Years had passed since Naomi last came up here. The musty odor sent hundreds of memories tumbling back into her head. She ignored the stabbing images and squirmed carefully towards the center opening. Upon reaching it, Naomi gazed down at the crime scene below.
Evidence of the murder was immediately obvious. Though the body had been removed, gory remnants of the crime were clearly visible throughout the elegant room. The first thing that caught Naomi’s eye was a horrible rusty red stain, located in the center of the cream-colored carpet. The blood had mostly congealed in one general splotch of the floor. But near the main scarlet blemish, there was a single bloody handprint. Naomi shuttered and wondered who made it: Broc or the murderer? Lying beside the grisly body fluid was a long bloody knife: the knife the police claimed held Al’s DNA.
Naomi was still stumped as to how the murderer had framed Al with such startling precision.
Lying near one of the gargantuan bay windows was a torn and bloody shirt; undoubtedly the one the police found in a trash can several houses down.
The murderer was clearly a criminal mastermind; she wasn’t dealing with any type of amateur assassin here. The murder had been carried out with terrifying prowess and skill.
Not for the first time that day, Naomi wondered if she should be more scared. This wasn’t some cutesy little mystery novel that guaranteed the survival of all main characters. This was a real-life murder, and she was following the steps of a ruthless killer. And yet…she could summon up no feelings of fear.
Besides, terror seemed to belong in an alternate universe right now. From outside, Naomi could hear a wafting symphony of chirping birds.
Blinking in an owlish sort of way, Naomi quickly reset her mind to the task at hand. Today, time was of the essence. It was imperative that she move as quickly and efficiently as was humanly possible.
Naomi reached for her backpack and withdrew a rather strange assortment of objects: a collapsible tent pole, duct tape, and a hand-held video camera. With swift, confident movements, Naomi duct-taped the camera to the end of the tent pole. She clicked the video camera to life, and then began to lower the contraption into the room below. As the camera ascended towards the ground, Naomi slowly assembled the lengthy tent pole. Soon, the camera hung suspended mere inches above the ground.
Gritting her teeth in concentration, Naomi used minute wrist movements to pan the camera in a slow circle around the room. Afterwards, she settled in for close-ups on the blood stain, the knife, and the shirt respectively. It seemed she’d hardly filmed anything at all, but according to Naomi’s watch the funeral guests would arrive for the reception in less than half an hour.
Naomi rapidly disassembled the tent pole, halted the live camera footage, and stuffed everything into her backpack.
A few minutes later Naomi reached the fifth floor of the mansion, the location of Brynn’s enormous suite. Naomi clearly remembered the suite’s orientation in the manor, thanks to Brynn’s endless threats about other people entering her rooms. Her threats and blackmail had been idle, but they’d been enough to frighten young Naomi out of her wits. No matter how hard Broc pushed for an adventure into his sister’s lair, Naomi maintained a firm refusal.
Earlier, Naomi worried about finding the right door. But having reached the top floor, it was immediately obvious that her worries had been vastly unnecessary. On a single magnificent mahogany door, gigantic silver letters screamed the words BRYNN AVERY in bold print.
At the last second, Naomi remembered to don latex gloves before testing the door handle. It was locked. No surprise there. Extending a gloved hand behind her, Naomi retrieved the wire from her backpack. After a few moments of fiddling, the door swung smoothly inwards.
With utmost caution, Naomi entered the dragon’s lair of her childhood. A few steps in, Naomi criticized herself for her slow-moving stupidity. No one was home. There was no need to muffle her footsteps.
The rooms were lavishly decorated in a garish Pepto-Bismol pink. A huge white vanity dominated the monstrously proportioned bedroom. Against the other wall sat an enormous canopy bed, smothered completely in flowing reams of deep purple silk. The ivory carpet was thick and soft.
Immediately, Naomi set to methodically searching every inch of the luxurious bedchambers. With a light touch, she skimmed her fingers over every surface of the canopy bed, searching for hidden pockets or seams in the smooth material. The canopy bed proved fruitless, so she moved on to the vanity. There, she rifled through gallons of make-up from every designer brand imaginable. Naomi hadn’t even known that so many types of make-up existed; let alone so many designer brands.
