Especially not the people.
She could send messages to her friends Janelle and Nate. Mostly Janelle. And mostly it was Janelle sending them to her, dozens a day, checking in on how she was. Stevie could only reply to every third or fourth one, because replying meant thinking about how she missed seeing Janelle in the hall, in the common room, across the table. How she missed knowing her friend was on the other side of the wall as she slept—Janelle, who smelled of lemons or orange blossom, who wrapped her hair in one of her dozens of colorful scarves to keep it safe while she worked with industrial equipment. Janelle was a maker, a builder of small robotics and other devices, who was currently preparing a Rube Goldberg machine for the Sendel Waxman competition. Her texts indicated she had been spending a lot more time in the maintenance shed building since Stevie had been gone, and that she was getting much more serious with Vi Harper-Tomo. Janelle’s life was full, and she wanted Stevie to be in it, and Stevie felt far and cold and none of that made sense here, at the shopping center with the Subway and the beer and cigarette place, in the Funky Munkee.
But she had the tin, and as long as she had the tin, she had the Ellingham case.
She’d found the tin in Ellie’s room shortly before she left. She had dated it using online images. It was from somewhere between 1925 and 1940, and the tea was popular and widely sold. The feather was about four inches long and looked like it may have been attached to a piece of clothing. The cloth was two inches square and was a luminous blue, with silver, blue, and black beads, and had torn edges. Another piece of detritus. The lipstick had the word KISSPROOF on the side. It had been used, but not entirely. The pillbox was the only thing that looked like it might have value. It was just over two inches in length. It was empty.
These four items Stevie thought of as a group. They were personal, they concerned jewelry or clothing. The feather and the torn cloth were junk, so the reason for saving them was mysterious. The lipstick and the pillbox could have had value. All of these items likely belonged to a woman. They were intimate. They meant something to whoever put them in this tin.
The other two items probably had a lot more significance. They were a set of photographs of two people pretending to be Bonnie and Clyde. Stevie stared at them until her sight went blurry. The girl had dark hair cut in a sharp bob. Stevie had Googled some pictures of Lord Byron, the poet, and found he did have a resemblance to the boy in the photos. They had written a poem about themselves. But who were they? The trouble was, there were no online records of all the names of the early Ellingham students. Their names had never mattered—they were never part of the case. So they weren’t printed anywhere. Stevie had searched the internet, read down every thread on every message board she frequented on the case. At the time of the crimes or in the following years, a few students had come forward and given statements or spoken to the press. The one who appeared the most was a Gertrude van Coevorden, a New York City debutante who claimed to have been Dottie Epstein’s best friend. She gave tearful interviews for weeks after the kidnappings. None of these were helpful in identifying the persons in the photos.
Then, there was the poem. It wasn’t a good poem. It wasn’t even a whole poem.
The Ballad of Frankie and Edward
April 2, 1936
Frankie and Edward had the silver
Frankie and Edward had the gold
But both saw the game for what it was
And both wanted the truth to be told
Frankie and Edward bowed to no king
They lived for art and love
They unseated the man who ruled over the land
They took
The king was a joker who lived on a hill
And he wanted to rule the game
So Frankie and Edward played a hand
And things were never the same
Stevie didn’t know a lot about poetry, but she knew about true crime. Bonnie Parker, the famous 1930s outlaw who Frankie was modeling herself after in the pictures, wrote poems as well, including a famous one called “The Story of Suicide Sal,” which was all about a woman in love with a gangster. This poem looked like it was modeled on hers.
And there were several things in the poem that seemed to be about Albert Ellingham—the mention of games, the king who was a joker who lived on a hill. And in the poem Frankie and Edward did something, but what, the poem never says.
There was only one thing she could find that might explain anything about Edward and Frankie. Stevie had read the police interviews with the various suspects many times; they were collected in an ebook she kept on her phone. She had flagged a section in which Leonard Holmes Nair, the famous painter who was staying with the Ellinghams at the time of the kidnapping, described some of the students:
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.
There was no question in Stevie’s mind that these two students described by Leonard Holmes Nair were the same two students in these photographs.
Anyway, the critical clue was actually contained in the photographs—or rather, between them.
Her phone buzzed. There was a text message from her mom: Where are you?
Stevie sighed.
Walking home.
Get a move on, she replied.
It was only four o’clock. At Ellingham, Stevie’s time was her own. When she ate, what she ate, when and where she studied, what she did between classes . . . all of that was up to her. There was no one looking over her shoulder. Now she was back in her family’s domain.
She drained her coffee and carefully returned the items to the tin. Headphones back on her head, she started the rest of the walk home. It was the lead-up to Halloween, and every business and home had a pumpkin or an autumnal banner. There was still a little late-summer lift in the air before the cold snapped down and killed everything right to ground level.
Winter would be unbearable here.
Her phone rang. The only calls Stevie got were from her parents and from Janelle. She was surprised to see Nate’s number appear. Nate was not a caller.
