Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,64

the dialogue would be recorded separately and put on top as narration, so there was a lot to know. When she did a quick pass behind him, she saw he was looking at pictures and replying to messages.

While the ramp was being positioned for the fifth time, Stevie noticed that they had been joined by someone new. Germaine Batt had slipped in through the gate and was floating around and heading in Hayes’s direction. Stevie wondered how this would play out, considering that Germaine had taken footage of Hayes the other night without his knowledge and posted it. But he seemed to welcome Germaine and even posed for some pictures. Stevie also noted that he made himself look very busy in those pictures.

There was a short lunch break, during which Hayes disappeared for a bit back to Minerva to put on his makeup. When everything was finally in place, hours later, he was nowhere to be found.

“Where the hell did he go?” Dash asked, looking around. “Stevie, can you find him?”

Stevie had been sitting on her bag, trying to get enough of a signal on her phone to download the latest episode of her new favorite true crime podcast, Speaking of Murder.

“Oh,” she said, getting up, “yeah. Sure.”

She wandered around the empty lake, around the edges of the garden. She heard voices coming from the folly by the back wall. She approached and heard a female voice, an angry one at that.

“You’re so full of shit, Hayes,” it said. “You owe me.”

“And I’ll give it to you,” Hayes replied.

“That’s what you said before.”

“Because I will.”

Stevie remained very still for a moment and listened.

“You think people don’t know?” the unknown person said, her voice dripping with contempt.

“Know what, Gretchen?” Hayes said.

Gretchen. The girl with the hair. The queenly one.

“Oh, please. You’re going to pretend with me?”

“Why do you even care?” he said.

“Well, first, I’m never getting paid back. Let’s not pretend about that. You do this to everyone. To me. Probably to Beth. At least she knows now, thanks to that girl who did the video. What about these dumb SOBs who are out here doing your work right now?”

Dumb SOBs? Stevie was one of those dumb SOBs.

“Gretchen . . .” It came out as a long sigh.

“What if I tell that girl with the show all about it?”

“I guess you do what you need to do, Gretchen,” he said. “Or you could take a Xanax and give me a week or two.”

Before Stevie could move, Hayes came from around the back of the folly. It was clearly Hayes, but he was older. His hair was grayed and his face was full of lines and furrows. Maris had done a good job with the stage makeup.

“Hey, Stevie,” he said, a little louder than necessary.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s time.”

Hayes smiled a bit, and Stevie realized he thought she was providing him cover to get out of the conversation. Now that she had been labeled as a dumb SOB who was doing Hayes’s work for him, Stevie regarded his expression with a lot more suspicion.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice thickening and sweeting. Tupelo honey now.

Gretchen emerged as well. She saw Stevie, but, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, she did not observe. Stevie was a part of the landscape. She strode past without a word.

“Thanks,” Hayes said, dropping a slow arm over Stevie’s shoulders. “My ex. I mean, she broke up with me and she still seems mad about it. It’s strange. But you know how these things are.”

Stevie did not know how these things were, but she nodded.

“It’s tough,” she said.

Hayes nodded and slipped into a deeper, more comfortable smile. Hayes had a smile like a hammock—just get in, go to sleep, forget your troubles and cares.

A few things Stevie quickly learned that afternoon:

One, shooting the video involved a lot of not shooting the video, and standing around, and talking about doing things again, and then sometimes doing them again, and then running to the bathroom to find that things were just about where they were before.

Two, Hayes really could act. There was no denying him that.

Three, theatrical fog stank.

And four, it was possible for Stevie to tire of standing in the sunken garden and listen to the Ellingham kidnapping story being hashed over and over.

As the hours rolled on, she started to resent the fact that she had allowed Hayes to take Truly Devious as a subject. Sure, she had agreed, but there was something wrong about this, about making this weird little