CHAPTER 14
THE WEST LAKE NOOSE
Frank was the only guest who chose to investigate the crime scene. Jacqueline had tried to talk him out of it, but he’d stubbornly stood by his decision.
“The crime scene can’t lie,” he’d said repeatedly. “It’s immediate.”
But, as Giles had quickly reminded them, he couldn’t change his decision even if he wanted to. Once a decision was stated, it was final.
Frank’s decision actually made more than a few of the other guests nervous. He was, after all, the only one of them with law enforcement experience. And he had been the winner of the first round. It’d made them all question their respective decisions to investigate the morgue and victim’s last known whereabouts instead.
But, as it were, Frank was escorted alone out to the large, oddly named West Lake, which was actually east of the mansion. The maid leading him there didn’t speak as they covered the hundred yards across the mansion’s east lawn. He was okay with that; his mind was already taking inventory of what he saw.
The dock was basically gone. What remained of it—a few support posts and one-third of the planks—was slightly charred from the explosion and small fire that resulted. Shards of wood scattered out from the point of impact on all sides, some blown as far away as fifty yards or more by the explosion.
There were also pieces of metal, fiberglass, and other mechanical materials strewn about in a slightly smaller radius from the point of collision. Frank recognized very few of the components. He may have been a sheriff and ex–-National Guardsman, but sheriffs didn’t spend a lot of time flying helicopters. And furthermore, helicopter designs had changed somewhat since his only experience riding in one while in the Guard in his late teens and early twenties.
When they finally got to the point of impact and resulting wreckage, Frank was surprised to see just how much of the helicopter was still intact. The main portion of the wreckage floated in shallow water next to the dock. Slicks of oil and gasoline streaked the surface of the otherwise clear lake.
Right away Frank could see that it was no ordinary chopper, even in the condition it was in. First, it was significantly smaller than a standard helicopter. Second, there was no glass or evidence that it even had a cockpit at all. Which of course explained how the killer had managed to fly it, somehow escape unscathed, and join the rest of the guests on the east lawn: he or she had been flying it remotely. It was an unmanned drone helicopter.
Frank spent the remainder of his time wading out into the lake, sorting through assorted pieces of debris. The only other discovery he made of any significance was the floating end of the cord from which Emily had been hanging, the other end still securely fastened to a chain latched to one of the chopper’s landing skids.
He couldn’t quite figure out what type of rope it was. It was thin but strong. It almost felt like nylon. It was surprisingly similar to the thick fishing line he commonly used when deep-sea fishing, but that wasn’t quite right, either. Frank still hadn’t figured out what the material was when the estate bell chimed faintly in the distant direction of the mansion.
“Mr. Ponder,” the maid said, “I’m sorry, but your time is up.”
CHAPTER 15
INDECENT EXPOSURE
Seeing Emily’s lifeless body on the cold metal table seemed to really cement the sobering fact that she was truly dead.
Emily had apparently been wearing a baggy sweatshirt, flannel owl-print pants, and UGG moccasins when she’d met her untimely death hanging from the chopper’s landing skid earlier that morning. The clothes themselves were still soggy from her dip in the lake, as was her sandy-blond hair, which was matted, stringy, and strewn across the table in thick clumps that resembled headless snakes.
Only three of the guests had had the stomach to investigate her dead body. Or perhaps that was even more than one would expect. It was difficult to say—it’s not as if there were guidebooks for real-life murder mystery games administered by some psychopath on a remote estate.
Thomas didn’t exactly like the idea of examining a real dead body, but he had chosen to do so assuming that the last known whereabouts and crime scene would offer few clues regarding how she died. After one round, what seemed to him to be the key to playing this game: discovering what had actually killed the victim. Everything else could be reasonably assumed, even with only a handful of the other evidence.
