“Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that one of you has truly impressed our gracious host. Mr. Frank Ponder, please stand.”
The old man wasn’t able to hide his grin as he stood. Nobody made a noise. Some looked frustrated, others scared. Frank was an ex-sheriff—what chance did they stand against him, after all? He had years of experience doing this.
Giles handed him an envelope.
“Please, Mr. Ponder, open it and read the contents aloud.”
Frank tore open the envelope and removed a thick white card. He scanned it quickly, again allowing a slight grin to flicker across his mouth for just an instant. Then he began reading: “ ‘Congratulations. You are Spared. It seems you are worthy of my game. Please, do tell those gathered around you what you and I know to be true. Tell them how I murdered one of you. I am listening.’ ”
Frank finished reading and looked up. The eight faces staring back at him were mixed. Jacqueline offered him a congratulatory smile. Thomas looked relieved, knowing that he had likely been close to the truth as well. But others looked terrified, some, like Guadalupe, even angry.
“Mr. Ponder, we’re waiting,” Giles said.
“Right, sorry,” he said. “Here is what I think happened, based on the evidence I collected. The killer left a note and a bottle of cologne in Mr. Cho’s suite. The note said, ‘I love the way you smell in this.’ Now, at this point none of us knew what was in store for us later in the night. So Mr. Cho had no reason to be wary or afraid, and he sprayed himself with the cologne. However, the killer had previously replaced a significant portion of the cologne with what I believe was diethyl ether, a highly volatile and flammable liquid. Or some such similar substance, anyway.
“The killer then engineered a remote trigger inside the victim’s party popper. Once the party popper was pulled, it sent a signal to a small DB9 pistol hidden inside the bust of Eros at the opposite end of the dining room. I’m familiar with this gun, and the killer chose wisely. The gun is small, compact, yet still highly accurate and very deadly. Anyway, the remote transmitter inside the party popper signaled the device wired to the gun’s trigger to fire.
“When Mr. Cho pulled his rigged popper, the sparks ignited the diethyl ether on his shirt and also set off the gun inside the bust of Eros. The bullet struck Mr. Cho in the chest, killing him in a matter of seconds.”
Once finished, Frank merely moved to join the rest of the contestants. Jacqueline put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Most of the guests looked impressed, in spite of the fact that they still did not know their own fates.
“Very well done, indeed, Mr. Ponder,” Giles said. “However, you are not the only one who has impressed the killer. Six others will also be Spared. For now. Unfortunately, that leaves two guests who did not fare so well and thus are deemed Scared. Pam will pass out the remaining envelopes, which contain your fates. Please, open and read them aloud one by one.”
After each guest had gotten an envelope bearing his or her name, they began opening them one at a time and reading the single word printed on the card within.
“Spared,” Thomas said with a nervous smile.
“Spared,” Guadalupe said calmly.
“Yes, Spared!” Bryce said, surprising many of the guests. Many had assumed he had not fared well.
“Scared,” Darrel said quietly, looking like he might vomit up the steak he’d eaten an hour before.
“Spared,” Sophia said, smiling at Parker, knowing that he’d also be Spared since he’d snuck into her room before the pitches so they could develop their theory together.
“Spared,” Parker said, grinning back.
“Scared,” Emily said, her voice trembling as tears began streaming down her cute face.
Everyone else was too concerned with helplessly watching the young, pretty twenty-three-year-old break down in front of them to notice Sophia’s sinister smile. She knew that Parker was as good as hers now. She wouldn’t have to compete with that young harlot anymore.
“Spared,” Jacqueline said without much drama since Emily’s fate had already given away her own.
“Very well,” Giles said. “I’m sorry to say that this means either Emily or Darrel will be our next victim.”
Emily wailed as he said this, and Darrel finally did puke up the steak he’d just eaten. He vomited all over the beautiful, imported hardwood floor in the foyer. The other guests spread apart, trying to get as far away from the yellowish-gray pool of vomit as possible.
“Let’s step inside the parlor while our maids clean this unfortunate mess, shall we?” Giles said.
The guests and Giles all exited into an adjoining room. The mansion’s sitting room contained expensive, custom-made couches, a crystal-and-gold coffee table with matching end tables. Several lamps doubled as expensive art sculptures, created by some of Europe’s most renowned artists, including an authentic, antique Tiffany lamp from 1900.
“Please, have a seat,” Giles said. “All of you.”
The remaining nine guests sat on the couches and chairs grouped around a grand fireplace in the center of the room. Giles stood in front of the fireplace and conferred with a small note card in his hand.
“Now then,” he said, “the killer will take an undetermined amount of time to decide which of our two Scared guests will be the next to die. It could be several hours or even several days. No matter how long the killer takes, he or she wants me to remind you that escape is impossible and will result in your immediate death. If you’re one of the unfortunate Scared individuals, your best hope is merely to continue playing the game. But you must play it better than you have so far, or indeed you will not make it out of this alive. With that, I wish you all pleasant dreams.”
Giles finished speaking and looked at the nine uneasy faces of the guests. Then he dismissed them for the night and left the room.
