Rex and I dropped the kids off and went home. It took us some time to think through the whole scenario. Rex made a few phone calls when we got stuck on a clue or suspect. It was so much easier to do things this way! Why hadn't I thought of it before, instead of just doing it all myself?
As we bounced a few things off each other, we revisited the video and made a call to Soo Jin. Stewie agreed to create a special presentation. Ava agreed to set things up outside of city hall. It was midnight before we went to bed. We felt like we'd won the lottery…or were declared prophets of Blasto Blasto.
"Why are we doing this in the alley?" Kelly looked around the scene of the crime. "It's kind of cramped."
I stared at her. "It's as if you've never done this before. The scene of the crime provides a more dramatic backdrop, of course."
"And you're saying that you and Rex figured this out together?" She feigned astonishment. "Will wonders never cease?"
"I know, right? It was actually fun. Why haven't I done this before now?"
Kelly winked. "Because you're a bit stubborn?"
I nodded. "That's it. Now go take your seat."
Everyone was there. Ava had the city's physical plant staff put chairs in a semi-circle around the spot where Vernon had been killed. She'd also had the alley cordoned off with a sign that read, Murder Suspects Only for Big Reveal Because Mrs. Wrath is a Drama Queen, which I thought was a bit unnecessary.
Rex appeared at my side as Kelly went and sat on the far right side of the front row, between Riley and Kurt, who had a huge cat on a leash, sleeping at his feet. "I've got Troy and Joanna in place."
"And Kevin?" I asked.
Rex pointed to the wall opposite. Kevin was leaning against it, staring at his hand, which was stuck in a Pringles can, with a look that could only be described as abject horror. Rex then pointed at the ground in front of us, where the Hamlets stood between us and everyone else. They were facing the crowd, with hands on their tiny holsters. No, that wasn't quite right. One of them appeared to be holding a small cattle prod, which crackled occasionally.
There was a banging noise, and we looked to see Kevin pounding his potato chip can–enclosed fist against a wall.
"Everyone's ready, right down to the hamsters." Rex smiled.
"Well, you know who to watch." I winked at him.
The alley door opened, and a procession came through, with Ava in the lead, wearing her medieval mayoral chain of office, head held high. Behind her was everyone but Betty, who made a dramatic appearance, lowering herself down from the roof on a rope. They took the front row of seats. I thought about correcting them. I'd rather have all the suspects in the front row, but I figured it would take too long to discuss this and I might not even win the argument, so I let it go.
Behind them sat Ellie, who was glaring at Eddie on the other end of the row. Eddie ignored her, staring instead at me. Between them sat Howey and Gandalf, in their full regalia, Milt, and Carlson. Behind them sat Hilly, Roger, Ron, and Ivan. None of them had to be there, but they'd insisted, and Hilly told Roger this was a good opportunity to see what all Americans did when solving murder cases.
Roger was grinning like he'd won the Lucky Charms lottery. He was eating from a box of popcorn. Kevin stopped banging his fist against the wall when he spotted it and started making his way over to the Holy Mud Man, with the Pringles can still firmly on his fist. When he got as far as Hilly, she took one look at him and yanked the can violently off his hand.
After a brief but impressive scream of pain, Kevin realized he now had access to the chips. He wandered back to his previous spot against the wall and promptly got his hand stuck again. His gaze returned to Roger, but there was a glimpse of doubt, perhaps wondering if it was worth the pain of getting so close to Hilly again.
I held my hands up to get everyone's attention. "Okay, we should probably get started…"
Ava got up from her chair and came over to stand in front of me, facing the group. "The City of Who's There does not condone violence against insurance executives," she said, as if giving a state of the union address. "And whoever killed my date, who wasn't my date but totally was, will be executed."
Betty started handing everyone a Vote for Ava. She loves ponies! buttons, and the Shetland pony was led up the alley by Lauren. They stopped in front of me, and Lauren handed Ava the reins.
Ava turned to us. "Mrs. Wrath, Detective Ferguson." She handed me the reins. "The floor is yours."
The girls returned to their seats, and I stood there, looking at the pony, who looked up at me as if to say, Get on with it. I handed the reins to Rex, who took them as if he thought this was totally normal.
