Truly, Devious

Truly, Devious Plot Summary

Introduction

# Shadows in the Academy: When Past and Present Mysteries Collide The fog rolled thick across Mount Hatchet on that April night in 1936, swallowing the grand estate of Albert Ellingham whole. In the glass dome observatory, fourteen-year-old Dottie Epstein sat reading Sherlock Holmes by lamplight, unaware that within hours she would become part of a mystery far darker than any fiction. The Truly Devious letter had arrived that morning, its cut-and-pasted words spelling out a riddle of death: "Look! A riddle! Time for fun! Should we use a rope or gun?" By dawn, Albert Ellingham's wife and daughter had vanished into the Vermont wilderness, and Dottie lay dead with her skull crushed. Eighty years later, seventeen-year-old Stevie Bell climbed those same mountain roads, drawn by an obsession with the unsolved case. Ellingham Academy now occupied the estate, a school for brilliant misfits where learning was supposed to be a game. But some games have deadly rules, and the past has a way of reaching into the present with cold, unforgiving fingers. Stevie had convinced herself she could solve what generations of detectives had failed to unravel. She never imagined the mountain was hungry for fresh blood.

Chapter 1: Arrival at Ellingham: A Detective's Obsession Awakens

The Gothic spires of the Great House pierced the morning mist like accusations. Stevie pressed her face to the car window as her parents navigated the winding drive, her heart hammering against her ribs. This was it. The scene of the crime that had consumed her thoughts for years. Her parents radiated the particular anxiety of people who had accidentally raised a daughter they couldn't understand. Her father muttered about liberal indoctrination while her mother fretted about the isolation. But Stevie saw only opportunity in the towering stone walls and cathedral windows. Somewhere in those halls, a killer had once walked free. Minerva House welcomed her with its blue door and common room that smelled of old fires and possibility. Her housemates were exactly what she'd hoped for at a school like this. Janelle, the engineering prodigy with her infectious optimism and precise measurements. Nate, the published author drowning in his own expectations, slouching in corners with dog-eared paperbacks. Ellie, the wild artist who danced through life like a bohemian sprite, her saxophone case perpetually slung over her shoulder. And then there was David Eastman, appearing in her doorway like a question mark made flesh. Tall and sharp-featured, he moved through the world with casual arrogance, his smile a weapon and his silence a challenge. When he looked at her during their first house meeting, something electric and dangerous passed between them. The mountain had gathered them all together, these brilliant, broken, beautiful young people. But mountains keep their own counsel, and Ellingham Academy had been built on ground that remembered blood. That first night, as rain drummed against her window, Stevie unpacked her crime scene photos and case files. The walls of her room became a shrine to the Ellingham murders, newspaper clippings creating macabre wallpaper. She was here now, in the heart of the mystery. The hunt could finally begin.

Chapter 2: Ghosts of 1936: Unraveling the Truly Devious Legacy

The library held Dottie's book like a sacred relic. Stevie pulled on blue nitrile gloves with the reverence of a surgeon, her hands trembling as she opened the volume of Sherlock Holmes stories. There, on the first page of "A Study in Scarlet," someone had underlined a single sentence about the mind being like an empty attic. Had Dottie made that mark? Or had it been one of the other students who checked out the book before that foggy April night when everything went wrong? Kyoko, the librarian, spread the original request lists across the wooden table like tarot cards. Dottie Epstein had requested over five hundred books in her single year at Ellingham. Greek texts, novels, classics, and buried among them, requests from other students for pulp magazines: "Gun Molls," "Vice Squad Detective," "All True Fact Detective Stories." The past felt close enough to touch in that moment, the weight of all those young minds hungry for knowledge, for escape, for answers to questions they couldn't yet articulate. But it was the Truly Devious letter that haunted Stevie's dreams. The original had been lost in a courthouse fire, leaving only a photograph of those cut-and-pasted words that spelled out a menu of murder. Someone had taken magazines and newspapers, carefully selecting each letter, each word, crafting a poem that was both childish and sophisticated, playful and terrifying. The letter writer had signed themselves "Truly Devious," and then proceeded to work through their list. A car that didn't hit a wall but carried victims to their doom. A broken head in Dottie's case. Guns for Iris Ellingham, whose body washed up weeks later wrapped in oilcloth. Anton Vorachek had confessed and died for the crimes, but everyone knew he couldn't have written that letter. His English was too poor, his education too limited. The real Truly Devious had walked away free, leaving only questions and corpses in their wake. The mountain kept its secrets close, but Stevie was learning to read its signs.

