“Plenty, but nothing big enough for a book this size.” She paused and looked over her shoulder at the wall of books. “Nothing on the first couple of rows, at least, but look up there.” She pointed at the second-to-top shelf. It was at least seven feet off the floor. Right next to the tall sliding ladder that I’d coveted earlier, on a shelf crammed with oversized books, was an opening the exact same dimensions as the copy of Moby-Dick she held.
We both saw it at the same time, because she called out, “On it!” at almost the same time as I spotted the gap. If it had been at eye level instead of so high up, the difference in the shelf would have been immediately obvious, as all of the shelves below it were spaced a standard twelve inches or so apart, but this shelf was at least two feet below the row above it.
She had to jog around Amanda, who, despite the warning we’d received with our game briefing, was busy taking selfies of herself posed in front of the wall of books. “I can’t get these to upload to Instagram,” she whined. “Does anyone get a signal in here?”
“Amanda! You can’t have your phone out like that. If you get caught, we all get banned and if I can’t complete practically the only escape room within fifty miles I haven’t beat yet, I’ll make you wish you never woke up this morning. Put it away. Pronto,” Gennifer chided her.
Ignoring their drama, I hurried toward Izzy and steadied the ladder as she scrambled up its rungs, the oversized book held awkwardly under one arm. She reached the second-to-top shelf. “Careful,” I warned her, even as the ladder shimmied in my grip.
“I used to live in an apartment that I could only access via a fire escape that was missing half its rungs and didn’t have a handrail.” Izzy’s adventures in apartments never ceased to amaze me. She was completely nonchalant about her ever-revolving living situation. One day she was living in a condemned schoolhouse, and the next she was sharing my aunt’s chic apartment in a bougie building that came complete with a concierge and a rooftop pool.
To her, it was all the same as long as she had someplace safe and relatively dry to sleep at night.
“Next to that, this is a walk in Domino Park,” she concluded, stretching out her arm. “A tad to the right, please?”
I obliged, pushing the ladder closer to the opening between two other large books.
Izzy slid the giant copy of Moby-Dick into the space, and we heard a loud click. In front of me, a section of bookshelf swung open, revealing a hidden passageway.
3
Realtor Vickie @VictoriaMarshNYCRealtor ∙ July 12
WINNING! #1 #LikeABoss #BestNYCRealtor #12MonthsInARow #Blessed #CallForAnAppointment
The secret passage was maybe two feet off the floor, and was three feet high and about the same wide. “This is so extra,” I said, unable to contain my excitement. I spent a lot of time listening to true crime podcasts, and to be completely honest, discovering a hidden passage in a library bookshelf was number one or two on my bucket list.
“That can’t be right,” Gennifer said, sidling up next to me and staring into the darkness. “The conservatory is supposed to have a secret passage, not the library.”
“What’s a conservatory?” Amanda asked, leaning in to use the flashlight app on her phone to illuminate the narrow tunnel leading out of the room.
“It’s a greenhouse,” I told her. Like the first room we’d entered, the walls of the passageway were painted black. It was hard to tell with her flashlight ruining the effect, but the light bounced off one side, as if the tunnel had a sharp bend in it.
“I thought it was a music room,” Izzy said, sliding down the ladder with ease.
“Do you mean a concert hall? A conservatory is where you set up a telescope,” Marlie said with authority.
“You’re thinking of an observatory,” Vickie corrected her.
“I’m pretty sure you’re wrong,” Marlie replied. “Game Master, what’s a conservatory?”
“A greenhouse,” came the voice over the speaker. The timer on the wall plummeted by ninety seconds.
“Stop doing that,” Gennifer growled. She snatched Amanda’s phone out of her hand. “Gimme that.” Without waiting for a consensus from the rest of us, she climbed into the passageway.
“I’m not going in there,” Vickie said. “If I’d known there would be crawling, I would never have worn silk pants.”
“Knock yourself out,” Izzy said, and hopped into the tunnel. “You coming, Odessa?”
“Right behind you!” No offense to the Debbie Downers back there, but between Vickie’s seeming inability to lift a finger, Marlie’s constant abuse of the useless hints, and Amanda putting us all in jeopardy with her constant selfies, we would be better without any of them. Just as I was hoping that we were on our own, there was a thump behind me as one of the remaining players joined us in the tunnel.
We emerged into another room. Izzy smoothed the side of her jumpsuit, which had gotten wrinkled crawling through the secret passage. Izzy had the energy of a bunny rabbit addicted to coffee and never sat still long enough to gain an ounce of fat. As a result, everything she wore hung off her frame like she was a high-fashion model. I’d been teaching her how to sew on our off time, and today she was wearing her latest creation—a blue and white jumpsuit that would have looked like a circus tent on anyone else. But on Izzy, it was adorable.
The second room was lit by two stained glass light fixtures mounted to the ceiling, each centered over a green-felted pool table. Two pool sticks leaned against one table, and several more were mounted to the wall. There were four balls—all solids—on one table and just an empty rack on the other.
One of the walls was made of wood panels, adorned with posters advertising different national beer brands and a framed print of dogs playing poker. There was also a clock mounted on the plain beige wall, but its hands were missing.