Jacqueline, once again relying on her medical knowledge as a former nurse, assumed she’d be able to learn the most from the body itself. And she also figured that she’d be able to provide insights into the evidence found on the corpse that the others would perhaps miss, not having any medical training themselves. So, in the end, she somehow had felt it was her duty to choose the morgue again.
The third guest to choose the morgue had been Guadalupe. She, like Thomas, wasn’t entirely comfortable with dead bodies, not that she’d ever actually seen one before, outside of her grandmother inside a funeral home a few years ago. But at the same time, she felt that given the nature of the crime, she’d be best served by examining the body herself. She had a gut feeling that there’d be subtle clues down here in the basement that the others might miss. And she’d been quite successful trusting her gut reactions throughout her life, in business and otherwise.
As soon as the door shut behind them as the maid exited, Jacqueline got right to work. She once again took charge, sensing how uncomfortable Thomas and Guadalupe really were now that they were actually face-to-face with Emily’s corpse. It had been much easier to choose the morgue without being in the presence of the body itself.
Jacqueline’s hands were steady as she lifted Emily’s head and felt for any signs of exterior trauma, such as a gunshot wound or evidence of a severe bludgeoning. She found nothing noticeable, aside from the fact that the girl’s neck had obviously been broken by the force of the chopper’s initial lift. The main question they were facing, they all soon realized, was how exactly had the killer managed to string her up on the chopper and then pilot it into the lake while somehow joining the rest of them on the lawn immediately afterward.
“Find anything?” Thomas asked.
“Not yet, other than the obvious fact that her neck is broken.”
“Should we roll her over?” Guadalupe asked.
“That was next on my list, honey,” Jacqueline said. “Help me.”
The three of them carefully flipped over Emily’s body. At first, nothing jumped out at them. But as they looked closer, Guadalupe noticed something unusual about the victim’s heather-gray sweatshirt. It was streaked around the butt and shoulders with a wide variety of faint, bright colors that hadn’t completely washed away in the lake. They almost looked like fresh grass stains, except that most grass didn’t come in hues of bright yellows, blues, and reds. No, not quite grass, Guadalupe soon realized. But something very much like grass that did, in fact, come in those colors: flowers.
She debated momentarily whether to reveal her discovery to Thomas and Jacqueline. This was a game, after all. The worse her competitors performed, the better her chances of survival. But the internal debate soon became moot as they noticed the same markings and eventually drew the same conclusions.
“What are these streaks?” Thomas said, rubbing his finger along one of them.
“They almost look like grass stains, except I haven’t seen grass those colors before!” Jacqueline said.
“It’s pollen,” Thomas said quietly as he sniffed his fingertips. “Definitely from the garden. This bright pink streak here with the almost chunky orange pollen spots?”
Jacqueline nodded as she leaned in.
“Well,” he continued, “they came from a stargazer lily, I’m pretty sure. I’m no florist or anything, but I had this girlfriend once, it was her favorite flower.”
Guadalupe and Jacqueline both stared at him. He didn’t seem like the type to have had many girlfriends in his life. If any. It wasn’t that he was particularly unattractive, so to spea
k. It was more that he had this gangly and awkward social demeanor typical of bookish, excessively intelligent types like he’d proven himself to be. It almost felt like he might be too intelligent to be able to form normal relationships with other people.
“I saw them in the garden the other day,” he explained further. “So it has to be where these streaks came from.”
“She must have been dragged right through the flower bed by the chopper at some point,” Jacqueline said.
The three of them paused and seemed to consider the implications of the discovery.
Eventually, Jacqueline continued her examination of the body. After the exterior examination, they began undressing Emily to check for other obvious signs of foul play. Thomas wondered briefly, as they pulled off the girl’s sweatshirt, whether he should stay. Was it proper? He wasn’t familiar with autopsy etiquette. He had a hard enough time figuring out normal etiquette rules. And he’d most certainly never seen a naked dead girl before.
