What happened in Good Girl, Bad Blood?

Read a full summary of Good Girl, Bad Blood, book #2 in Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series. This page is full of spoilers, so beware. If you are wondering what happened in Good Girl, Bad Blood, then you are in the right place!

Special thanks to Susan Jensen, a new BSR contributor, who wrote this great recap! Visit her blog to check out what she’s reading and see what’s on her mind. And don’t forget to follow Susan on Goodreads and Facebook!

Author
Holly Jackson

Ratings
4.6 stars on Amazon
4.33 stars on Goodreads
Add Good Girl, Bad Blood on Goodreads.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
#1 A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (recap)
#2 Good Girl, Bad Blood (this page)
#3 As Good As Dead (recap)

***** Everything below is a SPOILER *****

What happened in Good Girl, Bad Blood?

Good Girl, Bad Blood starts six weeks after the events from A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Although Elliot Ward has been arrested for the murder of Sal Singh, Pip feels like the media isn’t telling the whole story. That’s what she intends to do in her podcast, which Ravi names A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. The podcast becomes an instant sensation, bringing her both positive attention and death threats. Although her listeners are clamoring for another season, Pip insists she’s done with investigating murders. Her obsession with the last one was unhealthy and dangerous, she says.

A month later, Pip has to testify at Max Hastings’ trial. He’s accused of drugging and raping Becca Bell, as well as other girls. Her parents don’t allow her to attend the rest of the proceedings since she has school, but Ravi does.

A large memorial is held in Fairview for Sal Singh and Andie Bell. Pip attends with Ravi. Among many other people, she sees her friend Connor Reynolds and his older brother, Jamie. She hears the brothers talking to each other in low, urgent voices. Later that evening, Jamie bumps into Pip while walking slowly through the crowd with a determined look in his eye. He apologizes for running into her but is so distracted he doesn’t even seem to recognize Pip, which she finds odd.

The next evening, a worried Connor comes to see Pip at her home. He says Jamie is missing, he’s not answering his phone, and no one has seen him since the memorial the night before. Even though the Reynolds family reported the disappearance to the police, they were told nothing could be done since Jamie is, at 24, an adult and also has a history of leaving home without communicating with his loved ones. Connor says he’s worried about Jamie because his brother has been acting strange lately. Since the cops don’t seem concerned, Connor asks Pip to investigate. She says she doesn’t do that anymore but will try to persuade Detective Hawkins to take the matter more seriously. When Hawkins won’t be swayed, Pip reluctantly agrees to launch her own investigation.

Pip goes to the Reynolds’ house with her recording equipment. First, she interviews Joanna, Connor and Jamie’s mother. Joanna describes her son as feeling lost and unable to commit to anything. She says he doesn’t really have any friends in town except Nat da Silva, who he’s in love with (although she doesn’t feel the same way about him). Lately, Joanna says, Jamie has been acting strange—getting upset easily, staying out late, oversleeping, almost missing work, etc. When Pip interviews Connor, he adds that Jamie had been acting very moody, making secretive phone calls, and sneaking out of the house at night. He also says that Jamie and their dad do not get along well and had a nasty fight the night of the memorial. Connor says Jamie told him he was going to hang out with Nat after the memorial but would be back at home that night.

Pip searches Jamie’s room with Connor and Joanna. They can’t guess the right password to open up his laptop. Pip finds a scrap of paper in his trash can that says: “Hillary Weiseman left 11.” When she Googles the name, she finds a link to an obituary for an 80+-year-old Fairview woman. In Jamie’s nightstand drawer, Pip discovers a watch with a pink band. Neither Connor nor Joanna recognize it.

While Ravi hangs up Missing posters, Pip visits Stanley Forbes at the newspaper to ask if he’ll run something about Jamie’s disappearance. He agrees. She then visits Nat at the home of her boyfriend, Luke Eaton. Nat is not happy to see Pip, but she tells her that Jamie took off through the crowd at the memorial because he had seen someone he needed to talk to. She doesn’t know who and says she hasn’t seen or heard from Jamie since then. Nat also says she hasn’t spoken to or texted with Jamie much lately. Then who, Pip wonders, had he been so secretive about texting?