Her search was thorough, but nevertheless yielded absolutely nothing.
Naomi was just turning to a massive wood dresser when she heard a light set of footsteps rapidly approaching the suite’s main entrance. The rapid beat of shoes against the hardwood of the hallway sounded in time with the sudden ominous pounding of her heart.
What should she do? Leave? Hide?
Leaving was out of the question. There was only one door, and the windows opened on a five-story drop. As for hiding places, nowhere sufficient could be found in her quick scan of the room and she didn’t have time to look anywhere else.
As Naomi’s eyes flicked frantically about the room, they suddenly caught on an unlikely escape route. The rafters. Of course. The high reaches of the ceiling were lined with thick wooden beams. If Naomi could just get up there, she could crawl across one of the beams until she reached another room. But how could she get there in the first place?
Without conscious decision, Naomi scrambled to the top of the canopy bed. Using the wall for support, Naomi tipped precariously on top of the skimpy wood frame. The top of the bed had clearly not been made for human weight, but Naomi prayed it would hold her lightweight frame for just a few seconds longer. Even perched on the high reaches of the massively-scaled bed, Naomi was still a foot below the far-off reaches of the rafters.
Heart thudding painfully against her ribs, Naomi’s insides began to shake with uncontrollable fear. Sweat beaded in pools across her brow, and her ears began ringing. But despite the attack of painful anxiety, Naomi’s hands were steady and her head was clear as a pool of still blue water. Twenty-seven years of gymnastics training had finally kicked in.
Naomi crouched down, every muscle in her body taught as a coiled spring; ready to explode at the slightest command. At the door, a key turned in the lock.
She took a deep breath. She jumped.
Chapter 4
With strange detachment, Naomi’s mind noticed nothing but the beauty of the jump. Air sliced along her body as it streamed straight as an arrow in its path of utmost precision. The world fell away behind her. For an immeasurable moment, Naomi wasn’t a terrestrial being at all. She was wildly liberated like a bird, soaring through the sky with the chaotic freedom of a wild animal. She was a falcon, wild and free with the heavens at her bidding. Then suddenly she was falling down…down…down.
Naomi began to plunge to her death. The ground rushed at her dying eyes. Although the fall itself wouldn’t kill her, the killer opening the door most certainly would. Abruptly, Naomi’s flailing arms hit thick, bruising wood. Her fingers scrambled for purchase. She almost slipped, but at the last moment her nails dug deeper into the wood and found hold.
She hung suspended from the ceiling, with nothing but a few feeble pinches of plant matter to keep her from plummeting to disaster.
The intruder was right outside the master bedroom.
With a tremendous push, Naomi vaulted onto the wood beam, landing with her balance evenly distributed amongst both feet. Her high school gymnastics teacher would have been proud. Naomi pressed her body flat against the thick wood beam, just as the door flung open and Brynn Avery swept into the room.
*****
Naomi’s pulse continued to race, her mouth as dry as a desert. She worked to force her breathing away from hyperventilation. The danger had only barely lessene
d. Below her, the prime murder suspect paced back and forth in tremendous agitation. Naomi was suspended high in the air, lying flat against a single wood beam. The log thankfully obscured her from view, but any noise she made would be a dead giveaway.
Brynn Avery wasn’t a terribly attractive woman. For as long as Naomi had known her, Brynn’s face had been fixed in a permanent scowl. She had thin lips, beady brown eyes, and a hooked-nose that she'd recently had “beautified.”
But despite an obvious lack of natural beauty, Brynn’s endless ensembles of shockingly scanty outfits never failed to impress the boys. As a result, Brynn lived her life floating on clouds of money provided for her by dozens of rapt admirers.
Maple Falls’ resident gossipers had a field day when Brynn returned to Avery Manor after her young adult wanderings. Brynn was a magnet for trouble.
Below Naomi, Brynn paced back and forth, positively shaking with some unknown motion. She looked like an asylum outpatient.
