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Francis smirks knowingly, clearly loving the attention her husband is giving her as Cecil sticks his middle finger up at Mason Senior.
“Is that really a question? Obviously, I’d rather check out my beautiful wife,” he replies, his tone very matter-of-fact.
“Cecil,” Dexter groans, pinching his nose in frustration while everyone else just looks amused, and although it’s incredibly important, I try desperately not to laugh out loud at the whole situation and the fact that Dexter looks so much like Rome does when he gets frustrated with us.
Unable to help it, I say, “Judging from the way that you all behave, I’m guessing that the guy's parents lied to them again when they said that the families have always been enemies?”
Dexter actually laughs and then replies, “They said that, really? You can’t run and own a town like this without working together; that’s impossible. It wasn’t until them and until Silas went off the fucking rails that changed.”
“I thought so,” I reply with a smile.
Dexter nods and then turns his attention back to Cecil, “Cecil! Your idea, please?”
Cecil drags his eyes away from his wife, deliberately taking a long time, and then smirks goadingly at Dexter; it's so obvious that they’ve been friends, best friends, for a very long time.
“My idea, as you so graciously called it, is why don’t they use the original cameras?”
“What?” Rip frowns, clearly unaware that there were original cameras in the first place.
“When we were in charge, we were often under threat from outside sources, and we had security cameras fitted in our homes that were all linked together so that we could access them from any of the houses in case something went wrong. One of the first things that the kids did was to rip out the security rooms we each had and put up one's specific for individual houses on closed networks using that wiffee thing,” Hugo explains.
Cecil rolls his eyes, “How many times do I have to tell you it’s Wi-Fi.”
Hugo shrugs, “Potato, potahto.”
“If all the security rooms were ripped out from all the houses, then I’m assuming that the security room isn’t still here, so then how are we going to get access to them? And are we even sure that the houses still have them up? I mean, that’s a massive security risk,” Rome questions.
Dexter looks proud as he answers Rome, “They were so concerned about not allowing the other families to spy on them, as they referred to it, that they simply turned the cameras off, took out the control rooms, and thought that meant they couldn’t be used. They didn’t even bother to take them down.”
Dexter points to the corner of the room where next to the new camera, there is an older one that blends into the corner so well that I didn’t even realise that it was there.
“From the way that you worded that, I assume that the cameras can somehow be turned back on?” Ace asks curiously; this is, after all, his area of expertise.
Cecil answers his grandson when Dexter looks at him to explain, “Yes. The kids either bricked up and closed off the security rooms, or they ripped out all the equipment, not realising that the equipment just allowed them to view the feed and switch through the cameras. It wasn’t the power supply or anything like that. We decided when it was installed that we didn’t want to make it easy for someone to cut off the feed to our houses.”
“That’s really smart actually, because if they do think they’ve turned the cameras off, whoever is in your house that’s not supposed to be is less likely to be worried about covering their identity because they think they’re safe and can't be seen.” Ace agrees, leaning forward in his seat with interest.
“Exactly, we caught a fair few intruders like that, and they could never work out how,” Cecil grins and then clears his throat as he continues making his original point, “We knew this, but for obvious reasons, decided not to fill them in on that in case we ever need the advantage ourselves. Without the security rooms, the feed for all the houses is impossible to watch.”
“Then how did you plan to use it to your advantage, and how can we?” Rip asks curiously.
Cecil smiles, “None of them thought to rip the security room out of the Hawthorne estate.”
“Hawthorne estate?” I ask, even though I have an idea.
“Yes, dear, the fifth founding family, the one that disappeared. The children were in such a rush to get their new fancy cameras up before the others did that they didn’t think it through properly, so the security room that will have access to all the old cameras is still running and easy to access at the Hawthorne estate.” Lillian replies to me.
Hawthorne that must have been what I would’ve been called if I had been raised with my father and his side of the family.
“That will be your best bet to see what the others are up to and hopefully get some answers as to who is behind the murders,” Dexter adds.
“Okay, then I guess we’re going to the Hawthorne estate,” Mal replies.
I try not to make it obvious that I’m so excited that we get to go to my supposed family home already when I thought that it might take us a while until we had a free moment to get there.
“How easy is it going to be to access?” Rome asks, “Are there still staff there?”
Dexter shakes his head, “No, there is a cleaning crew that goes in just to do general maintenance once a week. They make sure nothing falls into disrepair and keep it fresh. They aren’t due to be there today.”
