Truly Devious

Stevie tries to sift through the information she has acquired and pose possible theories. She still doesn’t know why Hayes went into the tunnel or if he knew that the dry ice was there. Janelle and Stevie aren’t speaking, and after days of acting strange, Nate picks up on her behavior and orders her to come to the school dance with him. He has never wanted to go to school dances but is willing to go now because Stevie is his friend. He warns her that she is becoming a recluse and “kind of losing friends all over the place” (367), and reluctantly, Stevie agrees to go.

On the way to the dance, Stevie tells Nate that she is trying to solve Hayes’s murder. She hasn’t told Larry or the detectives yet, because she is worried about what might happen if she sounds the alarm and gets the whole school shut down. In 1937, a local anarchist named Anton Vorachek is caught with money in his house marked with Leonard’s invisible ink, indicating that he was involved in the ransom exchange. As an anarchist, Vorachek hated men like Ellingham, who hoarded their wealth, and when he is arrested, Vorachek declares that “all tyrants will fall” (372). He is found guilty, and on the night before his sentencing, Ellingham goes to see him in jail and begs him to tell them where Alice is. Vorachek refuses, and on the day of the sentencing, Vorachek is shot and killed by an unknown shooter outside the courthouse.

At the dance, Stevie takes in the Ellingham students and tries to leave behind her thoughts of Hayes’s murder. Janelle tries to patch things up with Stevie, and as they dance together, Janelle accidentally presses on the scratch Stevie got earlier in the Ellingham attic. Suddenly, Stevie has an epiphany. She finds Germaine Batt and asks to see the photos she took of Hayes the day they were filming, and according to Germaine’s photos, Hayes’s computer didn’t have scratch marks on it yet. Stevie remembers the scratches on Hayes’s computer and realizes she has seen the scratch pattern before “on her own hand, when she reached under the tub on that first day” (383). She realizes that someone took Hayes’s computer and hid it under the tub, and the computer might have been evidence that someone else wrote The End of It All. She realizes that the suspect pool has narrowed to Ellie and David because Nate and Janelle didn’t attend Ellingham last year. The dance ends, and as the Minerva students head back to their house with the moon “like a spotlight” (386) on their group, Stevie starts hatching a plan to flush the murderer out of hiding.

Stevie asks if any of the Minerva students want to play a game. They gather in Ellie’s room, and as the game begins, Ellie pulls Roota out. Stevie suddenly remembers what Ellie told her about how she “made a little art” and “got a little cash” (389) to buy the saxophone in the spring. Stevie starts questioning Ellie, and she learns that Ellie paid $500 for Roota—the same amount of money that Hayes borrowed from Gretchen. Stevie mentions Hayes and his tendency to steal things from others and con people into doing his work, and when she asks if Ellie ever did any work for Hayes, Ellie starts to get nervous and defensive. When Stevie keeps pushing and points out the scratches on Hayes’s computer and the inconsistent timeline, Ellie finally breaks down and admits that she helped write The End of It All, but she didn’t want anyone to know that she was responsible for writing a zombie show. She took Hayes’s computer because she knew it “didn’t look good” (393).

Suddenly, Larry appears in the doorway after Nate texts him, and he takes all the Minerva students to the Great House. As Larry and Charles question Ellie, she becomes uncooperative, and they decide to keep her there and get a lawyer for her to help sort all of this out. In private, Larry says Ellie is hiding something and might be responsible for Hayes’s death. Ellie escapes through a secret panel in the wall of the Great House, and she vanishes into the night. On the morning of October 30, 1938, Albert Ellingham is still grieving the loss of his wife, and his hope that Alice might be found is fading. Ellingham became somewhat of a recluse after the trial and death of Anton Vorachek, but on this morning, he tells Robert that he and George Marsh are going to take the boat out. He bids Robert a heartfelt goodbye and reminds him to “always remember the game” (402), and later that day, word comes that Albert Ellingham’s boat exploded.

Police come and search Minerva, but no one can find Ellie. The Minerva students stay in the Great House while their rooms are searched, and the next morning, David joins Stevie at the front of the Great House. David is having a hard time believing that Ellie would be capable of killing Hayes, but Stevie wonders why Ellie would run if she was innocent. When the police finish their search of Minerva, the students return, and Stevie and David enter Ellie’s room.

Stevie apologizes to David for going through his stuff, and as they search Ellie’s room, they find a small box with a poem dated April 2, 1936. The poem, “The Ballad of Frankie and Edward,” claims that Frankie and Edward “wanted the truth to be told” (412) and mentions a king who “wanted to rule the game” (413). She then finds photographs of a teenage boy and girl cosplaying as Bonnie and Clyde, and Stevie realizes that the people who wrote this poem also wrote the Truly Devious letter: students from the first year at Ellingham Academy. Suddenly, the sound of a helicopter landing outside causes David to rush out, and Stevie follows him. Edward King’s helicopter lands, and David reluctantly admits that Edward King is his father.