After several minutes of stalking back and forth, Brynn abruptly stopped.
“HOW COULD YOU?” she screamed, splitting the silence. Her voice cracked with a tremendous amount of raw emotion.
Suddenly and without warning, she picked up a curling iron and smashed a gigantic mirror that dominated the vanity. A tremendous crash echoed throughout the room as the once-beautiful mirror shattered into a thousand pieces. Naomi, whose nerves had not yet recovered from the death-defying aerial gymnastics stunt, jumped violently. Luckily, she was just able to catch her balance and stop from tumbling off the wood into the room below.
“HOW COULD YOU?” Brynn screamed again. Apparently one mirror wasn’t enough, for soon a second and a third shattered to the ground. “HOW COULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU?” The screams grew more and more manic as the piles of glass on the floor grew and grew.
Once the last mirror’s remains lay devastated with the others, Brynn collapsed to the ground, seemingly unaware that she was lying on countless shards of knife-sharp glass. Maybe she didn’t care. Maybe for some perverse motive she actually wanted to feel the pain. But regardless of the reason, Brynn’s spider-limbed body sprawled itself across the tiny saw blades of the carpet and positively shook with great heaving sobs. It sounded as if the girl was being ripped apart from the inside. Her distress seeped out like a pollutant and oozed into the walls of the heavy stone mansion.
The suffering seemed to last forever, tangibly hanging in the air with an evil, suffocating presence.
Somehow, miraculously, it ended.
Naomi opened her eyes. At last, she could ignore the aching in her chest. During Brynn’s lament, it had felt as if a knife had been stabbed into her chest and then twisted back and forth relentlessly. Every part of her being ached for Broc; longing for one last minute to explain how special he’d been to her.
Brynn stood up. She casually washed the crusty blood and glass off her hands. Then, she left the suite.
A heavy ton of stress cascaded off of Naomi’s shoulders, shattering to the ground to join the piles of mirror fragments. Naomi felt light and carefree, like a feather floating in the breeze.
Getting down from the enormous wood beam proved even more difficult than getting up. At last, Naomi gave up and dropped thirteen feet to the ground. Somehow, she landed safely. Naomi thanked her lucky stars for being enrolled in gymnastics since the age of six. She never guessed it would come in so handy.
After ages spent picking her way through the field of gleaming daggers on the ground, Naomi finally reached the suite’s hallway.
In the private bathroom, Naomi transformed herself from cat burglar extraordinaire back into plain old Ms. Zhu, dressed in respectable black funeral garb.
Mission successful.
Chapter 5
Downstairs, chattering voices roared like a tidal wave into Naomi’s ears. The sudden presence of so many people was unnerving. Still stuck in detective mode, Naomi fought the urge to scale the nearest pillar and hide from view.
Realizing her frayed nerves were in need of some repair work, Naomi gratefully sank onto a bench near the edge of the throng.
“I’m glad to know that Broc is in a better place now,” a high-pitched voice near Naomi’s right trilled. Naomi turned ever so slightly in her seat so she could watch the speaker out of the corner of her eye. Naomi could see little of the figure besides an ample bosom, obscured by horrendous floral fabric. However, she did take note of the light brown hair (clearly a die job) fashioned in strict oval ringlets. The woman cocked her head in Naomi’s direction, and Naomi felt a sudden spring of recognition. This was Mrs. Mink, a neighbor whom Naomi often assisted with her groceries.
“What do you mean?” an elderly gentleman beside Mrs. Mink questioned. He wore a stiffly pressed tail-coat and top hat, the picture of the classic 'esteemed old gentleman.'
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” she cackled, bursting to dish out a hunk of juicy gossip. “Broc had a lot of… issues, shall we say. He suffered from severe depression and mental trauma. His dad, the architect Broc Avery Sr, tried all sorts of different therapists, but to no avail.”
“How can you be so certain of this dreadful piece of news?” Sir Esteemed asked Mrs. Mink. “What connection did you have to the deceased?”
Mrs. Mink waved a hand in dismissal. “Word travels, my dear sir. I can’t say I’m too surprised he’s been murdered. Men with…problems like that can turn to shady people in order to fix them.”