At the far end of the room was a large red door with a punch-code lock. The timer over the door ticked down, with only twenty minutes remaining. Where had the time gone? I could have sworn we’d only been in the first room for five minutes, but between all of the bickering and confusion, and Marlie shaving off time with her requests for hints, it had been much more.
“I can’t believe we’ve wasted most of our time already,” Gennifer commented, running her fingers along the walls, feeling them for invisible clues. Finding none, she gave up and turned her attention to the door. “What are the numbers on the balls?” she asked, studying the lock.
“One, five, seven, and eight,” I told her. I bent down to check the ball return, but a glance at the window confirmed there were no more balls for either table.
“Rats. We need a five-digit code. Look around, and don’t forget that the clues could be anywhere.”
I looked up. The ceiling was made up of old-fashioned drop tiles, and was shorter than it had been in the previous room. I couldn’t reach it, of course, but I grabbed one of the pool sticks and methodically poked at the tiles. “Don’t do that,” a voice boomed from a speaker built into the wall, which I hadn’t noticed before.
I dropped the stick and it clattered to the floor. “Yikes, sorry!” I told the faceless voice.
“Hey, look at this,” Izzy said. She tugged on the classic dogs-playing-poker frame and it swung away from the wall on a hinge, revealing a clockface printed out on a round piece of paper. She pulled on it, and it came loose with the distinctive sound of two strips of Velcro being torn apart.
“There’s another clock over here,” I pointed out.
Izzy aligned the clockface in the center of the blank clock, securing it with another strip of Velcro that was already attached to the wall. I hadn’t noticed the Velcro before, because it was the same color beige as the wall.
I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t quite as observant as I’d always thought I was.
“Nothing is happening,” Izzy said.
“Huh,” Genni
fer replied, coming over to look over our shoulders. Both of the hands pointed straight down. “Do the hands move?”
I reached out and spun the hands, which were flimsy black plastic arrows attached by a metal paper fastener. They moved freely before both settled back to point at the six. “Looks like it.”
“Maybe we need to set it to a specific time?” Izzy suggested.
Gennifer shook her head. “To what end? It’s not connected to anything and we need a five-digit number to get out of this room. It might be a red herring.”
“A what?” Amanda asked. She’d been busy taking selfies, and this was the first time she’d actively shown interest in solving a puzzle.
“You know, a red herring. A false trail that doesn’t lead anywhere. But there’s no way they’d build a red herring into an escape room, would they?” I looked to Gennifer for confirmation. “Not when we’re already against a clock.”
“You’d think, right? It’s all part of the challenge. Don’t waste too much time trying to figure it out. It may come in handy to solve another puzzle later, or not at all. Keep looking around.”
I ducked under the closest pool table and rolled onto my back, hoping that Gennifer was right about major clues being hidden underneath furniture, but I didn’t see anything. I wiggled out from under the table and repeated the motion for the other table, with similar disappointing results.
“I already checked down there,” Izzy said, and I caught a glimpse of her shoes from my awkward position under the table.
“Whatcha doing?” Amanda asked, squatting down beside me.
“Looking for clues,” I said.
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, it is pretty dark under there. Maybe this will help.” She rolled a flashlight toward me.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Since cell phones were forbidden, it had likely been left in the library to make our journey through the dark passage easier. We were probably already disqualified because she’d used her phone, but we had to be close to the end and I wasn’t giving up now.
“It was next to the aquarium in the last room,” she said, confirming my suspicion. “I thought it might come in handy. But it didn’t work.”
I fumbled the flashlight switch on, but like Amanda said, nothing happened. I shook it and tried again. This time, even though I still didn’t see a beam of light, I caught a glimpse of a set of glowing green numbers and grinned. The numbers were written in invisible ink that showed up only with the help of an ultraviolet flashlight. “One, seven, one, two, nine!” I yelled.
I heard a series of beeps as I shimmied out from under the table, and Gennifer swung the door open. According to the overhead clock, we had almost a full minute to spare.
Amanda gave me a hand up. “Good job, picking up that flashlight,” I told her.
Together, we hurried for the exit. On the other side of the door, instead of the waiting room, we found ourselves in a huge industrial kitchen. “You have got to be kidding me,” Amanda said.
The clock mounted above the range counted down to zero. A loud buzzer sounded.
I couldn’t believe we’d wasted the entire hour already. It felt like we’d been in the room for half that, at most.
The refrigerator door swung open, and the pimply Game Master stepped into the room. “Sorry, folks, but you failed to escape from Clueless. Please come back and try your luck another day.” He paused and gave us a tight grin. “Maybe you would be better off in one of the less challenging rooms, like Doors of Our Lives.”
“Maybe you’d be better off . . .” Gennifer started, but Izzy grabbed her arm.
“It’s just a game,” she reminded her. I thought I was driven, but apparently that was nothing compared to Gennifer’s competitive streak.
Gennifer mumbled something under her breath.
“Now, if you will all just follow me,” the Game Master started, then he paused. “Wait a sec. Weren’t there six in your party?”
