Murder House Read online

  “Let’s get out of here.” Olivia grabbed Gail’s arm, and they hurried inside.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t be as okay as you act like you are. About my family having so much more money,” Joe said to me. “I’d be overheated. I might be willing to, uh, bend the rules to get some cash.” Nice work on our cover.

  “I’m not you,” I told him.

  There was a long silence. Even though we were outside, it felt like all the air had been sucked out from where we were standing.

  “So, great,” George finally said. “What you’re all telling me is that my sister and I are probably sharing a house with a killer.”

  Worried?

  “I guess that is what we’re saying,” I told George. “We’re probably living in a house with a killer. Zoinks, as Shaggy would say.”

  My joke got a few half laughs. More than it deserved. Because it wasn’t that funny. And because the living-with-a-killer thing was truly scary.

  Ripley let out a sigh. “So what should we all do for fun? That doesn’t involve bleeding or poisoning or snakes or anything like that.”

  “Well, if you take away all that stuff . . . ,” Hal said.

  “That leaves us with practically nothing,” said George.

  “Charades?” Ann the Silent Girl offered.

  That got real laughs from everybody. “Of course you want to play charades. You never speak. You’ll probably kill at it. Uh, I mean, you’ll probably beat us all,” Ripley quickly corrected herself.

  “I want to change these pants first,” Georgina said. “I got a grass stain on them, and I have to try to get it out. They’re my friend Carly’s.”

  “All you girls better watch yourselves,” George warned. “Georgina is always borrowing her friends’ clothes, then wrecking them.”

  “No, I’m not. Don’t listen to him. We share some DNA, that’s all. He doesn’t know anything about me,” Georgina told us, rubbing at the grass stain on the knee of her purple jeans.

  “Meet up in the great room?” I asked.

  “Where else?” answered Hal.

  As I led the way inside, I caught Frank checking the balcony that overlooked the fountain. Pretty much Brynn’s favorite hangout.

  I let the others go ahead of me, and dropped into step next to Frank, who was bringing up the rear. I couldn’t talk to him for too long. It would look suspicious, especially after Veronica pretty much invited us to hate each other. But I figured we could grab a second. “Do you know where the Band-Aids are in the supply closet?”

  “I guess I can show you,” Frank muttered. “You’re probably so used to having people wait on you that you’re helpless.”

  “You know you want to go after her,” I said once we were inside the walk-in closet. It was one of the few places we knew for sure there were no cameras. There and the bathrooms.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Did you just say who?” I shook my head.

  “Okay, I know who,” Frank admitted.

  Here’s the deal. I started crushing on Brynn from the first day we showed up at Deprivation House. And for once, a girl realized that I am truly the superior Hardy brother in looks, charm, and all other departments that matter. You got it: Brynn seemed pretty happy to hang with me. A lot.

  The thing was, Frank was crushing on her too. Mad crushing. Like he should go out and write the girl a poem or something. And Frank’s never that way. Usually he avoids girls, because he gets all blushy and stammery when he tries to talk to them. But for Brynn, he was willing to actually, you know, go up to her and try to speak. What could I do but step aside? I couldn’t make Frank compete with my magnificence when his heart was practically breaking out of his chest whenever he saw Brynn.

  “So go find her,” I told him. “I can keep watch by myself for a while.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I know I’m the little brother, but I’ve had as much training as you—” I began.

  “No,” Frank interrupted. “Are you sure it’s okay with you . . . about Brynn . . . that I . . .”

  See, he even gets stammery when he talks about girls. “I’m sure, I’m sure,” I promised. “Ripley actually seems to be getting into real nice mode instead of just camera nice mode. Maybe I’ll let her experience the wonder of me.”

  Frank laughed. I’ve been trying to teach him when things are funny and when they aren’t. He still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it.

  “Here are the Band-Aids.” Frank tossed me the box.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t find any antiblush cream for you, bro,” I said.

