And that would also mean there would be another loser. Which would leave just the killer and a winner. The game could very well be over by dessert. The thought made Giles grin as he watched Jacqueline investigate the study.
But what Giles didn’t know, as he stood there smiling, was that the killer had one more twist in store for them all that day. One that would change the very nature of the game itself entirely.
CHAPTER 46
354 SPECIES
“Since you’ve all investigated the same areas, there will be no need to give you the chance to share what you’ve learned. In fact, that would defeat the very purpose of the rule changes the killer has implemented for this investigation. Hence we will move right on to the challenge, which will be followed thereafter by a light lunch! So I hope you’re all hungry,” Giles said to the three guests standing around him in the foyer.
He then handed a quarter to each of them.
“Our killer, feeling spry I suppose, has written the accompanying riddle from the perspective of our dearly departed victim, Darrel Gleason. So, without further adieu…”
As Giles paused to look down at the card in his hand, the guests readied their pens.
“ ‘I was indeed murdered by a species of shark, just not the one that you think. Some of you might go rushing back to the tank to find a tenuous link. And maybe you’ll find one, but maybe you won’t, it’s really quite hard to say. But use your quarter to help find the truth—that’s the true American way. Size it up, sell it, save it, invest it, trade it, do whatever you wish. But keep in mind, a name is just a name, as you look for your killer fish.’ ”
After the guests finished writing down the riddle, they all reacted differently. Thomas departed almost immediately, heading in the direction of the aquarium. Jacqueline left very soon after, going instead into the dining room, perhaps on her way to the kitchen. Bryce, however, stood there and brainstormed for nearly five full minutes. He read and reread the riddle several times.
Giles watched him with interest. But soon he would need to retreat to the security control room to monitor the guests’ activities. He’d been given instructions to ring the estate bell as soon as one of the guests solved the riddle, or after forty minutes, whichever occurred first.
Several minutes later, after Bryce had finally seemed to reach some realization and dashed off, Giles was sitting in the control room intently watching the guests on the large monitor in front of him, grappling with the challenge.
Thomas had, in fact, gone back to the aquarium room. Giles watched as the young man inspected all the labels on the various fish tanks, likely looking for some sort of link between the fish name and the quarter. He seemed to grow increasingly frustrated as he neared the last tank.
Meanwhile, Jacqueline had passed right through the dining room and into the kitchen. She spent a great deal of her time there inside the large walk-in fridges and freezers, where there were no cameras. Giles suspected that she might have been looking for shark meat among the estate’s stores of food. It was not a bad theory, but it was also incorrect.
After Bryce’s short brainstorming session, he headed toward the mansion’s infirmary. When fully staffed, the estate had a small section of rooms in the west wing dedicated to medical care, in which a house physician’s assistant could see guests or employees alike for whatever ailment befell them.
It took Giles a few moments to figure out what might have led Bryce there, but then it hit him: nurse sharks. Bryce had wisely decided to tackle the riddle at its core, from within, instead of trying to decipher the wordplay. For the riddle itself stated in the opening line, “I was indeed murdered by a species of shark, just not the one that you think.”
That line of thinking would indeed eventually lead Bryce to the correct answer if there was time. Giles watched intently as all three of the guests’ first tries came up empty. Bryce was the first one to abandon his initial plan and head elsewhere. Through a string of camera feeds, Giles saw Bryce running down the mansion’s hallways and eventually outside to the garden.
The garden’s cameras captured him as he made his way toward the maintenance shed. Giles grinned. Clever boy, indeed. By now, he also noticed that a sudden, correct thought had occurred to Jacqueline and Thomas as well. Judging from their paths through the mansion, they were also headed to the same place as Bryce.
But Bryce got there first, throwing open the door to the shed and rushing inside. He emerged a short time later with a standard-sized claw hammer gripped in his hand. Giles couldn’t see it through the video camera footage, but he knew the blunt end of the hammer was stained with blood and likely a few strands of Darrel’s hair. As Bryce held up the hammer and put the quarter to the blunt end, making a perfect match, Giles pressed the estate bell button in the control room.
The chimes rang throughout the estate, stopping Thomas and Jacqueline just as they both reached the edge of the garden from opposite ends. But they had gotten there in time to see Bryce holding the hammer up triumphantly.
Darrel had been murdered by a shark species, it seemed. But, indeed, a name was just name. He was killed by a hammerhead. Or a hammer to his head, to be more exact.
CHAPTER 47
TIES ARE FOR SOCCER AND SUITS
Maids and servants led the three guests to the mansion’s massive formal living room, where Giles was already waiting for them. Trays of finger sandwiches, fruit, and shrimp cocktail were spread across several of the room’s end tables. The room was as ornate as the rest of the mansion. The sofas and chairs were French antiques and everything else was custom made from only the finest materials, including the grand piano, fireplace mantel, and huge grandfather clock.
