Larkin didn’t know how to respond to Anni’s email, so she didn’t.
She didn’t sleep much, either.
She did get up, with her alarm, in time to make her early-morning shift at The Coffee Shop.
As Larkin made her first pot of coffee—the one for the staff, to give them the energy to pull espressos and push pastries—she asked herself whether she should start asking people more questions.
“How was your evening?” she asked her boss.
That probably wasn’t the kind of question Anni had in mind, but Larkin knew very little about her boss—which was probably the problem. How much were you supposed to know? Were you really supposed to ask your supervisor about their hopes and dreams? Her boss’s evening had been “great!” and her boss would have said “great!” even if it hadn’t been. That was all that needed to pass between them before they started passing cups to customers.
Larkin hadn’t gotten any further on the question of how to ask people more questions by the time Elliott arrived. He ordered one cup of Earl Grey—he did not add the word “hot” at the end, which Larkin appreciated—and one cup of a Valentine’s Day-themed hibiscus blend called Love Potion.
“I can’t believe it’s already February,” Larkin said. It was the third time she’d said it this morning. This time she followed up with “Can you?”
This was also not the kind of question Anni wanted her to ask. Elliott did not respond, which made Larkin wonder how much he knew about the previous eight hours. He had to know enough to know that Larkin would feel terrible about asking what she knew she had to ask next—but it was Friday morning, and Bonnie’s next fitness class was eight hours away.
“Remember how you said you could help Bonnie get into her dashboard?”
“Yes.” Elliott seemed like the kind of person who would remember that.
“Would you be able to meet us at the fitness center at 3 p.m.?”
“Yes,” Elliott said again. “See you then.” He took a to-go cup in each hand. “Anni says hello.”
“Say hello back,” Larkin said. When Elliott was halfway to the door she called out “Tell her I’m thinking about what she wrote,” in a voice loud enough to draw eyes from laptops and a frown from her boss. “Please,” she added, since she had already projected herself into earshot. “And please tell her thank you.”
Elliott nodded. He knew everything, after all. She had suspected as much—and now she had to think about what she would say to her former suspect, assuming she could get to the campus bookstore as soon as her shift ended. Sometimes her boss asked people to stay late, and Larkin needed the job too much to say no—plus, she couldn’t afford to turn down the extra hours. Anni had said that Larkin shouldn’t think of her life as director-or-barista, after all.
No, wait.
Detective-or-barista.
Director was what she had wanted to be before all of this began.
Detective was what she was failing at being now.
Barista was what she had to be for the next three hours, even though all she really wanted to be was asleep.
* * *
Larkin was so tired that, three minutes after walking into the Howell College bookstore, she walked right up to a woman who reminded her of Bonnie Cooper and said “Did you get my message? I’ve got a friend who’s going to meet us at the fitness center this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry?” the woman said. She wore a Howell-branded sweatshirt and a lanyard embroidered with the word staff. “Can I help you?”
“No,” Larkin said. “I guess I thought I could help you.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, but it was also a ridiculous mistake to make—the woman had Bonnie’s height and Bonnie’s hair, but her face was sharper, with narrower eyes. She narrowed her eyes even further when Larkin asked “Is Ghoti on shift today?”
“They’re on break,” the woman said, and Larkin couldn’t tell if this bookstore staff member was against breaks, or against Ghoti, or against whatever circumstances had put her in this position. She was not young enough to be a typical college student—“actually, ten percent of our student body are what we call nontraditional students,” Larkin heard her mother say, the reminder winding its way through her sleep-deprived mind—and not old enough to have had a fulfilling career before spending her afternoons refilling pronoun button bins. Larkin wondered who this person had wanted to be, before she became who she was. She almost asked—Anni would have wanted her to ask, right?—and then the woman gestured towards a table in the corner of the bookstore.
Larkin was familiar with nontraditional breakrooms. She’d worked in enough theaters to know exactly what you had to do—and what you didn’t have to do—to meet Equity standards. When Larkin’s coffee shop shifts lasted longer than four hours, she took her state-mandated minutes in the corner of the kitchen or, if she felt like she could afford to treat herself, the other side of the counter. The location, or lack thereof, no longer mattered. In every real sense of the word, Larkin and every other employee she knew spent their breaks on their phones.
