Spyglass Mysteries: #1 Death At The Merryworth Manor

Chapter 1: A Night At The Office

Tuesday, May 21st

6:23 pm. Night

Hi! If you're reading this, then you may have heard of our famous little group of sleuths. We called ourselves "Slue", I didn't come up with the name, so don't ask me about it. Back then, we were all rookies heading to the top of our game. The best crime solvers in the city.If we couldn't solve it, it wasn't worth our time. In the long run,we had cases from all around the Big City. Clients came in, gave ustheir side of the case, and we'd have it solved in minutes. We almost made it world wide... except for our scandal on a huge case given to us by the Chief of Police at the time.

One of our members, my brother, was shot by a Crime Lord named Steven McCloy. The biggest mobster in the city. We had no jurisdiction to be at that abandon factory. But, to keep the city and the police from pressing charges, we had to escape the embarrassment and go out of business. Most of us weren't to fond of packing up, the big thing was, we all just graduated out of a school of sort. Logan, our interrogator, and I came from high school. Keith,our evidence collector, came from a junior college. Jeremy and Alex were really the only ones from the Police Academy. With our idea of solving cases for the police department becoming to far apart between each case load, we then moved into Private Investigating. This was my idea of course.Don't listen to what the others may say about it. At that time, it felt exactly what we wanted to do, solve cases for the city and endure the challenges of the criminal mind. After the cases rolled in, the public eye followed, giving us the fame and endorsement to our future plan. After... the incident, our license was pulled into questioning, Keith left to graduate the Police Academy and join the local Police Department. Logan couldn't handle the idea of the company closing. So he became his own Private Investigator through the dark alleyways and the local bar. I couldn't return home since Alex was... gone. It was a bit hard to move on, I could still remember his face and that scraggly blonde goatee he never shaved.Nothing really sat well after all that, with my parents already dead,I had nowhere else to go... but, enough about that, you want to hear the good stuff. So I'll start at the beginning of that night... the night of my first case.

So here I am,snoozing at the desk in the dark and dingy office of our previous venture. My name is Mike, the youngest of our group. I choose to stay at the office since I was fresh out of ideas for a job and believe me, I wasn't going to flip burgers or bag groceries all day. I figured something better for myself. I wasn't alone mind you, Jeremy,my new parental guardian, was out for the day earning the money for rent. He was mostly the brains of the group. Always one step ahead of the criminals. With him out of the office at his job at a well-known restaurant, I would tend to digging through the massive filing cabinet in the corner of the office. I figured, with no cases ever coming in, I could take a break and recollect on the fun we had solving cases in our prime. So I was on my own to watch over the office til the final papers came in to close us down. Much as it pained us all, we had no other choice, but, I still believed we'll come back. That big case to get us in the pages again... was just around the corner, or so I hoped.

After a couple of hours of dozing off at the desk, Jeremy walked through the front door. I woke up with my face suction cupped to an old case file marked McCloy. Jeremy hung up his uniform on the coat rack and joined me in the office. Papers flew around my head as I tried to look around.

"Whose there?"I asked, grabbing hold of a stapler and swinging it in self defense.

"Mike,you're still awake?!" Jeremy sighed as he walked over.

"Oh, hey Jeremy, back early tonight I see?" I said, knocking papers off the desk in an attempt to look around the room.

"I always comeback at this time, what are you doing?"