Get the books right and the rest will follow. Now she could address the rest of the room.
“. . . acid, a collection of poisons, a stretching rack . . .”
Stevie was less concerned about the day-to-day items like her clothes. Stevie had very little interest in clothes and no money to buy them anyway, so her wardrobe tended to jeans and plain T-shirts. She coveted a heavy fisherman’s sweater, because the detective in her favorite Nordic Noir wore one, and preferred a sensible cross-body bag like the one worn by her favorite English TV detective.
She did have one prized possession in terms of clothes—a vintage red vinyl raincoat, straight out of the 1970s, which she had found at the back of her grandmother’s closet. It fit Stevie as if it had been made for her, and she decorated it with a selection of tiny lapel pins honoring her favorite bands, podcasts, and books. The coat had deep pockets and a thick belt, and when she was wearing it, Stevie felt powerful, prepared, and extremely waterproof. Even her mother, who disliked Stevie’s taste in clothes, was on board for the red raincoat. (“Finally, some red.”)
She was hanging the coat in her closet and had just closed the door when she turned and saw the zombie.
Stevie often read that actors look a little different from the general population because the camera distorts appearances. Someone who looks good on camera looks so good in person that reality starts to bend a bit. This was the case with the figure standing in Stevie’s doorway. It was a guy dressed in a white linen shirt and a pair of bright-blue shorts, looking like a wandering J. Crew ad in search of a glossy spread.
His face was unmistakable. When she had seen it last, it was grim, covered in dirt, frequently crying. Now it was smiling gently. His features were soft and rounded—happy cheeks, a small, playfully rounded nose, a dimpled chin. His brown hair was longish on the top and fell in easy waves. His brows had to be artificially shaped. No arch that arched existed in nature. He looked toned all over, but his calves were particularly so. His calves, in fact, had outgrown the rest of him. Beefy calves.
“Hey,” he said.
His voice was deep and smooth and rich, like what gravy might sound like if gravy could talk. (Which, luckily, it cannot. Gravy might have a nice voice, but the conversation would probably be dull.)
“You’re Hayes Major,” Stevie said.
“Yeah.” He chuckled in a soft, self-deprecating way that Stevie was pretty sure wasn’t truly self-deprecating.
Hayes was a YouTube star. At the start of the summer, he had released a ten-part online show called The End of It All about a survivor of a zombie invasion. All of the videos were shot from a basement bunker, just Hayes to the camera, discussing his survival in something called the Hungry City, a beachside town that had a few pockets of human resistance. His show was one of those things that wasn’t there one moment and was everywhere the next.
Stevie had known Hayes went to Ellingham and that she might see him at some point. She did not expect to see him standing in her doorway as she unpacked. She didn’t know he would be in her house.
“Sorry, I was on the phone,” he said. “I was talking to some people in LA.”
He held up his phone, as if indicating the presence of tiny Los Angelenos inside of it. It wasn’t clear to Stevie why he was apologizing or even explaining why he had been on the phone before she had seen him. But she nodded anyway, like this made sense. Maybe this was something celebrities—Hayes probably counted as an actual celebrity—did. They talked on the phone, and then they told you about talking on the phone.
“So, hey,” he said. “Is there any chance you could give me a hand?”
Stevie blinked in confusion.
“With what?” she asked.
“My stuff.”
“Oh,” Stevie said, feeling the cold hand of panic on her neck. Already she sounded like a slack-jawed idiot. “Sure.”
She followed him to the common room, where his bags and boxes (nicer than hers and more of them) were waiting. He gestured to a box.
“You have to be careful with that one,” he said.
Stevie took this as a cue to pick that box up. It was a bit on the heavy side, full of some kind of equipment that was unevenly packed and slid around when she moved it.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a smaller bag and heading back down the hall to the right circular stairs at the end. “It’s been a weird summer. That’s why I was on the phone.”
“Oh,” Stevie said, “yeah. Sure.”