That was how Larkin found Ghoti—head down, fingers swiping.
“Hey,” Larkin said. “I came to say—”
What had she come to say, anyway?
“I’m sorry, I think.”
She hadn’t meant that last part.
“You think?” Ghoti twisted towards Larkin. The smile was genuine, although Larkin couldn’t tell if Ghoti was happy to see her or simply happy to have landed another zinger.
“Well, I’m not doing a very good job of it today,” Larkin said. “But I think I did an even worse job the last time I was here.”
“Why?” Ghoti pushed their hair out of their eyes just long enough to scrutinize Larkin. “I left your mom alone,” they continued, the locks falling back into place. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I mean, sure,” Larkin said. “That was a good thing for you to do. I appreciate it.” Her thoughts were having the hardest time shaping themselves into sentences. “But I accused you of something you didn’t do.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I did,” Larkin said. “Those signs.”
Now it was Claire’s voice, in her memory: “Don’t let anyone know you’re upset about the signs.” That’s what she’d said, right? That was how they were all supposed to protect Larkin’s mother?
“I’m not upset about the signs,” Larkin said. “My mom isn’t either.”
“Okay,” Ghoti said, turning away from Larkin and back to their phone. “So you’re not here to howl at me.”
“No,” Larkin began, “I—”
“That was a pun,” Ghoti said. “A real one.”
“Oh,” Larkin said. Howl at me. “I guess it was.”
“A lot of people say things are puns when they’re really just jokes.” Ghoti checked the time on their phone, and then put it into their pocket. “Not Dr. Jackson, though. Is that why you like him?”
“Um, no,” Larkin said. Why did she like Ed? “I like him because he’s smart.”
“You like him because he’s hot,” Ghoti said. “And because he pays attention to you. Is that why your mom likes that cop?”
“I don’t know,” Larkin said. She was still trying to figure out why she liked Ed—and why Ghoti’s question made her feel so sad. “I think Mom likes Claire because they take care of each other.” That was right, Larkin knew, but it wasn’t all of it. “And because they have the same idea about what people could become, if they wanted to.” That was closer. “What a good person could be.” She watched Ghoti watching her, more interested in this answer than anything Larkin had said thus far. “They’re both trying to be the same kind of good person.”
“Okay,” Ghoti said again. “I have to go back to work.” They held out a hand, nail-bitten and ink-stained, to Larkin. “You can tell your mom that I’m sorry too.”
“You can tell her yourself,” Larkin said. “She wants to meet you. She says you should contact Janessa in her office to set up a time. Do you know Janessa?”
Ghoti raised their one visible eyebrow. “Everyone knows Janessa,” they said. “That’s, like, her whole deal.”
“Well,” Larkin said, “I’ll leave you to deal with her.” She waited to see if Ghoti got it.
“That’s not really a pun,” Ghoti said. “It’s just a homonym.” They pulled their student-leader lanyard out of their pocket and draped it over their neck. “But I’ll tell your boyfriend that you’re trying to be the same kind of person as him, if you want.”
“I think we’re good,” Larkin said—hoping Ghoti wouldn’t catch her in the lie.
* * *
Larkin caught up with Elliott and Bonnie a few minutes after three. They were in the lobby of the Pratincola Fitness Complex, Elliot’s laptop spread over both their laps. His phone, on his free knee, was set to speaker.
“Yeah, it looks like her password was changed on Wednesday, February 1,” the person on the other end of the phone said.
“Can we get a timestamp on that?” Elliott asked.
“Sure. The request went through at 5:03 p.m. Eastern.”
“Location?”
“Pratincola, Iowa.”
“Device?”
“Couldn’t tell you. It came through the app, though.”
“Not a web browser.”
“Nope.”
“Were there multiple instances running?”
“Of the app? Couldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me this, then,” Elliott said, glancing up just long enough to nod his head at Larkin, “what do we need to do to get her back on?”
“Well, we’d need some way of proving it was her, you know?”
“Right,” Elliott said. “And TFA’s out because she’s been locked out of text and email.” He turned to Bonnie. “Does your phone still receive calls?”
