“My dear,” he said. “Proceed.”
She opened her envelope and read the card within. And for the first time since she’d arrived on the estate, she showed signs of having real human emotions. She gasped and covered her mouth with a shaking hand. She did not cry, but everyone in the room could see that the tears would eventually fall, even if it was hours later.
“Scared,” she finally whispered.
Jacqueline went next.
“Spared,” she said, looking relieved in spite of the fact that the joyful and vibrant glow in her eyes seemed to have disappeared.
“Scared,” Bryce said a short time later, reading his card.
Darrel tore into his envelope like a kid opening a Christmas present he always wanted and knows he is getting. He couldn’t help but smile as he read the contents.
“Spared.”
“With news both good and bad finally shared, the killer has requested that we take the night off from the game,” Giles said. “Dinner will be served via room service this evening, delivered directly to your suites. When you return to your rooms, there will be a small menu on your bed. Please make your dinner selections and give them to the maid, who will stop by at three P.M.”
Giles allowed a lengthy pause before he began speaking again.
“The killer has assured me that no one will be poisoned by tonight’s dinner items, so please eat your selections with confidence. And please keep in mind that the killer has not lied to us yet. As a reward for making it halfway, the killer will allow both Bryce and Guadalupe the opportunity to write one last letter home tomorrow morning. You may write only one letter to a single recipient of your choosing, expressing your last wishes and thoughts and, of course, possibly just to say good-bye. Stationery and a pen will be delivered to you both in the morning. Please bring your letters down to breakfast tomorrow at nine A.M. out on the patio. We will be having steak and eggs for breakfast, which I’m sure will be quite a treat!”
CHAPTER 33
HUMAN POPSICLE
The next morning, the guests arrived for breakfast on time, looking as refreshed as possible given their circumstances. Or, at least, most of the guests arrived on time. There was one guest who actually arrived late. But her grand entrance perhaps made up for her tardiness.
By ten after nine, most of the guests were already seated and enjoying the smell of steaks being grilled and eggs fried. Guadalupe’s absence was quite conspicuous with only five of them left, and most of the guests were already assuming the worst. But then, at precisely 9:11 A.M., they all heard a loud crash as something smashed through the glass and out one of the windows four stories above them.
Even the chefs manning the grill stations looked up and watched a seemingly naked, yet unnaturally pasty, human figure fall toward the pavement next to the swimming pool. The guests and staff were almost too shocked to react as the body plummeted down with frightening speed.
Jacqueline realized what was happening just in time to let out a horrible scream as the body finally hit the pavement. Most of the witnesses instinctively looked away upon impact, expecting a wet and sickening plop as the body splattered across the hard granite patio tiles.
It was the unusual noise that made most of them turn their heads back toward the grisly scene. When the body hit the pavement, there was a crash almost like the sound ice machines make when they’ve finished dumping a new batch of ice into the storage bins. Instead of splattering, the unusually pale, naked body shattered into thousands of hard pieces that slid across the granite tiles like ice cubes, some even landing in the swimming pool.
The chunks of human were shades of deep reds and purples, yet there was no actual blood. It was almost as if what had just fallen four stories was a porcelain replica of a human being and not an actual person. But the witnesses all knew that wasn’t actually the case.
They didn’t even need to walk over and see a shard of the body’s partially intact face to know that they’d all just witnessed the murder of Guadalupe Ferrara.
CHAPTER 34
THE SIXTH VICTIM
It had taken some time to get the visibly shaken Jacqueline to calm down. After they’d all realized what had happened, the normally calm and optimistic retired nurse basically broke into hysterics.
“I can’t take this anymore,” she kept repeating through her sobs. “This ain’t happening, it can’t be happening. I can’t take this!”
Darrel had, not surprisingly, been the first one to try to console her. But his efforts did little to calm her down. It wasn’t as if she’d been particularly close to Guadalupe—-nobody had been, really—but it was more that the horrific nature of her murder, and the culmination of seeing death after death, had likely finally taken its toll on the old woman’s mental state and seemingly unflappable affability.
Giles enlisted the aid of one of the chefs to help get everyone ushered inside the mansion. As he was leaving, he saw the estate maintenance super scooping up Guadalupe’s remains off the pavement with a shovel, the chunks of her body clacking together like ice cubes or stones. He was likely acting on separate instructions he’d received from the killer earlier that morning. Why else would he have been so prepared with a large Styrofoam box and shovel nearby?
Once they were all inside the mansion’s sunroom, Giles found an envelope waiting for him at the butler’s station. He opened it and scanned the contents as the guests finally were able to get Jacqueline calmed to quiet sobs. He had to admit that her sudden outburst had even unnerved him. Things were getting intense, and her unexpected reaction had certainly cemented that.
“My dear guests,” he said, addressing them as they sat at the table in the center of the sun-soaked room, “it seems as though we are down to just four. The end of our game is fast approaching. Very soon, we will have a winner. But for right now, we have another murder to solve. This particular murder will require a somewhat unique investigation period. It seems that the victim’s last known whereabouts happens to be her bedroom suite, which is, of course, connected to the crime scene, which is the bathroom. So we will hold three separate investigation periods this time, so as not to cross-contaminate the activities occurring in each location. As usual, you will still be allowed the choice to investigate only one location for thirty minutes. You will wait here until it is your turn to investigate. Please take twenty minutes to make your decisions. The chefs will serve you the breakfast they worked so hard to prepare this morning while you decide. I do hope you enjoy the meal. Oh, and please choose wisely. There is little room for mistakes.”
