Crushed

“Hello?” Aria called into the hall. No answer. She peeked into the kitchen, the backyard, and then the bedrooms. Her mother, Ella, wasn’t here.

She looked in her bedroom last, and her blood went cold. There, on the bed, lay a piece of paper that hadn’t been there this morning. She snatched it and looked at the words marching across the top of the page. They were in Icelandic. The bottom half of the page had been translated into English: Wanted Reykjavik Man Missing. Murder Suspected.

When Aria saw the face in the photo, she gasped. Olaf.

She swallowed hard and looked at the article. Olaf Gundersson, 21, went missing from his house on the outskirts of Reykjavik on the night of January 4.

That seemed like ages ago. Aria thought back. She had no idea what she was doing January fourth. Lounging around—they’d still been on winter break. Bored without Noel—his family had gone to Switzerland to ski.

She read on. Foul play is suspected, as Mr. Gundersson’s apartment was ransacked and there was blood on the floor. After extensive police questioning, locals said that Mr. Gundersson, who was “a bit of a hermit,” had been in a loud and violent fight the evening before, though they couldn’t identify the other person in the argument.

Mr. Gundersson had been accused of breaking into the Brennan Manor last summer and stealing the Starry Night study painting by Vincent van Gogh, though Mr. Gundersson had claimed in earlier questioning that he did no such thing. A police search of Mr. Gundersson’s home did not turn up the painting, and one theory is that Mr. Gundersson took it with him after the attack. There is a citywide search for both his body and the priceless artwork, though nothing has been recovered yet.

Aria’s head swirled.

Then she noticed the red scrawl at the very bottom of the page. Look in your closet. Someone had drawn a big, bold arrow, as if Aria might not know where her closet was.

Shaking, she turned and stared at her closed closet door. Someone had been in here. They could still be here. Should she call the police? And say . . . what?

She inched over to the closet door and pulled at the knob. Her shirts and dresses swung on hangers. Her shoes rested in shoe trees. But there, on the dusty wood floor, was a rolled-up canvas. Aria’s fingers fumbled with it as she lifted it up and pulled off the rubber band. A familiar painting, now out of its heavy frame, unfurled. There were those iconic swirls and cometlike stars. And there, at the bottom, was a signature that took her breath away: VAN GOGH.

She dropped the painting to the floor. As it bounced on the hardwood, a small slip of paper dislodged from somewhere inside. It landed faceup, so Aria could read exactly what it said without laying a finger on it.

Dear Aria,

Isn’t seeing good art truly liberating?

—A

9

Spencer Was Never One for Rules. . . .

Spencer peeked through the bay window of the model home at Crestview Estates. A stone McMansion loomed over the trees across the street. A mallard waddled in the direction of the water. A car swished past on the road, but it didn’t slow at the house.

She hadn’t wanted to come here again—it was unnerving enough stealing Mr. Pennythistle’s spare key once. Besides, she had a history paper to write, calculus homework to decipher, and potential prom dates to call and feel out—there was Jeff Grove from yearbook, though she didn’t feel too excited about him, and, of course, Andrew, but she could just picture his I-knew-you’d-want-me-back tone of voice when she asked, even though he’d been the one to end things with her. But Aria had called the girls’ burner phones this morning and said Not it. So it was back to the panic room they went.

The others hadn’t arrived yet, so she settled into the so-new-it-still-smelled-like-a-leather-factory couch in the generically decorated living room and stared at her old cell phone, which she’d removed from the data plan and was using via the house’s WiFi. Taking a deep breath, she typed ALISON DILAURENTIS CONSPIRACY THEORIES into the browser.

She paused before pressing the search button. She hated resorting to the Internet for information on Ali, but she was out of options. She’d driven by the abandoned house in Yarmouth where the DiLaurentises lived when “Courtney” returned. She’d walked the whole way around the property. The deck was swept clean. There was a single Rubbermaid garbage can in the garage, but Spencer couldn’t get inside to see what was in it.

She pressed the magnifying glass. Up came Google results. UNSOLVED PHILADELPHIA CONSPIRACIES was the title of the first site, along with the description A REGULAR SOURCE FOR THE PHILADELPHIA SENTINEL, THE ROSEWOOD GAZETTE, AND THE YARMOUTH YARDARM. Spencer clicked on the link, and a blog slowly loaded. The main page had a picture of the Rocky statue in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum. IS ROCKY TRULY CURSED?, the type read. READ ON FOR THIS AND OTHER PHILADELPHIA-RELATED CONSPIRACY THEORIES.

She clicked on the link. There were posts on the Philadelphia Experiment, a story about how, in 1943, a war vessel docked in Philadelphia mysteriously vanished—people were sure it was a government plot to render warships invisible. Below those were posts about Ben Franklin being a polygamist and his homosexual dalliances, Betsy Ross working part-time as a madam when she wasn’t sewing American flags, and the Liberty Bell bearing secret inscriptions from aliens. Below all of that were more recent conspiracy theories, including a kidnapping of a wealthy man’s daughter in the 1970s, which included a lot of links to police reports and even a shout-out from a biographer who’d written a book about the crime. Finally, at the bottom, was the twisted tale of Alison DiLaurentis and her identical twin, Courtney.