Nobody spoke for at least twenty seconds. The only sounds were those of Emily’s sobs. They all tried to ignore them, unsuccessfully.
“Look, I hope it’s me. She’s still got so much ahead of her,” Darrel finally said, unable to handle the sobbing of the young woman. “I’m just a washed-up football coach.”
His tone became bitter, almost angry as he finished. Perhaps he already regretted making such statements. Saying those words might be as good as committing suicide, after all. But at the same time, his own daughter was just twelve, and Emily reminded him of her for some reason. He couldn’t stomach hoping for her death.
Darrel’s words sparked a heated debate. Jacqueline suggested that nobody play along, that they all take a stand against this sick game. Thomas and Frank supported her, but then Parker and Sophia made a case for such actions resulting in all of their deaths. Accusations flew, culminating in Frank eventually directly accusing Sophia of being the murderer.
“I mean, we all saw the way that Cho guy was fawning all over you!” he yelled. “You used that to your advantage and sent him the cologne, didn’t you?”
Sophia scoffed and Parker took a step toward Frank. Darrel and Bryce tried to get between the two men and break it up. Meanwhile, Emily sat on the couch and sobbed, perhaps not even hearing any of what was happening around her.
CHAPTER 12
HUNG OUT TO DRY
Most of the guests retired to their individual suites a short time later, exhausted from the day’s events. Inside each room, the guests found a card resting on their pillows, containing identical typed messages:
Please join us for a casual breakfast at 10.00 A.M. out on the patio.
But not every guest went directly to their suite. Frank, for instance, went back to the trophy room to lie on his favorite red sofa underneath the massive swordfish. There, he spent a good portion of the night sipping expensive scotch and reading some huge tome by Stephen King.
Darrel, convinced he was going to die, made his way to the full bar in the estate recreation room, where he poured himself a large tumbler of whiskey on the rocks. Then he wandered over to the aquarium to watch the bu
ll shark swim slowly around in its safe glass prison.
Jacqueline accompanied him, feeling horrible for his predicament.
“I really hope it’s not you, honey, just so you know,” she said.
“Thanks, you’re probably the only one.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. Sophia definitely wants Emily to go next. I mean, you’ve seen how she is, right? She’s like a goddamned territorial tiger! Baring her fangs and spraying every time another woman even looks at Parker. I think it’s even possible she might be the killer herself!”
Darrel nodded slowly but didn’t say anything. He just kept watching the bull shark swim in slow circles. He almost wished he could find a way to jump into the tank himself. If he was going to go out, he’d rather it was on his own terms. Plus, he’d always loved sharks. Shark Week was the only thing he liked watching more than football on Sundays.
“You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you?” Jacqueline asked.
“Like what?” Darrel said, taking another long drink of whiskey.
“Look, just please try to be patient. You really can’t know how it will all play out. Promise me?”
Darrel shrugged.
“At least come out to the patio with me. I need to smoke,” she said.
“Okay, sure,” Darrel said. “I might as well have one, too. Why not, right?”
When they got out to the patio, they found Bryce and Emily sitting at one of the stone tables. They were passing a joint back and forth and whispering. The four guests looked at one another uncomfortably. Then Bryce finally broke the awkward silence.
“Come on, join us,” he said, sliding over.
Jacqueline and Darrel glanced at each other and then sat down at the table. Jacqueline lit up a cigarette and handed one to Darrel. The four of them smoked in silence for a few minutes. But it was an easy silence; it almost felt natural in a strange way.
Jacqueline and Darrel both figured they could trust Emily and Bryce somehow. There was innocence in youth. It just didn’t seem like a young twentysomething would be capable of planning and executing all this. Likewise, Emily and Bryce saw Jacqueline and Darrel as two of the more nonthreatening people there. Jacqueline reminded Bryce a lot of his own grandma, and Darrel reminded Emily of her eleventh grade math teacher. The mutual trust put all four of them at ease.
“Thank you for what you said,” Emily said after a while.
“Yeah,” Darrel said, but seemed unable to add anything more.
“Yeah, dude, that was a damn cool thing to do,” Bryce said.
“Well, we’re all probably eventually screwed either way, right?” Darrel finally said.
This was met by more silence. A more morose version this time.
“Emily has a plan, you know,” Bryce said.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Jacqueline asked.
“She is going to wake up early and go through the library and the study to see if she can find some information on who the heck owns this place and stuff,” he said. “Maybe we can put an end to this somehow. I mean, if we find out who the killer is, we can just kill them first, you know?”
Darrel nodded, even though he didn’t think she’d find anything. This had all been so well planned and orchestrated, there was no way the killer was just going to leave that kind of evidence lying around to be found. But at the same time, he wasn’t going to say that. Just in case. Besides, whatever kept her from sobbing in that heartbreaking way she had been all night was just fine with him.
After another hour of conversation and speculation among the four guests, they eventually retired to their suites to try to sleep. It actually came pretty easily for Bryce and Jacqueline, but Darrel and Emily, as might be expected, did not fare so well.
