While the others split up to look for Anton and Rose, I sneak outside alone. I head straight for the outbuildings next to the patio area. Most of them are empty, but one of the doors leads into a musty building that smells wrong. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and my heart picks up its pace. I fumble for the light switch, and a couple of dirty spotlights come on.
This is the pool house. This is where Rose died.
It’s been left to go to ruin like the rest of the estate. The glass is green with algae and mostly opaque. The pool still contains water and has turned into a thick shallow swamp. That’s what I smelled, stagnant and fetid water.
Around the edge of the pool, there are several statues of women. They remind me of the tombstones in the cemetery, except these don’t have wings. They’re also not as old, although one has a missing arm and a damaged face.
I circle the edge of the pool. For nearly a year, I’ve done nothing but picture this place, my imagination running wild. Blood trickling between the white tiles, dripping into the water. Rose lying there dead. I try to push the thoughts away, but they always come back.
I stop by the damaged statue. I look behind it, searching for the clue that the ghost told us about. It’s hard to imagine anything useful remains after all this time.
A movement makes me spin around. It’s Beatrix, a startled deer in headlights. Too late, she hides her hands. But I’ve already seen that she’s wearing disposable gloves.
“Wow, you came prepared,” I say.
“It’s not what it looks like; I…I didn’t want to disturb anything.”
She wrings her hands together behind her back. The plastic of the gloves squeaks. Dressed in bloodstained Anton merch, she looks like a deranged groupie.
Where was all the blood?
“That’s what the ghost meant when she asked where all the blood was,” I say, finally understanding. “You really did clean away the evidence so Rose’s death would look like an accident. She didn’t die in the pool, but you made it seem like she did.”
She backs away from me. “She…she hit her head falling into the pool. She drowned.”
“That’s what the inquest said. It was the obvious conclusion. A teenager at a party rife with drugs and alcohol. Drugs in her own system. A late-night swim gone wrong. There was no evidence of foul play. You made sure of that.”
She shakes her head, but it looks like it’s an effort. Her eyes flick to the damaged statue, then to a crack in the tiles where a heavy object clearly landed.
“That’s where she died,” I say, barely able to get the words out. “The statue fell on her. Just like Emma. There would have been a lot of blood.”
Her hands fall limp at her sides. “The statue couldn’t have fallen by itself. It had to have been pushed. I couldn’t leave it on the ground. I couldn’t leave her lying there, or everyone would have known it was murder.”
“Why?” I say quietly.
“I didn’t kill her, I swear. I just found her body. Grayson, you have to believe me.”
I don’t say anything.
“I saw that the light was on in the early hours of the morning, so I came in. And she was dead. The statue was lying next to her. It had hit her on the head, and there was so much blood, but otherwise she was perfect. Even in death, she was perfect.” She sits against the wall and rests her head in her hands. When she speaks, her voice is muffled. “I dragged her into the pool and cleaned up. The killer had left footprints in the blood. I made it look like Rose must have hit her head on the edge of the pool steps as she fell. Like it was an accident.”
“And everyone believed it.”
“Not everyone. Some of the crew who’d been close to Rose thought there was more to it, but the ones who mattered—the police, the coroner, the press—they accepted the story. No one questioned the damaged statue. I don’t know how, but we got away with it.”
“We?” I say, frowning.
At that moment, someone else appears through the door. Matthew stops abruptly when he sees the two of us. The final piece of the puzzle slots into place.
“You were protecting Matthew,” I say. “He’s the reason you staged the scene to look like an accident.”
“What’s he talking about, Bea?” Matthew says, his voice shaky.
She looks up at him, tears running down her face. “There were footprints.” She sobs. “A man’s footprints. They would have figured it out.”
“What?” Matthew says. His handsome face has gone slack and gray.
“She was covering for you,” I say, a nervous laugh escaping my mouth. “She staged Rose’s crime scene so you wouldn’t get the blame.”
“You genuinely thought that I killed Rose?” he chokes out.
“You’d been at each other’s throats for weeks. Then I saw you arguing with her at the party,” Beatrix says. “A few hours later, she was dead.”
Matthew’s mouth falls open. “And you presumed I killed her? Our friend?”
“Someone killed her! A murder investigation could have ruined Anton. As it was, Rose’s death nearly destroyed everything, but he could come back from an accident.”
“You tampered with a crime scene to protect the channel?” Matthew gapes at her, unable to do anything but ask increasingly panicked questions. I’d feel sorry for him if he weren't such a jerk.