With shaking fingers, Spencer clicked the bottom link. WHY ALISON DILAURENTIS MIGHT NOT BE DEAD, read a blog post. It was dated from April of last year, not long after the fire in the Poconos. The post included a police report about the fire, including a coroner’s assessment that no bones had been found in the rubble. There was also some information about the Radley, where Their Ali had been, and The Preserve, including medical documents and police files most people wouldn’t have access to. There were even a few tidbits about the DiLaurentises’ lives before they moved to Rosewood; they weren’t called the DiLaurentises back then but the Day-DiLaurentises. Maybe they’d cut off the first part of their last name in an attempt to escape their past.

When Spencer finished clicking on all the images and links, her head was spinning. Whoever this blogger was, he was legit. Working on some of those other cases must have opened some doors for the blogger, got him some connections. She wondered what else he knew.

The blog didn’t have any conclusive evidence of why Ali wasn’t dead or where she’d gone, but the post was from a while ago. Spencer scrolled down to see if there were any newer posts, but there weren’t. The blog was still up and running, though; the latest entry was about a rumor that all of the Wawa markets in the tristate area were run by the Knights Templar. She clicked on the ABOUT ME tab at the bottom. It said the blog was run by an avid investigator named Chase M., but instead of a picture, there was a video loop of a cat slapping another cat. There was a loud, fake kapow! sound when one cat’s paw hit the other cat’s cheek. Okay.

Crack. Spencer looked up. What if A was here? She stared at the empty street until her vision blurred.

Then she clicked on the CONTACT US link and composed an e-mail on a generic template. I am connected to the Alison DiLaurentis case. I can’t tell you my name right now, but I will if we talk. I’m eager to know if you have more information about her.

She signed it Concerned in Rosewood. In the space where the template asked for her e-mail, she used an address she’d created that morning, its password so nonsensical and impossible-to-crack that she almost forgot it as soon as she made it up.

“Spencer?”

Aria’s face loomed on the other side of the window. Spencer shot out the door and pulled her inside. A cab pulled up seconds later, and Hanna tumbled out. Emily drove up at almost the same time. Spencer led them down the hall and opened the heavy door to the panic room. The video monitors flickered. The room still smelled faintly of the microwave popcorn they’d made the last time they were here. Spencer fished out the list of potential Ali’s helpers and taped it back on the door. The remaining suspects glared at her. Iris. Darren Wilden. Melissa. Jason. Graham. Noel.

“This had better be good,” Emily grumbled as she peeled off her jacket. “I had to leave Iris at my house for this. Who knows what sort of insane things she’s going to tell my folks?”

“Iris is at your house?” Hanna repeated, staring at her.

Emily nodded, then explained how Iris would only give her Ali intel if Emily signed her out for a while. “I told my parents she’s a low-income student from inner-city Philadelphia who’s going through some tough times at home right now, and I’m doing this as an outreach program through Rosewood Day. Amazingly, they bought it.”

Spencer looked at Aria. “So what’s going on?”

Aria whipped out two things from her yak-fur bag. One looked like a newspaper article. The second was a handwritten note. Spencer recognized the scrawl immediately.

Aria showed the article to Hanna. “Recognize this guy?”

Hanna shook her head, but then her face paled. “Wait. Is that . . . O-Olaf?” she stammered. Her eyes scanned the article. “He’s missing?”

Aria nodded. “This happened in January.”

“Who’s Olaf?” Emily asked, hugging her knees.

“A guy I met in Iceland.” Aria swallowed hard.

Hanna lowered her chin. “You didn’t just meet him.”

“Okay, I kind of hooked up with him,” Aria mumbled. “I was really drunk.”

Spencer’s eyebrows shot up. Aria seemed so happy with Noel—Spencer never would have guessed that she’d cheated on him.

A crow landed near one of the video cameras, its body huge on the monitor. Spencer looked at the scrawl on the little piece of paper Aria had found. Isn’t seeing good art truly liberating? “What does that mean?”

Aria looked back and forth nervously. “Well, Olaf and I did more than just hook up. We sort of . . . stole a painting together.”

Spencer blinked. “You what?”

“What kind of painting?” Emily breathed, her hands at her mouth.

Spencer tried to listen as Aria laid out what had happened, but her brain stalled out once she heard the name Van Gogh. “How did I not know this?” she gasped. Then she glanced at Hanna, who had a guilty expression. “You knew?”

“It’s not like I wanted to know,” Hanna said, crossing her arms over her chest. “She called me in a panic when the police came—I picked her up. But we decided to keep it quiet.”

“I figured the less people who knew, the better,” Aria said softly, picking at the hem of her sweater. “And for a while, it was fine—the cops never caught Olaf, the painting was never found, and nobody ever connected it to me. But when I came home from school yesterday, that article was on my bed and the painting was in my closet. I’m sure A put it there.”