  He didn’t laugh. See?

  I walked out of the closet with a couple of Band-Aids clearly in my hand, in case the cameras were on and anybody cared. Then I headed up the S-shaped staircase and down the hall to the great room, this massive space that was like three or four living rooms combined. It used to have this awesome TV. Now, well, now it still had a great fireplace.

  I plopped down on one of the sofas next to Hal. He and George were the only ones there so far. “Are we really going to have to play charades?” he asked. The same way he’d ask, “Are we really going to have to drink pickle juice?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing else to do. But it’s not like it’s a challenge or anything. Veronica’s not going to come in here and make you.”

  “Hey, let’s psych the girls out,” said George. “Let’s say we want the teams to be guys against girls. We can write up the list of charade ideas right now and substitute them for whatever ones the girls team comes up with. Then we’ll be able to guess the movie titles or whatever they are in seconds.”

  “Uh, but the girls will realize that we aren’t guessing the stuff that they came up with. If you shout out a movie title that they didn’t write down, they’ll know we’re cheating.” Not that I was planning to cheat anyway. It was interesting that George was so up front about wanting to cheat, though—since we were all in a competition together.

  “Oh, okay. Then maybe we could—” He stopped abruptly as Georgina and Ripley came in.

  Georgina narrowed her eyes at her brother. “What were you just talking about?” she demanded. “He has his guilty face on,” she told Ripley.

  “Nothing,” George said.

  I wasn’t getting into this one. I wasn’t on a mission to make sure there was no foul play in charades.

  “You were trying to figure out a way to cheat,” she accused. “He is humiliatingly bad at charades. He never guesses anything,” she added to the rest of us. “I’m sure he was afraid of shaming himself. He actually started crying once because he didn’t know what one of the words he was supposed to act out even meant.”

  “I was seven!” George shouted. “Will you stop telling people these stupid stories?”

  “When you stop doing stupid things,” Georgina told him sweetly.

  “I am going to be so happy to get away from you. As soon as I win the mil, I’m getting legally emancipated. I’m moving out. I’m never going to have to look at you again. Or Dad. That bloated control freak.”

  “Yeah, this is it. Dad’s gone too far. Legal emancipation is the only option. I’m not even going home after I leave here.”

  “You’ll have to,” George told his sister. “Because you won’t have any money to live on, so you’ll be at home, seeing the face every day, hearing the lectures. I’ll be in my own place.”

  “We’ll see,” Georgina told him. The words came out sounding like, In your dreams.

  “No, you’ll—” George started.

  “Keep at it!” James called out as he entered the room. “Go on and take each other out. It wasn’t really fair that they brought you two in late anyway.”

  There was a serious edge of anger to his voice. Had James been so angry to have two new players in the game that he’d decided to try to take one out? He was almost lethally competitive.

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: James Sittenfeld

  Hometown: Huntley, Wyoming

  Phys
ical description: 5’11”, 220 lbs., short hair with skull and crossbones cut into the back.

  Occupation: High school student

  Background: Extreme sports fan, youngest of three brothers, average grades.

  Suspicious behavior: Very aggressive in presenting his desire to win.

  Suspected of: Sabotaging Georgina’s dirt bike.

  Possible motive: Losing isn’t an option.

  “Worried?” George asked. “You should be. Georgina would have kicked everybody’s behind in the race today. She might not look like it, but she’s a total extreme spots fan.”

  Interesting how George jumped to his sister’s defense against an outsider. Also interesting how sure he’d been that she’d win today’s competition. George badly wanted out of his house. Did he want it badly enough to sabotage his sister? To risk injuring her? Possibly killing her?

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: George Taggart

  Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina

  Physical description: 5’11”, 170 lbs., blond hair, blue eyes.

  Occupation: High school student

  Background: Spoiled child of rich parents; Georgina’s twin brother.

  Suspicious behavior: Knows Georgina would have won dirt bike race.