“And you consider Alan Richman a shady character?” Sir Esteemed asked, clearly taken aback.
“Kindly gentleman, surely you’re aware that every man has a dark side, particularly the rich ones. They’re always greedy for something more, addicted to the exhilaration of success. Clearly, in Mr. Richman’s case, the dark has overcome the good. Now, would you care for a drink?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Sir Esteemed declared, gallantly offering his arm to the pompous old witch.
Naomi fumed as she watched their retreating backs disappear into the crowd. A dark side indeed! She’d never help that despicable bat with her groceries again.
Insides still boiling in anger at the woman’s ridiculous accusations, Naomi decided that she’d had enough of sitting at the ghastly funeral. It was time for Plan B.
*****
Eyes flicking about nervously, Naomi strode rapidly towards the copse of trees that concealed her car. It was vital that no one saw her. If they did, she’d have a lot of explaining to do.
Inside the car, Naomi stripped down to jet-black underwear, then fished Al’s fancy business suit out of the duffel bag. Pulling on the ensemble, Naomi was soon swallowed by the gigantic reams of shapeless cloth. The pants were too big and had to be rolled up at least five times at the waist. As for the top, it ballooned ridiculously out at her hips, even after she tucked it in. The sleeves sank to mid-thigh, and she was forced to roll them all the way to her elbows. She added a tie and a sweater vest. The tie was the only part of the ensemble that actually fit.
Probing around at the bottom of the duffel, Naomi located the sleek black wig and stick-on mustache. She’d purchased them at the costume store this morning.
After a few minutes of fooling around in the car mirror, Naomi realized that she’d been trying to put on the wig backwards! With a laugh (her first genuine laugh in twenty-four hours), Naomi rotated the wig and settled it carefully onto her head. The mustache was easy enough to apply, though the material on the back was so sticky that Naomi wondered if she’d be able to get it off later. Perhaps she’d be stuck with a mustache forever! What a horrible thought. She wondered if a person could shave off a fake mustache. Maybe later on she’d have to find out…
For a final touch, Naomi used heavy black eyeliner to thicken her eyebrows. She examined herself critically in the mirror.
Yes, Naomi actually did look like a man. The transformation was astounding. Naomi was amazed at how much a suit, wig, and fake mustache could affect her appearance. Society’s perception of gender-difference
s was ridiculous, seeing that she could easily transform herself into a man with just a quick change of clothing.
Sliding on a pair of brown loafers from the thrift shop, Naomi slid out of the car’s safe haven. She set a brisk case towards the mansion; vainly trying (and failing) to make her smooth gymnast’s gait look more like a man’s.
Back at the Avery Manor, the crowds, if anything had grown. The Avery family had decided to show off their tremendous wealth by offering an elaborate dinner to all funeral guests. A number of greedy townspeople purposely missed the funeral, and then arrived just in time for dinner.
The back patio had been temporarily packed with elaborate buffet tables. Waiters in spanking white uniforms rushed back and forth, offering visitors piles of expensive appetizers. All around, people drank from delicate glasses of champagne. In the corner, a group of high school boys clutched liquor glasses, grinning manically at their “sneaky” alcohol acquisition skills.
Naomi’s stomach heaved, and she thought she might be sick.
Around her were people who’d talked to Broc once, maybe twice in his life. Some of them may have never spoken to Broc at all, and instead simply seen him in passing: at the supermarket, walking down Main Street, eating in a restaurant. The worst crowd consisted of the people who’d never even known of Broc’s existence. They’d simply come here, to his funeral, to bum food and alcohol off of his filthy-rich family. It was despicable.
The truth was that no one here had known Broc at all; never truly known him. It was to Naomi that Broc always confided his deepest fears, his darkest secrets. He’d stopped after they broke up, of course. But despite more than two years apart, Naomi was sure that she understood Broc better than anyone else here.
An honest funeral party for Broc would have been quite small. Broc had always been quiet and reserved. He’d been the brains in the business; Al was the charisma.