I looked around. Amanda was next to me. Marlie was right behind us, hovering around the open door leading to the billiard room. Izzy and Gennifer were standing in the middle of the kitchen. Gennifer looked annoyed, but as usual, Izzy was enjoying herself. “This was great. We should do this more often!” she said, her eyes roaming the room, still searching for possible clues. She was the only one who didn’t seem to care that we’d lost.
“Where’s Vickie?” Gennifer asked.
“Last I saw her, she was in the library, complaining about not wanting to crawl through the secret passage,” Izzy said.
The Game Master blinked slowly as if he was internally counting to five. “Everyone stay here but don’t touch anything. Even if you solved any more puzzles, they don’t count. Time’s up.” As soon as he backtracked through the open door behind us, Izzy started flinging cabinets open.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Game’s over.”
“Who knows? Maybe this is all a part of the game.”
I pointed at the clock, which now blinked all zeros. “I’m pretty sure it’s over.”
As if to punctuate my statement, there was a faint scream in the distance.
Izzy’s head whipped toward the door to the billiard room. “You hear that?”
“Yeah,” I answered, and we practically tripped over each other to get through the door. As we wove between the two pool tables, I could hear a voice I didn’t quite recognize repeating something over and over again.
I reached the secret passageway first, but then I hesitated. Without Amanda’s phone to light the way, it was awful dark.
“Make way,” Izzy said, gently prodding me to one side as she climbed up into the tunnel and crawled forward with no hesitation. “There was one place I used to crash at out near Coney Island that didn’t have any electricity. We had blackout curtains on the windows so the neighbors wouldn’t find out that anyone was living there . . .” Her voice faded as she reached the end of the tunnel and stepped into the library.
I followed her lead, crawling through the passage. I rounded the sharp bend and blinked at the bright light at the end of the tunnel.
From my vantage point, on my hands and knees, ducking so my head didn’t hit the low ceiling, I couldn’t see anything. Izzy was blocking the exit. “Psst,” I hissed, and she stepped to one side.
That’s when I saw her.
Vickie lay facedown on the library carpet. I could only see part of her from my position, but I instantly knew that something wasn’t right. She was still. Too still.
As if there were any question remaining, the Game Master stood over her, rocking back and forth, repeating in a monotone voice on a loop, “She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.”
4
Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ July 12
Oof. Déjà vu all over again #mystery #mayhem #murder
Six weeks ago, I’d never eaten avocado toast. I didn’t have an Instagram account. I had never tried craft beer. I’d never ridden mass transit or ordered an Uber, much less had my very own well-used New York City MetroCard.
And I’d never seen a dead body up close.
I hadn’t even known anyone who had died before one of my fellow waitresses at Untapped was murdered last month. And now, for the second time in as many months, I was sitting inside of a police station waiting to be questioned. There were several differences from my last experience, on top of my newly found familiarity with the inside of a cop shop. This time, there was no question that the victim’s death had been the result of foul play. Also, instead of being a concerned coworker, I was a material witness.
But most importantly, now I knew the plainclothes officer sitting across from me in the narrow interrogation room.
Detective Vincent Castillo wore dark tailored pants and a shiny black vest over a cream-colored, long-sleev
ed, button-down shirt. His tie was a narrow strip of blue chevrons, the only pattern in his outfit that I could see. His hair was buzzed short and his eyes were bright and observant. His now-familiar Puerto Rican accent was missing his usual sense of humor. Instead, he was all business.
“This is getting to be a habit, Odessa,” he said, not looking up as he bent over a chunky tablet. Like most of the equipment I’d seen so far at the Brooklyn police station, it was woefully out of date, built in the early days when tablets weighed a ton.
I shrugged, then realizing he still wasn’t looking at me, said, “It wasn’t like . . .”
He cut me off with a wave of his hand, then aimed a remote control at a box on the wall. A red light came on. “This conversation is being recorded. Detective Vincent Castillo, NYPD. Please state your name for the record.”
“Odessa Dean,” I replied, being careful to enunciate. Maybe I have a teensy bit of a Southern drawl, especially when I’m stressed. Whatever. Castillo was used to it by now.
“Address?” he asked.
I frowned at him. “You know my address, Vincent . . .”
He cut me off again. “Detective Castillo,” he corrected me, and I realized that Vincent, the laid-back coulda-been television heartthrob who had been dating my roommate, Izzy, for the last three weeks had been replaced with this more professional doppelgänger. If he could be all business, I could, too.
I rattled off my aunt’s address in an old turn-of-the-century warehouse that had been converted into high-end Williamsburg apartments in the late nineties. Then I added, for the record, “At least, that’s where I’m staying while Aunt Melanie’s out of town. In a few weeks, I’ll be back in Louisiana.”
Castillo continued, “And what is your relationship with the deceased?”
“Vickie?” I asked, then realized that was an unnecessary question. It wasn’t as if I knew multiple people who had died today. “I just met her an hour or two ago. She used to go to school with my roomie, Izzy Wilson.” I tilted my head and stared at him, wondering if he was going to acknowledge his relationship with Izzy.
No Memes of Escape Page 3