  Suspected of: Sabotaging Georgina’s dirt bike.

  Possible motive: Wants to win money to become legally emancipated.

  Deeply Disturbed

  Strategy. I needed a strategy.

  It’s not that I can’t think on my feet. I can improvise. I have to do it on missions all the time. But I’m definitely more comfortable with a well-thought-out plan. With maps and schematics and facts I can memorize before going into an unknown situation.

  Talking to a girl I liked . . . that was pretty much uncharted territory. I’d had some crushes, yeah. But I usually avoided them, to avoid the embarrassment of turning into a guy who lost 60 percent of his capacity to think, and 80 percent of his capacity to form words.

  And how I felt about Brynn . . . it wasn’t a crush. I think Joe got that before I did. I don’t know how to describe it exactly—

  JOE

  Joe here to help my bro out. The way you describe it is loooove.

  FRANK

  Get out. This is my section. “Loooove” isn’t the word I’d use. “Loooove” isn’t a word at all. The word “love”—which is a word—isn’t what I’d use either. But how I felt around Brynn . . . it was good. I should be able to say it better than that. All I can tell you is, the more I was around her, the more I wanted to be around her. And I wanted to be around her right now.

  I didn’t bother checking the basement. There was nothing down there. The bowling alley was locked. The exercise equipment had been removed from the gym. The sauna had been hacked up by a chain saw. I’d had to do the hacking. Don’t ask. There’s been way too much badness at this house in the past few weeks to go through it all.

  I made a pass through the kitchen and the dining room, then decided to stop by the billiard room—the former billiard room—where the Deprivation Chamber was. The chamber was a booth with a camera in it where any of us contestants could go and vent about anything that was bugging us. I couldn’t believe any of the real contestants here voluntarily went in there. You knew whatever you said was going to end up on TV.

  But maybe Brynn had felt like venting. She’d seemed upset when she left the group.

  I stepped into the room, my footsteps echoing on the polished wooden floor. The big room felt empty. “Brynn?” I called out, just to be sure. No answer. As I turned back toward the door, I caught sight of something white out of the corner of my eye. A sheet of sketch paper lying on the ground.

  Probably one of Hal’s drawings of L-62, I thought as I headed over to retrieve it.

  The back of my neck prickled when I picked the piece of paper up. It wasn’t one of Hal’s drawings. It was some words written in what looked like a child’s handwriting. It read HOUSE OF DEATH.

  Exactly the same words that had been written on the chamber wall. The handwriting looked the same too. Was this a practice sheet?

  I carefully folded the sheet of paper and put it in my pocket. I needed to discuss this with Joe. But first I’d find Brynn. I wanted to make sure she was all right. And, okay, I just wanted to be around her for a few minutes. I went upstairs and down the hall to the room Brynn shared with Georgina and Olivia. Gail and Olivia sat on Olivia’s bed, their heads close together. “What are you doing in here?” Gail asked.

  “The door was open,” I said. “I was looking for Brynn.”

  “Haven’t seen her,” Gail told me. She shifted her body, shoving something behind her.

  Which of course made me want to know what it was. I wouldn’t be a detective if it didn’t. I walked over and sat down on the bed across from them. “It was pretty intense down there with Veronica, wasn’t it?”

  “Veronica’s not as bad as some other people,” Olivia answered.

  “Really? Veronica’s pretty slimy,” I said, not caring if this was getting filmed or not. I casually leaned back on the bed. I could almost see what Gail had hidden.

  “Veronica didn’t accuse us of murder today,” Olivia reminded me. “That was the newly nicest person in the world. Ripley.”

  “My brother pretty much said the same thing to me after you left,” I told her. “Everyone was accusing everyone. We’re all freaked out.” I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand.

  Yes! I could see it now. Gail was hiding a sketchbook behind her. Could it be the sketchbook the sheet of paper with the note on it had come from?

