“So, dinner began and we all ate. The expired salmon made everyone sick, including Frank. What we didn’t realize was that he had also already signed his death certificate by eating several of the fugu rolls he was served. For those of you not aware, fugu is deadly poisonous to consume,” Darrel said, clearly enjoying this moment in spite of his genuine efforts to suppress his delight.
The other guests weren’t sure what to make of his almost gleeful explanation of the murder. Was he displaying pride of ownership in some way? Or was he merely excited to finally know for sure that he would remain alive for the immediate future? Either way, they said nothing and listened as Darrel continued.
“Anyway, all of us got up to leave, right? Because we were sick from the expired fish or whatever. And the victim, as predicted, made his way to his favorite red couch to lie down. A short time later, he vomited, his throat closed, and he died from the deadly venom inside the fugu rolls he ate. Not long after, the salve on the chain finally ate away enough of the metal so that the head broke free and the fish was dangling above Frank’s corpse. The weight of the whole fish on the second chain caused it to snap, impaling our victim in the chest, just below his heart. Of course, he was already dead from the fugu, which is why there was no blood pooled around him at the crime scene when his body was finally discovered.”
As he finished and sat down, several of the other guests looked nauseated, for they already knew they were in trouble. Their theories were quite far away from the scenario Darrel had just described. Their only hope was that some of the other guests got it even more wrong somehow.
“Well done, Mr. Gleason,” Giles said. “That was a remarkable turnaround from your past performance. So, as with all games, in order for there to be a winner, there must be a loser. Or in this case, losers. Since it’s already so late, I’ve been instructed by the killer to forgo the pageantry this time around. As you see I have only one envelope. It contains the names of our two Scared guests. If your name is not on the card within the envelope, it means you have been Spared.”
Giles opened the envelope, wasting no time. Catering to guests trying to solve a murder while administering some bizarre game via written instructions was just as tiring, if not more so, than playing the game itself. So Giles was just as anxious as the others to go to bed. He pulled out the card and looked at the two names. He was not particularly surprised.
“Sophia and Parker, you are Scared,” he said.
An uncomfortable silence followed, but it was brief. Giles broke the silence unceremoniously, giving the guests little time to react.
“And now, you are all free to finally retire to your suites for some rest.”
Sophia was crying openly by the time he had finished that one short sentence.
“I don’t want to die,” she sobbed. “Please, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!”
She seemed unable to say anything else. Parker just stood there, looking at the floor. He wondered what else he could have done. It had been his idea to check out the boathouse during the challenge, after all, so he couldn’t place all the blame on Sophia.
“I don’t want to die!” she said again, becoming hysterical.
The other guests avoided looking at her as they fled from the room. After a matter of mere seconds, only Giles, Sophia, and Parker remained. Giles and Parker looked at each other for a brief, uncomfortable moment while Sophia cried softly.
“Try to get some sleep,” Giles told them. “After all, for one of you, not all hope is lost.”
CHAPTER 26
KICK THE BUCKET SEATS
That night was a quiet one on the estate. It was almost too quiet. But the eerie silence did not last for long.
Sometime in the early morning hours, before the sun had even considered poking up from below the horizon, one of the estate’s massive garage doors slowly lifted open. The small motor connected to the chains struggled, and the infrequently used belts squealed as the door finally lifted all the way onto the rails.
A set of headlights switched on and light spilled out from the opening as a car engine revved. The two round headlights were almost like massive glowing eyes on the dark estate grounds as the car, a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom coupe convertible, fired forward out of the garage.
The tires squealed and left twin black skid marks on the pavement, as it roared out onto the estate’s gravel driveway. The engine hummed and gravel sprayed behind the tires. Had anyone been watching, they would have immediately noticed the car’s erratic path.
It veered off the gravel driveway after just forty yards, still accelerating. Then it turned right onto the estate’s western lawn. It turned right again, passing back behind the servants’ quarters. The car made four more unnecessary and seemingly random turns before straightening out and picking up more speed as it hurtled across the estate’s well-manicured eastern lawn. It was driving straight toward the large gasoline tanks connected to the estate boathouse.
The car didn’t slow. It also didn’t turn again.
It simply plowed directly into the gas tanks.
The explosion that followed shortly after woke every single human being on the estate grounds. If not from the earsplitting concussion, then certainly from the vibrating ground and shaking structures. And maybe, for some, it wasn’t until the orange glow of the massive fireball bloomed into the dark sky and shined a pale and haunting red glow into their estate suites through the large windows above their beds.
And so it seemed that the peaceful, uninterrupted sleep that the guests and servants so badly needed would not be coming that night after all.
CHAPTER 27
THE FOURTH AND FIFTH VICTIMS
Once again, Giles waited in the foyer for all the guests to arrive downstairs. He’d somehow gotten out of bed and changed into a clean, pressed suit with near impossible speed, well ahead of the guests and other employees. Although, to be fair, he hadn’t truly slept since the game began a few nights ago. He’d only gone through the motions of what sleeping was supposed to be.
