The Hand on the Wall(60)

OUR TREASURE

All that I care about starts at nine

Dance twelve hundred steps on the northern line

To the left bank three hundred times

E+A

Line flag

Tiptoe

Stevie set the diary down on her lap.

She was tired of people not saying what they meant. This, of course, was going to be a big part of her job as a detective. People would lie to her or talk around things. It was something she would have to get used to.

But David . . . he couldn’t have meant what he’d said last night, about ignoring each other forever. That was one of his games. A test.

Why had David even come back?

By midmorning, she had grown weary of staring at the diary and the house records. There was only so much energy she could spend on lists of routes and menus from 1935. She got up and rejoined her friends.

The morning room door was mostly closed, and there was a low hum of conversation. When Stevie stepped in, Janelle and Nate were watching the goings-on across the room like they were spectators at a major sporting event.

“What are you doing?” Stevie asked.

Nobody on that side of the room answered, or even looked up. Stevie turned to Nate and Janelle. Janelle beckoned her over.

“Something’s going on over there,” Janelle said, in a low voice. “They got really excited about an hour ago.”

David was comparing the screens on two of the tablets. Stevie went over and sat on the arm of the sofa and looked down at them.

“Is there something going on?” she asked.

Vi shushed her, which is not the kind of thing they would usually do.

“So all these payments here,” David said to Hunter.

“ . . . match the payments here. And the dates.”

“Plus the email records on the third one,” Vi added. “All the donors have been doing it. This guy, the private investigator, is always listed on the ones with an asterisk.”

Stevie tried to piece this all together. Payments. Private investigators.

“Are you guys talking about blackmail?” she said.

Three faces tipped up to look at her.

“Something like that,” Hunter said, smiling.

“Who’s being blackmailed?” Stevie asked. No matter what was going on, talk of private investigators and blackmail was going to interest her. She addressed most of this to Hunter and Vi, trying not to make eye contact with David after the events of last night.

“What seems to be happening,” Vi said, “is that whenever this person, who we found out is a private investigator, shows up in the files regarding these major donors to the King campaign, these donors suddenly give a lot more money, and on a regular schedule. They formed organizations to raise even more.”

“What is the private investigator doing?” Stevie asked.

“Something with financial documents,” David said, not looking up. “He delivers loads and loads of these spreadsheets. We can’t work out what they mean exactly, because we don’t have enough information, but it definitely seems like this is information about activities these people want hidden. Maybe it’s tax fraud or something. Whatever the case, my dad has this information on them, and then his campaign gets a ton of money. That’s blackmail.”

“And these people?” Vi said, breathless. “They’re the worst people you can imagine. This guy here”—she pointed at a line on the spreadsheet—“is almost singlehandedly responsible for the cover-up of a major oil spill.”

“Major, major oil spill,” said Hunter.

“This is how he did it,” David said, almost to himself. “He never had enough money to start his presidential campaign, and then it all comes rolling in as soon as he gets this material. And there’s no way this stuff was obtained legally. He’s getting information about things that are probably crimes, and he’s using it to power his campaign. Crimes to power crimes.”

“This is a treasure trove,” Vi said. “If you sent this stuff to a Dropbox for any media outlet, you could blow this all wide open. If we release this stuff, we could take down some of the worst people out there today.”

“Or you could destroy it,” Janelle said. She and Nate had come over to listen to this conversion. Janelle sat primly on the sofa. Even wearing cat-head pajamas, she looked serious.

“Destroy it?” Vi repeated.

“If the goal is to take down Edward King,” Janelle said, “you take away the thing he’s using to get his money. Once you destroy it, he has no leverage against these people.”

“And we have nothing on him,” Vi said. “Or them.”

“But you’ve completed your objective,” Janelle said. “If this material was obtained illegally, then destroy it. End the crime. Don’t go any farther down this path. If you want to do good, do it the right way.”

“But all these people . . . ,” Vi said.

“If the stuff was stolen,” Janelle said, “destroy it.”

“This is tough,” Hunter said. “Not sure what I would do.”

David leaned back against the wall and stared at the tablets.

“Honestly,” he said, “if this stops my dad, I don’t care how we do it. Vi, it’s your call.”

This left Vi, who gazed at the tablets and the bag of flash drives.