The Hand on the Wall(45)

“It is smart. I’m a smart guy.”

He went silent for a moment, and Stevie felt a burble of anxiety putter up to the surface.

“Was that your question?” he said. “Or was there something else?”

Everything in his tone said, “I too am fine and am ready to move on with the conversation.”

“She said something really weird on the phone,” Stevie said. “‘The kid is there.’ Do you know what she was talking about?”

“‘The kid is there’?” he repeated, shaking his head. “I have no idea what that means. You don’t think . . . Alice?”

“Alice wouldn’t be here,” Stevie said. “It makes no sense.”

“Maybe she didn’t say kid? Maybe she said . . .” He searched for something that sounded like kid, then shook his head. “Look, my aunt was drunk that night. Really drunk. So drunk she burned the house down.”

“She said kid,” Stevie replied.

Hunter shook his head in confusion.

“Then I have no idea what she meant. But she was really hung up on the codicil for those last few days. She was talking about it more and more. She said Mackenzie told her. There was a document. He hid it so that the place wouldn’t be overrun with fake Alices. She said the school knew all about it and was banking on it, because when it expired, they would get the money.”

“She said the school knew about it?” Stevie said, leaning forward.

“Yeah. Look, I know how she seemed. I know she could be . . . she had some issues. I know what I just said about the fire. But she knew what she was talking about when it came to this stuff. And when she got into this stuff with the will, she changed. She didn’t seem as interested in the case as she did with this idea that there was, like, a prize out there. A really, really big prize.”

“I asked about it,” Stevie said. “I asked Call Me Charles.”

“Call Me . . .”

“It’s what we call Dr. Scott.”

Hunter nodded, understanding the nickname at once.

Neither of them seemed to know what to say next. Stevie cycled through many possible things—like telling him about her solution to the Ellingham case or asking him if he really thought his house burned down by accident. But both of those things were too much.

“Nate said something about a board game earlier,” Hunter said. “Do you want to play one, maybe?”

Stevie was caught completely off guard by this. It was too normal.

“There are games,” she said. “Around here. Somewhere . . .”

“There’s nothing as serious as a game” was one of Albert Ellingham’s mottos, and since the school opened, there were always board games around. Back then, it was mostly Monopoly, but since there were so many games around now, the collections had grown. There was a whole pile of games in a corner of the common room. Stevie had never really paid them much attention except when Nate pulled one out and persuaded her to play.

It was something to do now, on this strange night.

She found the game pile, four in all, in the cabinet along with the cleaning and fireplace supplies. She set them down on the farm table like an offering. Hunter examined them expertly.

“This one is better with more people,” he said, pushing one aside. “I don’t know this one, but it looks complicated. This one, though . . .”

He held up a small box that contained a card game called Zombie Picnic.

“I played that one with Nate,” Stevie said. “It’s pretty good. You try to have a picnic while zombies attack you.”

“I know this one too. Come on. Sitting here like this sucks. Let’s play.”

Had you asked her a half hour before, Stevie would not have believed that she would be playing a card game instead of, say, crying in the corner of her room or making plans to fake her own death. Life went on, in the form of cards showing pictures of sandwiches and potato salad and zombies chewing people’s heads off. She was still here. David was still upstairs. Things could be fixed.

For an hour or two, there were no murders. There was no case. She looked at her phone at one point and saw it was after midnight. Then it was two in the morning. She became giddy on sleeplessness and adrenaline and whatever comes after sadness. Hunter was good company, and the game was ridiculous. Maybe Albert Ellingham had been on to something with this game thing.

Once they had passed the three or four o’clock mark, then it seemed only reasonable to go on until the sky lightened, which it finally did. It turned from night pink and black to day pink and white, then pure white. She and Hunter were now night companions, linked in some way she could not define. All felt good for a while. They would get up and start laughing at nothing. They made popcorn. They stuck their heads out the window and let snow fall on their faces, waking them up.

It continued like this until sometime around dawn, when there was a creak on the stair. David emerged from the hallway.

“Game, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, well . . .” Hunter arranged the cards in his hand. “We’re just taking a break.”

David made a hmmmm noise and disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a moment later with an untoasted Pop-Tart sticking out of his mouth. He sat in the hammock chair and spun, causing the rope to twist audibly.

“I was up half the night reading your stuff,” Hunter said. “Do you have any idea what we’re supposed to be looking for?”