She tried to maneuver the box into the twisting space. The steps creaked loudly, and the box caught. Hayes moved ahead, but Stevie was stuck trying to pivot and angle without shaking the box too much. She paused for a moment, expecting Hayes to come back and give her a hand, but when he did not appear she took a deep breath and persevered, letting the box scrape along the wall.
Hayes’s room was Minerva Six, at the very end. It was much like hers, but hotter and with an extra window.
“Oh, great,” he said. “Set it anywhere. Thanks.”
“Your show is good,” she said. “I really liked it.”
This wasn’t entirely true. The show was okay at best.
In preparation for coming, Stevie had watched all the episodes. They weren’t long, maybe ten minutes each, and they were fine. The story was pretty good. Hayes’s acting, less so. Most of it was cheekbones and a low, sultry voice. Sometimes, that’s all that was required. Stevie always tried to be truthful, but she didn’t want to make her first acquaintance in her new house and say, “Your show was mediocre and overrated but I see why you are valued: for your looks and deep voice.” People tended not to warm to that kind of thing.
“Thanks,” he said, leaving the room in a way that suggested she was to come with him and get more stuff.
This was good. This was Hayes Major, internet star, talking to her. Also, this was Hayes Major, internet star, getting her to carry most of the heavy stuff, but still.
Another weird thing, Stevie thought, as she made her way back down the twisting steps—she knew about Hayes’s love life. Hayes had been involved in a publicized altercation over the summer at some convention when he got involved with another YouTuber named Beth Brave, star of a show called Beth Isn’t Here. Beth had been dating Lars Jackson from a show called These Guys. Some kind of argument broke out when Hayes got together with Beth that had been widely recorded, and the three of them had a screaming fight in a hallway. There was online chatter after speculating that Beth would be involved in a second season of The End of It All.
This was the kind of life Hayes led. It was very different from Stevie’s life.
“People in LA,” he said unprovoked, as they picked up some more boxes. “There’s been a lot of interest in the show for movies, so . . .”
He let that hang in the air until Stevie said, “Wow.”
“Yeah,” he said. “My agent wants me to make another series right away because there’s a lot of interest right now.”
Another trudge up the tight steps.
“More zombies?” Stevie asked as she caught her breath.
“I don’t know. . . . You can just put that on the bed. . . . I mean, I did that already?”
“You turned into one at the end,” Stevie said. “I think? It was kind of open-ended.”
“Yeah . . . ,” he said, and his tone indicated that he was no longer really warming to the conversation. “So, I just have to make a few more calls now that I’m here? Thanks a lot. I’ll see you around?”
“Yep,” Stevie said, wiping the sweat from her brow as she backed out of the room. “I’ll see you . . . you know . . . here.”
He was already dialing.
As she stepped out into the hall and went down the stairs, two things occurred to Stevie.
The first was that it was eight in the morning here, so five in the morning in LA. On a weekend. While they may keep strange hours in Hollywood, it seemed unlikely that Hayes was doing a bunch of important business at that time.
The second was tha
t even though he lived in the same building as she did, Hayes Major had never asked her name.
April 13, 1936, 7:15 p.m.
“WE HAVE YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTER. DO EXACTLY AS WE SAY IF you want them to live. Do not call the police. We will know if you have. We have eyes on the police station. Take twenty-five thousand out of the safe. Come out to the lake yourself. Get into a boat with the money and come to the island. You have fifteen minutes.”
The line went dead.
Three men stood in the butler’s pantry: Albert Ellingham had the telephone. Robert Mackenzie and Montgomery, the butler, stood at the door. Albert Ellingham replaced the receiver on the hook and thick, frantic quiet followed.
“Montgomery,” Ellingham said quietly, “have Miss Pelham secure the children at the school. Everyone back in their houses. Doors locked. Curtains drawn. Everyone is to go inside. Do this now. Robert, with me.”
