《Whodunnit 2》Chapter 14 - Take A 'Leaft'
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The guests all did their usual exchange and reunited in the great room. Upon Giles serving lunch in the great room, the guests used the opportunity to talk about what they found in their areas.
Jeremy, Brett & Chantal all grabbed their plates and headed outside to the back pool where Mike's body was found that morning. The blood had been drained by this point and the pool was back to a normal, crystal oasis.
The alliance all lounged by the pools as they ate their sandwiches, Brett went first at what was at the morgue.
"So when myself and the girls walked into the morgue, Mike was in a literal blood cube. We had the pick the ice off of him. Once we did we found that he was incredibly bloated, like, he looked obese. Also, his eyes were streaming with blood. Plus he had a lot of dried sick around his mouth."
"Maybe he had an allergic reaction?" Jeremy suggested.
"Maybe, but would bloody eyes be a symptom of an allergic reaction?" Brett had its doubts that an injury that severe would come as a result of an allergic reaction.
Chantal put her hands into her face "This is so confusing!"
"Why do you say that?" Jeremy asked.
"Because what was at the last known whereabouts points nothing to what was at the morgue. There was a barely alive mountain lion at the buffet building!."
Jeremy & Brett both immediately stopped eating and looked at the blond nervously.
Chantal continued talking "The whole buffet building was wrecked. The wallpaper was shredded, all that fine China in the room was smashed. But the thing is, there were only two small drops of blood on the floor. The mountain lion was really malnourished so there was no way that he could have killed Mike."
"So what? Mike just walked into the buffet building and that mountain lion just happened to be there?" Jeremy asked.
Chantal shrugged "I guess."
"Well at the crime scene, the pool was completely frozen over. It was minus eighteen to be exact, there was also a small hole in the ice so it's clear that Mike was at least somewhat submerged before they got his body out of the pool." Jeremy finished explaining his findings alongside Kristina & Grace pretty quickly.
While the alliance of three was discussing what they found in their areas, the female alliance of four (Mary, Grace, Kendra & Cecilia.) discussed what they found in Kendra's room.
"The crime scene didn't actually have much. There was literally just a frozen over the red pool and a couple of leaves from the palm trees beside it." Grace was finished in five seconds.
"That's it?" Mary questioned after a moment of silence.
Grace nodded her head in response.
"Well, the last known whereabouts was the buffet building. It was completely mashed up, plus there was a really skinny mountain lion which was barely living inside. Troy killed it to put it out of its misery, but, there was only a couple of blood spots so the mountain lion couldn't have killed him."
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"Interesting," Cecilia commented.
"Well at the morgue Mike was like an ice cube, once we picked all the ice off of him we saw that he looked really bloated, had bleeding eyes and his bodily fluids had spilled out of him." Kendra kept it short and sweet, not exactly wanting the other girls to know the gruesome details of what the morgue told herself, Troy & Cecilia.
After a few moments of eating their lunch in silence, the girls started to theorise on what the clues meant.
"So, if the mountain lion didn't kill Mike, then what do you guys think did?" Mary hoped her alliance members could deliver an answer, as the eldest guest couldn't think of a theory to save her life (literally).
"It's possible that the chlorine in the pool could have been laced with some sort of poison. Therefore, it can account for him bleeding out in the pool. The whole mountain lion fiasco might have just been a ploy to throw us off." Grace thought of a decent theory.
"Maybe he was allergic to mountain lions? Just the slightest touch might have made him bloat up." Kendra also theorised on how she thought Mike was murdered.
The twenty-seven-year-old's theory caught the others off guard. They weren't expecting for Kendra to think of a decent theory, seeing how the model had been scared twice now, they weren't thinking she could have put together clues effectively. However, she just did. With Paul's murder it was clear that they all overthought the death, so maybe Kendra's simple guess might have been a true outcome of what really happened?
Meanwhile, Kristina & Troy discussed what they found with one another. However, they soon realised that they (once again) had a problem. They had no information on one of the areas (which this time was the morgue). So no matter what they put together from the information at the crime scene and last known whereabouts, they were still missing out on a vital area.
Eventually, Giles gathered the remaining nine guests in the resort's entrance and held the allusive note from the killer in his hand.
"As you know the killer has supplied a riddle.."
"Shocker." Kristina said sarcastically.
"To solve this crime, you will need a level head. Take a 'leaft' if you do not want to be dead. This element is your opposite, follow the clues. Once you link the item to the murder, you won't be singing the blues."
