by D E Dennis
“Thank you,” Monica replied as she took it. “We’ll go now and give you some privacy.”
Monica and Michael left the room. They waited until they were at the elevators to speak. “What do you think we’ll find at the house?” Monica asked.
“We only took a quick look around last night to get the layout. Today, we could try and search for the phone.”
“In a mansion that big? It would be like looking for a particular speck of sand on the beach.”
“Still wouldn’t hurt to try. The house is empty and nothing has been moved or cleaned up yet, so it’s the perfect time to run through the events of last night.”
“Okay, fair point.”
She pressed the button for the elevator just as Michael’s stomach loudly announced its displeasure at missing two meals.
He grinned at Monica. “Let’s stop for lunch on the way.”
BURGER IN HAND, MICHAEL drove up to the gate of the manor and waved at the guard as he let them through. He parked in the drive, and they polished off the rest of their meal before climbing out.
“I wish Mira and her army of uniforms and crime scene investigators were here,” Monica remarked.
Michael thought back to the tense moment at the café. “We can do this without the Castle Rock Police Department, Mo. We have solved murder cases on our own before.”
“We solved one murder case before,” she shot back, “and as I remember it, Samira was pretty involved then too.”
Michael let the act of pulling out the key and opening the door save him from answering. He pushed it open and stepped aside for Monica to walk through.
She whistled. “Wow. This place makes an amazing second impression too.” She glanced at him. “They are putting a lot of trust in us. Giving us their house key. Telling the guards to let us come and go as we please.”
Michael nodded, closing the door after himself. “Right now, we’re the only ones who believe them.”
Monica bit her lip. “About that... I don’t know yet if I do. We keep joking about a phantom, but no one can be in two places at once. If everyone was in the ballroom like the guards, Cadals, and the guests say they were, then we should accept this was an accident. We don’t want to give these parents false hope.”
He shook his head as he stepped around her, setting off for the ballroom. “No...no, I’m telling you, Mo. Something isn’t right. I can feel it.”
“Did you notice something while we were scoping everyone out last night?”
He turned his head to look at her. “The friend, Emma French. She says they have been best friends since they were kids, but she doesn’t even pretend to like her. And the boyfriend?”
Monica nodded. “Took him way too long to show some concern. Didn’t even ask how she was doing.”
“Exactly. None of them did.”
She sighed. “But they were still nowhere near her when she fell.”
Michael squeezed her shoulder. “One thing at a time. First, we find the suspects. Then, we’ll figure out the method.”
Monica squared her shoulders. “Alright, let’s do this. Our phantom stalker won’t know what hit them.”
Michael chuckled as they pushed through the doors into the ballroom. Monica went off ahead of him, she crossed the room to the platform.
Michael took his eyes off her and looked around at the rest of the room. Everything was still how they left it last night. Dining tables and a buffet surrounding the dance floor, masks scattered about the floor, a stage and a big screen set up at the end, and smack-dab in the middle of it all, a platform with a single throne. Beauty was the center of attention all night, giving her phantom a perfect view.
Much like the view Michael now had of Monica as she reclined in the seat. “I wonder why she asked for the throne,” Monica mused. “She was having a party thrown by Malia Diragoni herself. Why would you want to sit up here like a houseplant, when you could be enjoying the festivities with everyone?”
“Who is this Malia person anyway?”
Monica rolled her eyes. “You’re so out of touch, bro. How can you not know who Malia is? She’s amazing. She built her empire from scratch, becoming a household name in less than a year. Year of the Dragon is not just an event planning company; it is the event planning company. She is a legend known to throw the wildest, most unique parties out there. We’re talking acrobats, fire-eaters, jungle-themed parties with actual tigers in attendance. And because she only works with the rich and the famous, some of the bands she’s hired to work the parties have made their careers just on that one gig. The connections you can make through her are endless.”
Michael closed the distance and leaned against the platform. “That explains why you dropped your band name in the middle of your introduction.”
She laughed. “Gotta advertise when I can. Chasing phantoms and killers is just the day job.”
“Speaking of said day job,” Michael said pointedly. “We should get back to it.”
Monica sat up and looked around. “Well, this is what we know. Beauty was up on this platform in full view of everyone with her phone in hand, but when she was found, the phone was gone. Is the only explanation that it was taken?”
Michael bit his lip. “If she dropped it or something, we would have to assume she would stop to look for it, not just continue on.”
“Unless she didn’t know she dropped it. If she was dressed in one of those massive gowns, she might have thought she slipped it into her pocket when really she missed.”
Michael backed up, thrusting out his arms. “Then it would have happened here where the music would have been too loud for her to hear it clatter to the ground.”
“True.” Monica got to her feet. “And with all the people walking, stomping, and dancing around it could have been kicked underneath something.”
“Let’s look.”
They didn’t waste any more time. The Grimm siblings looked under every table and checked every corner. They even stuck their heads under the stage and the platform.
Nothing.
Monica flopped down onto a dining chair. “That got us nowhere.”
