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

“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:

* Ellingham left house on night of kidnapping for approx. 45 minutes around 2 a.m., did not go through front door. Seemed to leave from office. Mackenzie seemed sure that there was a tunnel leading from the Great House out, and possibly another that went from Minerva, where Ellingham would house his mistress, to a location on the opposite side of the property.

“Gertie von Coevorden my ass,” Stevie said. “So this is how she knew there was a tunnel.”

There was one other point, and it seemed important.

*** Last thing Albert Ellingham said was “It was on the wire”***

“On the wire?” Stevie repeated.

“Yeah,” Hunter said. “She read that to me. She thinks it means on the wireless? The night Albert Ellingham died, there was a big radio show . . .”

“The War of the Worlds,” Stevie said.

This was something that came up in every book about the case. On the night Albert Ellingham died, there was a radio broadcast by Orson Welles called The War of the Worlds. It was a play about an alien invasion landing in New Jersey, told in the style of a news broadcast. Except people in the 1930s weren’t used to that kind of meta story, and thousands of people freaked out thinking there was a real alien invasion going on and the world was ending.

“Seems like a weird thing to mention,” Hunter said.

“On the wire,” Stevie said again. “These are the big reveals? Something about a tunnel and a wire? What about the stuff about the will?”

“She would never write that down. Like I said, she’s really paranoid. She doesn’t even like that I have a phone that can take pictures. But I think that’s the . . . well, you probably noticed the bottles. And the smell. And everything.”

“Kind of hard to miss.”

“I should put this stuff back,” he said, reaching for the folder. “You should probably get out of here, or . . . you know, we could . . . If you want to take a walk or something? Get some coffee? Go somewhere that doesn’t smell like ass? Before she gets back and sees you?”

They walked down Pearl Street, from the university area, down to Church Street, where the shops and the tourist section took over. This street was blocked off to cars, so they walked down the middle. They said nothing for a bit—just let the silence sit between them.