A. Renee Art

“So remind us,” Merc said back at the inn, “as far as suspects and theories, where are we at exactly?”

“Dorothy and Derrick are the only two interviewees by Steve Moss left uneliminated,” Lydia said. “I think Dorothy was covering for Sofia, who is…still alive somewhere. Dr. Henry Johnson was embezzling funds in an offshore account for her after making her appearance known to him via a correspondence letter, in which she probably asked him about her child. I’ll bet there’s such a letter in his office! Dr. Johnson tells her that Vivian did something to her kid, and she wants revenge. Sofia gets a left-handed man who knows his way around tools to help her kill Vivian, but also the doctor, because he knew too much. This man might have been Derrick, though we have yet to find out which hand he uses. On our way back here, I have come to believe that Andrew Reed died because he might have had something to do with whatever happened to Sofia’s child, upon orders from Vivian, who didn’t want to do the dirty deed herself.”

The group sat with stunned silence.

“Truly, Lydia, you have a dizzying intellect,” Connor replied.

“Really, you’re gonna Princess Bride me? Anyone else? Anyone? Janet, this is your case.”

“I think we’re halfway there,” she replied. “You may be right about Derrick. We should check out his house. Any other suggestions?”

“The cemetery,” Madeline said. The other teens eyed her carefully. “We need to check out who’s really dead and who’s moved away.”

“Good idea,” Janet said. “We can truly eliminate suspects that way. I’m going to the Tylers’. Any volunteers for the cemetery?”

“I’ll go with you, Janet,” Caylix quickly said.

Janet nodded.

“Cemetery for me it is then,” Lydia said.

“I’ll go with you, Liddie,” Maddie said.

“You’re sure,” she whispered.

Maddie nodded.

Merc and Connor were waiting for the other to say their answers, neither of them wanting to appear as scared chickens in front of essentially four women. But then Janet intervened.

“I think the Tylers’ place might be more important for the investigation. Maybe Connor, you should come with us again?”

”Oh, sure,” Connor spoke. “For the filming, right.”

Merc silently resigned himself and pushed down his fear. At least it’s still daylight, he said to himself. Though remembering his earlier ghost sighting in broad daylight, he knew that anything could happen. He then remembered Connor saying something about a treasure hunt in the cemetery and gathered the letter with a drawn child’s picture of a map with a red X on it and a shovel and left with Lydia and Maddie. Seeing this, Connor suggested that his group should take the hammer with them.

The home of Wanda Tyler and her son Derrick was more modern in its style compared to Dorothy’s with its modern wood furnishings. Some furniture left behind was covered in sheets, a chair was left sidesways on the floor, and a few boxes were left taped up.

The first floor was cleared. The twins checked Derrick’s room upstairs. There they found an unsheathed switchblade knife with Derrick’s name on it.

“Wasn’t someone stabbed,” Caylix asked.

“Andrew, I think,” Connor remembered. “Before his body was burned as a cover, he was stabbed with a small knife according to the autopsy.”

“Guess Liddie’s theory’s not so crazy after all.”

“Scott was stabbed too.”

“Oh, that’s right. They had a falling out. Scott never said who it was, though.”

“But Dorothy alluded that Scott knew. If it was Derrick, he probably denied that it was him because of Wanda.”

Connor moved his camera at other parts of the room, eventually focusing on a typewriter in a box with a half-typed letter from Derrick addressed to his father. He noted the normal ‘e’s.

In Wanda’s room, Janet found an expensive handbag gifted to Wanda by Vivian. One of the drawers of her nightstand was stuck, so she asked Connor for the hammer. In that drawer, she found another journal of Wanda’s and a file on Derrick. Looking through it, they appeared to be some kind of psychological evaluation of Derrick Tyler. She wanted to read the journals to everyone back at the inn, however, so they made their way back.

“It’s kind of helpful, but strangely convenient that we’d find a bunch of diaries left behind by the most important people connected to the case telling us what we need to know,” Caylix commented.

“Yeah,” Connor said, adding, “I can get why Wanda’s and Vivian’s journals were left behind, but why wouldn’t Dorothy and Trisha take theirs with them?”

“After what happened here, I wouldn’t want any reminders of a place like Painscreek either,” Janet said. “Especially if I were Trisha.”

The twins nodded. Janet read the psych evaluation she found as they continued walking.

Derrick had sessions with a doctor for five months. The real breakthrough came in him being able to express himself in writing. In one session, when Derrick was 11, he wrote about how he saw his father standing in the road and waving at him. He felt his mother’s tears and woke up. He also wrote about letting a pet cat, “Kitty”, go out the back door late at night. Presumably, it never returned. In the next paragraph, he described hearing noises behind a wall fence and a light behind a locked gate. Janet read Derrick’s following words:

“There were four people. Two of them were fighting. A baby was crying. Then one of them fell down and hit her head. She stopped moving. Her eyes were open. I wet my pants because she was looking at me.”

The three investigators stopped walking.

“Uhh, what’s that about,” Caylix asked.

“Derrick’s doctor didn’t know if this was what Derrick saw or if it was imaginary.”

“If it was something imaginary,” Connor said, “like on television, then he wouldn’t have to see a psychiatrist about it. His mom would have explained to him that it was fake. A little kid wouldn’t make up something like that.”

“Where was this if it was real,” Caylix asked.

Janet looked at Wanda’s diary and said, “Derrick and his mother once lived at the mansion, but then they moved out. Something happened there. Maybe Wanda can tell us.”