Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “Flora,” Albert said. His voice had an urgency she had never heard before. “Did Iris tell you anything about where she was driving today?”

  “No,” Flora said. “Just that she was going for a drive.”

  “But she didn’t say where? Was she going toward Waterbury? Burlington? Which way?”

  “I don’t know, Albert,” Flora said. “What’s happening?”

  Albert turned toward the fire.

  Flora looked to George. She and George knew each other very well. Normally, she could read his expression in a moment. He had a wide face, with a heavy jaw and big brown eyes—the kind of face that could take a blow, rattle a crook, or melt in infectious laughter. Tonight, he was a cypher.

  “Please,” she said. “What’s wrong? Where’s Iris? Where’s Alice?”

  “It’s fine,” George said. He was such a terrible liar, and what was the point of lying under these circumstances? “If you could just go back to your room . . .”

  “I want to know what’s happened to Iris,” Flora said.

  “Flora, please!” Albert cried.

  The desperation in his voice made her physically cold. His secretary, Robert, shook his head, indicating to her not to press the question.

  “Of course,” Flora said. “I’ll see myself upstairs, Montgomery.”

  The maid was out in the atrium, fluttering around. It was obvious to Flora she was trying to find some business near the office door so she could monitor what was happening inside.

  “I’m in desperate need of a pot of coffee,” Flora said to her. “Could you have one brought to my room?”

  “Yes, miss,” she said, and skittered off.

  When the maid left to go to the kitchen, Flora turned quickly and silently to the ballroom, next to Albert’s office. These rooms had intentionally been built side by side because they were rarely in use at the same time, and both benefited from high ceilings.

  The lights in the ballroom were off and the curtains all drawn. The motley black-and-white floor still felt rough and dirty from the weekend’s revels; the staff had not yet cleaned it. There, under the soft padding of her feet, were the paper streamers, the gravel from the drive tracked in on dancing shoes, the endless sticky patches of spilled champagne.

  Iris had shown Flora a trick about these rooms: the mirrors in the room were interspersed with panels covered in wallpaper, in a pattern depicting the characters of the commedia dell’arte. On the last panel on the left side, there was a wall sconce in the form of a Venetian mask. Flora climbed quietly onto one of the gold chairs against the wall and stretched to reach it. She put her fingers through the eyeholes of the mask and pulled down sharply. The wall panel tilted, exposing a space behind. Flora pushed the panel, which swung open on a well-made hinge.

  The ballroom and the office, while seemingly sharing a wall, actually shared a secret space, about two feet wide. The ballroom mirrors on this side were one way and could be used to watch goings-on in the ballroom. There were switches that could be used to make the lights dim and flicker, and tiny panels you could open to snatch a glass from a confused partygoer. The perhaps unintended second use was that it was a perfect place to listen to what was happening in Ellingham’s office. Flora slipped along until she found the little door that led into Albert’s office. The door was far enough away from the men and sufficiently hidden in the wall that she felt she could safely crack it open an inch without anyone noticing, exactly as Iris had shown her.

  “Most of what I hear is very boring,” Iris said when she showed Flora the passage and the door. “I wish he’d get a mistress and give me something better to listen to.”

  Flora had a feeling it would not be boring tonight.

  “. . . the one that came on Thursday,” George was saying. “Do you still have it?”

  “Of course.” That was Robert Mackenzie. “Here.” He handed George a paper.

  “‘Look, a riddle, time for fun,’” George read. “‘Should we use a rope or gun? Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty. Poison’s slow, which is a pity. Fire is festive, drowning’s slow. Hanging’s a ropy way to go. A broken head, a nasty fall. A car colliding with a wall. Bombs make a very jolly noise. Such ways to punish naughty boys! What shall we use? We can’t decide. Just like you cannot run or hide. Ha ha. Truly, Devious.’”

  “The envelope was postmarked Burlington,” Robert added.

  A phone rang, and it was snatched from the hook before the ring could even complete. Albert Ellingham said a breathless hello. The men gathered around the telephone on the desk and the responses were difficult for Flora to hear, until George’s voice broke out of the cluster.

