The Hand on the Wall(28)

“What’s the message of this parable?” Stevie asked.

“I don’t know.” Nate spun the chair. “Don’t go to school?”

“It’s right here and I can’t see it,” Stevie said, shaking her head. “We’re famous for being the school with the murders. There’s all this legend around the place. Isn’t it easier to do bad things in a place where bad things are supposed to happen? All these people died here, and there’s a reason. Maybe even the same reason. Maybe there’s a line right from 1936 until now.”

She opened up her dresser drawer and pulled out the battered tea tin she’d found in Ellie’s room, the tin that had broken the Truly Devious case open for her. She opened it carefully and pulled out the contents, setting them on her dresser next to her brush and her deodorant.

“A bit of a white feather,” she said, holding it up. “A lipstick tube. A shiny clip. This little enamel box that looks like a shoe. A piece of torn cloth. Photos. And a poem. Someone collected these things back in 1936 and hid them. It’s junk. But that’s what clues are. Clues are junk. They’re things that fly off the car when it gets into an accident. Murder is messy, and you have to use garbage to figure out what’s going on. Somehow this shit takes us all the way to now, and these accidents with carbon dioxide and fire and people getting trapped. This school isn’t cursed. There’s no such thing. Unless money is a curse.”

“It kind of is,” Nate said. “Not that I have any. Well, I have some. From the book. Actually, I do. I don’t know what to do with it. I have to pay tax.”

“Money,” Stevie said. “The kidnappings were for money. If Fenton was right, if there’s something out there in a will that says someone gets a fortune if they find Alice dead or alive . . .”

“But didn’t Charles tell you that didn’t exist?”

Stevie stared at the items on her dresser. The beads glistened. She rolled the lipstick under her finger, back and forth.

“There’s something big that sticks all this stuff together,” she said. “I don’t know how to find it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to investigate a case. I mean, I’ve read about it, but I don’t have a forensics lab. I don’t have access to police databases or the ability to question people. I can look at stuff in the past, but I’m not sure how to do this in the now. This is real. It’s ongoing.”

“Tell someone,” Nate said.

“Tell them I think a bad big murderer is sneaking around and show them all my Post-its?”

“I guess?”

There was a knock, and the door creaked open a bit. Hunter’s tawny blond head stuck in, and he bit his lip nervously.

“Can I come in?” he asked. “I feel weird because Janelle is really upset, and I don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her or staring at her . . .”

“Sure, sure . . .” Stevie stepped in front of her sticky notes and tried to do a casual lean. Hunter had seen the tin before, so that was no problem—but the conspiracy wall of death was something he might not be prepared for.

“I guess this machine thing is going to be a problem,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Stevie replied. “The school has had to deal with worse. It’s not like before, when everything was in the news and there was a lot of pressure. As long as—”

“Does this count as news?” Hunter asked.

He held up his phone. The headline was loud and clear:

ANOTHER ACCIDENT AT ELLINGHAM: A BATT REPORT EXCLUSIVE

“Germaine,” Stevie said. “Germaine.”

The bottom line came via a school-wide text that landed at seven the next morning, buzzing Stevie out of her restless sleep. She had gone to bed in her hoodie and sweatpants again, the phone loose somewhere in the blankets, demanding her attention. Before she could fish it out to see what it wanted, Janelle was at her door in her cat pajamas, her eyes flooding with tears.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I shut down the school.”

“Huh?” Stevie managed.

Janelle dropped down next to Stevie on the bed, pushed over her own phone, and burst into tears.

School-wide meeting at 9:00 a.m. Attendance is mandatory. All classes are canceled. Please meet in the dining hall.

A short while later, the small group from Minerva joined the migration across campus. Janelle had only just stopped crying. Nate’s hands were so far into his pockets that they must have touched his knees. Vi was waiting by the front door to accompany them. They were dressed in a shirt and tie, and they had made Janelle some paper flowers to cheer her up. Hunter walked with them as well. He was not a student and did not have to come. He was still feeling new and awkward and wasn’t quite sure how to fit in, so he trailed along.

“This is all my fault,” Janelle said, sniffing. “Whatever is about to happen.”

“It’s not,” Vi said. “And it’s probably nothing. They’re probably going to put some new policy in place, or maybe it’s about the snow. This storm is going to be huge.”

They pulled out their phone and quickly scanned through the forecast.

“Listen,” they said. “Updated forecast, up to thirty-six inches, with high winds, so expect high drifts. Snow will begin tomorrow morning, initially two to three inches per hour, intensifying rapidly.”