Cherry Red Murder

A Name Not Found

Author's Note: Hello to the brilliant person who is reading this! Thank you so much! I'm so glad that you're reading! We're nearly at 200 reads! I hope you enjoy! Please upvote/like if you did! Thank you!

Love,

-C

"Why would someone hire Bullstock?" asked Stephan, "He seems normal. Incompetent, but normal."

"If you had a fairly good detective investigating your crimes, the likelihood of getting caught would be high," explained Madeline, "But to hire a detective who hardly knows what they are doing would be ideal; they would likely frame another. Your mother is a very intelligent woman, but she is currently going through a period of shock. She wants answers, not logic."

"What will we do?" asked Stephan, who Madeline was starting to realize was hardly as intelligent as she thought he was.

"We need to find out how someone could've changed the liquids in a drink," she said, "The drink needs to be examined."

They went to the police setup near the front, where there was a tent sheltered from the top. They talked to one of the officers sitting behind a table inside.

"Hello officers!" said Madeline in a falsely cheery voice, "What have you found?"

"Well," said one of the officers gruffly, "The poison was an added component."

"What!" she gasped, "That's not possible!"

"Most of the contents of the drink was water, actually," he said.

She thanked the officers and left the tent.

That's not possible. She thought. How could someone have added something to her drink afterwards! It was in her room! She ran her fingers through her hair.

She decided to take a walk through the ballroom. It had an eerie look to it, and the floor was wet. She lifted her skirts to avoid them from getting wet. It had come from the giant ice statue in the center of the room.

Suddenly it hit her. Then she ran up to Stephan.
"STEPHAN!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, "Did your sister ever drink water with ice?"

"Yeah, loads of time," he replied, "Why?"

But she didn't respond. It was fitting together. "Where is the nearest phonebook?" she asked.

"We keep them in the library," he said, "But what is going on?"

"Your sister had normal water last night, but someone poisoned the ice. It was a golden goblet, so she couldn't see the color difference. But the poisoner couldn't have put it in the public freezer; someone could've used it. Most people don't have freezers these days, except for very privileged people or..."

"Ice sculptors," Stephan finished.

She nodded gravely. "We need to find this man, Tim Ran. He was here late for some reason, but we don't have his information, so I was going to consult a phone book."

The library was huge and there was a whole shelf dedicated to phone books. They checked everything, but they came to the same conclusion; there was no one in the seventh state, or even the Heptunion named Tim Ran.

"Then who came to the house?" Stephan said, and bit his nails.

Madeline rubbed her nose. "I don't know, but it certainly wasn't Tim Ran."