  “We saw your man,” a voice with a strange, unplacable accent said. “You called the cops.”

  “No,” Albert replied. “George is a friend. He just came to visit.”

  “We know who he is,” the voice replied. “You’ve made this worse on yourself. This is what you do now. You gather up all the jewelry, all the cash, anything you’ve got. You put them in pillowcases. You send your friend there alone, in his car. He drives east on interstate two and makes the left toward West Bolton. We’ll take care of it from there and you’ll get them back. Better move it. You have one hour from now.”

  The phone went silent. Albert said hello several times but no one replied. Flora chanced it and opened the door an inch wider to see what was happening. The men were standing around the desk, not moving and not speaking.

  “I go alone,” George finally said.

  “No,” Albert replied. “It’s my wife and daughter . . .”

  “You heard them, Albert,” George replied. “They want me, so I go.”

  Robert Mackenzie had produced a map and opened it over the desk where the men were gathered.

  “Here,” he said. “They want you to go east on interstate highway two and take the left to go toward West Bolton. It’s a dirt road. The drive looks like it would take a half hour, maybe more, depending on what happens once you turn.”

  “So we work fast,” George said. “Get Montgomery to start gathering things. Jewelry, watches, anything you can get.”

  “Why you?” Robert asked. “You’re in law enforcement. You’re trained.”

  “I’m cheaper,” George replied. “If Albert went and something happened to him—if they hurt him or killed him—that’s international news. That’s the president getting involved. That’s the chair. An FBI agent no one’s ever heard of? That’s not such a big deal. It happens. They can’t let anything happen to you, Albert.”

  “You’re right,” Robert said. “And they’d also get no more money, if that’s how this goes.”

  “We have to move now,” George replied. “We need to get the stuff they want. Where’s the jewelry?”

  “There are two safes upstairs, one in my dressing room and one in Iris’s. The combinations to both are left five, right twenty-seven, left eighteen, right nineteen. Go, Robert. Get Montgomery to help you. Empty them.”

  Robert Mackenzie hurried off, leaving George and Albert alone with the map.

  “I should go,” Albert said again.

  George’s voice was quiet but it managed to fill the room and disturb the air. “You need to listen to me. You brought me here for a reason. It sounds like they’re ready to give them up, so we just have to be cool-headed about it. We play by their rules, but we play smart. I’ll go, and I’ll bring them back to you. I know you feel like you have to go, but you have to put your feelings aside.”

  Albert leaned against the back of a chair and remained silent for a moment.

  “If you do,” he finally said, “you have my life.”

  “I’ll be satisfied with a stiff drink,” George said, grabbing his coat. As he did so, Flora saw his glance pass in the direction of where she was hiding, but he didn’t seem to see the tiny opening in the wall panel. He simply picked up the coat and turned back. “Lock this place down. I don’t want a mouse able to get in here. You have a revolver?”

  “Ther
e’s one in the desk,” Robert said.

  “You load it. You lock the school. You get the staff stationed at every door. And you two stay in here with that door locked and that revolver ready until I return. If I don’t show up by, say, one in the morning, you call in the cavalry. This is how we have to do this. This is how we bring them home.”

  Crouching in the secret corridor, her head to the crack in the door, Flora felt her heart beat so fast that she grew faint. She slid down to the floor as silently as she could.

  6

  BACK IN MINERVA, THE TWO OTHER RESIDENTS WERE SLOUCHED cozily on the sofa, with Ellie’s legs draped casually over Hayes’s lap as she talked about Paris. Hayes didn’t seem to be listening. He was working his phone. Pix was sitting at the table again but her tooth collection was gone, replaced by glossy Ellingham Academy folders and paperwork.

  “You’re back!” she said. “Okay. I need a few minutes to go through the basics. . . .”

  “Don’t you have to wait for David or something?” Ellie said with a groan.

  “His plane from San Diego is late, and the sooner we start the sooner we’re done. It’s fast.”

  “But he’s coming, right?”

