The Age of Inno-Scents, page 4
“Is that what killed the victim?”
I tapped the envelope. “Biff was hit on the back of the head and strangled.”
“That’s overkill.”
I snorted. “Yep. Anyhow, whatever he was hit with wasn’t found in the library. Nor was the cord or whatever the killer used to garrote Biff.”
“How did the cheerleader end up with so much blood on her?”
“According to the witness statement,” I sorted through the packet until I found the right one. “Mary Jane Masterson went into the library looking for Biff to break up with him, and she found him on the ground. She said she’d tried to turn him over, but when she saw all the blood, she left him where he was.”
“That’s when she figured out he was dead?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay. So, the cheerleader was going to break up with Biff. Is that what the fight with the other guy was about?”
“The other guy being Brian Bender,” I said. “Brian and Mary Jane are from two different social cliques, and they’ve been secretly going out for the past two months. Biff caught them kissing behind the gym before the dance and confronted them on the dance floor.”
“Wow, witnesses and suspects readily volunteering damaging information. I wish my job was that easy.” He chuckled. “What happened with Mr. Moore when he took Biff out of the gym?”
“Mr. Moore is the science teacher. He says he told Biff to stay in the office and cool off, then he went to the teachers’ lounge to get some coffee.”
“He took a coffee break?”
“Apparently, he’d smelled alcohol on Biff and wanted to help sober up the star football player.”
“Did the ME report include a blood-alcohol level for Biff the Stiff?”
I choked out a laugh. “Results inconclusive,” I said.
“On blood alcohol levels?” Ezra frowned. “But you said that results for the blue gunk were part of the report.”
I quirked a brow. “Suspicious.”
He nodded. “Convoluted.”
I grinned. “In the best way.” I had to admit, I was really starting to get into the mystery.
“You know, if this were a real murder, I’d start with the crime scene.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But it’s not. We need to get a head start on the escape rooms.”
“You really want to beat Pippa and Gilly, don’t you?”
“I really, really do.” Gilly had thrown down the gauntlet, all in good fun, that I wouldn’t be able to sleuth my way out of a paper bag without my psychic aroma-mojo. I planned to prove her wrong. I tapped the packet. “Copper sulfate might not be the murder weapon, but it’s a pretty big clue.”
Ezra took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. “Let’s go before some other bird bath aficionado figures it out.”
The school map showed that the building was shaped like a squared-off number eight with a fat middle. Eight hallways made up the loops. The center halls housed the gymnasium that doubled as a cafeteria. The kitchen was located on the backside of the gym, and across the hall was the office along with the library. The west-facing hallways were staff only. The east hallways were comprised of the guest quarters and the classrooms.
But we didn’t need the map to navigate. We followed the posted signs to the classrooms.
“How did Biff have time to leave the front office, go all the way to the chemistry lab to get blue gunk on him, and end up murdered in the library?”
“According to the witness statements in the clue packet, forty-five minutes passed between Biff being escorted from the dance to Mary Jane Masterson, the brunette cheerleader, finding him.”
“So, the five minutes that passed before the scream was an accelerated timeline.”
“Looks like it.”
Only one fluorescent light illuminated the hall. It flickered ominously, clicking and popping like a bug zapper.
The noisy bulbs flickered again, reminding me of every horror movie that had ever taken place in a high school. “Wow. They’ve upped the creep factor by a hundred.”
Ezra put his arm around me. “You afraid of Freddy Krueger?”
“Uh…yeah. And Jason. And Michael. And the Children of the Corn.”
“I won’t let the boogeyman hurt you.” He pointed to the second room on the left. Chemistry Lab was written on a door plaque. “We found it.”
“Looks like the escape rooms are all together.” On the other side of the chemistry lab was a door labeled History. Across the hall, I saw the Math and English classrooms. Those had keypads on their doors. “Hmm.” I tapped my chin. “We’ll probably have to find the right combinations to get inside.”
“If they made it too easy, it would be more a mystery evening than a weekend, I suppose,” Ezra said.
Neither the Chemistry Lab nor the History room had keypads, and the lab door opened easily. Moonlight filtered in through the high windows, making everything in the dark room appear in silhouette. The door closed behind us. A beep sounded as it shut, and a red light began to blink.
Even though I knew the mystery was fake, my pulse picked up the pace.
Ezra tried the handle. “We’re definitely locked in,” he said. “There’s a keypad on the back of the door with nine numbers and the letters A, B, and C.”
“If the solution is math, we’re going to be stuck in here for a very long time.”
“I’ll handle the math problems,” said Ezra. “You get everything else.”
“Deal,” I said. “Let’s get the lights turned on,” I told Ezra. I gestured to the right. “I’ll take this side. You take the other side.”
“We make a great team.” He tilted my head back and dipped his lips to mine with a gentle press. Automatically, I went up on my toes to deepen the kiss. He tugged me closer, his hand cupping the back of my neck. As he eased back, he brushed my cheek with his fingers, sending a warm ache through me. “You’re beautiful. How did I get so lucky?”
My breathing quickened along with the beating of my heart. A flashing red light in the corner of the room diverted my attention. “Oh, crap. We’re being monitored. Possibly recorded.”
