The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(62)

I am fine. Going to bed.

Nate’s reply came quick: Sleeping where?

Janelle’s followed a minute later: You okay? Where are you?

She replied to both: Fine going to sleep see you at breakfast

Maybe she would stay here forever.

Ellie . . .

Ellie was a missing person, now found. Someone who had blown into the wind, and now the wind had blown her back.

And David . . .

She had destroyed whatever was there. She had killed it. She had murdered her feelings and his, but now all was exposed. She closed her eyes. She was so tired.

Larry would know where she was—her whole, embarrassing path would have been visible. She would not be lost, like Ellie. It was as if Larry alone was watching over her slumber, and that was the only thought that consoled her.





17


STEVIE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, WHICH WAS A GOOD START. WHEN things are bad, give yourself a point for everything.

She sat up. (Another point.) She was stiff and sore, her mouth dry, her hair definitely sticking up on one side. She felt a waffle pattern of yoga blanket on the right side of her face and the faint smell of lavender and patchouli permeating her being. It was like she had been run over by a boulder made of hippies.

She reached around, trying to find her phone in her belongings. It was stuck between some of the yoga mats she had been sleeping on. It informed her that it was 9:50 in the morning.

“Crap,” she said.

When she took an Ativan, she tended to sleep hard and a lot. People could have been trying to access the yoga studio and she would have had no idea. She peeked over the short wall of blankets and mats to see if there were any angry yoga fiends waiting at the door to get their chakras on. No one in sight. She crawled out of her nest. You were supposed to roll your mat and fold your blanket at the end of class and say namaste and things like that, but this was not class, so Stevie shoved everything back into something resembling the right position and unwound the strap that was holding the door closed. Outside, she saw gray skies and there was slanting rain smacking into the windows.

“That checks out,” she mumbled.

She reached up and rubbed her hand roughly over her short hair, taming it as best she could. She rubbed any sleep out of her eyes and away from her mouth. She had slept in her vinyl coat, so now it had a weird flipped-up bend in the bottom. This was not a good look or a good feel, but this was something detectives had to do. She might have to spend the night in a car, or an abandoned building on a stakeout. Detectives were always rough and sleepless. Of course, she thought, as she pushed open the studio door, not all of them slept in yoga studios by choice, but she would build up to it.

Outside, the mountain morning slapped her in the face in the form of the rain and wet wind. It wasn’t pouring, but it was steady and cold. The sky was colorless, and even the brightness of the trees was dimmed. The day subtracted from life. The rain helped flatten her sticking-up hair and slicked her coat. Stevie marched on away from the art barn. As she approached the Great House and the green, there were a few police cars and vans, but the presence was subdued.

“Hey,” someone said.

Stevie turned to see Maris coming up behind her on the path. She was dressed in a massive shaggy black coat with black tights and red boots, and was huddled under a large umbrella that was black on the top and had a print of a blue sky and clouds underneath. Her red lipstick was the most vivid thing in miles.

Stevie stopped and waited for her, even as the rain intensified. When Maris reached her, she tipped her umbrella at Stevie in an attempt to be helpful, but Stevie only got the edge, which made it worse.

“How are you?” Maris said.

Stevie shrugged.

“Holy shit, this is horrible,” Maris said, producing a vape pen from the depths of her shaggy coat. “I can’t believe . . . well . . . I guess I can.”

That summed up the experience pretty well. You can’t believe until you can. Then it just is.

Stevie didn’t want to walk with Maris, really. They had never exactly bonded. But to be fair, Maris was the only person who seemed genuinely, properly hurt by Hayes’s death. They had not been a couple long (not that they had even been much of a couple), but she had cared about Hayes. Maris had been friendly with Ellie as well; they were both art people. Maris deserved some sympathy.

“I haven’t talked to you much since you got back,” Maris said. “And now . . . I don’t know. Maybe the whole place will close down? But they can’t let that happen, right? Do you know what happened? How she got down there?”

Stevie shook her head.

“I guess she and Hayes tunneled a lot,” Maris went on. “They seemed to have a lot of secrets together. Do you . . . Did you really think Ellie did it? Killed Hayes? I mean, honestly? I thought you were wrong. But now . . .”

That’s how it should have been. Stevie’s idea must have looked farfetched at first, until Ellie ran and hid in a tunnel for so long that she ended up dying in it. But as Stevie turned and looked in the direction of the Great House, which was now a looming bulk on a dark day, her conviction was starting to evaporate. Maybe it was David’s belief in Ellie. Or maybe it was guilt.

Something was crooked in the landscape. She couldn’t see what it was, but the edges did not line up correctly.

Maris was still waiting for an answer.

“I just know about the script,” Stevie said. “That she wrote The End of It All. That she took his computer.”