The Hand on the Wall(78)

“Where did you put Alice?” she said.

“Stevie . . .” Call Me Charles half smiled. Half. The other bit was something very unpleasant. “I genuinely admire what you’ve done here. I think this is a real triumph of imagination. I also think the cabin fever has gotten to you a little, but no harm done. . . .”

“Like I said,” Stevie went on, fighting back a tremble, “where did you put Alice?”

On that, the study doors opened and a cold snuck into the room.

“I think I have the answer to that,” Larry said. “You were right, Stevie. This thing works like a charm.”

He held up the wall scanner.





25


“OH MY GOD,” STEVIE SAID, LETTING OUT A LONG BREATH. “WAS that enough time? Because I was running out of stuff to say.”

“More than enough,” Larry replied.

“That was exhausting,” she said, leaning against the mantel. “Seriously. They make it seem so easy in novels, but you have to keep talking and talking . . .”

“Can I ask what you’re doing here?” Charles said as a greeting to the former head of security. “You’re no longer employed by this school.”

“I’m well aware,” Larry replied. “However, I’ve rejoined the local police department on a temporary basis. I’m up here officially, doing a welfare check on everyone. I started making plans to get here as soon as I heard the school was closing and a few idiots decided to stick around and wait out the blizzard. I definitely knew who one of those idiots would be. So I hitched a ride on an emergency vehicle with a plow, then hiked up from the road. Took me almost two days. Then that idiot emailed me to say what she was going to do, and that she’d left me a wall scanner and some very interesting instructions. It’s a good thing I trust you.”

Stevie looked down to keep herself from smiling.

“I’ve done most of the second-floor offices,” Larry said. “Dr. Scott’s office is the last room left to do.”

“I object to an illegal police search of Ellingham property—” Charles said.

“Larry,” Dr. Quinn cut in, “I authorize anything you’re doing.”

Charles spun around and faced Jenny Quinn, who seemed to rise out of the floor a bit.

“Jenny,” he said, “this goes against—”

“My authority is equal to yours,” she said simply. “And I am telling Larry he should do as he feels best.”

Her words were a wall that could not be scaled.

“Fine,” he said. “Go and look in my office if you want. But I would like to be there.”

“We’ll all go!” David said chirpily. Larry opened his mouth to object, but David was already out the door. Once David had gone, it seemed inevitable that the entire company would be coming along. Larry was not in a position to stop anyone.

The group made their way up the wide, sweeping stairs. Stevie paused a moment on the landing to acknowledge the Ellinghams. They made their way along the balcony, and through the door with the posters that had asked, so clearly, for someone to come in and issue a challenge.

Larry had emptied the bookcases and pulled them away from the walls. All of Dr. Scott’s books and pictures were piled in the center of the room.

“You’re going to put my office back together,” Charles said to Larry.

“I’ll get right on it,” Larry said. “Everyone sit down and make space. Any place you want me to start in particular?” Larry asked Stevie.

Stevie shook her head. She was running on instinct at this point. If Charles had opened the trunk that day and seen Alice inside, he would have had to figure out what to do with her fairly quickly. It was most likely that he would have had to hide her in the building. He would have had months to relocate her, and Ellingham was full of places where she could be hidden, but if you had a body that was worth seventy million dollars, you’d probably want to make sure no one else found it by accident. That meant keeping it close, in a place you controlled.

Larry began on the window wall, moving section by section. From there, he did the other wall that faced the outside. Then the third wall. The atmosphere in the room thickened, and Stevie tried not to notice anyone giving her concerned side eye. Larry moved to the last wall, working around the mantel. It seemed like he was about to finish when he stopped down by the floor, in the corner.

“Something over here,” he said. “It’s small, maybe a foot and a half square.” He stood and examined the wall up close. “There are some cuts in the wallpaper here,” he said. He knocked on the wall. There was a hollow noise. He knocked around the space, making an outline that was about four feet by four feet, about three feet off the floor.

“That could be where the jewelry safe was,” Stevie said. “This was Iris Ellingham’s dressing room. After the Ellinghams died, the safe was taken out and it was donated to the Smithsonian with all the contents. I’ve seen the pictures. It’s about that big.”

Larry pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and used it to gently work along the edges of the space. “We’re going to have to take a look behind this wall,” he said. “We’ll need some tools. We’ll have to wait . . .”

“You’re not putting a hole in my wall. You have no . . .”