“Au contraire, baby sister,” Michael said, his smile still in place. “If it wasn’t dropped in a noisy room full of people, then it’s looking more and more likely that the phone was taken.” He spun around, heading for the door. “Come on.”
“Where to next?”
“Where she fell,” he said over his shoulder.
They hurried down the hallway and stopped right at the foot of the staircase. Well, Monica stopped, Michael put his foot on the steps and continued up.
“Where are you going?” Monica called.
“The guards came up that hallway,” he called down. “They heard the scream, they come running, but they didn’t see or hear anyone else.” Michael reached the top of the stairs. “The only places the attacker could have gone is in the living room, which is a dead end. There is the kitchen just off the living room which has a door leading out into the backyard, or they stayed up here.”
Monica picked up his line of thought. “The only way in and out of this side of the house is through the back door or down this hallway,” she said as she walked around, sizing up the space. “There is no back staircase and no other way for the attacker to get out.” She looked up at him. “They must have hidden in one of the rooms, waited until the guards ran to get help, and when the coast was clear, they made a run for it. What’s up there anyway?”
Michael waved her up. “Let’s look.”
Together, Michael and Monica searched the rooms one by one. They pawed through the drawers, opened the closets, and thoroughly snooped through everything. “We’re still on the search for the phone,” Michael said when Monica asked why they were bothering to check the bowling alley.
They finished on one side and moved to the other, pushing through into what appeared to be an office. Michael’s eyes swept the room.
Charles’s office.
The film containers, m
ovie posters, and signed actress and actor photos lining the wall, gave it away.
“I’ll look through the desk,” Monica said, zeroing in on the massive oak desk resting in front of the bay windows.
He nodded. “I’ll peek at the bookshelves.”
“I know they want us to find out what happened,” Monica said as she rifled through the papers on his desk. “But I can’t imagine Mr. Cadal will be thrilled about us going through his things.”
“It’s a good thing he isn’t here then,” Michael said mildly as he pushed the books aside.
“Oh yeah,” she said, pausing in her search. “He won’t be happy.”
Michael shoved the book he was holding back into the case. “Did you find something?”
She sighed. “Nothing that has anything to do with Beauty.”
Monica reached into the drawer and pulled out a small bronze coin—wait, no.
Michael took a closer look. It wasn’t money. There was a triangle where the head of an old dead guy should have been and a number in the middle.
“What is it?” Michael asked.
“Sobriety chips. Apparently, Charles is twenty-one—actually, twenty-three years sober.” Monica tossed the coin back. “Good for him.”
Michael jerked his head at the door. “We should go. We still have one more room to search.”
Monica stepped out from behind the desk and they padded out of the room, closing the door softly behind them.
They approached the double doors at the end of the hall and went inside.
Michael whistled. “Wow. No need to ask whose room this is.”
Beauty Cadal’s bedroom was like nothing he had ever seen before, but then, Michael was used to cheap wicker chairs, bargain decorations, and rooms no bigger than the length of his arm span.
Beauty’s room was bigger than his apartment and then some. A massive four-poster bed, loaded down with designer clothes, sat pressed against the back wall, while the plush pink carpets were covered with shoes, scarves, purses, and a bunch of other accessories. Michael had to assume they ended up on the floor because her vanity had no more space. It was covered with makeup and perfumes, and her closets, all four of them, were stuffed to the brim.
The siblings shared a grimace before getting down to work. They searched through the overstuffed closets, checked under the bed, stuck their head into the drawers, perused the bathroom, and pawed through the desk.
“Nothing,” Monica announced as she threw herself in the desk chair. “No phone, no diary, no threatening letters, no anything.”
Michael stepped out of the bathroom. “What about the laptop?”
She shook her head. “Password protected.”
“Everything is online these days,” he remarked. “There could be threatening letters in the form of emails, and her blog may be the diary.”
“What’s the blog called again? Beautiful Skin, or something?”
“Beauty isn’t Skin Deep.”
“Right,” Monica said. “We haven’t checked it out yet, but it won’t do us any good to look through it as a visitor. If we could get into her laptop we could look through the admin dashboard.”
“Dashboard?”
Monica rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you ever had a blog?”
He gave her a deadpan look.
“What am I saying? Of course, you haven’t. That would involve actually telling people what goes on in that head of yours.” She laughed. “A blog owner has their own dashboard to make posts, upload photos, and to receive and moderate comments. Her boyfriend said she deletes the nasty ones right away, but if we’re lucky there could still be a few sitting in her trash or waiting to be approved.”
Michael’s eyes went round. “We can see all that? Perfect! We just have to figure out her password.”
She shook her head. “It could literally be anything. No point in putting in a bunch of random guesses, we’d be here until we were dead.”
“Then how do we get in?” he asked, face falling.
“No need for the sad face, brother mine. I know a few people good at this hacker stuff. They should be able to get into the laptop.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Good things always happen when you start a sentence with ‘I know a few people.’ Where would we be without your connections?”