Chapter 3: Into the Forbidden Tunnels: Where History Bleeds Through

Hayes Major arrived at Ellingham like a golden god descended from Hollywood. His web series "The End of It All" had made him internet famous over the summer, and he carried that celebrity like a crown. Students whispered his name in hallways, snapped photos when they thought he wasn't looking. When Hayes approached Stevie with his proposal, her detective instincts prickled. He wanted to create a new series about the Ellingham murders, he explained, his eyes bright with ambition. He needed her expertise, her knowledge of the case. Together with Nate's writing skills, they could craft something extraordinary. The project consumed their evenings. They gathered in the art barn, poring over transcripts and police reports while Hayes practiced his lines. But as they worked, Stevie noticed troubling patterns. Hayes contributed little beyond his presence, leaving the research to her and the writing to Nate. When pressed for details about his famous series, his answers were vague, deflective. The breakthrough came when Hayes revealed his secret: the tunnel was open again. The supply tunnel that had carried bootleg liquor from Canada to Albert Ellingham's private stock had been filled with dirt since 1938. But construction work had excavated it, and Hayes had been inside. The night of filming felt like stepping into history. Stevie picked the padlock with paper clips, her hands steady despite the magnitude of the moment. The brick-lined passage stretched into darkness, smelling of earth and age and secrets. While Hayes recited the Truly Devious letter for the camera, Stevie made her own pilgrimage. She climbed the ladder to the observatory, emerging into the glass dome where Dottie Epstein had spent her final moments. The space felt smaller than she'd imagined, more intimate. Here, a brilliant girl had died for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The mountain had its own sense of justice, and those who forgot the lessons of the past were doomed to repeat them.

Chapter 4: Death Strikes Again: A Modern Murder Echoes the Past

Saturday's filming in the sunken garden stretched on for hours under the autumn sun. Hayes, aged with stage makeup to play Albert Ellingham, performed his monologue while fog machines pumped theatrical mist across the empty lake bed. The production felt hollow somehow, a glossy veneer over tragedy. Stevie noticed the tensions simmering beneath the surface. Gretchen, Hayes's ex-girlfriend, cornered him by the folly, her voice sharp with accusation. "You're so full of shit, Hayes. You owe me." Their argument revealed debts unpaid and promises broken, painting Hayes in a less flattering light than his golden exterior suggested. When dinner break came, Hayes disappeared with a casual wave. "There's something I forgot," he said, walking backward into the gathering dusk. He never came back. The hours crawled by as worry transformed into dread. Stevie sat in Minerva's common room, unable to shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. When eleven o'clock passed without Hayes returning, Security Larry's face went grim as he realized where Hayes might have gone. The golf cart ride through the dark felt like a funeral procession, red and blue lights flickering through the trees as emergency vehicles converged on the maintenance road. The tunnel hatch stood open, its padlock broken. Larry descended into the earth with his flashlight, his voice echoing off brick walls as he called Hayes's name. Then came the shout that changed everything: "Mark, call 911! Tell them we need the chopper!" Stevie found herself drawn into the tunnel despite Larry's warnings, pulled by a force she couldn't name. In the liquor room at the tunnel's end, Hayes Major lay crumpled on the concrete floor. His skin had turned the mottled blue-purple of death, his perfect features frozen in an expression of surprise. The YouTube star who had played a zombie apocalypse survivor had become a victim himself, claimed by the same darkness that had taken Dottie Epstein eighty years before.

