Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “No,” Dash said. “That was totally something he did on his own. He just produced that out of thin air over the summer. He was going to be a star, you know? I really think that. I think he was going to go to Hollywood and be in movies and be a big deal. He was just that kind of actor.”

  “That’s what I said when I first saw him,” Maris said. “Star. Star star star.”

  Stevie opted not to point out that Hayes already kind of was a star when Maris met him.

  “He was honest,” Maris said. “He was the most honest person I ever met. That’s why his performances were so good.”

  “Honest?” Stevie said.

  “Well, not honest,” Maris said. “Pure. Well . . . unencumbered. I knew as soon as I met him that I had to be with him.”

  She paused for a moment and stared at her nails. Then she looked up suddenly. Stevie turned to see what she was staring at. Gretchen had come into the yurt.

  “She,” Maris said, “is a bitch.”

  “She was Hayes’s ex, right?” Stevie said.

  “She hurt him. Look at her.”

  Gretchen looked wrecked, actually. She was crying.

  “The Beth thing was just something Hayes was doing for the show,” Maris went on. “I know what people are going to say, but it was all for show.”

  All for show. That phrase struck something that Stevie had been thinking but hadn’t been able to put into words. Something about this whole thing seemed—not staged, but . . . there was some kind of element of show about it. They had been making a show. And the way Hayes turned and didn’t want Maris to come with him. The big, dramatic looks.

  From across the room, Janelle waved Stevie over. She, Nate, and Vi were all hunkered over Nate’s computer. David was there as well, having come to the yurt at some point.

  “Germaine Batt again,” Nate said, turning the computer around so Stevie could see.

  Once again, the silent, all-seeing Germaine Batt had a report, and this one included the missing dry ice. The news spread around the room as people turned to their phones to watch.

  “Dry ice?” Janelle said, her voice low. “Is that what happened? Is that what my pass was about? Is that how Hayes died?”

  “How can you die from dry ice?” Nate said.

  “You can die from carbon dioxide poisoning,” Janelle said. “If you were trapped in a small space with enough dry ice it would displace the oxygen. Did Hayes take a bunch of dry ice?”

  “It seems like that might be what happened,” Stevie said. “I heard something about it when they took me up to the Great House.”

  Janelle’s brow furrowed. “He must have taken a lot,” she said. “And that stuff is heavy. Really heavy.”

  The group descended into thoughtful silence for a bit. Vi rubbed Janelle’s hand.

  “So what happens now?” Nate said.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be here much longer,” Stevie replied.

  “You think they’ll kick you out?” Vi said.

  “They won’t,” David said. He had come up behind them and crouched on the back of the sofa. “They don’t kick anyone out. I’ve tried.”

  “My parents could take me out of here,” she replied.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they never wanted me to come.”

  “Why wouldn’t your parents want you to come?” Vi said.

  “Because,” Stevie replied, “they like things that are normal. Ellingham is not normal. It’s full of everything they worry about. Other people. They let me come because it’s fancy and it’s free, but they’d take any excuse to pull me back out. And I think someone dying counts as a pretty big excuse. So I am not long for this fancy, special world. It’s back to the local Edward King headquarters for me so I can sit around and listen to people who believe in aliens but not climate change.”

  “Oh my God,” Vi said. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe if I suddenly became a prom-queen type. They like that.”

  “Maybe we’ll all have to go,” Nate said. “Maybe the school will close.”

  “You guys,” Janelle said. “Come on. Hayes is dead.”

  “It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the school closing,” Nate said.

  Stevie heard someone repeat “the school is closing?” in the group next to them in a whisper. Life comes at you fast, and games of telephone, even faster.

  The door to the yurt swung open, and Ellie strode inside. She wavered, obviously drunk, and held Roota over her head.

  “Hayes is dead!” she said. “Long live Hayes!”

  She started squawking away.