Pip’s neighbor shows her a photo from the memorial in which Jamie is standing in a crowd with a surprised look on his face. He’s looking at the camera when everyone else is looking away. What—or who—had caught his attention?

Cara tells Pip that, although she was drunk and only has hazy memories, she thinks she saw Jamie at a high school calamity party right after the memorial. A boy confirms that Jamie was there and says he saw Jamie at 10:32 p.m., talking on the phone. Jamie kept repeating, “I can’t do that,” and said something about a child. Until now, that marks the last time Jamie was seen before he disappeared. Pip assumes he was at the party because he followed whoever he spotted at the memorial to that location.

When Pip mentions Jamie working for her mom at the real estate office, Pip’s mom is confused. She says that he was fired two and a half weeks ago for trying to steal the company credit card. His only explanation was that he wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t a matter of life and death.

Pip goes to the Reynolds’ home to speak to Connor and his mom. While there, she notices a six-inch chef’s knife is missing from the knife block in their kitchen. It doesn’t turn up in a search of the kitchen. Joanna believes she last used it the week before—the same week Jamie went missing.

A girl sends Pip a video from the post-memorial calamity party. It shows Jamie tapping a girl named Stella Chapman on the shoulder. When Pip talks to Stella, Stella says she doesn’t know Jamie but that he did tap her. He called her Leila and said they had been texting each other for weeks. Stella was very confused. Pip deduces that “Leila” stole a social media profile picture of Stella and has been using it as their own.

A man from the local bookstore contacts Pip, saying he and his friends saw Jamie at 11:40 p.m. on the night he disappeared. He was walking fast away from town down Weevil Road. He and

his friends disagree on which top Jamie was wearing. Two say he had on a burgundy shirt. One says he was wearing a black hoodie.

To try to find Leila, Ravi signs up for the Tinder dating app. He scrolls through the people on the app and finds a profile for “Layla Mead,” who uses edited photos of Stella as her own. Jamie is one of her friends. So is the kids’ history teacher, Adam Clark. Ravi sends a generic greeting to “Layla,” who replies, “Hi, Pip.” The trio is stunned. A second message arrives: You’re getting closer 🙂 When Pip tries to reply, she gets an error message saying the user cannot be found. All of Layla’s social media accounts have also been disabled.

Pip’s new neighbors, Charlie and Flora Green, show her a video from their doorbell camera. It’s a video from a week ago showing Jamie breaking into their house. Only one thing was taken—Flora’s watch. It’s the same one Pip found in Jamie’s nightstand drawer. Flora says the watch was not expensive, so she can’t understand why it would have been taken, especially when more valuable things were in plain sight in the same room.

Pip and Connor confront their teacher, Mr. Clark. He says since he’s new and he’s never taught Stella, he didn’t recognize her edited picture on Layla’s profile. He chatted with “Layla” on social media, and she asked him many questions. She stopped messaging him when he told her what he did for a living.

A boy at school tells Pip she saw Jamie Reynolds at 10:50 p.m. the night of the memorial and calamity party going into Nat da Silva’s house. She remembers that Nat said he had not come over that night.

Acting on a comment from a Reddit thread about Jamie’s disappearance, Pip and Ravi go to the town cemetery. They locate Hillary Weiseman’s grave. They’re surprised when they run into Stanley Forbes, a local reporter who says he’s there to interview the pastor of the church near the cemetery. They ask Stanley about the children listed on a card from a bouquet on Hillary’s headstone. He says one of them—Mary Scythe—works at the newspaper with him. Harry and Joe Scythe are her sons. Harry is one of the bookstore employees who told Pip about seeing Jamie on the night he disappeared.