  “He’s coming,” Pix said.

  Stevie, Nate, and Janelle took seats at the table. Ellie and Hayes remained in their huddle, and Hayes was still on his phone.

  “Hayes,” Pix said. “Just look up for five minutes.”

  Hayes tipped his chiseled face up and smiled easily, setting the phone on the sofa.

  “So,” Pix said, consulting a list, “welcome, everyone, to Ellingham. ID cards. Each of you has been issued an ID card. That card is programmed to give you access to buildings you need to be in.”

  Ellie rolled dramatically off the sofa and onto the floor, where she landed facedown. Pix continued.

  “Visitors from other buildings have to stay in the common areas, so they can be in this room or the kitchen, but that’s it. You all got the official Ellingham rules of conduct, which includes information about consent and respecting other students. No means no here. Okay . . .”

  Pix quickly scanned the list.

  “Common sense stuff. No drinking, no illegal drugs. Any food in the kitchen needs to be in sealed containers and labeled for food allergies, but no one in here has a peanut allergy; I think we should be okay with that. No fires. Except for in this room when I’m present. Seriously, Ellie, no fires . . .”

  Ellie groaned.

  Janelle raised a hand. “Soldering?” she asked.

  “Fine in the common room. No one has a microwave, okay . . . No unauthorized leaving of campus. We have shuttles to Burlington on the weekends leaving at ten in the morning and coming back at four. Alert me right away in case of a medical emergency in the house. There’s a nurse living on campus, the doctor comes in three times a week, and security can respond to any medical emergency if you need immediate help. If you need to speak to anyone, you can speak to me in confidence, and we have two counselors on staff and you can make appointments online or in person. I think that’s it. . . .”

  She scanned the page again.

  “Most of this you can read yourself. I said no fires already. Seriously, Ellie . . .”

  “No fires,” Ellie mumbled into the floor.

  “Okay! Then that’s it. Everybody take a folder.”

  Nate immediately grabbed a folder and scurried back to his room. Pix headed back up to her apartment. Ellie peeled herself off the floor and went to the table to lean in over Stevie and Janelle.

  “Tub room,” she said to Janelle and Stevie in a low voice. “Both of you. Fifteen minutes. Bring a mug.”

  It seemed like a command that should be obeyed.

  Fifteen minutes later, mugs in hand, Janelle and Stevie knocked on the tub room door. Ellie was in the tub, dressed in what appeared to be nineteenth-century pantaloons and a corset. This alone would have caught Stevie’s attention, but what held it was the fact that the water was bright pink.

  “Shut the door,” she said. “We needed to have a little cocktail party to celebrate your arrival.”

  She indicated a pile of wet, used towels on the floor next to her as if it was a comfortable divan.

  Stevie wasn’t sure where to start, really. The fact that they’d just been lectured about drinking. The fact that Ellie was in the tub, dressed in pantaloons, and dyeing herself pink. Or the fact that there was a saxophone leaning against the tub. That too.

  She decided to let the whole thing go and see where the conversation took them. That was a technique in criminal investigation when you wanted to get a sense of someone—let people talk, let them guide, and they’ll take you to who they are.

  “I’m just dyeing my outfit for tonight,” Ellie said.

  Both Janelle and Stevie decided to sidestep the fact that Ellie was also dyeing herself pink. No need to state the obvious.

  “What’s tonight?” Janelle asked.

  “Tonight is the party!” Ellie said. “Here. Mugs. Here.”

  She reached around clumsily behind her and pulled out a champagne bottle.

  “Mugs,” Ellie said again, reaching out.

  “But Pix just said . . . ,” Janelle started.

  “Mugs.”

  Stevie passed over her mug, and after a moment, so did Janelle. Ellie poured some foamy champagne into each.

  “It’s warm,” she said. “I only managed to bring a few bottles home from France, and it’s cheap, but even the cheap stuff in Paris is better than most stuff here. Okay. I’m going to talk you through all of that. First . . .”

  She raised her mug, and Stevie and Janelle got the hint that they were to clink.

  “Skål.”

