The Hand on the Wall(9)

Stevie was deposited in front of the store, clutching the credit card she had been handed an hour or so before. It was more than a bit weird to be shopping for a guy she only sort of knew. Hunter was nice enough. He lived with his aunt while he went to college. He studied environmental science. He was fair-haired and freckled and was actually interested in the Ellingham case. Maybe not as much as Stevie or his aunt, but enough. He had even allowed Stevie to look through some of his aunt’s files. Stevie hadn’t seen that much, but she had gotten the hint about the wire recording from them.

The rest, now, were literally up in smoke. All of Fenton’s work, whatever she had gathered, whatever she knew.

Anyway, Stevie had to quickly buy some stuff for a guy she barely knew. Charles had given her a short list with sizes, leading with a coat. There was no shortage of black coats, all of them costing way more than Stevie had ever spent on anything. After a confused moment of going from rack to rack, looking at the prices and fills and temperature ratings, she grabbed the first one on the end. Slippers always seemed like kind of a nonsense item until she came to Ellingham and felt the bathroom floor on the first proper day of wintry weather. Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for. She grabbed some fuzzy-lined ones that sort of looked like shoes and had nonslip bottoms—Hunter used walking aids sometimes because of his arthritis, so having traction would be safer. She took the whole pile to the register, where a friendly clerk tried to talk to her about skiing and the weather, and Stevie stared blankly until the transaction was over. Fifteen minutes and several hundred dollars later, she walked out the door with an oversized bag that banged against her knees as she walked. She had little time to do what she had come to do.

Even though it was only late afternoon, the streetlights of Burlington winked to life. There were holiday lights strung over the pedestrianized Church Street. Street vendors sold hot cider and maple popcorn. There were dogs everywhere, pulling their owners along. Stevie cut a path through the crowds to her destination—a cheerful little coffee shop next to one of the street’s many yoga and outdoor shops. Larry was already there when she arrived, sitting by himself at a table in his red-and-black-checked flannel coat, his expression like stone.

Larry, or to use his full name, Security Larry, was the former head of security at Ellingham Academy. He had been let go following the discovery of Ellie’s body in the basement of the Great House. What happened to Ellie was certainly no fault of Larry’s, but someone had to pay. In his previous life, before Ellingham, Larry had been a homicide detective. Now he was unemployed but looking stern and sharp. He had no drink in front of him. Larry, Stevie surmised, was a man who had never paid over two dollars for a cup of coffee and wasn’t about to start now. Stevie felt self-conscious taking up the table and not buying anything, so she went to the counter and got the cheapest coffee they had—plain black in a plain mug, no foams or nonsense.

“So,” he said as she sat down. “Dr. Fenton.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

Stevie didn’t like black coffee, but she sipped it anyway. Occasions like this called for bitter, hot drinks you didn’t necessarily like. You just had to be awake.

“I didn’t know her well,” she said after a moment. “We only met a few times. What happened? I know you have to know something.”

Larry inhaled loudly and rubbed at his chin.

“Fire started in the kitchen,” he said. “It seems that one of the gas burners on the stove was partially turned. The room was full of gas, she lights a cigarette . . . they said the kitchen went up in a fireball. It was bad.”

Larry did not soft-pedal anything.

“It would have been hard not to notice a thing like that,” he said, “but Dr. Fenton had a known problem with alcohol. From the amount of empty bottles found on the front porch, this was still an issue.”

“Hunter told me that,” Stevie said. “And I saw the bottles. Plus, she said the smoking killed her sense of smell. Her house stank. She couldn’t smell it.”

“The nephew was lucky. He was upstairs, on the other side of the house. He came down when he smelled smoke. The flames were spreading through the first floor. He tried to get into the kitchen, but it wasn’t possible. He got some burns, inhaled some smoke. He stumbled outside and collapsed. Poor kid. Could have been worse, but . . .”

They sat in silence for a moment, the awfulness settling in.

“She had cats,” Stevie said. “Are they okay?”

“The cats were found. They went out through a flap.”

“That’s good,” Stevie said, nodding. “It’s . . . not good. I mean . . . it’s good about the cats. It’s not . . .”

“I know what you meant,” Larry said. He leaned back in the booth, folded his arms, and regarded her with the icy stare that must have freaked out suspects for two decades.

“Luck only holds out for so long,” he finally said. “Three people are now dead—Hayes Major and Element Walker up at the school, and now Dr. Fenton. Three people associated with Ellingham. Three people you know. Three people in as many months. That’s a lot of death, Stevie. I’m going to ask you something again: Would you consider leaving Ellingham?”

Stevie stared down at the oily, swirly sheen on the top of her coffee. The people a few tables over were laughing too loudly. The words were there, on the tip of her tongue. I solved it. I solved the crime of the century. I know who did it. The words came close to the opening of her mouth, touched the back of her teeth, then . . . they retreated.