“Let me guess,” Stevie said, on answering. “You’re writing.”
Nate Fisher was a writer. At least, he was supposed to be.
When he was fourteen, he wrote a book called The Moonbeam Chronicles. It started out as a hobby. Then, as he published parts of it online, it grew more and more popular until it had a robust fandom and Nate wound up as a published author. He had even gone on a book tour and appeared on some morning shows. He had gotten into Ellingham on the back of this achievement. Stevie got the impression that he liked it there for some of the same reasons she did—it was remote and people left him alone. At home, he was that writer kid. He didn’t like publicity. His social anxiety made every event a nightmare. Ellingham was a retreat in the mountains where he could be among people who also did weird things. The only problem was, he was supposed to be writing book two, and book two did not want to be written. Nate’s entire existence was avoiding the writing of book two of the Moonbeam Chronicles.
Which is why, Stevie surmised, Nate was calling her.
“Not going well?” she asked.
“You don’t know my life.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Do books have to have a middle?” he said.
“I think whatever happens in the middle is probably the middle,” Stevie said.
“What if there’s just a beginning where I tell you everything that happened in book one in a seri
es of contrivances, like found scrolls and speeches and drunk bards at the tavern who tell the story to some traveler and then it’s like two hundred pages of question marks and then I explain where the dragon is?”
“Is there kissing?” she asked.
“I hate you.”
“You can’t write anything?”
“Let’s just say that I needed to have Moonbeam fight something and the only thing I could come up with was called the Pulsating Norb. It’s like a wall that jiggles. The best thing I came up with this week is a wall that jiggles called the Pulsating Norb. I need you to come back here and kill me.”
“Wish I could,” Stevie said, hitting the button to cross the intersection. “I’d like to meet a Pulsating Norb.”
“How is it there?” he said.
“The same. My parents are still my parents. School is still school. I didn’t realize how much the place stinks like cafeteria and hot dishwater before. Ellingham is all . . . woody.”
When she called up the sense memory, Stevie felt a pain run through her. Like a punch in the gut.
“So how’s everyone else?” she said quickly.
“Uh . . . Janelle is all in love and power tools. And David, I guess . . .”
And David, he guessed. Nate paused long enough for Stevie to know that there was a there there. Only Janelle knew most of the facts—that Stevie and David Eastman were some kind of thing. David was an annoying rich boy, scruffy and difficult. Whatever ability he had—and apparently he had considerable ability in computer programming—he hid from the school and others. His likes were video games, not going to class, not talking about his past . . .
And Stevie.
Janelle knew that David and Stevie had made out several times. Nate likely guessed; he did not want to know details, but it would have been evident. There was something neither Janelle nor Nate knew about David. Something Stevie was holding on to. Something that could not be said.
“David what?” Stevie said, trying not to sound too interested.
“Nothing. I should go, I guess. . . .”
Stevie suspected that Nate wasn’t going because he was going to write; he was going because this was probably the longest phone conversation he had ever had, at least voluntarily.
“My parents have a sign hanging in the bathroom that I think sums it up,” Stevie said. “It says: ‘Believe in yourself.’ Have you considered believing in yourself? I can send you that quote on top of a pic of a sunset. Would that help?”
“Good-bye,” he said. “You’re the worst.”
Stevie smiled and pocketed her phone. It always hurt, but now it hurt a tiny bit less. She picked up her chin and took firm, decisive steps. She’d read somewhere that the way you move could influence your inner state—take on the shape of the thing you wanted to be. FBI agents walked decisively. Detectives kept their heads up, their eyes moving around. She fastened her hands on her backpack straps to pull herself to a straighter stance. She would not be broken. She quickened her steps and almost bounded up the crumbling concrete path to her front door, turning away, as she always did, from the weathered KING FOR SENATE sign that was still on their lawn a year after the election was over.
“Hey,” she said, knocking the headphones down to her neck and pulling off her coat. “I decided to walk. . . .”
It seemed they had a visitor.
2
SOMETIMES THE DEVIL COMES TO PEOPLE IN STORIES—THE UNEXPECTED visitor with the pleasing voice. The devil is not supposed to show up in life. The devil is not supposed to be in living rooms in Pittsburgh in the autumn twilight, sitting on the green sofa from Martin’s Big Discount Furniture, in a room magnetically pointed at the television. And yet, there he was.
Edward King was in his fifties, but still looked a bit younger. His hair was dark with a waving curl, forced flat. He wore an impeccable gray suit, one of those suits that stand out because they do not shine or bag. His unlined face was a mask of affability, his smile a gentle, who me? twist. He sat back deep into the sofa, his legs widely crossed, as if this was where he spent every evening. Stevie’s parents sat in the matching recliners on either side of the sofa, looking attentive and wide-eyed, and frankly, confused.
“Hello, Stevie,” he said.
