floor. He looked out of place here, as tall as the highest shelves and almost as wide; his arms were thick with muscle, and his near- black hair was tied back from his face in a small bun.
“I’m Harry,” he said, holding his hand out to Pip. “Harry Scythe,” he clarified when she shook it. “The one who emailed you.”
“Yes, thank you so much for that,” Pip said. “I came as fast as I could; we ran out as soon as the bell rang.” A floorboard creaked under Connor’s feet.
“This is Connor Reynolds, Jamie’s brother.”
“Hello,” Harry said, pivoting the outstretched hand to Connor now too.
“I’m sorry about your brother, man.”
Connor mumbled a few half-words.
“Could I ask you about what you saw on Friday night?” Pip asked. “Do you mind if I record us?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Hey, Mike,” Harry called to a guy restocking shelves at the back. “Go get Soph from the office! All three of us were there when we saw him,” he explained.
“Perfect. And could I set up the microphones here?” Pip gestured to the counter, beside the register.
“Sure, sure, it’s always quiet from four until closing anyway.” Harry cleared a pile of brown paper bags so Pip could set her backpack down. She pulled out her laptop and the two USB microphones.
Soph and Mike appeared from the back office. Pip had always been curious about what was back there, the sort of wonder that dies a little more each year you grow older.
They swapped new hellos and introductions and Pip instructed the three Book Cellar employees to gather around one microphone. She had to raise it on a stack of books to compensate for Harry’s height.
When everyone was ready, Pip pressed record and nodded pointedly. “So after the memorial, Harry, you said you went to someone’s house. Whose house?”
“Mine,” said Mike, scratching his beard too hard, making the blue audio line spike on Pip’s screen. He looked older than the other two, in his thirties
at least. “On Weevil Road.”
“How far up?”
“It’s number fifty-eight, halfway up where the road bends.”
Pip knew exactly where he meant. “OK, so you all spent the evening together?”
“Yep,” Soph said. “Us and our friend Lucy. She’s not in today.”
“And did you all leave Mike’s house at the same time?”
“Yeah, I was driving,” said Harry. “I dropped Soph and Lucy home on my way.”
“OK,” Pip said, “and do any of you remember exactly what time you left the house?”
“It was, like, eleven-forty-five-ish, wasn’t it?” Harry said, glancing at his friends. “I tried to work it back from the time I got home.”
Mike shook his head. “Think it was just before that. I was already in bed at eleven-forty-five, ’cause I looked at my phone to set the alarm. I went straight to bed after seeing you all off and it takes me only five minutes to get ready, so I’m thinking it was closer to eleven-forty.”
“Eleven-forty? That’s great, thank you,” Pip said. “And can you tell me about seeing Jamie? Where was he? What was he doing?”
“He was walking,” Harry said, pushing back some flyaway strands of hair.
“Pretty fast…with purpose, I mean. He was on the sidewalk on Mike’s side of the road, so he crossed only a few feet behind us. He didn’t even glance at us.
Seemed totally focused on wherever he was going.”
“Which direction was he going?”
“Up Weevil Road,” said Mike, “away from the center of town.”
“Did he go all the way up Weevil Road? Or could he have turned off, say, down Courtland or somewhere?” Pip asked, holding the headphones to her ears and glancing back to check that Connor was OK. He was watching intently, eyes tracking every spoken word.
“Don’t know,” Harry said. “We didn’t see him after he passed us, we went the other way, to my car. Sorry.”
“And you’re certain it was Jamie Reynolds?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was him,” Soph chimed in, leaning instinctively toward the microphone. “There was no one else walking around at that time, so I sort of noticed him more, if that makes sense. I knew it when Harry showed me your poster. I walked out the front door first, saw Jamie walking toward us, and then I turned around to say bye to Mike.”
“What was Jamie wearing?” Pip asked. It wasn’t a test, exactly, but she had to be sure.
“He had on a dark red, purply kind of shirt,” Soph said, looking for confirmation in her friends’ eyes.
“Yeah, burgundy color,” Harry said. “Jeans. Sneakers. And maybe a black watch, I think. But I wasn’t paying too much attention.”
The watch hadn’t been mentioned on the Missing poster, which meant this sighting had to be genuine. Pip unlocked her phone, scrolling to the photo of Jamie from the memorial. She held it up, and Soph and Harry nodded. But only Soph and Harry.
“I dunno,” Mike said, stretching out one side of his mouth in a sort of wince. “I could’ve sworn he was wearing something darker. I mean, I only looked at him for a couple of seconds, and it was kinda dark. But I thought he was wearing something with a hood. Lucy thinks so too. And I swear I couldn’t see his hands because they were in his jacket pockets. If he was just wearing a shirt, then where were his hands? But I got to the door last, so I only really saw the back of him.”
Pip flipped her phone back, looking again at Jamie. “This is what he was wearing when he disappeared,” she said.
“Ah, guess I just didn’t get a good look,” Mike conceded, shuffling back a half step.
“That’s OK.” Pip smiled reassuringly. “It’s hard to remember small details you don’t know will be significant later. Can you recall anything else about Jamie? His demeanor?”
“Nothing that really stuck out,” Harry said, speaking across Soph. “Guess I noticed he was breathing pretty hard, but he just looked like a guy in a hurry
to be somewhere.”
In a hurry to be somewhere.
Pip’s mind replayed those words, adding her own: And now he was nowhere.
“OK.” She clicked stop on the recording. “Thank you all so much for your time.”