Joanna Reynolds tells Pip that Jamie had a black hoodie that she can’t find anywhere in the house. If the bookstore employees saw him wearing it, that means he returned to his house between the time he left the calamity party and the time he was seen by the bookstore employees. Although Jamie’s dad, Arthur, had returned to the house about the same time, he never mentioned seeing Jamie then. Joanna also says that while looking for the black hoodie, she found a bloodstained shirt in Jamie’s laundry basket. She didn’t remember him injuring himself.

While at the Reynolds’ house, Pip, Connor, and Joanna figure out the password to Jamie’s computer. They discover Internet searches for “how to fight,” “controlling fathers,” “brain cancer,” and “how to make money quickly.” Pip also realizes that Jamie had been wearing a FitBit, which

was GPS-enabled. Although no information from it had been uploaded for the past few days, the Fitbit app shows data for the night he went missing. It shows that his heart rate picked up after 11:40 p.m., indicating he was probably running. Pip is excited because, using the information, she can figure out more details about Jamie’s movements on the night he disappeared.

On Jamie’s laptop, Pip finds messages between him and Layla. Jamie portrays himself as older and more successful than he is in real life. Layla stops messaging him when he confesses that he’s only 24, has a lowly desk job, and lives with his parents.

Pip organizes a group of volunteers to search for Jamie in the forest and fields around the area Jamie was in on the night he vanished. One of the groups discovers the Reynolds’ missing chef’s knife near the abandoned farmhouse where Becca Bell had hidden Andie Bell’s body for five and a half years. It’s clean, with no blood on it. Pip calls the police, and Daniel da Silva (Nat’s brother) comes to collect it. When Pip mentions Layla Mead to Daniel, he blushes and tells her he has no idea what she’s talking about.

When Pip and Ravi went inside the abandoned farmhouse, they noticed disturbed dust and food wrappers scattered around. It looked as if someone had been living there. They, Connor, and Cara decide to have a stakeout there. When they arrive, three high schoolers are already there. Pip realizes they’ve interrupted a drug deal of some kind. A white BMW pulls up and then races away. Pip and her friends follow it. Pip recognizes the car as belonging to Nat da Silva’s boyfriend, Luke Eaton.

Pip interviews Arthur Reynolds, father of Connor and Jamie. He says Jamie had just asked to borrow $900 but wouldn’t tell him why. Pip guesses it was for drugs. When Pip questions Nat about a drug connection between Jamie and Luke, she tells Pip to get lost and leave her alone.

The verdict comes back in the Max Hastings trial. He is found not guilty of all charges. Pip is furious.

Pip discovers that the boy who said he saw Jamie going to Nat’s house on the night of the memorial lied just to get his name on her podcast.

At school, Pip finds a note in her locker that says: This is your final warning, Pippa. Walk away.

An Internet rumor accuses Pip of making up Jamie’s disappearance to make the second season of her podcast popular. When Ant accuses her of the same thing, Pip pushes him and gets suspended from school for fighting. Ravi comes to see Pip later, and she reacts with anger, (figuratively) pushing him away. He leaves, frustrated with her. Before he exits, he tells her he loves her—the first time either has said it.

Pip sneaks out of her house and drives to Max Hastings’ residence. She uploads the audio file she has of him confessing to drugging and raping Becca Bell to the Internet. On his house, she paints, Rapist. I will get you. She also uses a hammer to shatter his windows. Then she drives to Ravi’s house. Pip apologizes for being obsessive and angry; Ravi forgives her.

Nat tells Pip she needs to speak to her, so Pip goes to her house. Nat says Luke lied about being home alone on the night Jamie disappeared. Looking through Luke’s phone, she found texts between him and Layla Mead. He was going to meet her that night. The last text from him to her says: What the f—, I’m going to kill you.

Pip and Ravi go to see Luke Eaton. Luke says he loaned Jamie $900 but didn’t ask why he needed it. When Luke went to the abandoned farmhouse to meet Layla, Jamie was there instead. Jamie said something that sounded like “child brown sick” and then ran into the woods. Luke chased him but didn’t catch him.