So the transition from lying in bed with his eyes closed to suddenly being fully awake and realizing that the game would continue that very night had been made rather smoothly. And by the time he’d gotten changed and ready for the day, or night, as it were, there was already an envelope on the floor of his room.
More instructions from the killer.
When it became clear to Giles, as he waited at the base of the stairs, that some of the guests would need a little prodding to leave their suites, either due to fear or fatigue, or both, he sent up a maid and a servant to ensure that they all got dressed and joined the group in the foyer posthaste.
Finally, thirty minutes after the large explosion had rocked the estate, all the remaining guests and three servants, as instructed by the killer, were grouped in the mansion’s foyer. The others were already noticing what Giles already knew: there were two people not present. Both Sophia and Parker were conspicuously absent.
“I do apologize that your slumber was so rudely interrupted,” Giles said with a sympathetic smile. “It appears as though two of our guests may have attempted to escape during the night. As you all know, escape attempts will not work out so favorably. So, alas, it seems we now have another crime to investigate. Except this time, there have been not one but two murders. Our first double homicide.”
Giles said this last part as if they were getting double scoops of ice cream rather than a double dose of violent death. The remaining five guests shook their heads slowly, almost in perfect unison. Had the circumstances been different, Giles might have laughed at the sight.
“And it seems,” he continued, “that Parker and Sophia met their untimely demise when the car they were driving crashed into the boathouse fuel tanks. The explosion was so great that both victims’ bodies were thrown more than fifty yards from the crash site. After all, when you live together in this game, you will die together. This challenge is somewhat unique, even more so than having two victims. Not only d
oes the killer wish for you to solve how the murder occurred, because I assure you there was more to it than mere poor driving, but he or she also requests that you attempt to figure out who was behind the wheel.
“Therefore, please, take a moment to consider how you would like to approach this very explosive double murder. Only half of you remain, which means you have all now doubled your chances of survival. So choose wisely. Your choices, as always, are the crime scene, the morgue, and the victims’ last known whereabouts, which was the garage in which the half-million-dollar automobile was so peacefully resting before they decided to end its life along with theirs.
“The staff and I will spend the next several hours putting out the fires and preparing the areas for your investigations. Please return to your suites. We will reconvene here at sunrise, which will be in approximately two hours. At that time you must state your approach for this crime. Try to get some rest—I have a feeling we all have a very long day ahead of us.”
CHAPTER 28
A WEIGHTLESS PASSENGER
Darrel was the only one of the five remaining guests who’d chosen to investigate the crime scene. He and Jacqueline decided that if they were indeed going to team up moving forward, they would need to do it better than Parker and Sophia had. Which meant, for starters, that it made way more sense for them to each choose a separate area to investigate so they could gather twice as much evidence firsthand.
In retrospect, both Parker and Sophia always choosing the same area to investigate seemed so shortsighted that Darrel was shocked they’d continued to do so. But then again, even though he’d hardly interacted with her at all, Sophia didn’t exactly strike him as a brilliant strategist.
The crime scene itself looked both horrifically violent, yet somehow not nearly as destructive as he’d imagined given the sound of the explosion and the resulting massive fireball, which all the guests had seen from their suite windows.
The charred remains of the convertible’s body and frame were still shockingly intact, for one. There were smaller pieces of the hood and engine block scattered around the blast site, but for the most part, the car was still in one piece, especially from the passenger cabin going back to the trunk. It was also less burned than he’d expected. The front end of the car had clearly been on fire and was charred both black and a rusty, dark brown. But everything else had seemingly not caught fire.
Darrel noticed right away that the convertible top was down, tucked away correctly inside the back of the car, which meant it had been down at the time of the collision and not blown off by the impact itself. Not that that really told him much.
He moved around the car, wondering what he could possibly find that would give him any real clues as to what had happened and who had been driving. They’d been told that the bodies had each been propelled backward more than fifty yards away from the wreckage. Two orange flags that were basically on top of each other marked the spots where the bodies had been found. There was surprisingly little blood at the scene itself. And the ruptured, charred remains of the twisted gasoline tank was evidence enough as to what had caused them to be thrown back so far.
It wasn’t until Darrel was inspecting the interior of the car that he noticed something unusual. The driver’s-side air bag had activated, which wasn’t unusual at all, given the nature of the crash. But the passenger-side air bag had not, even though the car had indicators on the dash clearly evidencing the existence of a passenger air bag. Darrel knew that meant one of two things:
1. The air bag was faulty and simply didn’t inflate, which was highly unlikely in a car this expensive. Plus, if that were the case, then the passenger’s blood should be sprayed all over the inside of the smashed windshield. But there was very little blood at all, and the windshield, although shattered by the force of the explosion, did not have a head or human-sized stress point or bulge in it.
