Cherry Red Murder

An Unexpected Encounter

Author's note:

Hello to my brilliant, lovely readers! I wanted to start by thanking you for 100 reads! I'm so glad that people are enjoying this story. This chapter is dedicated to Diana (DarkxCl0uds), for being the most supportive friend in the whole wide world. Thank you! I understand that this is much shorter than my usual chapters (this is literally half the size of them) but I felt like this one didn't need to be that long. Hope you enjoy it! If you did, be sure to upvote/like! Thank you for reading this!

Love,

-V

"How?!" Stephan asked, his eyes wide with shock, "She doesn't have a twin, does she?"

"Be sensible, Stephan Kingwell," said Madeline, rolling her eyes, "There weren't literally two of her. What I meant was that someone wanted to make her seem suspicious."

Stephan finally understood. "Oh," he said, "I'm not that good at this detective thing. Art is so much easier."

"The best thing to do now would be to find Daiya herself, but she's being interrogated by the authorities," she said thoughtfully, "So now we have to find the next-most suspicious person here. Was there anyone at all that you know hated your sister?"

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "There was Kate, our maid. She's always hated Elise, Ana and me."

"So we find Kate," she said, and they set off.

They searched the entire house, but Kate was nowhere to be found. It was as though she had vanished into thin air. Walking through the house, Madeline couldn't help but wonder how these people called coming to an annual party peace; they were always arguing and bickering. It was like everyone was forced to be there.

They made their way up near Elise's room, and found Kate there arguing with the police officers.

"Please!" she begged, "I left something in there when I found Miss Elise's body! I'd like to retrieve it."

"No," said Martina, her Boston accent strong, "We are the Law, and the Law says you can't come!"

"But-" she froze when she saw Madeline and Stephan, "Never mind. I understand that the Law is important." Then she ran.

Clutching her notebook Hawksworth chased after her. Madeline had never been interested in running, but her father always told her that it was important to be able to do many things as a detective. Thus she was rather fast and Stephan, a boy half her age who spent most of his time indoors struggled to keep up.

Kate reached the end of the hall and stopped. Then she opened the closet door next to her, jumped into it, and locked it from the inside.

"Kate," asked Madeline, "Why are you running?"

"Go away!" Kate said from inside the closet.

"I won't go anywhere until you at least tell me why you ran," she said.

"I don't want to go to jail!" Kate yelled, and Madeline heard a sniffle.

Though she knew the answer to the question, she gulped and asked, "What would you go to jail?"

Her response came back with a muffled sob. "Because I think I poisoned Elise Kingwell!"

---

"Kayla," said Jane yawning, "Do you know where my red necklace is? That one that goes perfectly with that skirt Martha gave me last Christmas?"

"No ma'am," she said, "I've checked everywhere, but I can't find it."
"That's odd; I could've sworn it was there yesterday," Jane said.

"I did, too," said Kayla, rubbing her eyes, as if to make herself see more clearly.

"I must have misplaced it last night," Jane groaned and sat down on her bed, "I can barely remember everything since Elise-" she broke off and began to sob. "I miss her so much!"

"I know, ma'am," said Kayla, sitting down next to her and patting her back gently, "I know."