I waved my hand. "I'd like to say that execution is probably not on the table for the murder of Vernon Croyer."
Ava started to stand up for rebuttal.
At that moment, Stewie and Mike appeared, wearing, to my complete surprise, suits. Stewie was wheeling a cart with a projector as Mike set up a screen.
"What's with the suits?" I asked.
Stewie looked down at himself as if he was also surprised. "Oh. That. It's our monthly dry-cleaning day for the robes. I thought a suit would be more professional."
"Yeah," Mike said.
I motioned for them to stand by, and they continued setting things up. I'd never really done a multimedia reveal before and was a bit excited.
Just then, Drew, the executive director for the Museum of Murder, and his son, Conrad, joined us.
My eyebrows went up, and he explained, "Thought I'd get a head start on this, since it's probably going to be a future exhibit."
Drew and his son stood in the back. Betty winked at her boyfriend, who nodded in response, causing the normally stoic girl to blush deep red.
I looked around the group. Everyone was here. For a moment, I realized I was about to show children the video of an actual murder. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I turned to Stewie, who stepped over to me.
"I edited out the actual stabbing," he confided. "You'll only see the victim and the killer from the shoulders up."
My jaw dropped. That was uncharacteristically wise for a teenage druid/demon wannabe.
He must have noticed my expression. "I thought I could turn this into a sort of business. And having something less graphic seemed to be the way to go. Betty is taking me on. She'll create deepfakes, and I'll debunk deepfakes, as long as I don't do that to hers."
I held up one finger. "We're going to talk about that later."
"What's the hold up?" Ellie shouted. "Let's get this show on the road! I have a plane to catch to Madrid!"
Eddie scoffed. "Unless you're the murderer. And I think you are."
Ellie jumped out of her chair and lunged in the direction of the insurance exec. Hilly grabbed her and threw her back in her seat, winking at me.
"Go on, Merry," the assassin said.
"Right," I said. "Some of you may have heard there was a video of the actual murder. Here it is." I cued Stewie. "This footage has been edited, but it is still disturbing."
The projector turned on, and Stewie tapped the surface of his phone. It turned out the video was edited, but more than the dred demi demon had implied. Instead of shoulders up, it was nose up. You could barely see what was going on.
"Sorry," Stewie said. "I might have cut too much."
After a few seconds, he turned it off.
"Can we get that footage for the museum?" Drew asked.
"All we could see was the top of your head and the top of Vernon's!" Ellie shrieked. Then the realization hit her. "You killed him!"
The Hamlets turned towards me and eyed me with suspicion. The tiny cattle prod crackled.
Rex spoke up. "Merry didn't kill him. This footage was altered to overlap her face over the killer's. Which is why we didn't release the footage to the press or public."
"Looks real to me." Eddie glared at me. "She's your wife, isn't she? Of course you would cover up for her!"
"Merry had solid alibis, and we thoroughly checked them all. She wasn't near the crime scene when it happened," Rex responded calmly. "Which is important because the crime didn't happen when we'd originally thought."
The suspects eyed each other warily. Kevin punched his way through the bottom of the tube and was rewarded with a handful of chips and a Pringles can as a bangle.
"Let's start at the beginning," I said. "Let's start with the fact that Vernon was behind his own murder. He just didn't know it."
"Vernon didn't stab himself!" Eddie scoffed again.
"No, he didn't," I agreed. "Vernon had planned to fake his own death. He'd been planning an elaborate insurance fraud, which Ellie tipped us off to. The project was called LIAR. Tall Corn State Insurance was losing people to the bigger name brands in insurance, like State Farm, Progressive, and others. Maybe because Tall Corn State is a strange name for insurance. But whatever the reason, they were losing business."
"That's a lie!" Eddie said with a little less venom.
"Which one? The idea that Vernon was planning to commit insurance fraud, or the fact that you were losing business?" Rex asked. "We did a deep dive into the company's finances. It's been in a death spiral for the past five years."
Eddie folded her arms over her chest but said nothing. How could she argue against the truth?
"We believe that Vernon worried that he was going to be arrested, maybe not immediately, but with his fraud about to be revealed, he thought he would just fake his own death and start again somewhere else."
"That bastard!" Ellie stood up, fists clenched. "Now that he's faked his death? I'll kill him!"
