Chapter 12: The Narrowing

“I don’t think you should barge in like this,” Kayla stated, fretting about Mercedes’s plan to search upstairs for Elliot. “It’s rude and…icky.”

“You heard what the Bowers said. Your buddy entered my home with my dad’s future booty call. Vincent even said that they asked for a room for Keever to change, and he suggested one of these,” the red-haired heiress recounted, waving her arms at several doors before both hands gestured to the doorknob with a purple bra resting around it. “Voilà! Look at what we have here!”

“I’d hardly think that Ellie is inside with your dad’s personal assistant. Not in that way,” Kayla protested.

“In what way do you mean?” Mercedes teased, lifting the lacy bra by one strap. “Surely, you and Linus don’t have sexual relations before marriage. Not my sweet, wholesome–”

“You know we do!” the perky brunette shot back. Drunk and growing annoyed, she placed her hands on her hips. “I know what a bra or sock on a doorknob means. My cousin told me.”

“And Alyse is definitely an expert,” Mercedes remarked, pulling out the skeleton key she’d grabbed.

“But we might walk in on people doing it!” Tinker Bell squealed.

“Sure, Keever might have more game than we ever suspected, but I bet Holland is just super slutty,” the current Marie Antoinette theorized.

“I meant that we’re going to walk in on other guests, not Ellie.”

Unlocking the door, Mercedes gave it a hard push and swung it open.

“I knew it,” the bratty, self-confident redhead declared, wearing a smug expression.

“Eek!” her co-best friend squeaked.

Her family friend and neighbor from across the street lay on the bed, with his arms and one leg tied to the bedposts, while a pair of purple panties covered his mouth.

"Your whining about interrupting another pair sure looks wrong now, doesn't it? Jeez, you'd better count your panties, especially Bree’s or Alyse's, whenever they stay over. Talk about a fetish," Mercedes commented, shaking her head at Elliot, who struggled against the bandages-turned-makeshift-ropes. "Seriously, Keever, this is the second time tonight that I've found you in a compromising position rather than working the crime. How out of control are your hormones?"

“Cede! Elliot is not like that,” Kayla insisted. The sweet, petite brunette stood near the doorway with her side toward the bed and a hand up to block her view.

“It’s always the quiet ones, Kay, always,” Mercedes proclaimed, grabbing a tissue from a box on the nightstand.

The redhead used the piece of Kleenex to pull the panties away from Elliot’s mouth gingerly. While she noticed the saliva on the garment with a cringing expression, she couldn’t have known that Elliot had struggled for some time to spit out the lacy panties with minor success.

“Miss Bishop!” Elliot blurted out.

“See? You’re so-called gentlemanly neighbor is into some master and submiss—”

“No, Holland is the thief!” Elliot gasped between gulps of extra air.

“Holland?!” Kayla exclaimed, turning to look at him before shifting her eyes away from the staff that had risen since they entered. “Ellie, put that away!”

“My dad’s future mistress can’t be the thief. She wears that horrid Vivotion perfume. Even dangling from a tree, I would’ve gotten a whiff of that putrid toilet water. Don’t tell Mr. D’Amour I said that.”

“Hanging from–”

“Booby trap. Hanging from a tree. My jewelry. Thief in a Mummy costume. That’s all you need to know for now,” Mercedes rattled off while side-eyeing Elliot’s growing member. “Wow, you really are getting hard from this experience, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Holland Bishop- actually, that’s not her real name- stole the Frost Diamond Necklace,” Elliot revealed.

“That’s not her name?” Kayla questioned.

“Who cares? What are you babbling about, Keever? How would you know that? Wait, where is that bitch?” Mercedes asked, finally noticing the empty bathroom.

“Listen, Holland explained…well, more like she bragged. Whatever. What matters is that she stole the necklace from Ms. Horne when the power went out. As she had planned the party, she ordered those witch statues with secret compartments. My showing up when she slipped the necklace inside led her to think I had caught her in the act. So, she later faked a fall to slip the necklace inside my jacket pocket.”