“Please, sit down, make yourselves comfortable,” Giles said. “Have lunch while you take turns going to an adjacent room to make your murder pitches. Pam will take drink orders.”
The guests scooped food onto their plates and then sat, each on their own chair or sofa, not very far from one another, but not very close, either. They likely felt as wary as they looked at this point. Even the killer had to be tired. Orchestrating this game certainly couldn’t have been easy. The guests’ trust levels were also at an all-time low as they eyed one another suspiciously while they chewed on lunch.
One by one, and for the very last time, they were taken to an adjacent room to make their murder pitches to a single camera on a tripod. Once all had their turn, the tension level seemed even higher, if that were possible. They had finished eating by now and looked anxious for Giles to dismiss them back to their suites.
So that’s exactly what he did.
“Well done for making it this far, all of you,” he said. “It’s quite unfortunate that one more of you must still die, but such are the rules of the game. So I will ask at this time that each of you retire to your individual suites. When you hear the estate bell chime, it means the killer has made his or her decision. You will have twenty minutes to prepare yourselves and meet right here, in this living room. At which time the winner will be revealed, one of you will die, and the game will be over.”
Two servants and a maid escorted the guests back to their suites, locking them in from the outside. Giles and the remainder of the service staff cleaned and prepared the living room as instructed by the killer.
The three guests paced nervously in their suites, each too anxious to do anything else at first. Even the killer anxiously paced while watching the final round of murder pitches. There was one final twist to the game, but it would of course be the hardest one to execute. It was grander and more complex than anything the killer had ever dreamed up before.
After the estate bell rang hours later, they arrived back in the living room right on schedule. None of them had even considered trying to hide. At this point they had a 66 percent chance of surviving. There was no point in trying to break the rules now. Besides, all of them had been quite confident with their stated murder cases this time around. They each assumed that there was no way they’d be on the bottom
this time.
“My dearest guests,” Giles said, greeting them warmly with open arms. “So glad you could join me again. I’m sure you’re all quite anxious to find out who has won and who has lost. So let’s dispense with the pleasantries and get down to it, shall we? Please, sit.”
He motioned toward the largest couch in the center of the living room. All three guests sat on the same couch. Giles stood calmly in front of them, flanked on each side by two maids. The guests noticed that neither Giles nor the maids held any sort of envelopes this time around.
“I will start by relaying a shocking bit of news,” Giles said once the guests were seated. “Unfortunately, the killer has revealed to me that none of you has won.”
This was met with a sharp gasp from Jacqueline. Bryce’s jaw swung open, and Thomas’s eyes narrowed into a laser-beam stare that seemed like it might melt a hole right through Giles’s forehead.
“Do not be alarmed!” Giles assured them. “It also means that none of you has lost, either. For now. It seems you have all done quite well on this last challenge. Each of you was very close to getting the murder correct, but you all missed one small detail here and there. So you have all tied!”
The guests looked at one another, unsure of what exactly that meant.
“I will get to what that means for you all going forward in a moment,” Giles said. “But right now, I’m going to tell you what you… mostly already know. I will explain how one of you murdered Mr. Gleason.
“Our victim was in the study when the killer arrived. The killer quietly covered the security camera in the room and then placed a gun to the back of the victim’s head. Using calm, direct orders, the killer forced the victim to put on a blindfold and ball gag and, using gold handcuffs from a nearby award plaque, bound the victim’s hands behind his back.
“The killer escorted the victim to a nearby utility room, which had direct access to the top of the shark tank for feeding and maintenance. Standing on the platform above the tank and behind the victim, the killer proceeded to strike the victim a single time in the back of the head with a hammer. The victim fell, either already dead or unconscious, into the shark tank. The blood attracted the testosterone-charged and aggressive bull shark, one that also had been starved for the past week, toward the victim. In a single bite, the shark bit off the victim’s head. Realizing that Mr. Gleason was not, in fact, proper marine life food, the shark retreated, finally feeding on a bucket of fish the killer dumped into the tank in order to ensure that the rest of the body stayed intact.”
Giles finished and saw mostly blank expressions in front of him. But of course, they were anxious to find out what would happen next. They hardly cared about the details they had missed at this point. So he left them waiting no longer.
“And now, back to our game. I have a message to read from the killer: ‘Congratulations, you have become worthy adversaries,’ ” Giles read from a card. “ ‘And so it is with great pleasure that I have planned one final challenge for you. By sunrise, there will be a winner, a loser, and a killer. Which is to say that I will have killed one of you, and the other will finally be free to leave. But this will be no ordinary challenge. I have cherry-picked some of my favorite clues from the other murders to incorporate into this last game. You remaining three will be tasked with using these clues to piece everything together in order to finally figure out Whodunnit.’ ”
Giles finished reading and looked up at the three remaining guests. But he really didn’t even get a chance to gauge their reactions, because suddenly all the lights went out, engulfing the three guests, Giles, and two maids in complete and total darkness. The black was filled with silence for a split second, and then suddenly the world around them exploded.