Chapter 5: The Investigation Deepens: Deceptions Within Deceptions

The Great House transformed into a command center as state police swarmed the campus. Stevie sat on the grand staircase with Nate, teaching him breathing exercises while red and blue lights painted the walls in shifting patterns. The irony wasn't lost on her: she'd dreamed of being part of a real investigation, and all it had taken was for someone she knew to die. The official story seemed airtight. Hayes had stolen Janelle's ID card to access the workshop, removed several blocks of dry ice, and transported them to the tunnel for some kind of filming project. The carbon dioxide had displaced the oxygen in the sealed space, and when Hayes returned alone that night, he had walked into his own death trap. But Stevie's trained eye caught details others missed. The timeline troubled her most. Security footage showed Janelle's ID being used at 1:12 AM, yet Hayes had been video-chatting with his girlfriend Beth in California at 1:20 AM. The eight-minute window was impossible. Her investigation led her deeper into Hayes's carefully constructed facade. Conversations with his ex-girlfriend Gretchen revealed a pattern of manipulation and theft. Hayes had convinced multiple students to complete his assignments while he basked in unearned praise. His famous web series showed suspicious gaps in its creation timeline. The more Stevie dug, the more hollow Hayes became. He was a beautiful shell, a performer who had convinced the world of his substance while possessing none. Someone had been doing his work, writing his scripts, crafting his success. And when that someone realized Hayes planned to take full credit for a Hollywood adaptation, they had acted. David watched her investigation with growing unease. Their relationship had shifted since the night of Hayes's death, when grief and adrenaline had driven them into each other's arms. Now he seemed to study her with the intensity of a chess player calculating moves, his usual sarcasm replaced by something sharper and more dangerous. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, but the picture they formed was more disturbing than Stevie had imagined.

Chapter 6: Confrontation in the Shadows: Truth and Betrayal Unveiled

The Silent Party in the Great House ballroom was a surreal affair, dozens of students dancing to music only they could hear through wireless headphones. Stevie moved through the crowd like a ghost, her mind churning with newfound evidence while her classmates gyrated in their private soundscapes. She had found the smoking gun in Germaine Batt's photographs. The campus blogger had captured Hayes during their filming session, his laptop clearly visible and unmarked. But when Stevie had searched his room after his death, the computer bore three distinct scratches down its front, marks that matched the metal shelving in the tunnel where someone had hidden it. The implications were staggering. Someone had taken Hayes's laptop after his death, searching for evidence of their collaboration on his web series. They had hidden it poorly, scraping it against the tunnel's infrastructure in their haste. It was the kind of mistake that solved cases. Stevie's attention focused on her housemates with new intensity. Janelle and Nate could be eliminated. That left Ellie and David, both of whom had the access and opportunity to plant the dry ice. The game of "I Never" began innocently enough in Ellie's cluttered room, wine passing between friends as secrets spilled like blood from fresh wounds. The interrogation unfolded with brutal precision. Stevie laid out the evidence piece by piece, the impossible timeline, the stolen laptop, the five hundred dollars Ellie had mysteriously earned the previous spring. Each revelation hit its target, and Ellie's bohemian confidence crumbled like a house of cards. Yes, Ellie admitted, she had helped Hayes write his web series. Yes, she had needed money for her beloved saxophone. But murder? The accusation hung in the air like smoke from her forgotten cigarettes. The confrontation exploded into chaos. Ellie's artistic mask slipped away, revealing something raw and desperate underneath. She fled into the night, disappearing into the darkness beyond Minerva House like a magician's final trick.

Chapter 7: The Original Sin Revealed: How Students Became Killers

Dawn broke over Ellingham Academy like a wound in the sky, painting the mountains in shades of blood and gold. Stevie sat on the dew-soaked grass, her mind reeling from the night's revelations, when she made the discovery that would change everything. Hidden in Ellie's belongings was a battered tea tin, its contents a treasure trove of 1930s memorabilia. Photographs showed two teenagers posing like Bonnie and Clyde, their faces bright with youthful rebellion. A handwritten poem dated April 2, 1936, told the story of "Frankie and Edward," two students who had played a deadly game with "the king who ruled the land." The implications crashed over Stevie like a tidal wave. The Truly Devious letter hadn't been written by some outside anarchist. It had been crafted by Ellingham students, children who had turned their privileged education into a weapon against their benefactor. The kidnapping, the murders, the decades of mystery, all of it orchestrated by young minds twisted by jealousy and ambition. Francis Crane and Edward Davenport had been brilliant students, the kind Albert Ellingham had dreamed of nurturing. But brilliance without conscience was a dangerous thing. They had crafted their crime like a school project, complete with literary flourishes and dramatic flair. The real tragedy wasn't just the deaths of Iris Ellingham and Dottie Epstein. It was the realization that evil could wear the face of youth and speak with the voice of privilege. The pattern was clear now, stretching across decades like a curse. Hayes's murder followed the same blueprint, another crime born from the toxic mixture of ambition and entitlement that seemed to poison Ellingham's mountain air. Whether Ellie had intended to kill him or merely sabotage his plans, the result was the same. Another young life snuffed out in service to secrets and lies. But even as this revelation shook the foundations of everything she thought she knew, another shock awaited. The helicopter that landed on the academy's green didn't bear police markings. It carried the logo of Edward King, the right-wing senator her parents worshipped and she despised. The mountain had one more secret to reveal, and this one would shatter everything Stevie thought she knew about trust.