The next morning, around eight A.M., a familiar pulsing noise woke those guests still sleeping. As the pulsing grew louder, it began to draw the guests outside. They gathered on the side lawn between the mansion and the lake, some, like Bryce, still in pajamas with tousled, messy hair. Others had seemingly already been awake. Sophia, for instance, wore a sports bra and compression gym pants and had made her way out to the lawn from the direction of the mansion’s state-of-the-art gym. Thomas showed up in a baggy swimsuit, dripping wet from a morning dip in the pool. But they all huddled together on the lawn, their faces plastered with hopeful expressions at the sound of possible rescue.
Then the helicopter finally came into view several minutes after it had first been heard, soaring above the forest at the southern end of the estate. The whirring blades spun, creating a familiar and hopeful sound. Were they really about to be rescued?
The guests clearly assumed so, as they jumped and waved their arms, shouting. But as the chopper got closer and closer, it became more obvious that something was amiss. First, the small helicopter was losing altitude at an alarming rate.
And second, there was a lifeless body suspended below it, dangling from one of the chopper’s landing skids by a tether of some kind.
Jacqueline and Sophia both screamed and several of the other guests looked away as the body swayed in the breeze against the chopper’s movements. The helicopter was smaller than a normal one, despite its military body styling—that much seemed obvious as it approached. It also continued losing altitude and then started swaying erratically as it dove toward the large man-made lake one hundred yards east of the mansion.
The guests watched in horror as the chopper plunged into the surface of the lake with incredible force.
The body in tow splashed down first with a sickening whap!
Then the helicopter itself collided mere seconds later with a much larger, almost thunderous splash. The chopper somersaulted forward, and the still spinning blades connected with one of the three docks on the lake’s northwestern shore. That’s when the explosion rocked the estate. It was less fiery than one may have expected, but the force of the chopper being torn to pieces still sent many of the guests sprawling to the ground. Those who managed to look up saw the last chunks of metal splashing into the lake and onto the shore surrounding the crash. Meanwhile, lighter chunks of the wooden dock floated down behind them in huge, twirling splinters, almost as if they were emulating or mocking the spinning blades of the helicopter in some sick way.
CHAPTER 13
THE SECOND VICTIM
Once the guests seemed able to climb back to their feet and compose themselves, Giles strode out onto the lawn in front of them.
“It seems there has been a small crash,” he said. “Of course, as you all no doubt have realized by now, it was no accident. It appears as though our game continues.”
With that said, the eight remaining guests finally began to look around in an attempt to figure out who had been killed: Darrel or Emily.
“Oh, crap!” Bryce shouted as he stared at Darrel, who was the only guest still seated on the grass, his head buried in his hands, but alive and well nonetheless. “How could we let that happen to her?”
Bryce glared at each of the guests, who mostly tried to avert their eyes. The realization that another guest had been murdered right in front of them seemed to be hitting them all at once as a group. Jacqueline swayed, possibly ready to faint, but Frank grabbed her elbows and steadied her.
“Please, this is neither the time nor place for accusation or lecture,” Giles scolded. “What is done is done, the killer’s decision was made and it cannot be changed. But for now, we must continue our game. Please, take a moment to decide which area you wish to investigate: the crime scene, the victim’s last known whereabouts, or the morgue.”
“But how do you know her last known whereabouts?” Frank asked.
The other guests were shocked at his open challenge. But Giles reacted as if he’d been expecting the question. He met Frank’s even stare and smiled.
“The information I have came from the killer. And, of course, the killer would know such information, would they not?” Giles said.
Frank scowled in response but said nothing more.
/> “Very well then,” Giles said coldly. “You all know what must occur next. You have twenty minutes to decide which area you’d like to investigate. Use your time wisely.”
Giles turned back toward the mansion.
“Wait!” Thomas shouted. “Can’t I go change? I mean, do I really have to do this in my freaking swimsuit?”
His pale, almost concave chest heaved as he spoke. Goose bumps rippled on his skinny, drying arms in the morning breeze.
“Yeah, and what about food?” Parker demanded. “My brain doesn’t function without breakfast!”
“You are growing increasingly unruly,” Giles said. “I strongly suggest that you curb these notions immediately, lest you upset the killer. He or she will not take too kindly to deviations from the instructions I’ve received and laid out before you. That said, breakfast is on its way while you decide where to investigate. And you may spend the next twenty minutes how you see fit. If you truly believe that time will be served changing your garments, then by all means do so. However, please note: no attempts to access any of the investigation areas early shall be permitted. Doing so will surely come with grave consequences.”
Giles turned and went back into the mansion before any of the remaining eight guests could protest further. As he entered through the east doors, two maids emerged carrying baskets of fruit and muffins, along with small bottles of juice.
Most of the contestants grabbed something to eat and then hurried off to their suites to get dressed for the day. The thought of trying to solve a murder in pajamas or swimsuits or workout clothes was enough to abandon any attempt to strategize their investigative choices as they’d done for the first murder.
The only two contestants who had already been awake and fully dressed, Frank and Jacqueline, remained on the east lawn. There, they ate their light breakfast and looked at each other warily. Already this game was growing tiresome. And the worst part, they both knew, was that it really had just begun.
Murder in Mystery Manor Page 6