“I don’t know,” Bonnie said. “I never thought of that.”
“Right,” Elliott said again. He tilted his voice towards his left knee. “Can you do a two-factor authentication through call?”
“Damn it, we used to,” the voice said. “But we killed that option, like, five years ago.”
“All right,” Elliott said. He thought about this—they all watched him think, his fingers bouncing against his right knee, his chin rocking up and down—and then he spoke.
“Give me the options you didn’t kill.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know there’s some way of getting in that’s still built into the system,” Elliott said. “Social media predates TFA and integrated user accounts. It predates smartphones, even. There’s no way you killed everything you used before you switched to the systems you’re using now, so you should have at least one legacy authentication protocol that doesn’t require a phone or email and is still functional.”
Then they all watched Elliott watch the phone. The other set of fingers tapped, then stopped.
“Jeez, Ell,” the voice said, “you owe me.”
“I’ll give you five stars,” Elliott said. “Your customer service is exceeding expectations.”
“Ask her when she opened the account.”
Elliott turned to Bonnie. “When did you open this account?”
“When I turned thirteen,” Bonnie said. “But we had smartphones then. I got one for my birthday.”
“Did you get a code?” the voice asked.
“For my birthday?”
“No,” the voice asked. “When you opened the account. A six-digit backup verification code.”
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “We were supposed to write it down and put it in a safe place where nobody could ever find it.”
“Right,” the voice said. “Because that was how we still did security ten years ago.”
“I kept it safe,” Bonnie said.
“Right,” the voice said again. “On a sticky note in your desk drawer, just like everybody else.”
“No,” Bonnie said. “In my head.”
“You memorized it?” Elliott asked.
Bonnie smiled, putting her hand up to cover the side of her face that no longer matched the other. “It was easy. Zero-eight-three-two-three-five.”
From there, it was easy—Elliott shifted his laptop onto Bonnie’s lap, she used his browser to attempt to log into her old social media account, and when the login failed the voice on the other end of the phone helped Bonnie navigate to the part of the website where she could input her backup verification code.
“All it is,” Bonnie said, “is, like, a zero becomes an eight when you squish it, and then a three when you cut it in half, and then two plus three is five.”
“Great,” the voice said. “Are you in?”
“Not yet,” Bonnie said. “It wants me to make a new password first.”
“Don’t make it any password you’ve ever used before,” Elliott said. “You probably shouldn’t even use dictionary words.”
“Thanks, I know,” Bonnie said, entering what Larkin hoped was a case-sensitive string of numbers, letters, and special characters. “Do you need to write it down?” she asked. “No,” Bonnie said, filling out the confirmation field. “Thank you, I’ve got this, and—I’m in!”
“Wow,” Larkin said. “That’s impressive.” She turned to Elliott. “I owe you at least a bottle of wine, or something.”
“It’s no big deal,” Elliott said. “Bonnie needed access to one of her social media accounts before she could log into her fitness instructor dashboard—which isn’t how I would have built it, but nobody asked me.”
“We love it,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “You won’t believe how many new users we got once all those smaller apps figured out they could use us to solve the login problem.”
“And the profile problem.”
“We solve a lot of problems,” the voice said. “At least as many as we cause.”
“I’m in my dashboard,” Bonnie said. “I can run today’s class!”
“Good,” Elliott said. “You can use this laptop until we figure out how to get your OS accounts reactivated. System accounts are a little more complicated than social media, but I’ll start thinking about how to get you in touch with someone who can help.”
He picked up his phone. “Thanks again,” he said.
“No problem,” the voice replied. “Don’t forget about the five-star rating.”
“Wait,” Larkin said. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of this earlier. She could barely believe she’d thought of it at all. “The first time the password was changed—did the two-factor authentication go through text or email?”
“Who’s that?” the voice asked.
“A friend,” Elliott said. He nodded to Larkin. “That’s a very good question. I should have thought to ask it.”
“I can check that for you,” the voice said.
They waited.
“It was text.”
“So it would have had to have been done on her phone,” Larkin said.
“I couldn’t say that for sure,” the voice said, “but probably.”