CHAPTER 35
WINTER WONDERLAND
Guadalupe’s bathroom was like a winter wonderland. But was that even usable evidence? Bryce wondered aloud.
“I mean, what the hell could have done this?” he said. “What could it mean?”
If Thomas knew the answer, he didn’t say so. Instead he merely looked around at the frosted ice shavings covering the bathroom. There were chunks of ice on the floor, ceiling, walls, and even all over the shattered frosted glass window through which Guadalupe’s body had somehow been launched. It looked like some mad supervillain from a lame comic book had sprayed the room with a deadly ice gun or some such ridiculous thing.
The more important question for Thomas was: What could have possibly propelled her out the window like that? The other four guests had all been on the patio when it had happened, so the killer couldn’t have done it manually.
Thomas crouched on the floor and inspected the bottom of the claw-foot bathtub. He’d never seen an antique-style claw-foot tub with Jacuzzi jets before. But as an engineer, he wasn’t surprised that they existed.
If he was looking for some kind of mechanical hinge, or device that would have caused the tub to catapult her out the window, he didn’t find it. He did, however, notice that the tub’s back two legs were each attached to the floor by four large bolts, whereas the two legs nearest him and farthest from the window were not attached by anything at all.
He q
uickly sat up, hoping that Bryce had been too busy flicking at the frost on the walls to have noticed.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Thomas said.
“Bull crap, dude, I saw your face!” Bryce said with a grin, apparently not connecting Thomas’s lie with another attempt to sabotage Bryce in a matter of life and death. “You totally saw something interesting.”
Thomas just shook his head as he climbed to his feet.
“Whatever, guy, I’ll just look for myself,” Bryce said, getting down on his hands and knees.
Thomas looked around the rest of the large bathroom, checking for anything else he may have missed. The door was shut and they were not allowed to open it. They’d been escorted up here blindfolded, so as to not get any unfair glimpses into the last known whereabouts, or bedroom suite. He wasn’t sure he could handle being trapped in this room with this moron for a full half hour.
If Bryce had found the same evidence Thomas had underneath the tub, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stood up again and leaned over the tub, trying to look out the shattered window.
As the sun continued climbing in the eastern sky, its rays seeped into the room. The frost and ice chunks on the walls began melting as the half-hour investigation neared a close. It was a small area, and, for the first time for both of them, they finished their investigations early.
Bryce tried to fill the last five minutes with either genuine, open speculation or a mind game of some sort. Thomas couldn’t tell, but given the punk’s propensity for marijuana, he assumed it was ill-advised engagement of the former.
“So who do you think the killer is?” Bryce asked as he watched the melting frost bleed down the walls around them.
“It’s hard to say,” Thomas said slowly after a long delay, deciding it might be fun to actually engage him on this topic after all. “It really doesn’t seem like it could be any of us. I actually think it’s one of the maids, or maybe even someone we haven’t seen at all yet. This mansion is huge; there could be, like, twenty other people lurking around who we don’t even know are here.”
“Damn,” Bryce said. Then he added, “I never thought of that.”
Thomas wasn’t sure what an appropriate response to that would be, so he just kept quiet. But it didn’t matter, since Bryce started talking again after just a few seconds.
“Well, I honestly thought I was dead when I was Scared this last time,” he said. “Because I really thought that Guadalupe was the killer! I figured there was no way the killer was gonna kill herself, know what I mean? So, in my eyes, that card was like a death sentence, man!”
“But you were wrong, apparently,” Thomas said.
“Yeah, apparently,” Bryce said, then paused a beat. “Did you think I was gonna die?”
He didn’t really expect Thomas to answer, but the skinny, creepy dude surprised him with an answer so blunt, it was like getting hit in the face with a bowling ball.
“Yes,” he said, pushing his large glasses up his sharp nose.
“Ha-ha,” Bryce said with no trace of humor. “Maybe we should, like, team up this time, or whatever? I mean, those other two are obviously going to work together and two heads are better than one. I hate that saying, my stepdad says it all the time and he’s the biggest douche I’ve ever met. But he’s got a point, right?”
Thomas didn’t respond right away. Instead he tried to avoid looking at Bryce’s hopeful face. He didn’t like the idea of teaming up with any of the remaining guests. He was the smartest one left; he didn’t need their help.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Thomas finally said.
“Oh,” Bryce said. “Okay.”
For the last thirty seconds, they merely stood there looking at each other warily. By the time the estate bell rang, and they were instructed to put their blindfolds back on, pretty much every ounce of frozen water in the bathroom had melted.
They’d arrived to a virtual winter wonderland, but by the time they were escorted back to their separate suites, the bathroom had become a soggy marsh.