Monica got to her feet. “I think we’ve already established you’d be completely lost without me.”
Michael guffawed. “I’ve never denied that we make a good team.”
Monica smiled, holding up her hand. “The best.”
Giving her a high five, he smiled right back.
MICHAEL AND MONICA looked around a bit more, but they eventually had to admit the room had no answers for them. Michael made a quick call to Charles to ask for permission to take the laptop and then they left.
“Tomorrow we’ll check out her apartment,” Michael said as they descended the stairs. “I also want to speak to the guard, the boyfriend, the friends, all of them again.”
“I have names and numbers,” Monica replied, the laptop firmly under her arm. “I’ll ask Ella to make a few calls tomorrow morning, and arrange times for us to meet.”
They reached the bottom floor. “I also want to check in with Samira and see if they had any luck getting their chief to sign off on an investigation,” Michael said.
“She would let you know if she did, wouldn’t she?”
Michael looked away. “Not... necessarily.”
Sighing, Monica patted him on the back. “Whatever you did, fix it.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested.
“Mmm hmm, sure you didn’t. Whether you think it’s your fault or not, apologize. I love Mira, and the two of you would give me such adorable nieces and nephews.”
Michael straightened and marched toward the hall. “Time to go.”
Monica’s laughter followed him. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, but don’t run off. We still haven’t checked out the attacker’s possible escape route.”
Michael halted. Unfortunately, she had a point. Stiffly, he turned back around. Ignoring her knowing look, he led the way to the kitchen.
“So the attacker must have slipped out the back door when the coast was clear,” Monica said when they entered the stainless-steel, marble-countertop paradise. Then she shook her head. “But Marcus already told us the security cameras didn’t pick up anyone outside.”
“I almost forgot about the cameras. It’s true, if the guards found something on it, we wouldn’t be here right now.” Michael chewed his lip. “Maybe... the killer skirted the cameras, staying out of sight, and in all the panic and the confusion, they slipped inside and blended into the crowd again without the remaining guard noticing.”
“It’s thin,” Monica said. “But I guess it’s the best we got.”
“We’ll get more,” Michael said confidently. “Come on, let’s go.”
They ventured out of the kitchen and headed for the hallway leading to the exit. Monica pulled him up again.
“Wait, bro,” she said, her hand reaching out to grab his elbow. “What’s the rush?”
Michael turned to her and narrowed his eyes. She had a look in her eyes which always showed up when she was planning some mischief. “Monica, whatever you’re thinking: no.”
She laughed. “Don’t say no before you know what I’m thinking.” She backed up, grin widening. “We’re in the home of one of the most famous movie directors in the country. Can you imagine his selection? It would be irresponsible of us to leave without at least checking it out.”
“Oh, well thank you for explaining it first so now I won’t feel bad about saying no.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the exit. “Let’s go.”
Monica just laughed and spun on her heels, racing into the living room.
Groaning, Michael wondered why in the world little sisters were invented while he hurried after her.
He found his mischievous sister pawing through a glass case of DVDs with the laptop resting at
her feet. One of many glass cases.
Michael had to admit this was an impressive setup. A large sectional couch took up most of the space. There was a popcorn machine and wet bar on one side of the room and the other side had the collection of movies. There was a massive big-screen television that was near enough to the size of an actual movie theater screen. Michael moved further into the room then looked behind him.
He hummed. “Monica, check that out. You can close the doors, pull the curtain, and it’s like a theater in here.”
“This isn’t even out yet!”
Michael drifted toward the bar. “They don’t serve this in a movie theater though. That is a seriously expensive bottle of scotch.”
“This one is signed by the actress!”
Michael stepped away. “Pretty cool, sis, but we should get going. The Cadals could come back at any moment, and I don’t want them to catch us fooling around.”
“Michael, look. Do you remember this movie?” she asked excitedly. She wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. “We used to watch this with Daddy when we were little. I had completely forgotten about it.”
She walked over to him and shoved the movie into his hand. “Let’s put it on.”
“No, Monica!”
But Monica sidestepped him and went over to figure out the entertainment system.
Michael looked down at the DVD in his hand. He did remember the movie. It was some kind of fairy tale about a wicked queen and a monkey. Michael recalled snuggling into his father’s side while they laughed and ate all the treats and snacks their mother would never let them touch before bedtime. He remembered... and he scowled.
“I don’t want to watch this, Monica,” he said as he stepped over to her side. “Let’s get out of— Goodness, what kind of futuristic tech is this?”
He blinked at all the black sleek gadgets. He didn’t recognize half of them, but wow did they look cool. There was some kind of rectangular box, a flat tablet-looking thing, and then another box that was bigger than the first box, but with a black reflective surface.
Monica chuckled. “This is the DVD player.” She tapped the big, black box and the screen suddenly lit up. She tapped the screen again and the DVD slot opened. Monica took out the DVD that was inside, replaced it with their disc, inserted it, and hit play. “And this is a remote for the smart TV.”