  This announcement did not go over well in the room. Unlike that first night in the yurt, no one was very receptive to Ellie’s arting. David slipped off the back of the sofa and went over to her and whispered in her ear. She jerked away and played more aggressively. He hooked his arm through hers and tried to lead her out, but she pulled away again.

  A few more art people got up from various corners and gathered around her. At first it appeared that they were trying to stop her, but then one of them started jumping up and down in a strange dance. Ellie did it too. Then another joined in. David shrugged and left the group, returning to his perch. Maris, who at first was staring at this in horror, got up and started dancing with all her might, her arms swinging furiously.

  “Oh my God,” Janelle said over the noise. “What’s even happening right now?”

  “The Bacchae,” Nate said.

  This little dancing group in the middle sucked all the rest of the air and energy from the room and continued until another group entered. This was a less festive group, consisting of Larry, Charles, Dr. Quinn, and two uniformed police officers. The room ground into quiet.

  “Everyone,” Larry said, holding up his hands.

  Ellie bleated once on Roota.

  “Element,” Larry said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  The saxophone was lowered.

  “The police are going to need to speak to everyone for just a few minutes,” Larry said. “It’s nothing to worry about. We just have to get a baseline of information about what happened here. So I’m going to have everyone move back to your houses.”

  “Dinner will be brought around to your houses,” Charles said. “And again, we have counselors on hand who can come to you. Anyone who needs help, just reply to the text I sent or speak to any faculty member.”

  Ellingham shuffled back to their houses, now more nervous.

  “Everyone gets to talk to a cop,” David said as the Minerva group walked home. “You get to talk to a cop, and you get to talk to a cop, and you . . .”

  “I’m not going to,” Ellie said.

  “Good luck with that,” David replied.

  “I don’t have to, and I don’t want to,” she replied. “This isn’t a fascist state.”

  “I don’t think that’s what this is about,” Nate said. “It sounds like they’re trying to find out what happened.”

  “And you’re drunk,” David said. “Coffee before cops.”

  She laughed and pushed him in the chest, catching him off guard and knocking him backward to the ground.

  “Could a drunk person do that?” she asked.

  “Pretty sure that’s a yes,” he said, getting up and brushing himself off.

  Ellie staggered ahead a few steps. She was drunker than Stevie first realized. It was so hard to tell with Ellie.

  “Come on,” Janelle said to Stevie. “Get her other arm.”

  Janelle stepped ahead and expertly scooped Ellie by the crook of one arm and waited for Stevie to get the other.

  “Let’s go together,” Janelle said. “Can we go together?”

  “We can go together,” Ellie said. “Why not? Together. Together!”

  Holding Ellie upright was becoming a challenge.

  “You know,” she said to Stevie, breathing hot wine breath into her face, “he told me to get Roota. He got it. He got it.”
<
br />   “Okay,” Stevie said.

  “He got art. More than people knew.”

  “Okay.”

  David strode along, hands deep in his pockets. Having been knocked over, he seemed content now to let Stevie and Janelle handle Ellie.

  “Hey, Nate,” Ellie said. “You get it. You write. You get it.”

  “Sure?” Nate said.

  “You do what you see in your head.”

  She tried to tap her head, but Janelle had a firm grip on her arm.

  “Water,” Janelle said. “We need some water! And then some coffee. And a bath! How about a bath!”

  “A bath!” Ellie said. “You get it. You all get it! Except Stevie. Do you get it, Stevie?”

  “I get it,” Stevie said, having no idea what Ellie was talking about.

  They managed to get Ellie inside without Pix seeing. Janelle ran a bath. Knowing that Ellie was not averse to bathing fully clothed, they put her in just as she was.

  Ellie grew quiet in the tub, sipping her coffee dutifully. She was in reasonable enough shape when the police came by in the next few hours. Janelle, Nate, and Stevie had already been through it.

  David was taken first. The questioning happened in his room and lasted about ten minutes.

  “What did they ask?” Stevie said.