"He wanted to fake his own death," I corrected. "His plan was to do so. But he actually was murdered, I'm sure, much to his surprise."
Betty raised her hand. "Does something like that work? Hypothetically speaking, that is. Can someone fake her death if the heat gets too real?"
"You and I really need to talk when this is over," I told her.
"So Vernon's dead," Ellie began to reason out. "But he didn't plan to be? It was a total surprise that he actually was murdered?" A small smile crossed her lips, and she sat back down. "Awesome!"
"Come on!" Eddie jumped to her feet and pointed at me then the widow. "If she didn't do it, you did! You're probably getting half a million in an insurance payout!"
Not to be outdone, Ellie also jumped up. "For your information, Vernon let his life insurance policy lapse! Which is why he's going to be cremated in a cardboard box because it's the cheapest way to get rid of that deadbeat!"
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence that I took advantage of. "Like I said, Vernon meant to fake his death. And he had help. Originally, he made this video, implicating someone else in his fake murder."
I pointed to Stewie, who had isolated the image of me. A dragon appeared in the righthand corner of the video. It swooped down and bit off my head, revealing another in its place.
"Dragons are real," Lauren said. "I've been saying that for years. And he helped unmask the deepfake. That dragon's a hero."
"Nice," I said to Stewie. "But the dragon is fake, just like I was."
The crowd was fixated on Eddie's head, that was now on the body of the killer.
"I didn't kill Vernon!" Eddie shrieked. "You said that this was all fake."
"Ah." I smiled. "But you did. But you're also right. Vernon wanted it to look like you'd killed him. My guess is that, like everyone else at your company, he knew you were gunning for his job. This was a way to get rid of you also."
"Who helped him?" Inez asked.
"Howey and Gandalf." I pointed at the two. "They helped him fake the video. Gandalf, it turns out, is very good at Photoshop."
Gandalf nodded. "Well, I am a wizard."
"We looked him up last night. Before he went full wizard, Gandalf was a professional film editor."
"We were forced to do it!" Howey cried out. "We didn't want to! He blackmailed us!"
I nodded. "I know. I also know that Milt helped him out with LIAR but was also blackmailed into doing it."
"Like I told you last night, nothing happened." Milt smiled at me. "We were just in the beginning stages of it. I was going to turn him into the police once the money came in."
Milt had been one of our calls last night. When Rex suggested he might come out of this unscathed if he confessed, he sang like a bird. He told us everything about LIAR, which stood for Loss Insurance Assistance Reclaimed. The words meant nothing. But what it would've done was create dummy insurance policies for people who didn't exist. By filing claims, Vernon would embezzle the funds and flee before Tall Corn State went under. It wasn't the smartest plan and it had a lot of holes in the logic, but he was going to give it a go.
What was Vern blackmailing Milt with? The threatening letters he'd sent. Vern had told Milt that if he played along, he'd approve his claim payout. Rex and I had decided not to reveal any of this since Milt was working for us. He sold out Howey and Gandalf but said he felt bad about that since they were victims too. He did not say how Vernon was blackmailing them, however. We'd have to find that out later.
I felt bad for the three of them. "Vernon was a monster," I said. "He tried to defraud his company with a scam, framed his colleague for murder, blackmailed people into participating in criminal activity, and canceled his life insurance and was going to leave his wife struggling for seven years, because without a body she'd have to wait seven years to declare him dead. He really was a piece of work."
Betty's hand went up. "You said Eddie did kill him but didn't. What did you mean by that, and is it a workable plan for a hypothetical murder in the future?"
"Like I said…" My eyes narrowed in an attempt at my intimidating leader face, which didn't intimidate her at all. "You and I are going to have a chat when this is over. But you're right. I did say that. That's because I believe Eddie found out what Vernon was planning to do. I'm certain that she killed him and added my head to the video."
Eddie shrugged in defeat. "I didn't think it was fair what he was going to do to me and his wife."
"Why did you choose Merry to frame?" Rex wondered.
"I visited the Museum of Murder a few months ago. I figured she was already well known for being murder adjacent. The odds were high that someone like that would eventually, actually commit murder." Her eyes landed on mine. "You were just a very convenient scapegoat."
I'd been right about that! That was nice!
