Two Can Keep a Secret

After seeing Declan, the group heads to the nearest restaurant to debrief, and it happens to be a Chuck E. Cheese. They play foosball and talk about why Declan and Daisy would keep their relationship a secret. Everyone agrees that the town would hate them for it, but Ellery has another theory: They’ve been a couple for much longer than anyone knows, perhaps even all the way back to when Declan was with Lacey before her murder.

Ellery returns to the true-crime maxim that “it’s always the boyfriend” (175); Declan is the only lead she has, but she’s not willing to rule out Officer Rodriguez. She’s running this idea through her mind when she’s distracted by how attracted she is to Malcolm.

Malcolm gets a text from his mom that includes a link to an article in the Boston Globe quoting Viv. Notably, Viv repeats an earlier assertion by Ellery: that Brooke’s disappearance and the recent vandalism probably have nothing to do with Lacey’s murder. Ellery wonders what caused Viv to change her story.

Nana drives the twins to work; Brooke’s disappearance has her nervous, and the whole town is on edge. After being dropped off, Ellery gets a call from Sadie, who has found out about what’s going on in Echo Ridge. When Sadie expresses dismay over not being told, Ellery lashes out, running down all the times Sadie has kept secrets and failed them as a mother. It's an emotional and cathartic conversation, and Sadie admits that she was losing her virginity when Sarah disappeared, which is the underlying reason for both her substance abuse and her distance from Nana. Ellery and her mother begin to reconcile, and Ellery is glad that the two of them are actually talking to each other.

Ellery ends the call when she sees Vance Puckett, who is playing the shooting game again. She uses the pretense of a rematch and mention of her mother to try and get Vance to open up about his conversation with Brooke. Vance reveals that Brooke came to him wanting to know how to pick a lock, and he told her she might try using a paperclip. Ellery realizes that Brooke must have been trying to break into something when they found her drunk and distraught.

While preparing to go out with a search party, Malcolm’s stepfather, Peter, tells him that Malcolm probably shouldn’t come, saying he’d be a distraction. Malcolm is angry with Peter, though he admits it’s probably true.

Malcolm runs into Katrin and Viv; Katrin is hostile toward him. When he asks her how she could believe he’d do something to Brooke, she insists again that they were romantically involved. Katrin leaves, and Malcolm asks Viv if she’s still writing an article; she tells him that she’s too distraught about Brooke to concentrate on it.

While he is helping Peter load up the car for the search party, Malcolm stops to consider the flyer for Brooke, noting that she looks happier in her photo that she has in a long time. Just then, an article comes in on his phone that suggests Declan’s return might have something to do with Brooke’s disappearance. Katrin comes back, looking distraught. Malcolm doesn’t know if it’s because she’s just read the same article or if it’s something else, but she’s no longer angry; now she looks afraid.

Soon after the events of the previous chapter, Malcolm arrives at Mia’s house to witness (alongside Ellery) Mia and Daisy having an intense fight. Mia has told Daisy she knows about Declan and has threatened to tell their parents about the matter. In anger, Daisy throws a candlestick and accidentally hits Mia in the head; Mia is okay but bleeding and dazed, snapping Daisy out of her anger.

The group starts talking about what’s been going on with Daisy, and she admits she had a nervous breakdown over the suppressed guilt she feels over Lacey. At the time of Lacey’s death, Daisy had already been in love with Declan a long time, and he had recently started to feel the same way about her. Declan claimed that Lacey seemed to be seeing someone else and had become distant, but Daisy didn’t want to be a bad friend, so she withdrew throughout the end of Declan and Lacey’s messy relationship.

Daisy doesn’t just feel guilty about her feelings for Declan; she also feels like she wasn’t helpful enough in the investigation of Lacey’s death. In particular, she mentions a unique bracelet that Lacey was wearing. It looked like antlers twisted together, and Lacey never revealed where it came from, even when asked directly. When she came back to Echo Ridge, Daisy asked Lacey’s mother if she could have the bracelet, using it to track down the local artist who makes them. She was too nervous to visit the artist on her own, so she asked Declan if he would come along, which led to their reconnection.

The bracelet ended up as seemingly a dead end, but the relationship between Declan and Daisy blossomed from there. When she mentions that she gave the bracelet to the police, Ellery wants to know which officer. Daisy reveals that it was Officer Rodriguez, and Ellery floats a theory: Officer Rodriguez might be the one who gave Lacey the bracelet in the first place.