Truly Devious

Stevie starts rewatching The End of It All to look for clues, and she finds herself neglecting her school work and hanging out in the Great House attic for hours at a time. While putting a few of the boxes away, Stevie scratches her hand on a shelf. She leaves the Great House, and Larry encourages her not to stagnate in her search to solve the Ellingham murders. Reluctantly, he reveals a few details about the Hayes Major investigation: Hayes stole the dry ice, and the dry ice degraded slowly over 18 hours. Larry says that the carbon dioxide levels in the tunnel were so high that it was essentially “a death trap” (359), and they are lucky to be alive after finding Hayes. That night, Stevie manages to get in contact with Beth Brave, Hayes’s YouTube star girlfriend. Beth is unbothered by the idea of Hayes dating around because they aren’t exclusive. However, she mentions that she spoke to Hayes on the night he stole the dry ice. Stevie realizes that Hayes was talking to Beth at the same time the dry ice was taken from the art barn, which means that someone else moved the dry ice to the tunnel, “which sound[s] a lot like murder” (362).