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“Aside from the button, do we have any physical evidence?” Daniel asked.
“Someone cut the phone wires,” Carl noted.
“Did you find anything when you searched the house? Other than the catering trays.” Leo asked.
Carl and Aroostine exchanged a look.
“What?” Sasha prompted.
“There’s a heavy silver candlestick in my backpack,” Aroostine said.
“Pardon?”
“We found it under the bed in the room at the top of the stairs.”
“And you disturbed it?”
Aroostine frowned. “Do you think Bodhi’s the only one who carries evidence bags and gloves?”
“Well, until this minute, I did,” Sasha confessed.
Roo shook her head. “I borrowed Maisy’s camera to take along, so I snapped some shots of itin situand then collected it according to accepted practices.”
“Hope it’s enough to get it admitted into evidence if this mess ends up in court,” Leo mused.
“I don’t think it’ll matter.”
“Couldn’t it be the murder weapon?” Maisy asked.
Aroostine exhaled loudly. “Itcouldbe, but I don’t think it is. More likely someone planted it there to cast suspicion on whoever had that room. My gut tells me that’s not what delivered the blow.”
Carl nodded slowly. “I know what she means. It looked staged. Like we were supposed to find it.”
Maisy rubbed her hands together gleefully. “The plot thickens!”
Sasha shot Leo an amused look. “And you thought they wouldn’t want to play a murder mystery game.”
He looked up from the hummus he was making, olive oil in hand, and grinned at her. “I stand corrected.” Then his smile faded. “We need to find out who had that room, though. If someone’s trying to frame them, there might be a reason.”
Sasha waved her hand to get their attention. “Okay, forget about the candlestick and the button for now. What else do we know?”
“We know Tessa and Leeza were together in Leeza and Paul’s room when Rex was killed. Or at least when his body was found,” Leo corrected himself.
“We need to button down this timeline—no pun intended. But I can’t imagine Rex was dead for any length of time before Annette found him,” Bodhi remarked. “Although ….”
“What?”
“Annette didn’t say anything about Rex being conscious when she found him, did she?”
Everyone looked around, shaking their heads.
Finally, Naya said, “No. Why?”
“There’s a nickname doctors use for an epidural hematoma like the one Rex suffered. They call it ‘talk and die syndrome.’ Sometimes, after an injury to the pterion, the victim is lucid, communicative, and seems fine—for a few minutes up to a few hours—after sustaining the blow. They think they’re fine, but all the while, the edema is swelling, hemorrhaging, and putting pressure on the brain. Then, wham, they up and die.”
Sasha winced. “Yikes.”
“I just wonder if someone may have talked to Rex between the time he was attacked and when Annette found him,” Bodhi mused.
