The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(6)

“Do you like used potato salad?” she asked.

Stevie noticed her manager eyeing her curiously.

“Gotta go,” she whispered. “I think they know I’m on the phone.”

“Talk later. And remember, if these coasters I’m looking at are telling the truth, it’s always wine o’clock somewhere. Think about that for a while.”

At eleven, Stevie Bell, student sleuth and destroyer of salad bars, clocked out and stepped into the muggy night. Her mother’s maroon minivan was there, waiting by the curb. Stevie did not have a car of her own; that was definitely out of the Bell family’s financial reach. Every night, one of her parents came to get her.

“Have a good night?” her mom asked as she got in the car.





“It was okay. I got the cheese you asked for.”


American cheese, of course.

“You talk to David tonight?” her mom asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Uh-huh.”

“How is he?”

“Fine,” Stevie said.

“He’s a good one.”

Historically, Stevie and her parents had not gotten along. She wasn’t what they expected from a daughter. Daughters were supposed to like prom dresses and getting their hair done and shopping. Stevie assumed those things were all fine and good, but she didn’t understand them, really—at least not in the way that you were supposed to understand them. She never once in her life felt the desire to dress up, do her hair and nails, accessorize. She stared blankly at Instagram ads for new makeup palettes that looked, to her eyes, exactly like every other makeup palette. The only clothing item she really adored was her vintage red vinyl raincoat from the seventies. She wore a lot of black, because it suited her and it always seemed to go together. Sometimes she felt like she was missing a chip or a gene or something that made this all matter, but it never bothered her much.

Before Ellingham, Stevie’s lack of daughterly graces was a sticking point, but there had been peace in the household for months now, and not because Stevie had solved a murder. No. It was because she had a boyfriend—and not just any





boyfriend. Stevie’s boyfriend was David Eastman, who happened to be the son of Senator Edward King. Stevie’s parents loved Edward King. That Edward King had recently been the subject of a major scandal and had to withdraw his bid for the presidency did not diminish their love for him. Like any true believers, they felt that the more Edward King was accused of wrongdoing, the more right he must be, the more it had to be someone else’s fault.

Her parents didn’t know that David was the one who had gotten his father busted. They certainly didn’t know that Stevie had seen the proof against Edward King with her own eyes.

David had been pulled out of school when his father found out what he had done. He finished the school year remotely, then left home to work with a voter registration campaign that traveled around the country. This was why he didn’t know what town he was in tonight, and why he was standing around at a Cracker Barrel with baskets full of lavender bath salts and coasters.

The details of all this were largely unknown to Stevie’s parents. They only knew that David had completed high school off campus, and that he was doing some kind of internship or work-study somewhere. All that mattered was that Stevie had a boyfriend—the perfect boyfriend, in their eyes—and therefore she had completed her mission.

It was the most infuriating thing that had ever happened, and it made Stevie want to scream all the time, but she also





wanted to maintain this weird peace that had been established so that she could get back to Ellingham in the fall, and then to college after that.

But what then? She had gotten in with the stated purpose of solving the Ellingham case. She’d done that. It was impossible, but she’d done it.

What do you do for your next act after that? What would she study? Where would she go from there?

It hit her every night, this weird emptiness, usually as she unclicked her seat belt and got out of the car, still smelling of grocery store deli department, biting her tongue so that she didn’t snap at her mom about the boyfriend thing.

As she climbed into bed, Stevie thumbed through her messages. Right after the Ellingham case broke, she had gotten many of them—media requests, strange influencer offers (“We think you’d be a great fit to promote our paleo meal kits”), creepers, and people who wanted her to help find their lost relatives or dogs. The media requests had been okay, but they had petered out. The bizarre influencer offers had stopped. Stevie had sympathy for people who had missing relatives or dogs, but usually there was nothing that could be done from a distance. So really, it was just the creepers now. They were loyal.

Tonight there was one note about a lost cat, two messages that said “hi” and nothing else, and a random picture of a teddy bear holding a heart. But right in the middle, there was a subject line that stood out: “Camp Wonder Falls.”

There was only one Camp Wonder Falls.





Well, that probably wasn’t true. There might be a lot of places called Camp Wonder Falls. But there was one Camp Wonder Falls that was related to true crime.


She opened the message.

Stevie,

My name is Carson Buchwald, and I am the owner and founder of Box Box (you’ve probably heard of it). I’ve recently purchased a camp in western Massachusetts called Camp Sunny Pines. It used to be called Camp Wonder Falls. Yeah. That Camp Wonder Falls.