Belle froze, the wire hanger in her hand. She could hear someone closing the front door, and a moment later, she heard heels clacking on the stairs. Evelyn was home. Evelyn was coming upstairs. Frantically, Belle unwound the hanger, creeping across the room. She knelt in front of the vent. Guided the hanger inside.

Evelyn’s heels hit the second-floor landing.

It took a moment to hook the end of the hanger around the rectangular object, and then Belle was guiding it toward the opening in the vent. She almost had it. But Evelyn had reached the third floor now, and when Belle’s head jerked toward the sound, the hanger clattered into the vent.

She cursed under her breath. The smart thing to do would be to get the hell out of there and come back another time. She and Raven could investigate together. They could solve the mystery of Evelyn’s deception without incurring her wrath.

Belle placed the lid over the vent. There wasn’t time to replace the screws, so she nudged them under the bed. Just as Evelyn’s hand twisted the doorknob, she bolted toward the window, knocking into a bedside table in the process. A bottle of pills toppled to the ground. There wasn’t time to retrieve them. Belle climbed over the windowsill, channeling her old friend Jack, and used the vines to guide her body toward the ground.

“Later that night, Evelyn was dead,” Belle whispered now, in the quiet of Raven’s living room. “And the police never mentioned the vent, so I figured they didn’t find anything down there.”

“Or they were saving it for the trial,” Jack muttered.

Lily shook her head. “That isn’t what happened,” she said, her eyes finding Raven’s. “I searched your room after my dad’s file went missing. I searched your dad’s room too. In his bedside table, next to his bottle of sleeping pills, I found a tiny tape recorder. But it was empty, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

“That doesn’t prove that he…” Raven swallowed, pushing to his feet. “The police could’ve found the tape recorder in Evelyn’s bedside table. Everything got shuffled around while they were here. They could’ve put it back in the wrong one.”

“There’s more.” Belle dug around in her purse. When she revealed the stack of letters she’d stolen, Jack reached for them first, knocking half the pile to the ground. Belle crouched down, pulling out the letter she’d shown to Lily earlier that night. “Tonight, I snuck over to your orchard,” she quoted, looking at Jack. “I thought I caught a glimpse of your curls and it startled me so badly, I almost fell out of the branches. But it wasn’t you. It was—”

“Your dad.” Jack’s mouth dropped open, and he glared at Belle. “You stole the letters.”