Ezra smiled as he let go of me. “I forgot about that.”
“No Fast Times at Murder High pornos will be made today,” I said to whoever was in control on the other side of the camera.
“Noted. By the way, we don’t record guests,” a guy’s voice said over the intercom. “But I can see everything that happens in the room.” He sounded amused. “Welcome to Chemistry Chaos. You have twenty minutes to discover the clues and make your escape.
“What happens if we don’t make it?” Ezra asked.
“You’ll have to leave and try again later. This allows every team the same amount of time in each locked room.”
I shrugged. “That makes sense.”
“Do you guys want a hint?” the voice asked. “It will cost you five minutes of time.”
“Nope,” I answered. “We got this.”
“Righteous,” the guy said. “I’m here if you need me. Just wave your hand if I don’t respond right away. I’m in charge of all the escape rooms, so the waving will alert me if I get busy.”
I gave the camera a thumbs up. “Got it.” I patted Ezra’s chest. “Let’s get the lights turned on.”
We searched the walls but couldn’t find the light switches. After a few minutes, our eyes adjusted to the low-level light enough to see there were six rectangular workstations with drawers and an instructor’s workstation at the front of the class.
I started with the instructor’s area and opened drawers. The first drawer on the top row was locked, but the rest weren’t. When I slid open the fourth drawer, I yelled, “Bingo!”
Ezra walked over. “What did you find?”
“A flashlight,” I told him. I clicked the button on the side. No light came on. “Fantabulous. It doesn’t work.” The end was loose, so I unscrewed it. It was empty. “It doesn’t have batteries.”
“Oh,” Ezra exclaimed. “I found two C batteries in the first desk, top drawer.”
We returned to the first student desk, and Ezra opened the drawer. I held up the flashlight’s open end.
“Which side goes down? Plus or minus?” he asked.
“Let’s go nipple down, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll turn them around.”
“That’s what he said,” Ezra joked.
I snorted a laugh. “You’ve been hanging around Gilly too much.”
“Your fault,” he countered with a smirk. He dropped the batteries inside the tube. “Here goes nothing.”
I screwed the bottom back on the flashlight. The light came on, and I let out a triumphant, “Yes!” Then I noticed the purplish color of the beam. “Is this a black light?”
“UV light.”
“Let’s see what it picks up.” We walked around the room, running the light over every science poster, the bookshelves, the windows… A glow of blue showed up on the third window. “Up there,” I said. I shone the light over the window. “It’s the numbers four, three, and one. Maybe those are for the keypad on the door.”
I returned to the door and punched the numbers in. The light stayed red. I added the A, then tried again with the B, and finally with the C. The light never changed.
“Let’s keep looking for more clues,” Ezra said. I heard the excitement in his voice.
“Having fun, huh?”
He scratched his beard and chuckled. “Maybe.”
I shined the light at him, and my eyes widened when his facial hair glowed in patches. “Hold on,” I said. “Let me see your hands.”
He held them out. Two of his fingers showed the substance. “What is it?”
“What have you touched since you’ve been in here?”
“Just the workstations.” He shook his head. “But not all of them.”
I ran the light around each of the stations, one at a time. The one nearest the windows in the second row had a blob of blue across the top with a smear where he must’ve touched it. “There,” I told him.
“I walked past that one but didn’t get a chance to go through it before you found the flashlight,” Ezra said.
“Hmmm.” I opened all the drawers. In glowing letters, the word Find was written in the top left drawer, the middle drawer had the word The in it, and the last drawer had the word Key. We opened the rest of the drawers, and other than smudgy prints, they were empty. “Well, poop.”
“Ten minutes,” the guy said over the intercom. “You have ten more minutes left to discover the clues and find a way out.”
“Thanks,” I said loudly.
“Do you want a hint?”
“And lose five of our ten minutes? No, thank you.” Besides, my pride wouldn’t allow me to take the hint. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“Good luck,” the voice said.
“Four, three, one,” I said to Ezra. “It has to mean something.”
“This is the fourth station,” Ezra said. “Maybe it has something to do with the drawer counts.”
“Oh. Like the third row of drawers, first drawer in that row.” I frowned when we pulled it open. “It’s just as empty as the first time we looked inside. We’ve looked through all the drawers. Nothing.”
“But we didn’t look under them,” Ezra said. He pointed up to a poster that was under the window where we’d found the numbers. “Everything Under the Sun.”
“Seems a little in your face, but I’ll take it.” I loved that Ezra let me check under the drawer, even though I knew he was itching to see if he was right.
When I produced a small metal key, he gave a fist pump of triumph. I grinned so hard my cheeks hurt. “There’s a locked drawer in the teacher’s station.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Well, let’s see if it fits.”
The key opened the drawer, and cripes if my heart wasn’t pounding as if I were being chased by Duran Duran in the Hungry Like the Wolf video. “There’s a note and a grade book.” I shined the UV light on the note. The white of the page was candescent. “You read it,” I said. I didn’t want to admit that even with surgery to correct my vision, I still had trouble with my near vision in low light.