"You did all that for me?" Ellie asked slowly, as if she was afraid the words weren't true.
The killer nodded. "And for me. And for Howey, Gandalf, and Milt. Vernon was a moron. He'd written down everything he'd planned, in a notebook labeled If I Faked My Own Murder. I found it on his desk one day. After the fake stabbing, Howey and Gandalf were supposed to give him a car and ten thousand dollars so he could escape. I could tell he was forcing them to do it because he kept writing Mwah Hah Hah! I'm an evil genius, and these are my pawns, in the margins of the plans. I have the notebook at home. I'll turn it in."
She was resigned to her fate, and I felt bad for her too. But hey! Getting the notebook was a bonus!
"So why implicate me?" Ellie said.
Eddie's face fell. "Sorry about that. I guess it was self-preservation to take the heat off myself."
"I respect that," Betty muttered.
"I'm not sorry he's dead," Eddie said.
"Me either," Ellie added.
"Us too!" Howey said for himself and Gandalf.
Milt just nodded.
This was going to be a mess, with all these people involved at various levels. Troy arrested Eddie and led her away. Joanna spoke to Howey, Gandalf, and Milt, telling them to report to the station immediately. Rex had said he would have to talk to the prosecuting attorney but was confident they wouldn't go to trial.
As Joanna and Kevin led the three to their squad cars, the Hamlets prepared to follow. That is, until the cat at Kurt's feet woke up and noticed them. I managed to scoop them up and put them on the pony's back before the large feline lunged for them.
"Sorry about that," Kurt said as he picked up the squirming cat. "I was on my way here and just happened to find Sweetie here. I've got to take her back to the office to let her owners know I found her." He looked at the projector. "That was pretty cool and all. Good job, Stewie!"
The diminutive redhead swelled with pride. "Thanks!"
Ava and the girls went back into city hall. Lauren came running back, snagged the reins, and led the pony and hamsters inside.
"Come on, Officers Hamlet," she said. "I'll give you a tour."
People began to disperse, and Roger limped slowly over. "This is so much more exciting than the way this is done back home! Usually you are just arrested for crimes that you may or may not have committed and interrogated for months until you confess. This was fun!"
Drew walked over. "These are so interesting! It's like being in a detective novel. I think this would make an excellent exhibit. And the fact that the killer visited the museum and, as a result, chose her mark makes it extra special!" He clapped his son on the back and led him away.
Rex smiled. "You know, you get all the glory and fun of the Big Reveal, while I have to go back to the office, fill out mountains of paperwork, press charges, log evidence, and make sure the prosecutor has enough to convict. You're getting off easy."
"Not really. I was the main suspect. And with the Museum of Murder, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again."
"Well…" He kissed me on the cheek and squeezed my hand. "As long as I'm on your side, that isn't going to happen."
He called out to Kevin, who had eaten all the chips and was again banging the can against the wall. The two of them walked to the squad cars. I wondered if Kevin realized he'd left the Hamlets behind.
Kelly hung back. "What was Carlson's role? And did you ever get over to see his paper clips?"
I shrugged. "As far as we know, he didn't have one. Rex is going to talk to Eddie about it, but Milt didn't think he was involved, so we have to wait on that one."
Kelly moved a step closer and lowered her voice. "And what about the three stab wounds that looked like four?"
Crap! "I totally forgot to add that to my monologue! We examined the footage later and found that the knife blade broke off after the third stabbing. In the video, you can see a quick flash as it falls to the ground between them. Soo Jin came back here last night and found the blade had been kicked underneath a dumpster. She likes that idea." I tapped my chin. "I really should have included that."
Kelly patted me on the back. "Most people didn't even know about it. I'd say you did a great job figuring that out."
Hilly bounced over. "Hey, did you find out why Reg and Rog kidnapped Roger?"
Kelly looked at me in askance. It hadn't been common knowledge, and because we weren't sure, Rex and I had left it out.
"I'm pretty sure Eddie's behind that. Rex is going to ask her at the station. Since she admitted to the murder, she'll probably confess to it. But I don't think Rex is going to press charges on that. I argued for leniency for Rog and Reg, and he's taken that into consideration."
Was it the cleanest case we'd closed? Not really. What did you expect? An Agatha Christie ending?