Stevie was stranded in the doorway, feeling a cold paralysis come over her limbs.
Edward King was the worst man in America.
Well, that point could be argued. But Edward King was a powerful man. He was a Pennsylvania senator, based here, out of Pittsburgh. This was the man who wanted to keep “outsiders” and “bad elements” out of America, which largely meant people who weren’t white, weren’t rich. For Edward King, wealth was goodness. There was no climate change in his world—the earth was there to produce more life-affirming dollars. This was a man who wanted to be president.
“Stevie,” her father said, a slight warning tone in his voice. She knew what that tone meant. We know how you feel about this, but this man is a senator and our personal hero, and if you think you are about to storm out or go into some political tirade, you are much mistaken.
Stevie felt that old tyrant in her chest, the unsteady heartbeat that signaled the start of an anxiety attack. She grabbed the doorframe like it was a life preserver. Her parents didn’t know that this was not the first time Stevie had come this close to Edward King.
“It’s okay,” he said. He was too clever to smile broadly; it was just a gentle hint of a smile. “I know that Stevie may not be my biggest fan. We can have different opinions. That’s what makes America great. Honoring our differences.”
Oh no. No, no, no. He’d lobbed the ball at her. He wanted to play.
Oh, she would play.
If she could breathe. Breathe, Stevie. Breathe. One intake of air and she could get the whole apparatus moving. But it was a no-go from her diaphragm.
“Stevie,” her father said again, though the tone was less stern. “Come sit down.”
The floor was coming up to meet Stevie a bit. Hello, said the floor. Come see me. Plant your face in my bosom and be still.
“That’s all right,” Edward King said. “Stevie, you do whatever makes you comfortable. I’m just here to talk to you all, see how you’re doing after the events at Ellingham.”
Another move in this chess game. Now that he was saying she could stand, maybe the move was to sit. Or she might be giving in to what he wanted. Too much input. The golden twilight was dimming fast and the shadows were falling across the carpet. Or was that just her vision? The floor really was inviting. . . .
STEVIE! she screamed to herself. YOU. MUST. REINHABIT. YOUR. BODY.
“I want to congratulate you on the remarkable work you did at Ellingham,” Edward King went on. “Your investigative powers are really exceptional.”
Her parents looked at her as if they were expecting her to dance or maybe pull out some puppets. Still, her body and voice refused to participate.
Okay, she said to herself. Points for not being on the floor. But you’ve got to move. You can move. You can speak. DO SOMETHING.
“We’re sorry,” her mother said.
“Don’t be.” Edward King spread out his hands in a generous gesture, as if this was his house. “Actually, Stevie, and you may not like to hear this, you remind me of a young me a bit. I stood by my principles. Even if others around me didn’t always like it. You’ve got backbone. So what I’ve come to ask, come to talk about, is this . . . and I ask you all to hear me out. I’ve come to ask that Stevie return to Ellingham.”
The floor could have completely fallen away and revealed a cloud city below.
“I’m . . . sorry?” Her mother was now off her footing.
“I know, I know,” Edward King said apologetically. “I’m a parent of a student there as well. Please. Let me make my case. I have something to show you.”
He reached into a sleek leather case leaning against his leg and pulled out several glossy folders.
“Have a look at these,” he said, passing
one to each of her parents. He held one toward Stevie as well, but immediately set it on his lap when it was clear that she would not make a move for it.
“Security?” her father said, examining the folder.
“The best firm in the country. Better than the secret service, because it’s private. It’s the firm I use. And it’s the firm I’ve hired to wire Ellingham. I always thought there should be a better security system there, and after recent events, I managed to convince the board to allow me to install a network.”
Her parents were looking through the folders, dumbfounded.
“I did this,” he continued, “because Ellingham Academy is a very special place. They cultivate individual talent. What they’ve done for people like Stevie and my son . . . I truly believe in the mission. Albert Ellingham was a great man, a true American innovator. And new American innovators are being made at Ellingham right now. I’m asking you, please. I think Stevie should return. The campus is safer now.”
“But that girl,” her mother said. “Everything that’s happened . . .”
“Element,” Edward King said, shaking his head. “Do you want to know what I think?”
Her parents always did, and for the first time, so did Stevie.
“I believe what happened was an accident. I think those two students were out of their depth and Hayes died. I think your daughter worked it out. And I think the girl panicked and ran. She’ll be found.”
“The school should have been more careful,” Stevie’s father said.
“Now here’s where I disagree with you,” Edward King said, in his congenial debate voice. He leaned back into the sofa. “I don’t blame the school. I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. The school locked up those materials. You know, those students are old enough to know better than to break into a locked storage area, to steal chemicals. Personal responsibility.”
This was one of Edward King’s big talking points: A RETURN TO RESPONSIBILITY. It meant nothing as far as he was concerned, but people liked the slogan. She saw her parents lulled by the familiar word.
The Vanishing Stair Page 2