Chapter 8: Legacy of Secrets: When Power Rewrites History

David stood frozen as the aircraft's rotors slowed, his face a mask of recognition and dread. When the passenger door opened and Edward King stepped onto the grass, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place with devastating clarity. The resemblance was unmistakable once you knew to look for it. The sharp angles of the face, the bearing of natural authority, the way both men carried themselves like they owned whatever ground they stood upon. David wasn't just another privileged student hiding his past. He was the son of one of America's most powerful politicians, a young man whose very existence was a state secret. "Meet my dead dad," David said, his voice hollow with defeat as Edward King approached across the morning grass. The lie that had defined their relationship crumbled like everything else at Ellingham Academy, leaving only the bitter taste of betrayal and the promise of consequences yet to come. King's presence transformed the investigation into political theater. Suddenly, questions about Hayes's death became secondary to questions about David's identity, about the senator's connection to the academy, about the kind of power that could make inconvenient truths disappear. Stevie watched as the machinery of influence ground into motion, lawyers and handlers materializing like vultures drawn to carrion. The truth about Ellingham Academy emerged like a photograph developing in chemical baths, slowly, inevitably, and with devastating clarity. The institution built on Albert Ellingham's dreams of enlightened education had been corrupted from its very beginning by the privileged children it was meant to nurture. The 1936 kidnapping hadn't been the work of outside anarchists but of students who had turned their education into a weapon. As helicopters circled overhead and police cordoned off the campus, Stevie understood that she had solved more than just a murder case. She had uncovered the dark heart of American privilege itself, the way wealth and power could corrupt even the most innocent institutions. The academy would survive this scandal as it had survived others, but its reputation would bear new scars, fresh reminders of the price of unchecked ambition.

Summary

The mountains of Vermont held their secrets close, as they always had. Somewhere in those dark woods, Ellie Walker remained free, carrying with her the knowledge of what really happened in the tunnel beneath the sunken garden. Hayes Major was dead, another victim of the toxic ambition that seemed to poison Ellingham's mountain air. The Truly Devious case was solved at last, its eighty-year-old mystery revealed as the work of students who had turned privilege into murder. But perhaps the greatest revelation was the one that shattered Stevie's faith in the people closest to her. David's deception cut deeper than any academic betrayal, a reminder that even love could be built on lies. As Edward King's helicopter lifted off into the Vermont sky, carrying his son toward an uncertain future, Stevie understood that some mysteries were solved not with satisfaction but with sorrow. The mountain would keep its remaining secrets, and somewhere in its shadows, the legacy of Truly Devious would wait for the next brilliant mind twisted enough to carry it forward.

About Author

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Maureen Johnson

Johnson situates her narrative prowess in the realm of young adult fiction, weaving intricate tales that often delve into mystery, romance, and contemporary themes. Her early decision to pursue writing, influenced by her childhood literary inclinations, laid the foundation for a prolific career. With her debut novel, "The Key to the Golden Firebird", she set the stage for future successes, including the notable bestseller "Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances". This book, co-authored with John Green and Lauren Myracle, even made its way to a Netflix adaptation, illustrating the broad appeal and adaptability of her stories.\n\nHer writing method thrives on collaboration and detail-oriented storytelling. Johnson finds joy in "working in somebody else's sandbox," which allows her to contribute to established worlds while crafting unique narratives. Her series, such as "The Shades of London" and "Truly Devious", exemplify her ability to engage readers with suspenseful plots and complex characters. This focus on character development and world-building offers a rich experience for readers, drawing them into intricate universes that resonate with young adult audiences worldwide.\n\nJohnson's impact extends beyond her writing, evidenced by a nomination for an Edgar Award for "The Name of the Star". Her works, translated into more than thirty languages, highlight her global reach. Moreover, her contributions to prestigious outlets like The New York Times and her role as a scriptwriter for EA Games underscore her versatility and influence. This bio illustrates how her commitment to storytelling not only entertains but also enriches the literary landscape, offering young readers narratives that are both engaging and thought-provoking.

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