But the answer became painfully obvious once the corpse was topless. Death, it seemed, had stolen away every ounce of sexuality Emily had ever possessed. She was no longer a female, but now was merely a dead body. An empty vessel of biological dysfunction.
All three of them noticed the twin burn marks on her side almost immediately. The twin pea-sized red welts were surrounded by a ring of yellow-and-purple bruising and were about four inches apart. They were located on her right side toward her back, just eight inches or so from her right armpit.
“What is it?” Thomas asked. “It almost looks like a snakebite or something.”
“Yeah, maybe if the snake was forty feet long,” Guadalupe said.
“I was just speculating,” Thomas said, maybe too defensively.
“They’re taser burns,” Jacqueline said, ending the argument before it got any further. “I’ve seen them before at the hospital. Every once in a while we used to get people who had just been apprehended by the police. When they resisted, they’d get tased or injured in the process. So then they had to be brought in to the hospital before going to the county lockup.”
“That explains a lot…” Thomas started. But he never got to finish his thought.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The estate bell chimed, and just like that, their time was up.
CHAPTER 16
CUTTING THE CORD
For the first murder, Bryce had picked the morgue. But this time he didn’t think he’d be able to handle it. He didn’t think he could stomach the sight of Emily’s dead body lying on that metal table. So when his turn to choose had rolled around, he’d mumbled his choice with his head down, still mostly in shock that Emily had been the one to die next.
Frank had seemed particularly annoyed that nobody else chose the crime scene. Bryce really hadn’t even given it much thought. He just knew he didn’t want to visit the morgue and “whereabouts” was just what came out of his mouth when he opened it to make his choice.
Sophia and Parker had both once again picked the last known whereabouts. The difference was that this time both of them were in on the decision. During the last round, Parker had merely been following Emily’s choice, and Sophia his. But since then, Sophia and Parker had met secretly in her suite at least twice to discuss their game strategy among other, more fun activities.
The two of them had decided collectively to stick together. To collaborate for the duration of the game. They even would come up with their murder pitches with each other. They had this feeling that together they could beat this thing. But, of course, in Sophia’s own mind, she already had. Eleven years Emily’s senior, and still Sophia managed to snag Parker out from under that slutty bitch. Not that she had to worry about her anymore.
Darrel had been the first person to choose where he’d like to investigate. He’d picked the last known whereabouts simply because the morgue hadn’t worked out quite so well for him the last time. But mostly he was just still too much in shock that he was alive after round one to really have given the matter any deeper consideration, anyway.
The four of them were escorted to the mansion’s study by a maid, who reminded them about their thirty-minute time limit before leaving.
The study itself, like everything else on the estate, was a display of grand excess. Instead of having one desk, the study had four, each placed in its own corner of the room. And not just any old desks, but massive U-shaped English cherrywood desks with custom-designed walnut and maple inlays. The guests were not luxury furniture dealers, but it was obvious that each desk had been uniquely handcrafted and had likely cost a small fortune.
On top of each desk were two vintage art deco–style lamps and a variety of other standard office supplies, such as notepads, pens, telephones, and folded laptop computers. Darrel knew the laptops required passwords for use. He’d already tried that the first day they were here and had gotten locked out after three unsuccessful guesses.
But he hadn’t tried the phones yesterday. What reason would he have had to do so? At that time, they still thought they were lucky winners. But now that he knew better, he thought it was worth a try at the very least. So he picked up the phone receiver from the desk closest to the entrance of the study and pressed it to his ear. He hung it back up seconds later. The other three looked at him, the small glimmers of hope in their eyes betraying their otherwise grim expressions.
“Dead,” he said.
They focused their attention back on the matter at hand. The far wall of the study was lined with twenty-foot-tall windows. Several of them were open and there were no screens separating the outside world from the interior of the study.
