Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,20

need.”

Stevie turned that over in her mind for a bit. One good thing about being from Pittsburgh was that the Carnegie Library was one of the best in the country. She had been able to get loads of books and materials there. But here there might be things related to the case, things not available anywhere else. Stevie wanted to stay, but Kazim was moving them on, all the way across the campus, to a large, circular tent structure that looked semipermanent.

“This is the study yurt,” Kaz said, pushing back a heavy flap that served as the door. The floor of the inside was covered in a mix of beautiful woven rugs and piles of pillows and beanbags.

“A lot of people sleep in here,” Kaz said. “It’s for studying, but . . . it has all kinds of uses.”

The girl with the bob laughed knowingly. A girl with short silver hair, a longer chunk of which poked straight up at the forehead, was lingering nearby. She wore round glasses, white overalls, and a short tank top underneath. She had been trailing Janelle, Stevie, and Nate for several minutes. The sun came out from behind a cloud, bathing all of them in strong, burning summer light. The girl tapped on her glasses and the lenses darkened.

“Magic,” she said.

“Transition lenses,” Janelle replied with a laugh. “Photochromic plastic.”

“Vi Harper-Tomo,” the girl said to Janelle, extending a hand. “And I am magic.”

Something flashed between these two that was almost visible to the naked eye, which caused Stevie a second of panic. She had just met Janelle, Janelle was her best bet at a closest friend, and already someone else was coming into the frame.

Which was a crazy thought.

Stevie tried to push it out of her mind and focus on the prize of this tour—an inside look at the Ellingham Great House, the Ellinghams’ former residence. She had studied the photos of the house for so long. Seen the floor plans. Knew the history. But instead, Kaz walked them right past it.

“Aren’t we going in?” Stevie asked.

“End of the tour!” he said, walking them past the walled garden, and back into a clearing in the trees to a large, sprawling modern building of raw Vermont wood and stone. It had a high, peaked roof like a ski lodge.

“This is the art barn,” Kaz said. “This is the only building that was added to the original campus, and it keeps getting bigger. They’re adding to it now.”

The ground around one side was dug up, and the construction looked new. Stevie couldn’t help but note that the building bordered closely on the walled garden—the famous walled garden that held the lake where the Ellingham ransom drop had occurred.

The garden gate was open, and people wearing hard hats were passing through. Stevie craned her head to look, but the tour was moving on into the art barn. There would be time. She would get in.

“The art barn isn’t just for art,” Kaz said, while walking backward. “Everything kind of happens here. Yoga and dance, meetings, some classes.”

Kaz was never so excited as when he was talking about the eco friendly construction of the art barn, the bamboo floors and the locations of composting toilets. Stevie began to twitch from anticipation. After what felt like an hour-long lecture on sewage, they left and walked back to the Great House.

When they stepped inside, Stevie stopped breathing for a moment. The house was built around a massive foyer, with balconies on the upper floors looking down over the space. Before her were the master stairs, sweeping up to the balcony of the second floor, and from there twisting elegantly up to the third. On the wall at the top of the first level of stairs was a massive painting, done by the famous painter and Ellingham family friend Leonard Holmes Nair. The setting was the lake and the observatory in the background, at night. Though that much was clear, the style was borderline hallucinatory. Iris and Albert loomed in the foreground of the picture—mythical figures in swipes of blue and yellow. Iris’s short black hair seemed to spread from her head and weave into the branches of the trees. Albert Ellingham’s face was merged with the full moon that hung over the observatory and spilled light onto the lake. They looked away from each other, their expressions stretched, their eyes pulling long, their mouths almost rectangular.

Stevie had seen many images of this painting. Online, it wasn’t that impressive. But in person,