A Toast to Death

Chapter 5

We were all shocked, but it was starting to make sense. Velma had the means, which was the poison that was used, then later found. She also had the opportunity, which was her being a worker at the restaurant and having access to Jerry's drink. The only thing we couldn't figure out was the motive. We wondered what Jerry had done, or how she even knew him in the first place. We also couldn't understand what Fred and my dad had to do with everything.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?" One of the police officers handcuffed Velma and read her rights to her. She was in shock and didn't speak the whole time. She just silently followed the instructions the cops gave her, even up until they went out of the room.

As one of the cops told us we had to leave, the others continued to search the room for anything else they could find, while also checking for DNA. When we left, we wanted to leave the residence hall because it was too chaotic, but no one was let in or out for security reasons.

We went to our hangout spot to regroup and gather our thoughts about everything because it felt like it was all happening so fast. While we were talking, our parents added each of us to a group call they were already in. I guess they didn't know whether we were together or not because everyone's phone began to echo and produce feedback. Everyone except Steph hung up, so we decided to just talk to them on only her phone.

Tyler's mum had seen the news about cops being at our school due to a suspicion of a student being guilty of the death of Jerry. So she informed the other parents, which was how they ended up on a group call. My dad told us that while he was on the phone discussing the situation, Fred barged into his office, screamed that he quit, insulted my dad, then just left.

Amid all the Velma drama, I had forgotten to ask my dad about Fred, and I had just remembered when we walked into Velma's room and saw the pictures. Their parents must've been Scooby-doo fans because they were both named after characters. We told our parents about Velma and Fred, from the conversation we overheard them having to the picture of them and another girl together as a family.

As we were talking to our parents, I get a suspicious text on my phone from an unsaved number. The text asked what we did to get Velma arrested. I showed everyone the text and they all advised me to ignore it because we didn't want to be involved deeper than we already were. I was too curious to completely ignore it, so I decided to search for the number on the internet. It was owned by someone named Daphne Barnum. Since there was a trend in names, it didn't take us long to realize that had to be Velma and Fred's sister.

We decided to play around with Daphne by pretending we didn't know what was going on. She asked if I was Natasha Crawford, to which I replied that I had no idea who that was. It kept going back and forth until another unknown number texted me, telling me they were coming for me. Once again, I decided to search for the number on the internet, and that's when we found out that it was none other than Fred.

I told Fred that I knew it was him and he should give up the act, then he said we will all pay for what we did to Jerry and Velma. We weren't sure if he was delusional or something, because Velma was the one with poison in her, not us, but somehow, we were still the guilty ones.

After we were done talking to our parents, we were unable to eat or sleep the rest of the day. It had just been two weeks of our freshman year at college, and everything had already been messed up from the start, even before classes even started.

The next day, we had to go back to the police station because they needed our updated statements. Just like in the previous process, we were questioned individually. During that interrogation process, the questions started to get oddly specific, as though they thought I was guilty.