Murder in Mystery Manor

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  Within ten minutes, each guest had changed clothes in some fashion, although not everyone put on a swimsuit. Frank merely changed into a pair of Dockers shorts, sandals, and a white polo shirt. And Jacqueline changed into a long and light sundress.

  But regardless of their intent to swim, all the guests gathered by the pool as instructed. Frank sat under an umbrella at one of the tables off to the side. When the server came around for drink orders, he asked for a double right away.

  Bryce leaped into the pool almost immediately. He sank to the bottom and stayed there for a surprising amount of time before bobbing back up to the surface. He lazily floated on his back and stared up at the blue sky. Perhaps he was thinking about Emily, or maybe trying not to. Or maybe he was merely enjoying the cool water and pretending that he was somewhere else.

  Sophia and Parker also swam, often jumping on each other and giggling as if they were newlyweds on vacation and there weren’t murders happening around them. But the other five guests merely sat at the surrounding tables or on the reclining chaise lounges set up nearby.

  Darrel remained particularly despondent and found a spot at the far end of the patio, away from everyone else. After a while, Jacqueline came over and sat next to him.

  “You’ve got to keep going,” she said. “You got a second chance, honey, don’t waste it.”

  He shook his head slowly but didn’t say anything. He vacantly stared at the slab of slate tile under his feet.

  “Seriously,” Jacqueline continued, “if you give up now, you’re as good as dead. You know that, right?”

  Darrel nodded.

  “Come on, so tell me what y’all found in the study,” she said. “I’ll tell you what we discovered in the morgue. We can do this together, but we have to help each other. Someone here is the killer and I know it ain’t me, and I’m pretty sure it ain’t you, neither. So we know we can trust each other, but that’s about it, right?”

  Darrel paused, still looking down, but then he began nodding again and finally met her gaze.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”

  There was other information shared that afternoon by the pool. And, again, at least one lie was told as well. After thirty minutes in the pool, Bryce climbed out and went from person to person, starting with Guadalupe, trying to exchange as much information as he could. He knew the other guests underestimated him. They thought he was just some dumb stoner whom they could take advantage of. But he also hoped that would be their greatest mistake. That he could figure things out better than they expected and hopefully better than even he expected from himself.

  The only person who refused to share any amount of information that day, fake or otherwise, was Frank. This time around, he just sat under his umbrella and sulked. And drank. He’d been approached by Thomas first. Then Bryce. And eventually Jacqueline, Parker, and Sophia, all three at once.

  For every attempt, he refused to discuss his investigation at all.

  “You all certainly didn’t seem to think anything at the crime scene would be very valuable earlier, so why are you desperate to know now?” he said.

  “Relax, man, we’re all just trying to help each other,” Parker said. “We have to in order to win.”

  “No, I don’t have to do a goddamn thing! This is America, isn’t it?”

  “All right, honey,” Jacqueline said. “Take it easy, no one is trying to force you to do nothin’.”

  Frank took three gulps of his scotch, finishing it. Then he slammed down the glass so hard, Sophia took an instinctive step backward. He was clearly drunk.

  “Let’s just see how well you all do this time around without a crime scene. Don’t you all forget, I won the last round!” he shouted at them. “Besides, I can’t really trust any of you! One of you is the sick, twisted psychopath behind all of this. And until I find out which of you it is, I’m not trusting any of you!”

  After a few more minutes of beating their heads against a stubborn brick wall named Frank, the other guests seemed to give up. Near the very end of their time, Thomas made his way back over to where the former sheriff was brooding like the grouchy old man they’d seen him to be from day one.

  “Hey, don’t worry, I don’t care what you found out there,” Thomas said as he sat down. “I just wanted to talk to you about who you think the killer is. I’ve got a few theories I’d like to run by you.”

  Frank looked into his empty glass and then smirked as much as his face would allow.

  “Oh, you think you got this all figured out? Yeah, I’d love to hear it,” he said sarcastically. But at the same time, he stopped talking and allowed Thomas to talk.

  For the last fifteen minutes, Thomas and Frank talked quietly by the back table. The other guests found themselves forming into two other groups: Jacqueline, Parker, and Sophia by the beach chairs, and Bryce, Darrel, and Guadalupe at a table on the other side of the pool. Not everything they knew was shared that day, but surely at least some positive information exchanges resulted.

  Giles returned promptly, as always. He gave them just ten minutes to head into the pool house to change clothes again if desired. Only half the group exited to change. While they were gone, two maids brought out a picnic basket and handed it to Giles.

  Once all the guests were back, he opened the basket and began handing out headbands with utility headlamps on them. The guests examined them, some switching theirs on. It was hard to tell in the bright afternoon sunlight whether they were even working. Bryce put his on his head and adjusted the strap.

  “Please, your attention,” Giles said. “You will have ample time to play with your headband torches, I assure you. The headlight is, of course, another clue. Another piece of the puzzle our host has so carefully constructed for you. The headlight may eventually make sense or come in use if you manage to correctly solve the following riddle the killer has asked me to read:

  “ ‘Down the garden’s path is a dangerous trek, lest for the appendages of a sunburned neck. The killer among you murdered in plain sight; to answer how, seek the dark to see the light.’

