Jamie Reynolds is clearly dead.
The words jumped in and out of focus as Connor held the phone in front of Pip’s eyes.
“Look,” he said, his voice quivering, maybe with the effort of keeping up with her down this corridor, maybe with something else.
“I have,” Pip said, slowing to divert around a group of chittering freshmen. “What was the one very important rule I gave you, Con?” She looked over at him. “Never read the comments. Ever. OK?”
“I know,” he said, going back to his phone. “But that’s a reply to your tweet with the episode link, and it’s already got a hundred and nine likes.
Does that mean a hundred and nine people really think my brother’s dead?”
“Connor—”
“And there’s this one, from Reddit,” he continued, not listening to her.
“This person thinks that Jamie must have taken the knife from our house on Friday evening, to defend himself, and therefore he must have known
someone would try to attack him.”
“Connor.”
“What?” he said defensively. “You read the comments.”
“Yes, I do. In case there are any tips or someone has spotted something I missed. But I know that the vast majority are unhelpful and that the internet is
full of morons,” she said, skipping up the first set of stairs. “Did you see Jamie carrying a huge knife around at the memorial? Or in any of the photos from the calamity? No. Because he couldn’t have, he was wearing just a shirt and jeans. Not many places to hide a six-inch blade.”
“You get a lot of trolls, huh?” Connor followed Pip as she pushed through the double doors on to the history floor. “I killed Jamie and I’ll kill you too, Pip.”
A student in the grade below was passing just as Connor said that. She gasped, mouth open in shock, hurrying away from them in the other direction.
“I was just reading something out,” Connor called to explain, giving up as the girl disappeared through the opposite doors.
“Right.” Pip stopped outside Mr. Clark’s classroom, looking through the glass in the door. He was there, sitting at his desk even though it was break time. She guessed he was new enough that an empty classroom was still more welcoming than the staff room. “Come with me, but if I give you the eyes,
that means you need to leave. Got it?”
“Yes, I get it now,” Connor said.
Pip opened the door and gave Mr. Clark a small wave.
He stood up. “Hello, Pip, Connor,” he said brightly, fidgeting like he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. One went to his wavy brown hair, the other settled in his pocket. “What can I do for you both? Is this about the final?”
“Um, it’s actually about something else.” Pip leaned against one of the tables at the front of the classroom, resting the weight of her backpack.
“What is it?” Mr. Clark said, his face changing, features rearranging beneath his heavy brows.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Connor’s brother, Jamie, went missing last Friday and I’m looking into his disappearance. He was a former student here.”
“Yes, yes, I saw that in the town newspaper yesterday,” Mr. Clark said.
“I’m very sorry, Connor, that must be very hard for you and your family. I’m sure the school guidance counselor would—”
“So.” Pip cut him off; there were only fifteen minutes of break left, and time wasn’t something she had to spare. “We’re investigating Jamie’s disappearance and we’ve traced a lead to a particular individual. And, well, we think you might know this individual. Might be able to give us some information on her.”
“Well, I…I don’t know if I’m allowed…,” he spluttered.
“Layla Mead,” Pip said the name, watching Mr. Clark’s face for a reaction. And he gave her one, though he tried to wrestle with it, shake it off.
But he wasn’t able to hide that flash of panic in his eyes. “So you do know her?”
“No.” He fiddled with his collar like it was suddenly too small for him.
“Sorry, I’ve never heard that name before.”
He wanted to play it that way, did he?
“Oh, OK,” Pip said, “my mistake.” She stood up, heading toward the door. Behind her, she heard Mr. Clark breathe a sigh of relief. That was when she stopped, turned back. “It’s just,” she said, scratching her head like she
was confused, “it’s strange, then.”
“Sorry?” said Mr. Clark.
“I mean, it’s strange that you’ve never heard the name Layla Mead before, when you’ve liked several of her posts on Instagram.” Pip looked up at the ceiling, like she was searching for an explanation. “Maybe you forgot about that?”
“I—I—I,” he stammered, watching Pip warily as she stepped forward.
“Yeah, you must have forgot about it,” she said. “Because I know you wouldn’t intentionally lie about something that could help save a former student’s life.”
“My brother,” Connor chimed in, and Pip hated to admit it, but his timing was perfect. And that glassy, imploring look in his eyes too: spot-on.
“Um, I…I don’t think this is appropriate,” Mr. Clark said, a flush of red appearing above his collar. “Do you know how strict they are now, after everything with Mr. Ward and Andie Bell? All these safeguarding measures, I shouldn’t even be alone with a student.”
“We aren’t alone.” Pip gestured to Connor. “And the door can stay wide open, if you want. All I care about is finding Jamie Reynolds alive. And to do
that, I need to you to tell me everything you know about Layla Mead.”
“Stop,” Mr. Clark said, the red creeping above his beard into his cheeks now. “I am your teacher. Please stop trying to manipulate me.”
“No one’s manipulating anyone here,” Pip said coolly, glancing back at Connor. She knew exactly what she was about to do, and that pit in her stomach knew too, reflooding with guilt. Ignore it, just ignore it. “Although I do wonder whether you knew Layla was using the photos of a current student here at Fairview: Stella Chapman?”