  “Did I know anything about Hayes’s plan? Did he say anything about the tunnel, about the dry ice. He didn’t. I was here when Hayes was doing all of that, smoking a bowl with Ellie. I didn’t say that, and I don’t know if that’s what she is going to say, but I guess we’ll find out.”

  Ellie was sober enough not to say that. She said that she and David were at home working together.

  The exhaustion of the day seemed to hit everyone at once after that. The Minerva residents slumped in the common room for a while, then, one by one, people peeled off to bed. Ellie went first, then Janelle, then Nate. David was in the hammock chair, rocking slowly back and forth.

  “So,” he said, “you really think your parents will make you leave?”

  “I think someone will,” she said. “If not them, the school.”

  David extended his legs, pulling the stretchy hammock material taut.

  “They won’t throw you out,” he said. “They don’t do that here. Believe me. I’ve tested the system.”

  “Did anyone die when you tested the system?”

  “Nothing you did caused Hayes to die, right?”

  “I don’t think so. But . . .”

  “You haven’t done anything you regret, right?”

  She looked up at him sharply. Was he talking about what they did? What kind of dark conversational game was this?

  Not one she wanted to play.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said, getting up. “Good night, Westley. They’ll most likely kill me in the morning.”

  “You might not want to make death jokes,” he said as she went down the hall.

  * * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN AGENT SAMUEL ARNOLD AND LEONARD HOLMES NAIR

  APRIL 17, 1936, 3:30 P.M.

  LOCATION: ELLINGHAM PROPERTY

  SA:Mr. Nair. I need to ask you some more questions.

  LHN: That’s all we seem to do around here.

  SA:We just need to establish the facts. I understand you once taught an art lesson to the students.

  LHN: Please don’t remind me.

  SA:Why do you say that?

  LHN: That was the longest afternoon of my life, trying to explain Max Ernst to children. But that’s one of the prices you pay for knowing Albert. He believes his children should learn from the best.

  SA:Did you meet a student named Dolores Epstein that day?

  LHN: I have no idea. All children look the same to me.

  [A photograph of Dolores Epstein is presented.]

  LHN: Again, all children look the same to me.

  SA: Dolores was a very gifted student. She was considered by many of the teachers to be the brightest student here.

  [Mr. Nair takes another look at the photograph.]

  LHN: Now that you say it, there was one that seemed more aware than the rest. She had a passable knowledge of Greek and Roman art. This could have been the one. She had curly hair like that. Yes, I think this was the one. Is that the one that vanished?

  SA:Dolores Epstein was last seen on the afternoon of the thirteenth, when she checked a book out of the library. Did you ever see her outside of your class?

  LHN: You see them all, milling around. You know, Albert opened this place and said he was going to fill it with prodigies, but fully half of them are just his friends’ children and not the sharpest ones at that. The other half are probably all right. If I’m being fair, there were one or two others that showed a bit of a spark. A boy and a girl, I forget their names. The two of them seemed to be a pair. The girl had hair like a raven and the boy looked a bit like Byron. They were interested in poetry. They had a little light behind the eyes. The girl asked me about Dorothy Parker, which I took as a hopeful sign. I’m a friend of Dorothy’s.

  [A silver lighter is placed on the table.]

  SA:Do you recognize this, Mr. Nair?

  LHN: Oh! I’ve been looking for that!

  [Mr. Nair attempts to take the lighter. He is prevented.]

  SA:It’s evidence, Mr. Nair. It has to stay with us.

  LHN: It’s Cartier, Agent Arnold. Where did you find it? I’ve been looking for that for ages.

  SA:We found it in the observatory, along with Dolores’s library book and a pencil.

  LHN: I suppose I left it in there.

  SA:We found Dolores’s fingerprints on this lighter. Why would Dolores have your lighter?

  LHN: She must have found it.

  SA:You didn’t give it to her?

  LHN: Why would I give a child my Cartier lighter?

  SA:I don’t know, Mr. Nair.

  LHN: I lose things. I assume the girl found it and kept it because it’s a lovely thing. She must have good taste. Do I get it back?