  “You have thirty minutes. Best of luck,” Giles said, and then retreated back into the air-conditioned mansion.

  Many of the guests cursed themselves silently for once again having no way to write down or record the riddle. Guadalupe and Frank both jotted it down, just as they had the first time. But this time around, only Thomas had also thought to bring a pad of paper and pen from his suite.

  It didn’t take long for the guests to scatter. Parker and Sophia snuck off together to attempt to figure out the riddle. Thomas made a move toward Frank to partner up with him once again since it had worked so well for them the last time. But Frank bolted inside the mansion alone, without looking back, before Thomas could even get near him.

  But Thomas had the riddle written down and already knew a lot about the murder. By the pool, he’d managed to finally get an intoxicated Frank to reveal that a nylon cord of some sort had been used to suspend the victim from the helicopter. So Thomas actually didn’t think he would need help. Solving this one on his very own would most certainly give him an advantage over the others going forward.

  Darrel and Jacqueline paired up again. She had become a comforting presence for him. Almost motherly, even though he had kids of his own and was used to being the parent himself. But this whole game had shaken him to the core. He needed her to keep him focused. They also let Bryce tag along with them as well. The kid seemed especially determined to solve this one, probably since he’d really taken a liking to Emily.

  Most of the guests picked up on the line “seek the dark to see the light.” And most correctly assumed that it meant they needed to find a dark place. It also seemed to fit right in with the headlamps. The main question was: Which dark place? An estate of this size certainly had its fair share of dark nooks and crannies.

  Parker and Sophia first went up to check out the attic. Or see if the mansion even had an attic. After failing to find the entrance to attic
stairwell, they headed to the kitchen to check for a dark pantry, cupboard, or walk-in fridge. Both searches were entirely fruitless.

  The team of Darrel, Jacqueline, and Bryce tried the servants’ quarters first, which they knew were mostly empty and therefore often dark. After failing to get inside the locked building, they next made a list of places to investigate, then split up with plans to rendezvous in the parlor to share what they’d found.

  Guadalupe, who was determined to do this on her own once again, made her way to the large walk-in wine cellar off the kitchen. She knew it was kept mostly dark and was convinced she had found the answer. Alas, she had not.

  Frank headed directly for the basement. He knew it was the correct location—it had to be. What was darker than a deep, unfinished concrete basement in a century-old manor, after all? The key was, once he found the evidence the killer had left, he was planning to take it so nobody else could find it and solve the crime. That would teach them.

  But there was only one guest who correctly interpreted the first half of the riddle.

  Thomas knew from his time in the morgue that the victim had been dragged through the garden’s flower bed. But that’s not entirely what the riddle was alluding to, he knew. It was that second line about “appendages of a sunburned neck” making the garden path safer that was the key. A sunburned neck seemed to indicate someone spending long periods of time out in the sun looking down. Someone like a gardener. But what did the gardener’s arms have to do with this? Unless the riddle was referring to the tools that the gardener’s arms used, thereby making them appendages as well. And it was immediately after having that thought when it hit Thomas all at once: the shed behind the garden. It was dark, it fit the riddle, and it had a good sight line to the lake.

  Thomas worked his way around the outside of the garden itself, assuming some of the others would check it out, given the clue. He didn’t want them to see him going toward the shed. Once he was sure no one was looking, Thomas shuffled quickly over to the groundskeeper’s shed behind the garden.

  He opened the unlocked metal door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. It was nearly pitch-black inside the small shed, except for a few thin beams of sunlight poking through cracks in the shed’s exterior. There was also one small hole cut into one of the shed’s walls, easily noticeable in the darkness.

  Thomas put on his headlamp and switched on the light as he walked toward the hole. The beam of light coming from his forehead passed over tools of all sorts. Then a small table with a black object on it. He looked closer. It was a small TV monitor with several toggles and buttons built into its base. As an engineer, he recognized it right away as some sort of transmitter device. Underneath it was an eight-page brochure with a picture of a small helicopter on the front—one that looked very similar to the chopper they’d all seen this morning. He shined his light directly onto the cover of the brochure.

  MQ-8B FIRE SCOUT:

  Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical

  Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System

  It couldn’t have possibly been visible were anyone else actually present in the dark shed, but Thomas’s smile was wider than any he had smiled since arriving at the Westlake Estate.

  CHAPTER 18

  A MUCH-NEEDED BREAK

  Once time was up, the guests gathered back near the patio. It was now midafternoon and the heat was almost unbearable, even to those guests wearing shorts and light shirts. But somehow, miraculously, even in his black butler suit, not a single drop of sweat dripped down Giles’s face as he stood before them under the blazing sun.

  “As you may have guessed, it is now time to present the murder theories you’ve cultivated using the evidence you collected both personally and in conversation,” Giles said. “You will be taken into the pool house one by one to state your cases to a camera. Once again, I must remind you to proceed carefully; the killer will be watching.”