“I didn’t know that at the time,” Mr. Clark said, voice dipping into whispers. “I don’t teach her, I only worked it out a few weeks ago when I saw Stella walking down the hall, and that was already after Layla and I had stopped talking. I unfollowed the Layla account immediately after.”
“Still”—Pip pulled a face with gritted teeth, sucking in a breath between them—“I wonder if that would get you into hot water if anyone found out.”
“Excuse me?”
“Here’s what I suggest,” she said, replacing her expression with an innocent smile. “You record an interview with me in which I use a plug-in to distort your voice. Your name will never be mentioned, and I’ll bleep out any information that might potentially identify you. But you tell me everything you know about Layla Mead. If you do that, I’m sure no one will ever find out anything you wouldn’t want them to.”
Mr. Clark paused for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek, glancing at Connor as though he could help. “Is that blackmail?”
“No, sir,” Pip said. “It’s just persuasion.”
File Name:
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder SEASON 2: Interview with Adam Clark.wav
PIP: So let’s start with how you and Layla met.
ANONYMOUS: [DISTORTED] We never met. Not in real life.
PIP: Right, but what was your first online communication? Who initiated contact? Did you match on Tinder?
ANONYMOUS: No, no, I’m not on there. It was Instagram. I have my account set to private so that [—————BEEP—————]. One day, I think near the end of February, this woman Layla requested to follow me. I checked out her profile, thought she looked nice, and clearly she was local to Fairview because she had photos from around town. I’d only been living here a couple of months then and hadn’t really had a chance to meet any people outside of [—BEEP —]. I thought it might be nice to get to know someone new, so I approved her and followed her back. Liked a couple of her photos. I swear she looked a lot older than eighteen in her pictures.
PIP: Did you start messaging each other directly?
ANONYMOUS: Yes, I got a DM from Layla, something like “Hey, thanks for following me back.” She said she thought she recognized me, asked if I lived in Fairview. I’m not going to go into all the particulars of our conversations, by the way.
PIP: Yes, I understand. So to clarify, the nature of your and Layla’s conversations, would you say they were romantic? Flirtatious?
ANONYMOUS: PIP: OK, no need to answer. Loud and clear. I don’t want you to recount every conversation, I just want to know anything Layla said that might help me identify who she really is. Did you ever have a phone conversation with her?
ANONYMOUS: No. Only on Instagram. And really, we only spoke on and off for a few days. A week at most. It wasn’t a big deal.
PIP: Did Layla tell you where she lives?
ANONYMOUS: Yes, Fairview. We didn’t get to the point of swapping addresses, obviously. But she seemed to have local knowledge, talked about the amazing chicken burgers at Bobby’s Bar & Grill.
PIP: Did she tell you anything else about herself?
ANONYMOUS: Said she was twenty-five. That she lived with her dad and worked in HR somewhere in New York, but she was on sick leave at the moment.
PIP: Sick? With what?
ANONYMOUS: I didn’t ask. We hardly knew each other, that would have been rude.
PIP: Sounds like a classic catfish line to me. Did you suspect she wasn’t who she said she was at any time?
ANONYMOUS: No. I had no idea, not until I saw Stella Chapman [—————BEEP—————] and I was very shocked that I’d been catfished. At least it hadn’t gone on long.
PIP: So you only spoke for a week? What kind of things did you talk about? The clean stuff.
ANONYMOUS: She asked me a lot of questions about myself. A lot, in fact. I found it quite refreshing to meet someone so interested in me.
PIP: Really? What kinds of things did she ask?
ANONYMOUS: It wasn’t like she was interviewing me or anything, her questions all occurred naturally during our conversations. Right
at the start she wanted to know how old I was, asked me directly. I told her I was twenty-nine, and then she asked when I would turn thirty, and if I had any plans yet for the big birthday. She was chatty like that. Nice. And she was interested in my family too, asked if I still lived with any of them, if I had siblings, how my parents were. She would sort of avoid answering when I returned those questions, though. Seemed more interested in me. Made me think she didn’t have such a good home life.
PIP: It seems like you two were hitting it off—why did you stop messaging after a week?
ANONYMOUS: She stopped messaging me. It felt completely out of the blue, to be honest.
PIP: She ghosted you?
ANONYMOUS: Yes, embarrassingly. I kept messaging after, like, “Hello? Where’ve you gone?” And nothing. Never heard from her again.
PIP: Do you have any idea why she ghosted you? Anything you might’ve said?
ANONYMOUS: I don’t think so. I know what the last thing I said to her was, before she disappeared. She’d asked me what I did for a living, so I replied and told her that I was a [——BEEP——] at the [——BEEP——]. And then that was it, she never replied. I guess maybe she’s one of those people who doesn’t want to go out with a [—BEEP—]. Maybe she feels like she can do better, or something.
PIP: I know you didn’t know she was a catfish at the time, but looking back now, did Layla let anything slip, any clues about her real identity? Her age? Any out-of-date slang she might have used?
Did she mention Jamie Reynolds to you? Or any other people she interacts with in real life?
ANONYMOUS: No, nothing like that. I believed she was exactly who she told me she was. No slips. So if she’s a catfish, then I guess she’s a pretty damn good one.