Robert Mackenzie again trailed his fast-moving employer to his office. Once inside, Ellingham shut and locked the door, then went to the French doors and looked outside. The dark had come down over the mountains. The dark had come down everywhere.
Ellingham marched to one of the bookcases in the windowless wall. He pulled down a book from a top shelf, but just halfway. There was a telltale snick, and the entire panel of wall gave. Ellingham swung back the bookcase, revealing a massive vault inside of the wall. He entered the combination and turned the lock. Robert, meanwhile, ran from window to window, pulling the curtains.
“We have to call the police,” Robert said. “We have to call them now.”
“Find a lamp and light it for me,” Ellingham said, pulling out several bags of cash.
“There are still a few workmen on the property,” Robert persisted, pulling the massive curtains that swept over the wall of French doors at the back of the room. “We could have them out in five minutes, surrounding the property and out on the roads. Some of them have shotguns. All of them are handy enough.”
“Robert, there is no time for this. I am taking this money out to the lake. Light a lamp and then help me count.”
Later, when asked about this moment, Robert Mackenzie would say that there really was no time to think. That was the genius of the demand—no time to think, no time to plan. He grabbed one of the oil lamps kept in every room of the house (power loss was frequent), lit it, and then dropped to his knees and started to count money. In the end, there was twenty-three thousand and a few extra twenties.
“It’s not enough. We need more.” For one of the first times in his life, Albert Ellingham sounded desperate. “I only have five more minutes to get this outside. We need something.”
One of America’s richest men raced around his office for a moment, pulling open drawers, looking for piles of cash he certainly didn’t have, or anything that might be worth that much money.
“It will have to do,” he said.
The bag of cash only weighed maybe twenty pounds. Ellingham hoisted it and opened the French doors.
Robert paused before handing him the oil lamp. “You know they can take you out there. It’s probably you they want!”
“Then they’ll have me.”
“And then what?” Robert said. “This is madness. We need help.”
Albert Ellingham took a crucial second’s pause.
“Marsh,” he said. “Call him at home. Don’t say what’s happened. Just get him up here on some pretense. No one else, do you understand? No one but Marsh.”
Robert nodded. Albert Ellingham took the lamp and stepped out into the Vermont mountain fog carrying a bag of money. He walked the fifty or so yards to the lake edge, where there was a small dock. He set the money into one of the rowboats he had moored on the side facing the house and got inside carefully, then put the lamp on the empty bench seat. When he knocked the edge of land away with his oar, his entire body was shaking. Still, he reached the mound in a minute or two and threw the rope around the mooring post.
“I’m here,” he called into the dark.
A flashlight shone down on him, blinding him for a moment.
“Get out,” said a voice. “Bring the money.”
“My wife and daughter—where are they?”
“Stop talking.”
Ellingham threw the bag. It landed on the narrow strip of grass around the dome. He got out as well as he could, considering that he could barely see.
The person kept the light squarely on Ellingham’s face, forcing him to look down and shield his eyes. He half crawled out of the boat onto the ground.
“Open the door,” the voice said.
Ellingham pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the door on the side of the dome. This dome was his little thinking place—his island of peace. The person shoved him hard, pushing him into the dome, where he landed on the floor.
“Put the money in the hatch,” the voice said. The person was speaking through a scarf, so it was muffled. There was an accent there, an accent he was trying to hide by pulling out the words in a strange way. His pupils were still constricted from the light, so Ellingham felt blindly along the floor, feeling for the hatch. He found it and opened it and pushed the sack into the hole. He heard it knocking some bottles off the shelves as it fell, and they shattered on the floor. He turned back to the stranger, but the light was shoved right back into his face, blinding him again.
Ellingham battled with himself for a moment. Should he lunge for this person? Just take him down now, beat his head into the side of the stone base of the observatory floor and demand with every blow where his family was? Fear and rage came in equal measure. But Ellingham had not gotten as far as he had in life by giving in to every impulse.