  Maids and servants escorted the eight remaining guests one at a time into the pool house. Some of the guests spun incoherent and illogical scenarios that missed the mark badly. Some were better but still not quite right. But at least one guest managed to present a detailed, coherent, and accurate account of the events surrounding the murder case in question.

  Afterward, they were served a light lunch of crab cakes and Kobe beef sliders and then dismissed to spend the afternoon however they pleased.

  “Dinner will be served at seven P.M. Dress appropriately and, please, don’t be late,” Giles said, glaring at Sophia. “Those of you who are Spared and those who are Scared will be revealed at dinner.”

  Most of the guests, exhausted from the day’s events, retired to their suites to relax, or nap, or, in Bryce’s case, get high. But Frank, as usual, headed for his favorite red couch in the trophy room.

  Later that night, after all the guests had arrived in the dining room for dinner, Giles stood in front of them with eight envelopes in his hands.

  “First, our winner. Then, our dinner,” Giles said with a smirk. “The killer was once again quite pleased by one of your cases. Mr. Gatling, please come forward and tell the other guests what only you and the killer already know.”

  Thomas grinned his crooked grin as he stood and moved toward the front of the room. Some of the other guests looked surprised, as they’d really believed they’d had this one in the bag, while others looked nervous. Only Frank looked angry.

  “Thank you,” Thomas said, taking his envelope from Giles. He opened it and read aloud the contents. “ ‘Congratulations, you are Spared and have won this round. Please share your theory with the others.’ ”

  He looked up at the seven expectant faces looking back at him. Beads of sweat formed at his hairline. He never had been comfortable with speaking in front of groups larger than two. Or, really, to anyone if he was forced to be completely honest with himself. But this wasn’t the time or place to show fear or doubt—he knew that. So he began with a mostly steady voice.

  “Paranoid at being one of two Scared victims, Emily woke early this morning and snuck into the mansion study. She was there likely in an attempt to log in to one of the four computers in the study. Perhaps she was trying to uncover information about the estate’s owner or the identity of the killer. Or maybe she just wanted to check her Facebook status. Either way, the killer snuck up behind Emily, and incapacitated her with a taser. The killer then rolled up the taser in one of the room’s curtains before climbing onto a nearby desk and cutting free the double nylon drawstrings near the top.

  “The killer quickly fashioned a noose out of the surprisingly strong drawstring and slipped it around the unconscious victim’s neck. Then the killer attached the other end of the curtain’s drawstring to a chain on the landing skid of a Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout drone helicopter parked just outside the study window, hidden among the garden’s ample shrubbery.

  “The killer then climbed out the open window and hurried through the garden to the adjacent groundskeeper’s shed nearby. There, they cut a small hole in the shed’s thin metal siding, giving them a perfect view of the east lawn and West Lake. They used the drone’s expensive remote monitor system to fly the helicopter into plain view of the east lawn, dragging the victim’s body through the garden’s flower bed and snapping her neck upon takeoff.

  “When the killer was sure the other guests had heard the chopper and would be arriving outside soon, they abandoned the chopper’s remote controls and joined the other guests gathering on the lawn. No longer being piloted, the helicopter plunged down and crashed into the lake, as we all witnessed.”

  After he finished, Thomas immediately sat down and took a long and slow drink of water.

  “Very well done, Mr. Gatling. Well done, indeed,” Giles said. “Now, as for the rest of you, your fates are sealed within these envelopes.”

  He passed them out.

  “As before, please go around the table and read the contents aloud, one by one,” Giles said.

  “Spared,” Sophia s
aid with a smug grin, knowing that meant Parker would be as well.

  “Spared,” Jacqueline said, appearing to reread her card over and over to make sure she’d read it right.

  “Scared, again,” Darrel said as he tossed the card behind him in frustration.

  The guests all watched the card twirl through the air as it spun and floated down to the floor. It moved much in the same way the chunks of the exploded dock had earlier that morning. It was easier to watch Darrel’s card than it was to look at his anguished face.

  “Spared. I’m getting good at this,” Bryce said almost too calmly.

  More than a few of the other guests noticed his pink, bloodshot eyes.

  “Spared,” Guadalupe said as if she were ordering a coffee and not discovering that she would survive at least another night.

  “I don’t believe this,” Frank shouted as he looked down at his card. “I was sabotaged. This can’t be right.”

  “Mr. Ponder, I do suggest you follow the instructions and read the contents of your card, lest you push the killer into doing something drastic,” Giles said.

  “I’m Scared, obviously,” he said.

  Parker had already opened his envelope. Not that he needed to in order to know what it said.

  “Spared,” he said with a smile, his dimples bookending the word nicely.

  “Now, then, you will eat,” Giles said.

  He turned and left as servers entered with trays of food. Dinner consisted of a roasted beet and goat cheese salad, followed by a bowl of lobster bisque. The main course was a Bison New York strip steak topped with bone marrow butter, served with sweet potato and bacon gratin and grilled escarole with maple gastrique. For dessert was a study of apple with bacon ice cream and lemon-honey snow made with liquid nitrogen.