CHAPTER 36
HUMAN ICE CUBES
Jacqueline worked completely alone in the dark morgue for the very first time. And it would have been creepy enough even without her breakdown earlier. The fact that the body this time was inside a rectangular plastic bin the size of a large cooler certainly didn’t help matters.
Once again, as part of her and Darrel’s plan, they split up again. Darrel would take the last known whereabouts. She’d honestly wanted to pass on the morgue this time around, but she knew that they’d be much better served with her down here and him up there.
Outside on the patio surface, the sight of the shattered body had been horrific enough because of what it’d represented. But the fact that the chunks of Guadalupe had not bled for whatever reason had kept it from being unfathomably disgusting. However, by the time one of the maids finally escorted Jacqueline down to the morgue, she feared that the chunks of the victim’s body would be thawed, slimy, bloody, soggy slabs of meat and bone and skin.
Even with forty years of experience as a nurse, it would be an utterly shocking and disgusting sight to behold. One that she didn’t think she’d be able to stomach. But when she opened the plastic bin sitting on top of the metal table, she was relieved to see that it was, in fact, an insulated cooler, complete with a three-inch frozen insulation layer.
Which meant that the hundreds of chunks of Guadalupe piled inside were still frozen solid. Not that it really made it all that much less disgusting, but it was stomach-able at the very least.
It was difficult to know what evidence to possibly look for in a bucket of human ice cubes, but Jacqueline began looking nonetheless. She took out the pieces of the victim one by one, telling herself that they were fake. If she didn’t, she likely wouldn’t have been able to continue.
The first, most obvious question, of course, was: What could have caused this? Jacqueline felt like she already had a pretty good idea. There were likely only a few substances known that could flash freeze a human being like that. And she had seen one used many times at the hospital to freeze off people’s moles and other skin tags.
The second question was: What else was she looking for?
In the end, Jacqueline had a feeling that she’d know it when she found it. And she was right. About halfway through the bin of leftover Guadalupe, Jacqueline found a still-frozen piece of the victim that had something else less human attached to it. Several of the pieces had had glass shards frozen to them, but this one was different. It wasn’t glass.
Jacqueline held up Guadalupe’s frozen finger under the naked lightbulb above her. Frozen to the tip of one of the victim’s severed index fingers was a small white disk, about the size of a half-dollar coin. Not that people really ever used those much anymore. Jacqueline had loved getting them from her dad every Sunday for her allowance. She’d collected them in a huge jar under her bed. And that was back when they had a picture of Ben Franklin on them, not JFK, and back when they were made of pure silver.
But the thing attached to Guadalupe’s finger wasn’t a silver fifty-cent piece.
It was white and had no markings. It was slightly convex from the fingertip out. It was still frozen itself, so it was somewhat hard to tell, but it seemed to be made of some sort of plastic. After examining the object and finger for the better part of five minutes, Jacqueline had a feeling that she knew precisely what it was.
Satisfied, she set it aside and began digging through the rest of the Guadalupe cubes. She worked until her time ran out, making good time with nobody else down there to distract her. But by the time the estate bell rang and her time was up, she hadn’t found anything else unusual or note-worthy.
CHAPTER 37
NO HABLA ESPAÑOL
When Darrel entered Guadalupe’s suite, he noticed right away that the bathroom door was closed. Giles stood in the bedroom doorway, where he would stay for the duration of Darrel’s investigation t
o make sure he didn’t try to sneak any peeks into the crime scene area.
Sometimes during this game, the evidence had been somewhat difficult to find. It had taken some real searching and digging to uncover. But this time, it hit Darrel in the face as soon as he entered the room. Of course, the real challenge was going to be to figure out what it meant.
It was hard to miss, really, the mess on the desk and walls. The desk next to Guadalupe’s king-sized bed was completely splattered with some kind of dark substance. At first, Darrel thought he was looking at blood splatters, as if she’d been bludgeoned to death while hunched over the desk, writing a letter. But when he got closer, he realized the substance was way too dark to be blood, dried or otherwise.
The real culprit as to the source of the substance became apparent when Darrel looked at the desk itself. There was an antique fountain pen resting atop some estate stationery. The pen itself was covered in ink. The liquid had also pooled under it and onto the desk itself. There was also a clear trajectory of ink spraying up from the desk and onto the walls. It wasn’t merely a pen that had broken. Broken pens don’t eject their ink into spraying jets like that. It was definitely a trick exploding pen of some kind.
Darrel looked down at what Guadalupe had been writing. It was her last letter home that the killer had instructed her and Bryce to write that morning. Sadly, it looked as though hers would never get finished, or sent. Not that she’d gotten very far before her pen had exploded, anyway.
Estimado Sr. Machado,
Escribo para decir adiós. Y también para
obtener mi asunto en orden. Soy j
That was as far as she’d gotten. Darrel didn’t speak Spanish, so he had no idea what the letter said. But he did think that a letter home to loved ones wouldn’t be addressed to Sr. Machado. If he were writing his last letter home to his wife, he wouldn’t call her Mrs. Gleason. He wondered briefly to whom Guadalupe was actually writing her last letter, but then quickly dismissed the question. It didn’t matter, really, in terms of solving this murder. He knew that.
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