“Then I really, really need to apply for my business license,” Larkin said, “because we’re going to need access to those security cameras.”
“You shouldn’t apply for a business license just to get access to a security camera.” It was Anni, dressed for Bonnie’s workout because she had guessed—correctly—that Elliott would work everything out. Larkin was still wearing her barista clothing. She hadn’t even thought about preparing herself for forty-five minutes of guided fitness.
She also hadn’t thought about preparing herself for Ed—but there he was, gym bag over one shoulder, shaking hands with Elliott, saying hello to Bonnie and Anni. Larkin wanted to call out all of the questions she had inchoately collated: Are you all right? My mom said you were stressed out? Do you want to talk about it? Does this have anything to do with me? Is there any way I can help? Why do you like me? Why do you think I like you? If someone could like you in exactly the way you wanted to be liked, could I like you like that? Can you tell me for sure that I am not failing you? If I were failing you, could you tell me how to stop?
But Ed was talking with Anni about that Sunday’s choir rehearsal—Larkin had forgotten, until that moment, that the Pratincola Concert Choir was about to end its winter break—and after listening to Ed make a joke about springing into action and listening to Anni make a joke about spring still being six weeks away, she was glad she hadn’t made the moment about herself.
Because that’s what she would have done, if she had stopped Ed to ask him what was going on. Even when she tried to make things about other people, it all came right back around to her. Larkin looked around the lobby and asked herself if there was anything she could do to help anyone else. Bonnie had what she wanted, thanks to Elliott. Anni had what she wanted, thanks to Elliott. Ed was off-limits, and not just because he had already left for the locker room. That left—and as Bonnie went to set up her class and Anni went to hang up her coat, Larkin looked at the rangy ginger who had once been a magician. She wasn’t quite sure what Elliott wanted, but she was pretty sure how to start the conversation.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I guess I have to wait here until Bonnie’s class is over so I can get my laptop back.”
Now Larkin was pretty sure how she could help. “Could I treat you to a coconut water or a protein smoothie?”
“You’re not going to class?”
“I’ll go next time,” Larkin said. “Right now I think I owe you a nutritionally optimized beverage.”
The two of them made their way to the fitness center canteen, where Elliott ordered a bottle of water and Larkin ordered a Drink. She figured she ought to do her bit to support Bonnie, especially since she hadn’t done much to help the case so far.
“Aren’t you worried about missing a clue?” Elliott asked, as the two of them took their drinks to a metal table.
“I feel like I need to get a clue first,” Larkin said. She unscrewed the cap of her Drink and took a tentative swallow. “Wow, this is surprisingly not terrible,” she said. “It’s like a liquid gummy vitamin.” She helped herself to a second swig. “I can see why Bonnie was so excited about getting them as a sponsor.”
“What do you mean, as a sponsor?”
Larkin explained the situation, as well as she understood it. Then she explained the problem. “Since Bonnie can’t post to social media, she might lose her Drink money. That’s a significant part of her income, or at least that’s what she made it sound like.” She took one last drink and placed the empty bottle on the table. “I’m not sure how Bonnie gets paid, exactly. I should have asked. I’m going to ask. You know that Anni just emailed me—I mean, you know everything, I’m not going to explain it to you because I’m not going to talk about me.”
Elliott nodded. He did that a lot. Larkin kept talking.
“If I were to guess how Bonnie got paid, well—she’s probably getting a little bit from the fitness center and a little bit from the company that provides the music and routines. The fitness center pays the company, and the company provides the fitness center with credibility. Like, if you take this class you can burn up to 600 calories per hour, or whatever. But Bonnie also has to provide credibility. That’s why she has to be on social media all the time. She’s the proof that this whole system works. Without her, it all falls apart.”
Larkin pulled at the wrapper of her Drink until it fell apart. Then she shoved the crumpled plastic into the pocket of her mother’s coat and took out her phone. “Bonnie’s really good at what she does, too. There was this picture she took of Ed that got, like, four thousand likes.” She did a search for Ed Jackson Pratincola fitness. Maybe she could find the image on an account that hadn’t been murdered.