  Ellie sipped heavily. Janelle looked into her mug. Stevie hesitated for just a moment, and then decided to go for it. She had only drunk a few times in her life, but if there had ever been a time and a place, this was probably it. And they could probably ditch the mugs in time. Probably. The champagne was warm and had a hard, mineral taste and fizzed up her nose. It was not unpleasant.

  “Drinking,” Ellie said, draining her mug. “They know it happens. We’re in the middle of nowhere so that kind of limits what goes on. This is a real no-one-can-hear-you-scream kind of place.”

  Janelle was still staring into her mug. She raised it to her lips a few times and was clearly pretending to drink.

  “They don’t really care as long as you don’t get too messed up,” Ellie went on, rolling to the side to adjust her wet clothing. “If Pix catches you, she just makes you dump everything out. My advice: buy cheap, buy often, put it in another container. Most people get stuff on the weekend coaches to Burlington. The only thing to watch for there is that Security Larry has a bunch of narcs in the liquor stores who’ll call him if anyone from Ellingham shows up. They make things hard but not impossible. Plenty of people on the street will buy for you for five bucks. But don’t get caught by Larry. He’ll bust your ass. Okay! Next point.”

  She poured herself a little more.

  “Curfews. This one is easy. You can handle it a few ways. One, you can have someone take your ID back to the house and fake tap you in for the night. Works sometimes, but if Pix is in the common room and sees it isn’t you, that’s bad. Better solution, come back and go out the window. Again, Larry will bust your ass, but it’s not as bad as drinking. The other security people, they vary. Depends on how hard Larry’s been riding them. Having people in your room, not too hard. Pix doesn’t really check very much. She’s cool. She’s also easily distracted. She’s super smart but her mind is always elsewhere.”

  The way Ellie was holding her arms, Stevie got an eyeful of her tattoo. In fact, she was pretty sure that Ellie was holding her arm in the universal “ask me about my tattoo” position. It was composed of elegant script. The ink was very dark, and while there was no redness, there was just a bit of white scarring around it if you looked carefully. It was new, and it extended from the inside of her elbow to her wrist:

>   Mon coeur est un palais flétri par la cohue . . .

  “It’s Baudelaire,” Ellie said when she saw that Stevie was fully engaged. “I got it over the summer in Paris. Do you speak French?” she asked.

  “I do,” Janelle said. “Well, some. I think it means . . . my heart is a palace . . . something . . . ?”

  “. . . debased by the crowd.”

  Stevie had no idea what the hell that meant, but she nodded.

  “I was reading this poem one night in Paris over the summer,” Ellie said, elegantly turning her arm, “and it just hit me, and I said to my mom, I’ve got to get it on my arm. My whole arm. And she agreed. We had some wine, and we went and found a place in the Canal Saint-Martin. My mom’s new lover is a street artist down there and he knew a place.”

  Stevie reflected for just a moment on how she’d spent the summer. The majority of the time she was working at the Monroeville Mall in the knockoff Starbucks. When not working, she read. She listened to podcasts. She walked down to the ice cream place. She bought mysteries cheap from sale tables in front of the library. Doing everything she could to drown out the politics. Her life was the opposite of hanging around Paris with your mom and your mom’s lover getting tattoos.

  “Another thing,” Ellie said. “The cell service up here sucks. The Wi-Fi goes out all the time.”

  “How do we watch TV?” Janelle asked.

  Stevie had the feeling that Ellie was about to say she didn’t watch TV.

  “I don’t watch TV,” Ellie said.

  Stevie gave herself a point on her mental scorecard.

  “You don’t watch TV?” Janelle said, in the same way you might ask, “You don’t breathe oxygen?”

  “I make art,” she said.

  “I make machines,” Janelle replied. “And I keep the TV on while I build. I need TV. It’s how I focus.”

  Janelle looked to Stevie in a kind of panic. Stevie knew from their summer conversations that Janelle was not joking. She seemed to know every show. Janelle was nature’s finest multitasker, someone who could talk, build a robot, follow a show, all at the same time.