2. There had been no passenger in the passenger seat and thus the air bag did not eject. Darrel knew that all newer cars had sensors, and that passenger air bags would not activate if the seat was empty.
Given the evidence, option two was the far likelier scenario. But if that were actually the case, then where was the second victim at the time of the crash? If they weren’t seated in the passenger seat, then where exactly were they?
And why?
As his time expired, and the estate bell rang, Darrel had still not been able to come up with any answers to those questions. So now he could only hope that Jacqueline was finding some evidence on the bodies themselves that would help them find those answers. Because if not, he might go from being the most recent winner right back down to the bottom.
CHAPTER 29
CSI SAVES THE DAY
Jacqueline and Bryce were escorted down to the morgue early that morning by a very tired-looking maid. Not that they appeared much more well rested themselves. Although Jacqueline was surprisingly spry, even if she had never looked so much of her sixty-eight years than she did just then. But Bryce had deep bags under his bloodshot eyes. Jacqueline wasn’t sure if that was because he was tired or simply stoned again.
“So, how do we do this?” he asked, looking at the two metal tables side by side, each containing a body covered with a white sheet.
“Well, that depends, sweetie,” Jacqueline said. “Do you want to each take one and then compare, or shall we do them together, one at a time?”
“Uh, let’s do them together,” Bryce said.
“I thought you might say that,” Jacqueline said, and chuckled. Even her chuckle sounded like booming laughter, especially in such a confined room.
The two of them carefully removed the sheets covering the bodies. They were both surprised at the state they were in. Certainly the bodies were no pretty sight to behold, but given that they’d both been in a high-speed car crash and a massive explosion, they were actually in remarkably good condition.
Bryce didn’t even need Jacqueline’s medical background to conclude as much.
Jacqueline and Bryce noticed immediately that neither victim had suffered any significant burns. Which meant that they had likely both been launched away from the explosion either at impact or by the force of the explosion itself.
“Let’s start with her,” Jacqueline said.
Bryce didn’t really do much but stand there and watch Jacqueline examine the body. For one, he had no idea what he was doing. And two, she did. So he figured he was better off just watching and helping her as best he could.
She did a thorough examination of the corpse. The only obvious external injuries she found were two broken legs.
“How did she die, then?” Bryce asked.
“Likely internal bleeding from the force of either the collision or the explosion itself. Or maybe both,” Jacqueline said.
“Really?” Bryce asked.
He’d never known that someone could die in a car accident without actually looking like they should be dead.
“Yeah, there are signs of internal injuries. See how swollen her abdomen is?” Jacqueline pointed at Sophia’s mid-section.
“Oh, yeah,” Bryce said. He did remember seeing her in either a swimsuit or tight dress several times, and her stomach had been way flatter than it was now. “Cool, did you learn that from being a nurse?”
“No, honey, from watching CSI!” she said, and then belted out a laugh.
Bryce laughed, too, even though he wasn’t sure if she’d been joking. Either way, laughing with her seemed like the polite thing to do.
“Mmm-mmm, so tragic,” she mumbled as she started inspecting Parker’s sculpted body. “These two were so beautiful and died so young.”
After spending the last ten minutes on Parker, they again discovered remarkably similar injuries, which made sense considering that they’d likely been sitting side by side in the same car, in the same accident. He had two broken knees and evidence of massive internal injuries, but no other obvious serious external injuries.
“So, since they’re both so similar, we s
till have no idea who was driving,” Bryce said.
“It appears so,” Jacqueline said, sounding disappointed. “Could have been either one of them. Maybe our friends found out something more than we did?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Bryce said.
But he was worried. Jacqueline and Darrel had forged a kind of team. He knew that; everyone did. Guadalupe was the hardest one to get information out of, and Thomas had lied to Bryce during the last murder, which meant he couldn’t trust much of what the skinny, creepy geek said anymore. Besides, he’d become increasingly convinced that the killer had to be either Guadalupe or Thomas, so he likely wouldn’t have wanted to work with either one of them, anyway. Which basically left Bryce completely alone for the first time. So now, having learned very little in the morgue, he had no idea if he stood a chance to be on the top this time. Unless he somehow miraculously solved the challenge on his own, something he’d yet to even come close to doing. For the first time since this whole thing started, Bryce was really, truly scared that he might not make it out of there alive.
CHAPTER 30
AUTOPILOT
Guadalupe and Thomas were perhaps the least talkative of the remaining five guests. Which is why it was no surprise that the mansion’s garage was almost eerily silent as they both conducted separate, individual investigations there.
Thomas started by examining the spot on the pavement where the car had obviously peeled out of the garage, while Guadalupe looked under a few canvas tarps covering several other cars. The garage had six double doors and was deep enough to hold at least six cars per door. But as of now, only four covered cars sat in the cavernous garage, making it feel more like an empty warehouse than an actual garage.
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