The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(73)

It was just a clock. It did not know or understand. But it did know the time, and it was telling Albert Ellingham that it had come. Choose.

No. It was best to do it without the gun. The plan was well-balanced. He returned it to the drawer and got up for his coat before he could second-guess himself.

It was time to play the game.





20


THE SCHOOL, HAVING JUST RELEASED LARRY FROM DUTY, WAS NOT inclined to let him drive Stevie to Burlington. However, in accordance with the “we will do anything to make you feel better” initiative, there was no objection to her going to Burlington to work with Dr. Fenton. She was given a ride with a security officer named Jerry who was going off duty in a half hour. Someone else would come pick her up. Jerry drove Stevie to Burlington in his old Acura and didn’t care that she was listening to her earbuds the entire time. She needed to play some music. Things were thrumming in her head and she needed them all to get into the same rhythm.

They pulled up at Fenton’s door, and Stevie sprang out, gave a quick thanks, and hurried down the cracked concrete path. She had not texted Hunter, because what she was about to do required an element of surprise and a bit of recon. First, she listened. The house was quiet. There were no lights on downstairs. She had checked Fenton’s schedule, so Stevie knew she had a class to teach in forty-five minutes. She paced awhile, keeping out of sight and away from the direction that Fenton would walk. She waited almost forty minutes, before Fenton blew out of her door and started furiously clog-walking in the direction of her classroom building.

She texted Hunter now:

Are you home?

After a moment, came the reply. Yeah why.

Come downstairs and outside.

Stevie waited on the screened porch, with the piles of garbage and recycling waiting in bins. After a moment, the inner door opened and Hunter poked his head out.

“Can I come in?”

“Sure?” he said, opening the door.

The house had a bad odor that day. Clearly Fenton had made no jokes about not having a sense of smell. Even the cats seemed to have abandoned ship.

“I need you to help me,” Stevie said.

“With what?”

Stevie could have lied. She had lied before. But the lies had all backfired. Sneaking into Fenton’s house was not like sneaking into someone’s room, either. In the real world they called that breaking and entering. This required transparency, and a bit of luck.

“I need to go into her office. I need to look at the manuscript.”

Hunter’s face sagged.

“I can’t . . .”

“I’m not stealing anything,” she said. “I just need to see her notes about what Mackenzie said.”

“I told you . . .”

“Look,” Stevie said, moving around the room to find a spot that didn’t smell quite as bad. “I may not have forever to do this. I need to show you something.”

She found a somewhat clear space on one of the tables and set her bag down. She unzipped it, reached in, and produced the tin.

“This,” she said, “contains proof that the Truly Devious letter was written by two students on campus. It was a joke, a prank. Or something.”

“Shut up,” he said.

She pulled open the tin and produced the photos.

“These two,” she said, holding up a photo, “were two rich students. The guy was a poet. The girl was really into true-crime magazines. They were cosplaying Bonnie and Clyde. Here’s a poem they wrote.”

She showed him the poem.

“And here,” she said, showing Hunter the stuck-together photos with the cut-out letters. “Proof, or close to proof. I have actual evidence about this case. And if your aunt does as well, I need to see it. Because I feel like she is playing some kind of game with me. And something is going on at my school. Two people have died.”

“Accidentally,” he said.

“Yeah, but something is happening. If this money theory is something Mackenzie really said, I need to see the notes.”

Hunter inhaled deeply and looked at the office door.

“I’m the real deal,” Stevie said. “I’m not here for the money. I’m here to find the answers. Please.”

Hunter’s gaze drifted along the floor, then up to Stevie’s face.

“She’ll be back in less than an hour,” he said. “She never teaches the full forty-five minutes. Come on.”

He went through the French doors, and Stevie followed. Once inside, he walked toward a file cabinet. But instead of opening it, he knocked a stack of magazines on the floor out of the way with the tip of his crutch.

“She’s paranoid,” he said, leaning the crutch against the cabinet and getting down on the ground. He pushed the magazines off and revealed a pizza box underneath. This, he opened. The pizza box was unused, and inside it contained several manila folders. He thumbed through them, then selected one. He sat back on his heels for a moment.

“I think when she talked to Mackenzie, he was sick,” he said. “He was old. They had him on a lot of medication. He told her things that he had always kept quiet, because he was vulnerable. But, I guess, it had to come out.”

He considered, and then passed the folder up to Stevie.

The tab read: MACKENZIE. It was a thin folder, with only a few papers inside, handwritten on torn-out pieces of yellow legal paper. A lot of the notes seemed to concern whens and wheres of meeting. Then, there was one page with just two points: