Thomas quickly looked toward the study door. He hadn’t heard or seen either of the contestants in a while. He was sure they were still way behind him. They had to be; he had the map, after all, which meant that they never would find it.
He clicked on the name David Bazan and brought up his profile. This profile had some content. Just two items:
1. His favorite movie was listed as Jaws.
2. And there was just one post, a link to a video.
Thomas opened the video. It was footage from some university somewhere. A professor was on a stage in front of a lecture hall. He held a glass of water over a vat filled with something emitting tons of smoke or steam. Liquid nitrogen.
The professor then poured the water into the tub: boom!
There was a huge explosion in the video as water and nitrogen sprayed everywhere. The students and professor, all wearing protective goggles and thick rubber aprons, either screamed or took a step back. Or both.
Thomas sat there and stared at the screen. Both Jaws being listed as the favorite movie and the posted video were definitely clues. But what did they mean? They didn’t really do anything to indicate who the murderer was. Thomas considered carefully what he might have missed. Then he angrily stuffed the map into his pocket and headed back toward the morgue to look for more evidence.
Just the same, despite this minor roadblock, he was still confident he was going to win.
CHAPTER 54
WHODUNNIT?
Bryce, on the other hand, couldn’t have been feeling any worse about his chances. He was beginning to wish Giles hadn’t disappeared on them. He hadn’t quite realized before that moment just how comforting it had been knowing that the cheeky British butler was always around. With the butler missing, panic was truly setting in.
Bryce had gone back to the maids’ quarters after his mostly unsuccessful trips to the crime scene and morgue. He found the mess Thomas had made searching for the map, but he couldn’t figure out what to make of it. He riffled through the maid’s purse again, picking up the car keys. They had to be a clue that related to the car accident murder.
There was one obvious car key on the key ring, since it had a Chevy emblem on it, and one normal-looking house key. The key ring had only one key chain attached, a small leather pad that had the word “Camaro” printed on it. That struck him as somewhat familiar in some way, as if that should mean something more than simply a kind of sports car, but he couldn’t quite figure out why.
So Bryce merely put the keys back into the purse, again unsure of what significance they held. He sighed and then left the maids’ quarters, heading back toward the crime scene. He needed to figure out what he might have missed there, especially with the clock.
Bryce didn’t see either Jacqueline or Thomas as he worked his way from the servants’ house to the mansion’s upside-down living room. He went back over to the clock and picked up the face again. He spun it upside down and stared at it: 6:90.
That just didn’t make any sense. Frustrated, and close to tears, he spun it around and around in his hands until the numbers were nothing but blurs.
That was it!
He had been thinking about it all wrong. Don’t look at the numbers, just the hands. He held the clockface upside down again. The hands now said 3:00 A.M.
It didn’t tell him much that was very helpful at the moment, but he was convinced that that was the proper answer to the puzzle. The question now was: What did it mean? He glanced at his watch, which up until that week, he’d worn mostly as a fashion item rather than a functioning timepiece. But since his cell phone had been rendered useless out here, he’d stopped carrying it around with him, once again making his watch relevant.
It was already 2:03 A.M. He couldn’t believe how much time had passed. It had been hours since the room had flipped upside down and Giles disappeared.
The clock clue definitely had to mean something… likely that something was going to happen at 3:00 A.M. But he knew he needed to piece together more clues for it to be relevant. There had to be more to this than simply waiting around until 3:00 A.M.
So Bryce sprinted back to the maids’ quarters. It was the only room where he’d found nothing additional since they’d received the clue to “look at things another way.” Which meant that the key to knowing what to do next had to be in there.
Once back, he really inspected the remnants on the table. Someone—he had no idea whether it was Thomas or Jacqueline—had truly made a mess of things. The plastic dinner containers were upside down, their food spilled out all across the table. Napkins and plastic forks were everywhere, both on the table and the floor under it.
Bryce picked up the empty sushi box. He looked at the name “Pam” written upside down the way he was holding it. It spelled “wad.” That didn’t make any sense at all. But maybe he was once again thinking too literally. Upside down could also mean backward. He reversed the letters: “Pam” backward spelled “map.” That had to be it.
He looked through the mess on the table for a map of some kind, obviously exactly what the person before him had been searching for. What Thomas didn’t realize, for all of his smug satisfaction, was that the killer had made multiple copies of the map on several napkins.
And Bryce found one of them.
Bryce followed the map with a little more difficulty than Thomas, but it still eventually led him to the study. Had Thomas not left in such a hurry, and also so confident that no one else would be led there, he might not have left the laptop open. And had he closed it, Bryce might have never figured out what to do next.
But the fact is, the open computer made it quite easy for Bryce to piece together the rest. He logged in, looked at the already open browser, and made the same conclusions as Thomas.
Both of the clues on David Bazan’s page clearly meant something, but what?
Leaning back in his chair, Bryce thought about all the evidence so far. The only thing that kept bothering him was those damn keys. What did they mean? And why did seeing the Camaro key chain spark some hint of recognition?
Then it hit him like a right cross to the side of his head. There had been cars parked behind the servants’ house. He’d seen a Camaro parked back there the day they’d arrived, when he and Emily had walked all the way around the mansion, pool house, and servant quarters to see just how huge the manor was. That had to be the clue. Sophia and Parker’s murder had been the only one that none of the clues had related to so far. So the car keys had to be the missing clue. It may have been a stretch, but he had to at least check it out. If not that, then what else did he have?
So Bryce ran back through the mansion and then outside, and eventually made his way into the servants’ house. He rushed into the maids’ quarters and grabbed the car keys. He ran outside again and around to the back of the small building. There were just two cars parked in the large gravel lot: a small Toyota that was perhaps a decade old and a vintage 1969 Chevy Camaro convertible. Bryce knew he was right when he saw that it was a convertible, just like the car that had killed Parker and Sophia.
Bryce practically sprinted across the gravel toward the red Camaro. He got in the driver’s side and put the keys into the ignition. Or, at least, that’s what he tried to do. The thing was, the key didn’t fit. It was too small.
He shouted curses into the empty and uncaring night sky. He’d been so sure this had been right.
He got out of the car and then noticed that the tires had been slashed. So he was obviously never meant to drive it, even if it was the missing clue. He moved around to the trunk. The key fit perfectly.
Bryce’s heart leaped as he turned it and the trunk popped open.
Inside were the jaws and teeth of a shark encased within a large block of ice sitting in an open cooler. Then it all clicked together so much faster than he ever would have guessed. On David Bazan’s profile: the movie Jaws and the video of the liquid nitrogen demonstration.
He knew exactly what he needed to do next.
B
ryce noticed a pair of ice hooks next to the cooler. He grinned as he picked them up. Now he knew he was right for sure. He dug the hooks into the ice and sprinted back toward the mansion awkwardly. The ice was much heavier than he’d expected.
He made his way up to the fourth floor and into Guadalupe’s suite. All of her stuff was still there, exactly as she and the other guests had left it. He was surprised to feel a pang of guilt over being so excited. So many people had died here the past few days. It still did bother him, of course, how could it not? But at the same time, he was now so close to maybe winning. To getting a chance to make it out of there alive. He vowed to himself right there and then, as he rushed through Guadalupe’s suite, that if he did get out of there alive, he’d get a job. Or go to college. Or do something for once, besides just hanging out and getting high all the time.
The bathtub in the adjoining bathroom was already full when he got there. The liquid inside of it was smoking just like in the video posted on David Bazan’s profile page. It was full of liquid nitrogen. Then he saw the goggles, large rubber apron, and gloves hanging from the towel hook on the bathroom door.
Bryce carefully set down the ice and put them on.
He picked the ice back up and took a deep breath. It was now or never. He stood as far back as he could and then tossed the ice block into the tub of liquid nitrogen.
Ka-boom!
Water and ice chunks sprayed everywhere. He ducked and threw his arms up in front of his face. All four legs of the tub were now bolted down, so it stayed firmly in place.
When the water and ice particles finally settled, Bryce noticed that the force of the explosion had blown both the ice block and shark jaws into pieces. The chunks had flown everywhere: into the sink, behind him onto the bedroom suite’s hardwood floor—there was even one shark tooth stuck in his tangled hair.
Bryce picked it out and looked down at it. He was just about to toss it aside when he did a quick double take. There was a faint letter engraved on the tooth: N.
Bryce put it on the counter and scrambled around the bathroom, picking up all the shark teeth he could find. He gathered close to forty, in the end, but not all of them were engraved with letters. He grouped together the ones that contained letters and placed them side by side on the bathroom counter.
L, Q, C, J, E, E, N, I, A, U.
Had the retired nurse had a more common and nondescript name, like Susan or Linda, it might have taken Bryce a lot longer to figure out this final clue. But the distinct J and Q, and the sheer volume of letters in her name, made it surprisingly easy to solve. It only took him a matter of seconds to realize what the letters on the teeth spelled if unscrambled: Jacqueline. The realization hit him so hard, he had to stumble back and sit down on Guadalupe’s bed. Jacqueline had been the killer all along.
CHAPTER 55
NO ESCAPE
Instead of being elated at solving the crime and ultimate puzzle, Bryce realized that he was more nervous than anything else. After all, he was still inside the mansion with a psychopathic killer posing as a sweet, fun-loving old lady.
Bryce exited Guadalupe’s bedroom cautiously, looking both ways down the hallway. The mansion was completely silent. That only made it all worse. He worked his way to the top of the stairs above the mansion foyer.
“Jacqueline?” he called out. “Thomas? I’ve found something crazy, you guys!”
He tried to play it off as if he knew nothing. He waited and then called out for them again. No answer. So Bryce descended the steps slowly. He made his way cautiously back to the living room. This is where everything had started that night, after all. Maybe it’s where it would all end?
Bryce was pretty relieved to find Thomas standing in the center of the still-upside-down room.
“Oh, dude, am I glad to see you!” Bryce said, walking toward Thomas. “I never thought I’d say that, but… Hey, what’s going on?”
Thomas just stood there with his back to him, perfectly motionless. He didn’t turn around or indicate that he’d even heard Bryce speak at all. Bryce reached out and nudged his shoulder. Thomas swayed slightly but didn’t speak.
Bryce circled around to face him and that’s when he saw the bullet hole in Thomas’s forehead. There was a trail of dried blood that streaked away from the wound, but it ran up his head rather than down his face. How was that even possible? How was he still standing for that matter when he was clearly dead?
Bryce reached out and pushed Thomas in the chest. The corpse teetered back and fell to the floor, the legs bent at an awkward angle. Then Bryce realized why Thomas’s legs looked so weird. His shoes were still firmly planted to the floor despite having fallen over.
Bryce crouched down and examined the soles. They were thick and clearly made of metal of some kind. Which suddenly explained how the killer had managed to kill both maids while upside down. They’d all three been wearing these same magnetic metal shoes. When the room had flipped upside down, Jacqueline had killed them both quickly in the dark, then moved back over to the couch before the lights had switched back on. Among the rumbling and chaos, Bryce had had no idea which of them might have gotten up from the couch. All he really remembered from that moment was being scared and thinking he was likely going to die.
As if on cue with his sudden discovery, the lights all cut out again. Panicked that the room may start revolving, Bryce worked his way blindly toward the door. He reached out in front of him, tripping and falling over debris several times along the way. But eventually he did reach the wall and then felt his way along it to the door.
In the rest of the mansion, there was just enough moonlight seeping in through the windows for him to see where he was going. He had to get out of there. He ran toward the double front doors. They were locked.
“Crap!” he whispered.
He fiddled with the lock, but it didn’t work. The front doors were somehow locked from the outside. So Bryce ran back through the mansion toward the east door leading out to the patio.
It was also locked from the outside.
Panic ripped through his body. He was going to die. Even after all of that. He could hardly believe it.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“Holy!” Bryce screamed. He was sure his heart was exploding all over the inside of his rib cage.
He whirled around, waving his arms in an awkward attempt to fend off his attacker. But he hit only air as the figure stepped to the side.
“Please, remain calm,” a familiar voice said.
“Giles? Is that you?” Bryce whispered into the darkness.
“Oh, is there some other individual with an English accent roaming the mansion of whom I am unaware?” Giles quipped.
“Thank God!” Bryce said. “I thought you were dead, man.”
“As did I there, for a moment,” Giles said calmly. “But apparently it was not yet my time.”
CHAPTER 56
THE CURSE
Bryce laughed nervously.
“Relax,” Giles assured him.
Then suddenly the lights switched back on. Giles stood in front of Bryce grinning in a way Bryce hadn’t seen from the butler before. The man seemed genuinely elated. And that made sense: for him the nightmare was finally over, regardless of what happened to Bryce next.
“The killer has requested your presence in the study,” Giles said. “It’s okay, do not be alarmed. She has assured me that you will be Spared. After all, you’ve won the game! Check your watch.”
Bryce looked down at his watch. Exactly 3:00 A.M.
“The killer’s time has come to an end, as has her game,” Giles said. “Now, if you’ll follow me, please.”
Inside the study, they found Jacqueline sitting on an oversized red velvet chair in front of one of the large windows. A wooden box sat on her lap. She greeted them with her usual wide smile and that thunderous, infectious laugh of hers.
“Congratulations, Bryce!” she said. “You’ve surprised me, and most certainly our other dearly departed
guests, with your wit and mettle. You’ve perhaps even surprised yourself a little, no doubt. So I am quite happy to declare you the winner. You will be Spared. The authorities, as well as several news teams, have already been notified and have arrived at the mansion’s front gates. No doubt they will be pulling up in front of the mansion shortly. Therefore, we mustn’t waste any more time.”
She held out the wooden box. Bryce hesitated for a second, but then reached out and took it from her. He looked down at the heavy, polished oak box and then back at Jacqueline.
“Open it, go on,” she urged him with a warm smile.
How could she have done all this? Could she really be that much of a psychopath? Bryce could hardly believe it. Had he not just witnessed it all go down the past several days for himself, he doubted he would have believed it. Either way, he definitely wasn’t about to start disregarding her instructions now.
He opened the lid of the box. Inside were the golden handcuffs that she’d used on Darrel before bashing his head with a hammer. The sight sent a chill up Bryce’s spine.
Jacqueline held out her hands and nodded at Bryce. He heard the sirens now as the cops arrived at the mansion’s front entrance. He took the cuffs from the box and snapped them on to her outstretched wrists. Then she spoke one last time.
“I have the right to remain silent, but I will not. I declare you the winner, for I am a sinner. I will live the rest of my days as a dying rose, but this curse will now follow Giles wherever he goes,” she said, and then grinned at Giles.
As they drove away, Bryce turned and saw the butler’s eyes widen with fear. But before any of them could react further, there were cops bursting into the room with guns drawn. Bryce, so taken by relief and the realization that he would live after all, combined with leftover adrenaline and fatigue, collapsed to the floor.
EPILOGUE
Murder in Mystery Manor Page 19