Ezra plucked it from the drawer for a closer look.
“Mr. Moore, I know what you did, and unless you want everyone finding out, you’ll change my grade from a D to a B. It’s signed B.C. It has to be Biff Cruise, right?” Ezra nodded. “Isn’t Mr. Moore the guy who took Biff to the office? The last person to see the victim alive?”
“I think so.” I steepled my fingers. “The plot thickens.” A familiar sweet herbal scent wafted from the note. “Do you smell that?”
“I’m really disappointed with your attitude,” a woman says. Her face is unrecognizable, but she has straight brown hair with the front pulled up and back in a smooth bump on the top of her head. She’s wearing a blue cardigan and tapping her foot. “You’re better than what you show people. And you have a lot of talent. I hate to see it wasted.”
“Sorry,” a guy says. He’s wearing a blue and gold sweatshirt, high tops, and jeans. “I’ll apologize.”
The woman sounds pleased as she nods. “Good. If you want, I can help you. You’re getting a D in my class right now. Some extra tutoring before and after school will pull that grade right up.”
A noise outside the room startles them. The guy stands up and says, “Thanks, Mrs. P.”
“What did you see?” Ezra asked in a hushed voice.
“A super-uninteresting meeting between a student and a teacher named Mrs. P. I think he might’ve been either the geek or one of the bullies from my earlier vision. The teacher was definitely the same.”
Ezra glanced up at the monitor as a reminder we were being watched. It’s not like the guy would understand anything we were talking about, but still, we both turned so our backs were to the camera. Ezra lowered his voice and said, “Maybe you’re picking up on stuff from when the school was still active. Some of the props can be leftover items.”
I whispered my response. “Maybe. But this scent was on the note.” I shook it off. “You know what. Never mind. No one is dying, getting hurt, or anything else bad, so we’re going to let it go. Besides, it doesn’t have anything to do with the current mystery, and I’m not going to let it stop me from whooping Gilly and Pippa’s butts.”
“That’s the spirit.” Ezra patted me on the back.
“Five minutes,” the guy said over the speakers.
“Crap.” Ezra shoved the note back in the drawer. “Where’s the door code?”
An idea struck me. “The grade book.” I set it on the desktop and opened it up. “Just as I thought. There’s a list of student names in here, including our four students from tonight. Biff, Brian, Mary Jane, and Leah Standish, the blonde cheerleader.”
“How do we get the code from that? There’s twenty-five names on the roster.”
I nodded and began counting. “Look at the grades. There’s five As, seven Bs, and seven Cs.” I ignored the Ds and Fs since those letters weren’t on the keypad.
Ezra went over to the electronic lock and punched in 5A7B7C. The red light turned green, there was a slight whirring sound, and the door opened.
“Yes!” I high-fived my guy. “We killed it.”
“Nice job, folks,” the disembodied voice said. “You managed Chemistry Chaos in sixteen minutes and forty-one seconds. I need your room number so I can mark your time.”
“We’re in room five.” I gave the camera a final salute. “Thank you, Man-Behind-the-Curtain.”
“Where to next?” Ezra asked as we exited the room.
“I think we need to interview Mr. Moore. He has some ’splainin’ to do.”
Chapter
Five
The suspects-slash-witnesses had all conveniently congregated in the gym as per the schedule. They stood a few feet away from each other as various guests asked them questions. Gilly and Scott were talking to Ms. Nelson. The young married couple were chatting up Brian Bender, Velma and Daffney had Mr. Moore cornered, and two other teams were talking to the cheerleaders. Pippa and Jordy weren’t in the gym.
Ezra and I grabbed our sack dinners from the cafeteria line in the kitchen, which consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches, barbecue or plain chips, apples, a granola bar, and our choice of soda, milk, or water. I was a little tired, so I took a Diet Coke for the caffeine.
We sat on the bleachers and ate while we waited our turn to interview Mr. Moore.
“I’ve got bleacher butt,” I complained. It had been about half an hour, and we weren’t any closer to interrogating the science teacher.
“The twins sure are taking their time with our suspect,” Ezra said. He jabbed my granola bar with his finger. “You going to eat that?”
“We’re definitely having you tested for a tapeworm,” I kidded. “But yes. You can have the granola bar. You can have my chips, too, if you want them.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “You really do love me.”
“I really do.” I gave him a quick kiss and brushed breadcrumbs from his beard. “Not sure I love the facial hair, but definitely the man it’s attached to.” I watched as the single Graves sister reached out and touched Mr. Moore’s hand as she laughed at something he said. “Cripes. How long is Daffney going to monopolize Mr. Moore?” I complained.
“Come on,” Ezra said. “Let’s go check out the library. We can’t talk to Moore with this many people around, anyhow. Not without giving up our advantage. We’re the only ones who know he was being blackmailed by the victim, and I’d like to keep it that way for now.”
I smirked. “Now, I’m the one impressed with your competitiveness.”
“I was quite the athlete in high school,” he said with a grin. “You know, before…” He made a round gesture at his belly.
“Before you swallowed a basketball?” I snickered. “Kidding.” I squeezed his hand. “You’re still quite the athlete.”
