A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Pip hears the commotion of her brother, Josh, and her dog, Barney, as they skitter through the house downstairs. People often attempt to figure out the structure of her family, she narrates. Victor, a Nigerian man, is her stepfather and Josh her half-brother. Pip’s biological father died in a car accident when she was 10 months old.

In Capstone Project Log—Entry 2, Pip notes that social media sleuthing has led her to find Andie’s best friends: Chloe Burch and Emma Hutton. She then logs some of the details of the night of Andie’s disappearance. Friday night on April 18, Sal was hanging at his friend Max Hastings’s house, along with Naomi Ward, Jake Lawrence, and Millie Simpson. When interviewed, Sal told the police he had left Max’s to walk home around 12:15am, and his father confirmed that Sal had returned home around 12:50am. The police confirmed Sal’s alibi with his four friends.

However, that Tuesday, the four friends confessed to the police that Sal had asked them to lie about his alibi and that he had actually left Max’s at 10:30pm. That evening, during a search for Andie, the police found Sal’s body in the woods. He had died by suicide by taking sleeping pills and securing a plastic bag over his head.

The police suspected Sal after they found Andie’s phone on his body, traces of her blood under his fingernails, her blood in the trunk of her abandoned car, and Sal’s fingerprints on the car’s dashboard. The case was closed shortly afterward.

Pip and her friend Cara prepare to mend their friend Lauren’s broken heart with chocolate and movies. Pip and Cara became close after Cara’s mother’s diagnosis with an illness and death, as well as when Cara came out two years before. Cara’s father, Elliot Ward, is Pip’s history teacher, and Pip considers him a father figure.

Cara asks Pip whether she will want to interview her sister Naomi for her capstone project. Pip affirms this, and Cara tells her to take it easy on Naomi as the situation still upsets her. Cara wonders aloud what people will think when they see Pip entering Ravi’s house.

In Capstone Project Log—Entry 3, Pip admits that she is biased in that she wants Sal to be innocent. She also transcribes her interview with Fairview Mail journalist Stanley Forbes, who reported on the Bell case in the local press.

During the interview, Pip accuses Stanley of labeling Sal a criminal without his having been convicted, and Stanley retorts that it is obvious that Sal committed the crime. Stanley states that in addition to being Andie’s boyfriend, Sal was Indian and that “they have different ways of life from us […] They don’t treat women quite like we do” (26). Stanley presumes that Andie had decided she did not want to be with Sal and that Sal murdered her because he felt she belonged to him.

Pip points to recent articles Stanley has written in which he calls a murderer who pleaded guilty a “lovesick young man” (27). Pip asks Stanley whether his eased tone is a result of that young man’s being white. Stanley vehemently denies this suggestion.

Pip arrives at Ravi’s house. When speaking about Sal, Ravi states that he does not even feel he is allowed to grieve for his brother because it would make him seem like he is siding with a murderer.

Pip logs her interview with Ravi in Capstone Project Log—Entry 4. Ravi informs Pip that Sal did not know about Andie’s disappearance until the following Saturday morning. The police contacted Sal that afternoon for an interview. Ravi then admits that Sal said something he could not forget: “He said that everything Andie did was deliberate, and maybe she’d run off on purpose to punish someone” (37). Ravi always presumed Sal was talking about Andie’s father, Jason, because he had overheard that their relationship was strained.

Ravi explains that Saturday afternoon, Sal’s friends came to check on him, and Pip surmises this was when Sal asked them to lie to the police about his alibi. Ravi last saw Sal the following Monday at school, when he heard rumors that the police were talking to Sal’s friends. His father had shown him the final text Sal had sent, which stated, “It was me. I did it. I’m so sorry” (40). Pip inquires as to whether Ravi ever thought Sal could be a person who thought about suicide, and Ravi definitively denies this.

Pip admits to Ravi that she knew Sal from when he would hang out at Cara’s house with her sister Naomi. Pip says that Sal told her how to handle two bullies that had picked on her in middle school and that she looked up to him as a hero since then.

In Capstone Project Log—Entry 5, Pip logs her thoughts about Jason. When she watches press footage of Jason, Pip cannot help but feel something is off in his body language and the way he speaks. Pip decides to create a persons of interest list, and Jason becomes the first name placed on it.

Pip prepares to interview Naomi in Mr. Ward’s study. She narrates that Naomi has been going to therapy since her mother died seven years prior and that she is fragile, so Pip tries to proceed with caution.

When Pip asks Naomi what they were all doing at Max’s house the night of Andie’s disappearance, Naomi nervously shifts in her seat and looks away. Pip brings up the fact that there are pictures of that night on Facebook but that Sal is not in any of them, and Naomi supposes he must have left before they took them.

Naomi eventually admits she thought Sal and Andie were having a disagreement at the time, although she was not sure what about, and she refers to Andie as “kind of a nightmare” (46). Naomi says Sal left Max’s house around 10:30pm because he “wasn’t really feeling it” (47), and she and Millie stayed the night at Max’s in a spare room. Naomi explains that lying to the police for Sal seemed to make sense at the time because Sal convinced them that if the police stopped focusing on him, they could concentrate harder on locating Andie. Naomi and the others decided to confess their lie to the police that Tuesday for fear of getting into trouble.

Capstone Project Log—Entry 7 includes a transcript of an interview with Sal’s friend Max. Max informs Pip that Sal and Andie’s relationship began at a “calamity party”—what the teenagers call house parties—and he states that Andie was more like an acquaintance than a good friend of his. Max says that Naomi went upstairs that night for a period of time while he and Jake and Millie played video games, although he does not know why.

In Pip’s notes, she wonders whether Naomi could have slipped out during the time she was meant to be upstairs at Max’s house. She also remembers that Naomi did not seem to like Andie, and she ponders whether Naomi could have killed Andie out of jealousy. She adds Naomi’s name to the persons of interest list.