The search engine was unable to find a precise match for Larkin’s query—so it began retrieving other Pratincola fitness center posts instead. “Wow,” Larkin said, “a lot of people in this town spend a lot of time posting fitness selfies.”
“The Eastern Iowa Creative Corridor is one of the healthiest areas in the nation,” Elliott said.
“Did Anni tell you that?” Larkin asked. “She said the same thing to me after I moved here. I guess I ended up staying, so it must have worked.” She set a second set of search parameters: Pratincola fitness Bonnie Cooper. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume you were staying here too. That was probably rude of me. I haven’t slept.”
“We haven’t decided where we’re going to live,” Elliott said. “We’re pretty sure it’s not going to be Anni’s apartment.”
Larkin was pretty sure Anni would have wanted her to ask Elliott about that—it was a pretty big thing to say, after all—but she was too busy asking the search engine to pull all of the Pratincola fitness Bonnie Cooper posts, as well as any posts that included Pratincola guided fitness or Blithe and Bonnie, that had been made on the day of Bonnie’s social media murder. “We might not need the security cameras,” Larkin said. “Look at this.”
She turned her phone towards Elliott just long enough for him to see the search results. “There are fifty-two posts from the day Bonnie’s accounts were killed.”
“Not from Bonnie.”
“No,” Larkin said. “Her accounts are dead. These are all of the posts made by other people.” She began scrolling. “Nearly all of them have images. Some of them are from inside the classroom, where we couldn’t even get security camera footage anyway.”
“Ha,” Larkin said, “there I am. In the background. That was when Bonnie was talking to Anni and me about how we should start a true crime podcast.” She showed the image to Elliott.
“I am the luckiest man in the world,” Elliott said.
“Why?”
“Because I found Anni again. Because we found each other.” He handed the phone back. “Also, that picture has two Bonnies in it.”
“Wait, what?” Larkin looked, and Elliott was right—there was the Bonnie who was talking to Larkin and Anni about true crime, and a second, identically dressed Bonnie who appeared to be walking towards the corner of the classroom. The second Bonnie was blurred, and expanding the image didn’t make it any clearer.
“Could it be a double exposure or something?”
“That’s film,” Elliott said.
“What if it was, like, a new social media filter?” Larkin did a quick search for double exposure filter—they did exist, but there wasn’t any reason for this social media selfie to be doubly exposed. The subject was exposed enough, wearing ill-fitting fitness togs and telling her followers that she was still keeping up with her New Year’s Resolution.
“I don’t remember our class having two Bonnies in it,” Larkin said. “We would have noticed.”
“No,” Elliott said, “you wouldn’t have. It’s a classic example of misdirection.”
“Thanks, Mister Magician,” Larkin said, and Elliott looked just uncomfortable enough that she wished she hadn’t. “Sorry. I mean—you think somebody did this deliberately?”
“If somebody did this,” Elliott said, “it was deliberate.” He examined the photo again. “I suppose it could just be someone who looks a lot like Bonnie, who just happened to be wearing the same clothes.”
“Yeah,” Larkin said, “she’s kind of a type. Especially for Pratincola. There are more natural blondes in Eastern Iowa than there are in the entire state of California.” She took her phone back and began searching for other photos with two Bonnies in them. “I saw someone a few hours ago, and I almost called the person Bonnie.” That wasn’t quite true. “I mean, I actually said hey, Bonnie, and they turned around and it wasn’t her at all.”
Larkin waited for Elliott to respond. Then she remembered Anni’s advice. “Do you know what’s funny? I lived in Los Angeles when I went to grad school. Ed lived in Los Angeles when he went to grad school. You must have been in Los Angeles at around the same time, when you were doing your TV show. We were probably within a few miles of each other, all three of us, and we all ended up here.” She glanced up from her phone to see if Elliott had registered that she was trying to ask him a question. Then she realized she actually hadn’t. “I mean, isn’t that interesting?”
“In what way do you think it’s interesting? I have a couple of theories, but I’d be interested in hearing yours first.” Elliott was way better at asking people questions. Larkin wondered if that was one of the reasons why Anni liked him.