“It’s everything I had in the safe,” he said. “I was under two thousand short, but we gave you whatever we had. If I’d had more time . . . you can have whatever you want. Anything you want.”
Something came down on his head, and then all faded to black.
4
AFTER MAKING SUCH A HUGE IMPRESSION ON HAYES MAJOR, STEVIE paced her room for a few moments and reviewed her introductory strategy. More confidence. That’s what she needed. When she joined the FBI, she was going to need to walk up to people and shake their hands, look them in the eye, ask questions. Hayes had just caught her by surprise.
Her next chance was already here, kicking a laundry basket brimming with sketchbooks, pencils, oil crayons, and paints sitting by the door. A girl, the presumed owner of the foot, followed it in.
She wore a faded, shrunken yellow T-shirt from an auto repair shop and an old cheerleading skirt in deep blue with red internal pleats. Her legs were covered with little bruises and nicks—nothing serious-looking, more like the kind you would get by trying to climb trees or other objects. Her feet were just about covered in a pair of scruffy red cloth Mary Jane slippers held together with safety pins. Her hair was the real statement piece; it looked unwashed and matted, and it had been gathered in little bunches around her head and tied into bundles with what looked like baby socks. Down her left arm was a long tattoo, one massive line of elaborate script. Down her right arm were notes and sketches in different colors of pen.
“It is hot as balls in here,” the girl said in greeting. “Balls. Seriously. When the hell are they going to get some AC?”
Stevie stepped forward, considered offering a hand for a handshake, and opted instead for a casual lean against one of the chairs.
“I’m Stevie,” she said. “Stevie Bell.”
“What’s up,” the girl said. “I’m Ellie.”
There was no Ellie on the list of Ellingham students, but there was an Element Walker. And this person looked like an Element. Ellie, or Element, kicked a box that contained feather boas, a ukulele, a bowler hat, and a lot of plastic storage bags full of used makeup, and spilled glitter across the floor.
“Can I help?” Stevie said.
Ellie shrugged, but seemed happy enough with the offer.
Ellie’s things were a lot scrappier than Hayes’s
or Stevie’s—two old cardboard boxes, an oversized army duffel bag, a gold backpack, and a lumpen black laundry sack. It didn’t take long to deposit these items in Minerva Three, which was down by the turreted bathroom.
“Pix,” Ellie yelled as she dragged the last of her things into her room, then walked back to the common area. “Why is it hot as balls in here?”
(Note to self, Stevie thought, you could say balls to teachers here.)
“It’s summer,” Pix replied, coming into the common room. “Hey, Stevie. I left your parents out on the tour. They’ll be back soon. And Ellie, the heat won’t last long, and then you’ll be freezing. So you can look forward to that.”
“Why don’t they get air-conditioning?” Ellie said, dropping heavily into the hammock chair. She spun around and turned herself upside down, letting her head hang off the bottom, dusting the floor with her hair bunches.
“Because this is an old building with old wiring,” Pix replied. “Because fire. How was Paris?”
“Hot,” Ellie said. “We went to Nice for a while. My mom has a new boyfriend and he has a place there.”
Paris. Ellie had been in Paris. Obviously, Stevie knew that Paris was a real place that real people went to. Her school sponsored a French Club trip the last summer, and she knew three people who had gone on it. It was only a week long and the biggest story out of it was that Toby Davidson got hit by a bike and almost lost a finger. (Almost Lost a Finger: The Toby Davidson Story. Not a compelling read.)
There were shuffling noises by the door, and Stevie turned to see another person there. Though it was blazingly sunny, he had the look of someone caught in a rainstorm with a heavy backpack on. He wore a T-shirt that said IF YOU CAN READ THIS SHIRT, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. His eyes were a strange pale gray. He had a shock of red-blond hair that had been cut by someone with more enthusiasm than skill.
Truly Devious Page 4