  “Hey, did you find Hal’s sketchbook? He’s been looking all over for it.” A lie. But you’ve got to be a good liar when you’re an ATAC agent. “You know how obsessed he is with his drawings of that planet.”

  “This one’s mine,” Gail said quickly. “Hal’s not the only one who likes to draw. I take art for every elective I can. I even won a prize once for a poster I made. Got fifty dollars.”

  Gail wasn’t such a good liar. She gave way too much detail. And she looked up as she talked, like she was trying to find the answers up in her brain.

  “Cool,” I answered. “Can I see some of your stuff?”

  “No,” Olivia answered.

  I laughed. “Is she your manager?” I asked Gail.

  “I already asked her if I could see,” Olivia explained. “She told me she never shows anybody anything until it’s completely finished, and she doesn’t have anything done yet.”

  “Well, if you finish something, tell me,” I said. I stood up. “I’m going to go see if I can find Brynn. Everybody’s going to play charades in the great room, if you guys are up for it.”

  “I’m not ready to hang with Ripley right now,” said Olivia.

  “I think I’ll stay here too,” Gail told me.

  I nodded and left the room. My brain was whirring as I mentally reshuffled Joe’s and my suspect list. I decided I needed to bump Gail and Olivia up. There was something they didn’t want me to see in that sketchbook. Was it where they practiced writing in that kidlike way? Were they teaming up to sabotage the rest of the contestants?

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Gail Digby

  Hometown: St. Louis, Missouri

  Physical description: 5’9”, 145 lbs., sandy hair, brown eyes.

  Occupation: High school student

  Background: Oldest of three kids raised by single mother. Grew up in severe poverty.

  Suspicious behavior: Trying to keep sketchbook hidden.

  Suspected of: Sabotaging Georgina’s dirt bike; writing the message in the Deprivation Chamber.

  Possible motive: Winning the millions could change her life and the lives of her family members.

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Olivia Gavener

  Hometown: Homestead, Florida

  Physical description: 5’7”, 140 lbs., red hair, freckles, brown eyes.

  Occupation: High school student

>   Background: Oldest of five kids, family on welfare, helps out with paycheck from fast-food job.

  Suspicious behavior: Contemptuous of rich people; always strategizing how to win.

  Suspected of: Sabotaging Georgina’s dirt bike; writing the message in the Deprivation Chamber.

  Possible motive: Needs money to continue to help family and have a different life.

  I took a fast look in the great room to see if Brynn had rejoined the group. Nope. I continued down the hall, deciding to try the library next. I’d run into Brynn there once. That’s where I had my first real conversation with her. And actually, I had no plan or strategy then, because I didn’t know it was going to happen.

  Now that I thought about it, it had been easy to talk to her that day. Maybe that’s what made what I felt for Brynn—whatever I should be calling it—different from a crush.

  The library door was ajar, and I pushed it open. Brynn stood inside. For a second I felt like I was in free fall. Like I’d just done a bungee jump and the cord hadn’t started to pull me back yet.

  “This isn’t a bad place to hang, even now that we’ve been deprived of all the books and magazines,” I said from the doorway.

  Brynn didn’t answer. She didn’t turn toward me. She was staring at one of the walls. I didn’t remember there being a painting on it or anything.

  I took a few steps toward her. Then I saw it. Someone had drawn in crayon on the pale wall-paper. Pressing down so hard in places that the paper had torn.

  “What is that even supposed to be?” I asked, hurrying over to Brynn. One figure in the picture was clearly a little blond girl, drawn the way a little kid would do it. Big head. Stick neck. Those hands that look like mittens. The other . . . it was some kind of creature. Blank eyed, with claws almost as long as its body.

  It took me a moment to realize that Brynn hadn’t answered. I pulled my gaze away from the drawing to her. She was still staring at the wall, her eyes dull and blank.

  “Brynn! Are you okay?” I touched her shoulder, and she started.