A horrific, metallic screeching noise erupted below them. Seemingly everyone screamed as a wide variety of indistinguishable, loud noises crashed everywhere. The floor rumbled and vibrated, and there was more screeching that drowned out everything else.
And then, suddenly, it all stopped. Just as quickly as it had all started, it was once again pitch-black and completely silent.
It was as if time were standing still.
CHAPTER 48
ENDGAME
The silence didn’t last long, though.
Two more massive crashes rocked the room, followed by more screams. The voices of the contestants rang out, calling for Giles, but there was no reply. Was he dead or simply gone? In the darkness, they couldn’t tell.
Why is it so dark? one of them wondered, having failed to notice before the lights had gone out that the curtains in the room had all been sealed to the walls around the windows, creating a virtual light vacuum inside the living room.
But then, perhaps just minutes after the lights had gone out, they suddenly popped back on again. The brightness blinded all three of them for just a moment. But as their eyes adjusted, they saw that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
“What… the…” Bryce said.
They looked around the living room, as they all still sat on the couch. It was no longer the living room, or… it was, but it wasn’t quite the same. The whole room had been flipped entirely upside down!
Aside from the couch they sat on, every single other item in the living room was now on the ceiling… or the floor, technically, but now it was the ceiling, too. The grand piano, grandfather clock, lamps, tables, chairs, all of it suspended from the ceiling. The windows were upside down, the decorative hand-carved wainscoting was upside down. Chandeliers now rested on the floor, which was actually the ceiling, of course.
And Giles was nowhere in sight. The two maids who had been at his side were both crumpled on the ceiling floor in front of the couch, either dead or unconscious.
“What the hell just happened?” Bryce said again.
Again he got no reply from Jacqueline or Thomas. But this time they almost didn’t even get a chance to reply. Because suddenly the room was shaking and a deep rumble vibrated from below the floor up to their stomachs. There was a short crack from above them, and even before all three of them managed to look up, the grand piano was falling.
It landed on the body of one of the maids with a crash that left all of their ears ringing. Before they even had a chance to react, the grandfather clock fell next as the rumbling of the mansion continued. It landed on the other maid’s body, sending shards of glass and splinters of wood flying in all directions.
Bryce instinctively reached out to shield Jacqueline from the debris. But the rumbling continued, and so did the raining furniture. All they could really do was cower and duck for cover as tables, lamps, couches, chairs, and vases came crashing down all around them. It lasted for several minutes, the noise deafening, until every piece of furniture had fallen from the floor above them onto the ceiling under their feet.
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rumbling stopped and the mansion was quiet again. The three guests stood and looked at one another. They all appeared to be okay.
“Thank you, dear,” Jacqueline said as Bryce helped her stand up again.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
Jacqueline shook her head as she looked around the room, luxury shattered all around them. Thomas and Bryce did the same. But they didn’t need to wonder for long, because a few seconds later a prerecorded message from the killer began playing through unseen speakers. The voice had been altered to hide the killer’s identity:
“Congratulations, you are the final three. But there’s so much more than meets the eye, you see. Solve this double homicide, and do it fast. Figure out my little trick, and you’ll win at last. Your time starts now, in tune with your beating hearts. If you want to survive, I suggest you start.”
As they listened intently, trying to take in the words without any means to write them down, the three guests became vaguely aware that four male estate staff members had entered the upside-down living room through secret panel doors in the spots where the regular doors had been before they’d someho
w been shifted to the ceiling with the rest of the room. The servants dug through the rubble of the piano and grandfather clock and placed the maids’ bodies inside two body bags.
They finished shortly after the killer’s recording ceased. Before leaving with the maids’ bodies, one of the servants handed Bryce an envelope. He gave them all a grim look but said nothing.
Then, just like that, Thomas, Bryce, and Jacqueline were alone in the upside-down living room.
CHAPTER 49
THE EIGHTH AND NINTH VICTIMS
Bryce tore open the envelope. It contained a single card. He read it and then read it again, the second time aloud.
“ ‘This murder has the same structure as those before it,’ ” he read. “ ‘There is a crime scene, in which you are standing, the morgue, and the maids’ last known whereabouts, which is their quarters in the servants’ house behind the mansion. You are to investigate each area for twenty minutes together as a group. You must all stay together for the time being. Failure to follow these rules, as always, will result in your deaths. More instructions will arrive in due time. Good luck!’ ”
They looked at one another, their eyes accusing and scared and determined all at once.
“Well, let’s get started, we’re wasting time,” Thomas said.
He started picking through the remnants of the grand piano. There were droplets of the maids’ blood all around him. Bryce and Jacqueline joined soon after and the three of them looked through the debris together.
“Anything at all?” Thomas asked after a few minutes.
“No, it just looks like a smashed piano to me,” Bryce said.
“I found this, but it might be nothing,” Jacqueline said.
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