The Hand on the Wall(66)

There were a few bags of concrete off to the side and a few busted crates. She tested theses crates to see if they would be stable enough to stand on, but they were broken.

Stevie sat on the ground in the middle of the candles and took it all in. The world of the present drifted away for a moment. She was in 1936. This was where the pair had come to be together. The button had probably torn off Francis’s dress or coat. This was the treasure—another underground spot. Another trip to nowhere. It was fantastic, but it told her nothing.

Light. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it bouncing. Someone was in here with her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she moved behind one of the rock formations, her heart pounding. Someone had followed her. Someone was coming up behind her quietly. She snatched a shovel from the ground. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was something. She held it like a bat, her hands tense.

The light was close now. The person was inside the grotto. She tensed her stance. She was ready. . . .

“Hey! Hey! Stevie!”

The voice was David’s.

“What the hell?” he said, winded. “Were you going to hit me?”

“What are you doing here?” she said, still holding up the shovel.

“What do you think? I saw you go up to a statue, dance around, kick it, and then you fell into a hole in the ground. What the hell did you think I was going to do? Will you put that down?”

She looked at the shovel in her hand as if she had to consult with it first. She set it down slowly.

“Why did you sneak up on me?” she said.

“I didn’t. I was yelling your name up there. When you didn’t answer I jumped in after you to make sure you weren’t hurt.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Do you think I’m lying?” he said. “So am I supposed to be sorry for following you into a hole? Thanks a fucking lot.”

Stevie didn’t know what she thought, except that sound would seem to echo in a grotto underground. It wasn’t something someone would lie about, though. Her breathing slowed a bit. She came out from behind the rock formation.

“I thought you wanted to ignore me,” she said.

“You vanished from the house.”

“And you ran after me?”

“I didn’t run,” he said. “It’s snowing. There was one set of footprints. Even I, with my inferior mystery-solving skills, can work that one out.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“What do you want me to say?” she replied.

He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “Say nothing.”

Stevie had just failed some test she had no idea she had to take, on a subject she was not aware of. She had been sitting here in her hole in the ground, minding her own business, and then this. There was no winning.

David shined his light around the room.

“I’ve seen some crazy shit here, but this may be the winner,” he said. “How did you find it?”

“I found a diary,” she said. “From a student who was here in the thirties. There were instructions. I followed them. The last thing I had to do was pull the toe of the statue, and I did that. And then I fell in the hole. I guess no one found this before because no one pulls on statue toes that often.”

“Just another way our generation is lazy,” he said. “So you came out in a storm to pull on a toe.”

He stepped down into the ditch to get a closer look at the lopsided swan boat and the fresco.

“We’ve got some Mad King Ludwig action going on here, huh?”

“What?”

“Trip to Germany with Dad when I was ten,” he said. “This, if I am not mistaken, is a replica of something in one of King Ludwig’s castles. Underground grotto, big classical painting on the wall, big swan boat. It all checks out. Why not have your own underground grotto with a swan boat? What are you, poor?”

As he looked around, Stevie mind continued to reel. He had followed her through the snow, to a place he could not have known she was going. This could not be his plan if she didn’t know the plan herself.

“We’re going to have to climb back out of here,” he said. “Come on.”

“Before we do that,” she said, “I want to know something.”

“What now?”

“I met some of your friends in town,” Stevie said. “At the art colony.”

This was clearly not what he was expecting. He pulled back his head a bit in surprise.

“Oh, the art house. Fun place. Did you meet Paul? Is he still talking through puppets?”

“I think he is in some kind of silent phase,” Stevie said.

“That’s better than puppets.”

“Bath—Bathsheba—said that Ellie told her something about the message that showed up on my wall that night before Hayes died. . . .”

“I told you before and I’ll say it again—I didn’t shine any creepy message on your wall.”

“Well, Ellie knew about it and thought it was real, and she seemed to know who did it. If you didn’t do it and Ellie didn’t do it, who did it?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “But it’s getting late. If we’re going to get out of here, we have to go. Come on.”