Framed

Seven.

"No pizza this time?" Normani whined as the group met once again, this time in Ally's living room instead of her bedroom. Hoping for a change of scenery, the elder Latina had hobbled from the bed over to the couch earlier that morning, and hadn't moved since.

"Pizza is expensive, and we have more important plans to go over." Ally responded, wriggling around on the brown suede couch in an attempt to get comfortable.

"Li and I got Yogurtland, for one." Lauren said, as she ate her Strawberry flavoured froyo. "That's pretty important."

"Lauren, considering that your fate is one of two that hangs in the balance of this, I would recommend being just a bit more focused on all this happening right now and not the frozen yogurt that you and Liam decided to so sweetly stop by and get after investigating a series of three murders and two more murder attempts."

"Oi," Zayn whispered to Harry, who was sitting next to him. "I've never seen Ally so damn serious in my life. When she's like this I can see her as a sorta criminal mastermind in like one of those Spiderman movies, her with a black wig and a secret briefcase and that kinda shit."

"When she's like this, she scares me." Harry said back.

"Okay so let's see what we've got here," Ellie said, pulling out a notebook and a pen. "Let's start with Liam and Lauren first...wait, where is Liam?"

"He's bringing the protein powder and other evidence in," Lauren replied. "He wanted to eat his Rocky Road frozen yogurt first, and then he washed his hands and put gloves on so he wouldn't fuck up the evidence."

Lauren stopped talking, put a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth, and swallowed.

"Might be nice if someone put some paper or plastic on the counter so the evidence could stay legitimate," she said before taking, once again, another mouthful of yogurt.

Normani and Selena rushed over to the nearby kitchen and grabbed the box of cling wrap. Putting latex gloves on so that their fingerprints would not show, Selena and Mani pulled out sheets of the cling wrap and started putting it on in layers on the left side of the living room table.

Then Liam came in, arms basically coated in plastic wrap, hands wearing latex gloves. At the pace of a brisk walk, he brought the protein powder in and gently placed it on the plastic wrap once everyone else backed away. He took off his gloves and tossed them into the fireplace in Ally's living room, which had a small fire burning, then proceeded to plop onto the couch next to Ally.

"There," he said. "That should do the trick."

"Okay." Ally replied. "So we have the protein powder, which is good. But other than that, how did things go, Liam?"

"They went okay...Lauren had a bit of a lash out at one of the lockers, but that's okay. I checked the locker - there wasn't any bloodstains or skin or anything left by her, even though she punched the locker. Lo may have a strong fist, but not that strong."

"Lauren."

"Yea, Ally?"

"Why in the name of the good lord Jesus did you freaking go and punch evidence?"

A silence fell over the room for a few seconds before the sounds of mumbled whispers erupted through the room.

"She took Jesus's name in vain..."

"It's Allysin who's here."

"O shit waddup it's evil Ally."

"Can't I ever express frustration without someone getting on my ass about it?" Lauren responded, not backing down.