The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(45)

“I guess you have the something,” he said. “Actually, I applied. I didn’t get my letter from Hogwarts.”

She realized for the first time that she was an insider to others who might have wanted to go there, wanted to have this magic. She was to be envied. It was weird, and not entirely comfortable, and she wanted to say something to make Hunter feel better, but she knew that if someone had said something to her in that position, she would have taken it as being patronizing.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I wasn’t hanging on it or anything. I just knew about it because of my aunt and I took a shot.”

He smirked and glanced around, as if embarrassed by everything he was saying.

“I still think I was a mistake,” Stevie said.

“Everyone must say that.”

“No one says that,” Stevie said. “But me. It may be true. My friend Janelle is a genius. My friend Nate is an author. Everyone’s something there.”

“And you’re something,” he said.

“I like crime,” she said.

“Who doesn’t?” he said, smiling.

“Lots of people.”

“Stupid people,” he said.

This made her smile.

“Good work.” Fenton was standing in the doorway. “You did this a lot faster than I expected. My lazy-ass grad students would have taken all semester. Come on.”

Hunter grimaced just a bit, and Stevie got up to follow Fenton back to her office. Once inside, Fenton shut the double doors and then sat and looked Stevie over.

“You’re serious,” she said. “I like that. I thought we were going to be screwing around, but all right. Maybe we can do some real work together.”

Stevie wondered what she had just spent a week doing if it was not real work.

“First rule,” Fenton said, pointing at the wall of document boxes. “Don’t put your stuff on the internet. Once you put it online, it’s worthless. It’s not yours.”

She took the cigarette from behind her ear and lit it with a lighter from her desk.

“I assume you’ve read the Vorachek court transcript?”

“Of course,” Stevie said. That was one of the first things anyone interested in the case did. Fenton pulled out a bound copy with what looked like a hundred Post-it notes flagging from the side. She licked her thumb and opened it to a blue-noted page.

“Here,” she said. “Read from the highlighted lines.”

It was the testimony of Marion Nelson, the housemistress of Minerva. These were the lines Fenton had highlighted:

PROSECUTION: Miss Nelson, can you tell us when you first realized Dolores Epstein was missing?

MARION NELSON: It was right after nine that night.

PROSECUTION: Nine at night? Isn’t that late for a young girl to be out?

MN: Well, no, not at Ellingham. One of the precepts of the school is that the children have freedom to learn and explore. The school is—the school seemed—and generally is very safe. So they can read, play, experiment, study. Dottie was a voracious reader, and she would often hide away somewhere with a book. But generally, she would appear for supper.

PROSECUTION: And she did not?

MN: No.

PROSECUTION: When did you first learn that she was missing?

MN: When Mr. Ellingham’s men came to the door at dawn and told us to get the children packed and ready to leave.

“Now,” Fenton said, taking the transcript back and turning to a later page, to testimony from July 22, 1938, from Margo Fields, the local telephone operator who connected the ransom calls. Fenton had highlighted more lines:

PROSECUTION: Miss Fields, you were working at the telephone exchange in Burlington on April 13, 1936. Is this correct?

MARGO FIELDS: Yes. I was. Yes. At work. Yes.

PROSECUTION: How long have you been a telephone operator, Miss Fields?

MF: Six years this June. I started as soon as I left high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but there was an opening and I applied for it, and I got it and I’ve been doing it ever since.

PROSECUTION: What can you tell us about the telephone lines going to Ellingham Academy?

MF: Oh, there are a lot of them. There are seven lines going into the house, and then a lot of the buildings have their own telephones. There are sixteen lines going to the property in total.

PROSECUTION: Seven lines go into the main house?

MF: Yes. I didn’t know a house could have seven phone lines until Mr. Ellingham came along! Imagine, seven telephones in one house!

PROSECUTION: Can you tell us where the lines go?

MF: Well, one goes to Mr. Montgomery. He’s the butler. There’s one to the kitchen. There’s one to Mr. Mackenzie—he’s Mr. Ellingham’s secretary, one to Mrs. Ellingham, there’s a guest telephone, and a housekeeper’s telephone, and then, of course, there’s Mr. Ellingham’s telephone. Most of the calls to the house or going out of it go to Mr. Montgomery or Mr. Mackenzie or Mrs. Ellingham, unless there’s a party up there, then the calls come and go from all the phones all day. And the calls that go into Mr. Ellingham’s telephone—they come and go from all over!

PROSECUTION: Let’s go to the afternoon of April 13, Miss Fields. When do you get to work?

MF: Well, that day I was doing a shift starting at five p.m. I have lunch at Henry’s before I do that shift. So I sat down at my station at five p.m. and took over from Helen. Helen Woolman.