“I guess I never thought I’d end up in a place like this, and I never thought someone like Ed would end up in a place like this,” Larkin said. “I don’t know a lot about you yet, but I bet you never wanted to end up in a place like this.”
“Ah,” Elliott said. “That’s not why I think it’s interesting.”
“Why do you think it’s interesting?”
“I think it’s interesting because it’s completely predictable,” Elliott said. “Of course people like you and me and Ed would end up in Pratincola, if that’s the way you want to put it.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “People go where the opportunities are, and right now there are more opportunities in Eastern Iowa than there are in the entire state of California.”
Larkin watched Elliott send a text. He used the same two-finger technique that she had seen Anni use—short-long, long-short, long-short, short-short—and she suddenly realized what it was.
“You’re texting in Morse code!” she said. “I’ve been watching Anni tap at her phone for months. I wanted to say something, but I thought it would be rude, you aren’t supposed to ask people what they’re doing on their phones, it’s like whenever anyone’s texting or emailing or taking a selfie you have to, like, pretend like they don’t exist, and all this time she was just waiting for me to ask her about it.”
“I know,” Elliott said, smiling. “I heard the whole story last night.”
“So did I,” Larkin said.
“Good good good good good!” It was Anni, workout bag in one hand and Elliott’s laptop in the other. “I was hoping the two of you would be friends!” She kissed the top of Elliott’s head in a way that suggested she would have kissed whatever part of his body was available without worrying about what it meant. “Bonnie’s class went well,” she continued. “She’s going to come up and thank you in a minute, I think.”
“Look at this,” Larkin said, holding her phone towards Anni. She was about to tell Anni what she and Elliott had found, and then she decided to turn it into a question. “What do you see in this photo?”
“That’s Beth,” Anni said. “I was helping her out on Monday. Bonnie’s class is her New Year’s Resolution.”
“What else do you see?”
“It must have been taken at the beginning of class,” Anni said. “You and I are in the background, with Bonnie, and—”
Larkin watched Anni figure it out. “There’s someone else in this photo wearing Bonnie’s clothing.” She handed the phone back to Larkin. “Not literally Bonnie’s clothing.”
“Obviously,” Larkin said.
“Not obviously,” Anni said. “I mean, I know what you meant, but the whole point is that it wasn’t supposed to be obvious. Beth didn’t notice when she took the selfie. Nobody said anything about it in the comments. We didn’t even notice it when it happened.”
“It’s called the Gorilla Effect, right?” Elliott asked.
“Invisible Gorilla,” Anni said, “but yes. We see what we expect to see, and because of that, nobody saw this.”
“Well,” Larkin said, “I guess we need to find out who the Invisible Gorilla is.” She stood up, ready to take the next step—and then sat down again. “But maybe tomorrow? I am kind of exhausted, and it’s late—”
“It’s 5:02,” Anni said.
“And I should really check in on my mom, and—”
“What’s going on with your mom?” Anni again; Larkin could see the worst-case scenarios work their way through her imagination.
“Nothing serious,” Larkin said, trying to reassure Anni without breaking the unspoken rule to not tell anyone else about the signs. “It’s a Howell thing. Work stress. She asked me not to talk about it.”
“All right,” Anni said. “Then we’ll leave you to it—oh, hello!” It was Bonnie, finished with her post-workout routine; she slung one arm around Anni and another arm around Larkin and said “Thank you.”
“Happy to help,” Larkin said. “Although Elliott did most of the work.”
“We worked together,” Elliott said.
“And if you were interested in getting together tomorrow,” Larkin continued, “I might have a lead on your case. Do you want to meet at The Coffee Shop again, maybe around 1 p.m.? That’s when my shift’s over.”
“Sure,” Bonnie said, and they settled it, and the four of them made small talk as they made their way out of the fitness center and towards their respective cars and sidewalks. Larkin went home; she asked her mom all the right questions about how her day had gone (well) and whether there had been any new signs (no) and whether Ghoti had set up that appointment (well, no), and then she had her dinner and took her shower and watched the first thirteen minutes of a bootleg recording of the latest Into the Woods revival before falling asleep.
She woke up, a few minutes after midnight, with one question in her mind:
Why hadn’t Ed joined them after class?