Darrel walked over to the nearest open window and looked out across the huge estate garden. It was filled with flowers of all kinds and colors. He never had understood the point of flowers. They just died a week after you bought them. He didn’t get the point of buying his wife $100 worth of terminal plants. But, of course, he still did on all the occasions he was supposed to. Like Valentine’s Day, their anniversary, etc. He’d learned after almost forty years of marriage that it was just easier to do it and not question the point of it all.
“Guys, check this out,” Bryce said a short time into their investigation.
The other three guests grouped around him. He was next to one of the open windows.
“What did you find, bro?” Parker asked.
“Look, this window’s curtain is, like, rolled up and stuff,” Bryce said, pointing up toward the top of the window.
They all looked up and saw the rolled-up inner curtain, tucked behind the thicker drapes set around the window frame.
“So, what’s your point?” Parker asked. “Lots of these curtains are up.”
“Yeah, guy, but they all still have drawstrings,” Bryce said.
They checked each of the nine large windows in the study. Sure enough, Bryce was right. The middle window was the only one that did not have a drawstring. How could it have been rolled up without a drawstring? Upon closer inspection, they soon discovered that it did actually still have a drawstring. It simply had been cut about halfway up the window, the semifrayed end dangling down like a severed tail.
“Let’s try to get up there to pull it,” Bryce suggested.
Nobody really understood what the point of that would be, but at the same time, they didn’t have any better suggestions. So Bryce climbed up onto the edge of a nearby desk. He reached up and grabbed the frayed end of the curtain drawstring and yanked it a few times.
On the third try, he got the latch to catch and the curtain began unfurling. As it neared the windowsill, Parker noticed an unnatural bulge in the remaining rolled-up curtain. He hurried forward and caught the object as it fell from the curtain.
“What is it, baby?” Sophia asked.
Bryce was too excited by the find, and Darrel was still too dazed in general, for either of them to notice her usage of a pet name. Not that it really would have mattered, anyway. It was becoming increasingly obvious to the other guests t
hat Sophia had attached herself to Parker permanently, like some sort of parasite. Or perhaps, as Guadalupe suspected, she was luring him in only to eventually betray him to her advantage like some sort of succubus.
“I think it’s a taser,” Parker said, holding up a small black device, which was roughly the size of a TV remote.
“What the hell?” Bryce said. “Why was it in the curtain?”
“It’s definitely a taser,” Sophia said. “My husband made me get one just like it.”
“But that still doesn’t explain why the drawstring to the curtain was cut,” Parker said. “The killer didn’t need to cut it in order to get the taser to stay up there. I think the two things might be unrelated. It’s like they put the taser up here to hide it, and then cut the curtain cord for a totally different reason.”
“Maybe,” Bryce said. “Or maybe they cut the cord to make it harder to find? Or so that nobody would find it accidentally by lowering the curtain?”
“It’s possible…” Parker said slowly.
They likely could have continued debating the issue for a while, but none of them had time to really speculate any further because just then they were rudely interrupted by the chiming of the estate bell.
The investigation period for the second murder had officially ended.
CHAPTER 17
CRACKING FLAGS
Once the investigation period ended, the guests were escorted outside to the patio. The sun blazed down on them, making the day feel unnaturally bright in spite of their dire situation. It almost felt like the sun was mocking the guests in some weird way.
After a short wait, Giles strode out in front of them, still wearing his full butler suit regardless of the late morning’s growing heat.
“It appears that today will be cracking flags quite soon. Or, as you might say here in the States, ‘we’re in for a hot one,’ ” Giles said, doing a fairly decent impression of a southern American accent. “As such, the killer has suggested that we all take a swim break by the pool this early afternoon. You have ten minutes to go to your suites and change into appropriate pool attire. After that, you have one and a half hours by the pool area to relax, enjoy the sun, or cool off in the spectacular swimming pool. Please do bring a change of clothes to leave in the pool house, as you will not be returning to your suites before the next challenge. May I also suggest that you use your time lounging by the pool to share what you discovered during your investigations?”
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