The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(67)

“It’s really amazing,” he said. “I’m sorry to come like this, but it’s still cool to see it. I don’t know where to start.”

“I guess, around?” she said.

Stevie started walking toward the grass.

“Sorry,” he said again. “Could we do the path?”

He held up his crutch.

“Oh, God. Sorry. Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it. It just sticks in the ground, especially when it’s wet.”

Stevie decided that of the two possible directions, it was best to head toward the left, to the classroom buildings. It seemed like these would be less populated. David seeing would make this whole weird thing even worse. The library was as good as any place to start, so she took Hunter there.

Hunter was appreciative of everything he saw, his eyes growing wide. She could see longing on his face.

“This place is nuts,” he said as they walked between the classroom buildings. “It’s better than the pictures.”

“It’s okay,” Stevie said.

“You know it’s better than that.”

She shrugged.

“So someone gets all of this,” he said.

“What?”

“If they find Alice. Someone gets all of this.”

“That’s an internet rumor,” Stevie said.

“Not according to my aunt.”

“Bullshit,” Stevie said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t believe that.”

“She does,” he said.

Hunter stepped ahead a bit and sat down on the bench between some of the statues nearby.

“She says . . .” Hunter sighed deeply. “That Robert Mackenzie told her that there was something added to Ellingham’s will that stated that anyone who located Alice, dead or alive, would get some huge fortune.”

“That’s bullshit,” Stevie said, shaking her head. “That’s an old rumor, like that the whole thing was faked or that Alice lives in the attic and she’s a hundred years old. I’ve been in the attic, by the way. She’s not there.”

“My aunt believes it.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Stevie said. “No one who is serious about this thinks that’s real. If it were real, everyone would know. That would be the whole point. Tell everyone so that they would go look for Alice. You don’t post a reward without telling people to go look.”

“According to my aunt,” Hunter said, “Mackenzie disobeyed. He said he never felt right about going along with everything on the night of the kidnapping. He thought if he’d gone against Ellingham’s wishes and called the police right away, things might have turned out differently. When Ellingham wrote this codicil, he told Mackenzie to publicize it far and wide. Mackenzie always thought that Alice was dead, and even if she were alive, she would be safer if the stakes were lower, if the publicity had died down. If this challenge went out into the world, every con artist and hustler would land on top of them. And then when Ellingham died, Mackenzie felt he needed to protect his estate. He didn’t want the money to be stolen away—he wanted it to be used for good. So he made sure the codicil was locked up.”

“So there’s this magical piece of paper out there that no one knows about that says ‘Find Alice, win a prize!’”

“I’m not saying I believe it. I’m saying it’s what my aunt believes, and she swears Mackenzie told her about it.”

Stevie paused and thought about this for a moment.

“Someone would have to know,” Stevie said.

“She says people do know. The people on the board, who run Ellingham and the trust. And they can’t inherit. They all agree to keep things quiet so that they don’t get spammed by treasure hunters all the time. Can you imagine? It’s a shit-ton of money.”

Stevie could imagine. As it was, people had presented themselves as Alice many times, but all had failed to pass the sniff test. There were things about Alice that were kept secret that they didn’t know. The only people who had tried more recently failed DNA tests.

“So are you saying your aunt is doing this for money?” she said.

“I think at first she wanted to write a book, but yeah. Now she’s basically a dude with a metal detector looking for a lost city of gold.”

The idea of doing this for money left a bitter taste in Stevie’s mouth.

“I’m telling you this for a reason,” he said. “I don’t like how she’s using you. I don’t like how we’re here today. It’s why I wanted to give you my number. There’s something gross about all of this. She’s had contacts at the school before. You’re not even the first person she’s been talking to up there this year.”

“Who?” she said.

“I don’t know. I heard her talking to someone on the phone, someone who had to be here on the campus. She was being very secretive about it. And she mentioned your name.”

“What about me?” Stevie said.

“I couldn’t make much out. I caught your name, something about Ellingham, that’s it.”

“When was this?”

“It was earlier in the year because it was warmer and we had all the windows open. But school was definitely in session. Mid-September?”