“You and Anton were everything to me. I was trying to save us. All I wanted was for things to be how they were before Rose joined the Accomplices.” She stands up shakily. “But it was too late. The damage was already done. Only, you’re always so busy being the wonderful Matthew Bright that you don’t realize we’re only going through the motions of being in love.”
“What?” Matthew says.
“Our relationship is over, Matthew. It has been for a long time. It just took me meeting Grayson to realize that.”
Oh. Oh dear. She gazes at me with such desperate hope on her face, and all I can do is open and shut my mouth like a suffocating fish. This is not good. There’s flirting, and there’s breaking up someone’s relationship. I don’t want to be that guy.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and now she’s talking to me, not him. “I know that you loved Rose, and I’m so sorry I lied about her death.”
“H-him?” Matthew says. For the first time in the competition, he actually looks at me. Like, really looks at me, instead of letting his gaze skim over me like I’m nothing. He finally finds his voice. “You son of a bitch!”
“Whoa, time out!” I duck aside as Matthew lunges at me. “This is between you and Beatrix. I’m an innocent party.”
“You cowardly fuck.” He grabs me by the collar and shakes me. “It’s not enough that you spent months creeping on Rose after she dumped you. You had to mess with my girlfriend?”
“I didn’t creep on anyone, I—”
“Rose hated you,” he snarls. “She’d tell us stories about her idiot ex. That’s what she called you. She played us the song you wrote her, and we all had a good laugh.”
“Don’t you dare!” I cry, suddenly filled with the kind of rage that makes you do incredibly stupid things without thinking.
I swing a punch with everything I have. I miss and fall against him. We both plummet into the pool. The water’s less than two feet deep, so I hit the bottom hard. The filthy soup gets in my mouth and my nose, and it smells like death.
My hands tangle themselves in Matthew’s clothes. I grab at wet fabric. My fingernails scrape against skin. He’s trying to yell, but I drag him down, pushing him against the slippery floor of the pool.
All I can think about is Rose mocking me to her Accomplice friends. To the people she left me to be with. The people who changed her beyond recognition, into someone who no longer needed me. I want to pin him down until he’s forced to take a breath of the thick poisoned water. I want to punch him until he breaks into a thousand pieces.
Beatrix is screaming from the side of the pool, but I can’t hear her over the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. Matthew manages to wriggle free of my grip. He bursts, gasping, above the surface. He lands a punch on my chin, and I skid on a thick layer of slime, going under again.
“What in the name…?” All the noise must have alerted Erin as she bursts into the building. She holds her nose with a manicured hand.
I manage to stand up, clinging to the side of the pool. I’m gasping and coughing too much to speak.
“He…he tried to drown me,” Matthew says, spitting dirty water.
I scramble out of the pool, dragging myself on my belly across the tiles. I stagger to my feet and try to compose myself. Got to smile and laugh at myself because that’s what I do. I’m the harmless goof without a clue. That’s what people expect from me, but I can’t do it anymore. I’m too broken inside.
“Can someone explain what this is all about?” Erin says.
“It’s none of your business,” Beatrix says.
Matthew and I glare at each other, our chests heaving. Beatrix crosses her arms and glares at Erin.
“All right,” Erin says brightly. “Good chat. In other news, I found the equipment used to fake Rose’s ghost. Nothing’s been real. This whole game has been about getting justice for Rose. The secrets, the tricks, the pantomime. The question is, has it worked?”
She looks at me. I hold her stare. The corner of her mouth quirks in an almost smile.
“We still don’t know who the killer is,” Matthew says. “Because it’s not me.”
Erin nods, then waves a photo at us all. I can’t see who it’s of though. “I think I know how to clear this up. Where are Amber and Charlotte?”
“I’ll check in the house,” Beatrix says. She pushes past us all to leave first and carefully avoids looking at either Matthew or me. Her cheeks are bright red. “You three take the gardens, maze, and outbuildings.”
As we leave the pool house, Erin catches my arm. “What were you doing in here?” she says.
I shrug. “Following the clues. The ghost—” I force an embarrassed laugh. “I mean, whoever is pretending to be a ghost said that we’d find a clue at the scene of the crime. Something that everyone else overlooked.”
“You found this building very easily,” she says. “Almost like you’d been here before.”
“Idiot’s luck, I guess,” I say.
She points at me with a long sharp nail, smiling like we’re best friends. “You’re not half as much of an idiot as you pretend to be, Grayson.”
Only, I don’t think she means it as a compliment.