  SA:When it’s no longer needed, Mr. Nair. Let me ask you something else. Why might Miss Robinson go into Mrs. Ellingham’s private, locked dressing room?

  LHN: Any number of reasons, I suppose. Those two are thick as thieves.

  SA:Specifically, this was on the evening of the thirteenth, when everyone in the house was looking for Miss Robinson. She did not respond to the many people calling for her and was found alone in the room, where she had been for approximately fifteen minutes. A strange thing to do during what was clearly a panic.

  LHN: I can’t say why Flora does what she does.

  SA:You are friends with Miss Robinson?

  LHN: Flora and I are friends, yes.

  SA:Where did you meet?

  LHN: Oh, some speakeasy. Years ago.

  SA:So you are saying that Flora Robinson did not tell you what she was doing in Iris Ellingham’s room on Monday evening at the time the alarm was raised?

  LHN: She did not.

  SA:She said nothing of the matter?

  LHN: Flora doesn’t tell me every time she goes in or out of a room.

  SA:And when did you first learn of the kidnapping?

  LHN: When Flora woke me on Tuesday morning, as you know, because I’ve gone through this ten times or more. If you’re suggesting that Flora had anything to do with this, you couldn’t be more wrong. Unlike me, Flora has a heart. She loves Iris like a sister and Alice like a daughter. Be careful with that lighter, would you? I really do want it back.

  [Interview terminated 3:56 p.m.]

  21

  “SO,” CHARLES SAID. “LET’S TALK.”

  It was the next morning, and Stevie sat in front of Call Me Charles up in his office. The rain beat against the windows as classical music played very quietly from small white speakers. Stevie had been waiting for this call, and when it finally came, she felt like her body and soul were ready. She’d read about Marie Antoinette, waiting in a prison palace in Paris while they built
guillotines outside.

  “Let’s talk about what happened,” Charles said. “First of all, tell me how you’re doing.”

  “You mean, how I feel?” Stevie said.

  “However you want to answer the question.”

  Stevie was not someone who liked talking about feelings, but in this one instance, feelings were probably better than facts.

  “I mean,” Stevie said, “I’m okay. It’s weird, but Hayes wasn’t someone I knew well. So, it’s horrible, but . . . we weren’t close.”

  Charles gave a concerned nod.

  “Can you talk to me about what happened? Whose idea was it to use the tunnel?”

  “It was Hayes’s,” Stevie said. “I thought the tunnel was filled in.”

  “No,” Charles said. “We dug it out in the spring. It’s going to be demolished and filled in when we run the new water and sewer line for the art barn expansion. We thought we were keeping that fact under wraps, but . . .”

  “I was the one who picked the lock,” Stevie said.

  It just felt important to say it to him. The police already knew. Best not to have the telltale heart beating under her until she lost her marbles.

  “I know,” he said.

  Several long seconds passed. Charles didn’t look so young and carefree today. No superhero T-shirts under his suit.

  “Tunneling has been a feature of this school for a long time. We try to discourage it. And Hayes didn’t—it wasn’t the tunnel that hurt Hayes. What happened to Hayes was an extremely unfortunate accident. Extremely unfortunate. Should you have gone into that tunnel? No. But you didn’t take Hayes in there that night.”

  Stevie looked at the pattern of the drops beating on the glass.

  “Am I going to be expelled?” she asked.

  “No,” Charles said. “But there is something I’m going to have you do. Come with me.”

  Stevie followed him, almost in a trance, as he took her back to the attic entrance. She wasn’t being kicked out—and she was being taken to the attic?

  “We’ve decided after what happened with Hayes to double up on all security,” he said, entering a new, longer security code into the panel. They made their way up the narrow stairs.

  “When we spoke before,” he said, turning on the lights, “I said I wanted you to find a project that put a human face on the crime that happened here, the loss. You found a project. No one could have predicted the terrible lesson on loss you learned. Now that you know about the tunnel being opened, there’s something I can show you.”