After Giles read out the riddle, all were confused (minus the killer). When Giles read out the riddle, the emphasis on the word 'leaft' was clear, it left many guests confused whether or not he was trying to say 'left' or some other word. In the end, all the guests split up in their groups.
"Was Giles meant to say 'left' ?" Grace whispered the question on everyone's mind to her alliance as the foursome quickly walked around the side of the main resort, to the green where Aubrey's body was found during the first murder.
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"I don't think so. He clearly said 'leaft' weirdly" Mary clearly wasn't falling for what she thought the killer had set up as a trick. The eldest guest was old but wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what he/she was doing.
However, the two other groups did fall for it.
"Take a left where?" Chantal kept on saying the same phrase over and over again to her alliance as they wandered aimlessly back through the main resort building.
Just feet away from the alliance of three, Troy & Kristina had also misinterpreted the riddle.
"The opposite of our element is lava. I saw some lava rocks yesterday by the massage parlor. I think we should check it out!" Troy had (once again) started to get his hopes up, he thought he had the answer.
-
It was now ten minutes since the riddle had been read out, and the all-female alliance was still in the main resort building. They had all figured out that Giles definitely said 'leaft' instead of 'left'. Now they just had to interpret the rest.
It was Grace that eventually figured it out. The author quickly made the connection that the opposite of a humans element is H20. Grace also knew the word 'leaft' had to mean something, and when the alliance went out to the back pool, it all clicked for her. Directly left from the massive swimming pool where Mike was found dead that morning, was several palm trees.
The palm trees all obviously held hundreds of leaves when combined.
The four females and rushed over to the palm trees and stared closely looking at the leaves. With the 'objects' part of the riddle, the alliance thought they might have been looking for a murder weapon within the trees.
However, they soon found the answer.
Cecilia let out a bizarre noise as she found the answer to the riddle. Rolled up in one of the leaves from the palm trees was a small scribe of paper. The small scribe of paper held instructions of Rhubarb Leaves, the leaves hold Oxalic acid. Upon reading the small scribe of paper, the alliance realised that if a ton were digested at one time, it would be fatal.
"So he ate Rhubarb leaves by accident at the buffet table?" Mary suddenly cast her mind back to the last known whereabouts and remembered a small smashed plate near the buffet table. It clicked in her mind that Mike might have been having a late night meal at the table and the mountain lion just happened to stumble in, or was placed there by the killer.
The resort bell rang immediately Mary just covered up her thoughts. The four women all celebrated loudly, they continually jumped up and down in the grass, throwing their arms up in the air and screaming with excitement. However, their celebration didn't go unnoticed as Troy & Kristina happened to walk across the path by the pool. Kendra, Cecilia, Grace & Mary awkwardly shrugged off their celebration and stared at the siblings.
"Good job guys," Troy said politely.
"Thanks," Grace replied, slightly embarrassed by herself and the alliance being caught red-handed by the two guests.
The female alliance all squandered back over to the main resort, whereas Troy & Kristina stayed out by the palm trees.
"Let's find out this answer," Kristina said in a confident tone as she strolled over to the palm trees. She squatted down and picked up the small paper scroll. However, Sophie, the maid stopped her.
"The riddle is over! Please reunite with the guests in the great room!" Sophie's shout came booming down the automated voice system from the many speakers surrounding the island.
Instead of conforming to the rules and leaving the riddle answer alone, the siblings quickly grabbed the paper scroll and headed back inside. Yes, it was a break of the official instructions, but the siblings wanted to survive badly. And not playing fair was something which they were going to do to remain in the game.
Eventually, all the guests did reunite in the great room. Giles congratulated whoever solved the riddle and let the guests know they had two hours to discuss information before they would be locked in their suites before the dinner.
The alliance of the women was confident that nobody else knew about the answer to the riddle. They all did want to share their information with Troy & Kristina. However, they all knew that if they did they were only putting themselves in jeopardy of having a scared card. The females also came to a conclusion that they didn't want to share information with the other alliance (Brett, Jeremy & Chantal) as most of them had the suspicion Jeremy was the killer. And helping out the suspected killer was something the girls had no motivation to do.
Chantal, Brett & Jeremy knew they had failed the riddle but were hoping that the siblings would be the scared two, since they thought they hadn't found the answer either. However, unbeknownst to them, the siblings were now safe. Brett, Chantal or Jeremy was going to be the next person to be killed.
But who would be the scared two? And who would killed next?
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