When Pip and Ravi Google “child brown sick,” they are led to articles about “Child Brunswick,” the name the media gave to the unnamed child who helped convict Scott Brunswick, a serial killer, of a number of child murders. Because the boy—Scott’s son—was coerced by his father into helping kidnap his father’s victims, he was sentenced to serve five years in a juvenile detention center. When he turned 18, Child Brunswick was given a new identity, and an injunction was placed on the media, preventing them from leaking the information to ensure the young man’s safety. Knowing that Layla Mead was chatting with several local men (Luke Eaton, Jamie Reynolds, Daniel da Silva, etc.) who were the right age to be Child Brunswick, Pip concludes that she was looking for him.

A comment on a Reddit post reminds Pip of Howie Bowers, an inmate at the local prison. She remembers seeing Stanley Forbes meeting with Howie, giving him money, and insisting this was the last time he would do it. Pip realizes that Stanley is the right age to be Child Brunswick. He was giving Howie money to keep him quiet about his real identity.

How did Good Girl, Bad Blood end?

Pip texts Stanley, pretending to be Layla. She says to meet her at the farmhouse that night. Stanley agrees. While Stanley drives to the farmhouse, Ravi and Connor break into his house. They discover that Jamie is there, alive but locked in a room. Jamie tells them to leave because he’s worked out a deal with his captor.

Meanwhile, Stanley arrives at the farmhouse. He tells Pip that Layla asked him to meet her at the farmhouse on the night Jamie disappeared. Instead of Layla, it was Jamie. He lunged at Stanley with a knife, and Stanley pushed him, causing Jamie to hit his head. Stanley took Jamie home and locked him in a room while he decided what to do. The men talked, and Jamie told Stanley he had confronted Stanley because Layla told him to. She had been making him do things—steal a watch she said belonged to her dead mother, give her money for a supposed medical trial (which he left for her in the cemetery), and kill a man she claimed had been stalking her. Layla said she didn’t know which of the two men were stalking her. She’d invite them both to the farmhouse, where Jamie would say “Child Brunswick” to them. He should kill whichever one reacted to the words.

After Stanley and Jamie talked, the two men made a deal. They would work together to figure out who Layla really was. Jamie wouldn’t tell anyone who Stanley was, and Stanley wouldn’t tell the police Jamie had attacked him with a knife. Jamie would stay locked in the bathroom until Stanley knew for sure Jamie wasn’t the one pretending to be “Layla.” Although Stanley now trusted Jamie, they still didn’t know Layla’s real identity.

When Pip tells Stanley that Connor and Ravi are at his house and that they broke a window to get inside, Stanley says that the windows are rigged with an alarm that automatically calls the police.

Pip is surprised when her new neighbor, Charlie Green, walks into the farmhouse. He takes Stanley’s and Pip’s cell phones and then holds a gun on them. Charlie says that he and Flora are the ones pretending to be Layla. His real last name is Nowell, and he’s the twin brother of one of Scott Brunswick’s victims. He’s been searching for Child Brunswick ever since, desperate for revenge.

Charlie shoots Stanley, then sets the farmhouse on fire. Charlie flees. Pip drags Stanley outside, but he dies soon after. She is taken to the police station, where her clothes are taken, and her hands are tested for gunshot residue to eliminate her as Stanley’s killer.

Two and a half weeks later, Stanley is laid to rest. A group of protestors shows up at the funeral, yelling at the mourners for honoring a murderer’s accomplice.

A week later, the Reynolds host a barbecue to celebrate Jamie’s safe return. Afterward, Pip Googles Charlie and Flora Green. They had been sighted in Wichita but had not been apprehended.

There you go! That’s what happened in Good Girl, Bad Blood. We hope you enjoyed this Good Girl, Bad Blood summary with spoilers.

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