“Why the hell would she do that?” Mercedes challenged.

“Because your dad ordered the ballroom on lockdown, but wanted me to escort Ms. Horne and Mrs. Ashmore outside. Worried that I would tell security, I think Holland set me up to take the fall if I tattled and the necklace was found on me,” Elliot explained. “Either way, when Mullen tried to kick me off the grounds–”

“Mullen did what now?” the heiress queried.

“That must be what Chuck meant,” Kayla realized, thinking back to the guard’s remarks when they asked about Elliot.

“He thought my costume was the Mummy, and you told him to throw Freddie out, I guess,” Elliot explained. “It doesn’t matter. Miss Bishop saw me with the guards at the front gate and panicked. So she grabbed me and brought us up here. Uh, I don’t think she planned actually to have sex with me, but it just happened. After we–”

“You had sex with Holland?” Kayla questioned, her jaw dropping open.

“It’s not worth being impressed over…but we can see what convinced her,” Mercedes remarked, waving her hand at the rock-hard cock.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Kayla tittered in denial.

“Would you untie me?”

“Finish your story first!”

“At some point in here, Holland realized that I hadn’t caught her in the act, but it was too late. So she used my costume bandages to tie me up so that she could retrieve the necklace from my pocket,” Elliot recounted. “I was a bit worried that she might hurt me, but she only needed to keep me quiet while she made her escape.

“Miss Bishop wrote that letter?” Kayla inquired, still staring at the painting on the wall.

“Of course, she’s this Seeper!”

“No, she’s not,” Elliot immediately corrected his quasi-client. “Holland bitched about the Seeper. Said the letter ruined her plan to rob your vault, and with the tightened security, I assume she was concerned her cover would be blown. Instead, she grabbed that necklace and planned to use the sales list from the company records to target others.”

“Yeah, the identities of private sales are usually kept quiet. Knowledge of who bought what might come in handy for a jewel thief,” Mercedes conceded.

“And your dad trusted her!” Kayla declared, sounding outraged over the betrayal.

“Leave it to my dad and his one-track mind for hiring assistants,” Mercedes grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“Holland didn’t leave me more than fifteen minutes ago. They might be able to stop her,” Elliot suggested.

“Shit! Kay, give me your phone,” Mercedes responded, holding out her hand. Immediately, she fired off a message to her father. Next, she asked about the guards on this floor. When Elliot mentioned a team searching rooms, she raced to the door.

“What about me?” the still-tied young man yelled.

“Kay, take care of him,” Mercedes instructed, rushing into the hallway. Then, she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Davidson! Holland Bishop is the thief! Davidson!”

“Ohmigawd. This is so wrong,” the petite brunette groaned, moving toward the bed while looking across the room. “Ahh!”

“It’s okay. Calm down!” Elliot reassured the screaming girl after Kayla came too close and fell onto the mattress. “That was my thigh. Only my thigh.”

“I did not see your…wiener. I did not see,” Kayla repeated, as she untied his left hand. Then, the brunette groaned and winced after realizing that she’d need to circle the bed to untie his other wrist. “Linus doesn’t need to know that I saw nothing.”

“Linus? My…Our moms can’t hear a peep about this,” Elliot warned, earning a firm nod.

---

“Hey, Mercedes just messaged me. We’re to keep watch for her dad’s personal assistant, too,” Brielle relayed, coming over to inform Graham and Spencer.

“Why, is she also a suspect?” Spencer inquired.

“Beats me,” the cheerleader co-captain replied with a shrug. “She only said that I could meet her here soon.”

“Any sign from the back?” Graham asked, while the bookworm and school actress stayed to monitor the high-traffic veranda; Brielle and Bash moved to watch the back area.

“Nothing except that Vampire King and Queen that we messaged you about. What about the front?”

“Reese hasn’t provided an update in almost ten minutes,” Spencer revealed. “Nellie left to follow the Angel.”

“She’s Suspect B for now. That’s Suspect A,” Graham declared, slightly gesturing to where a breathtaking brunette in a Roman outfit chatted with several handsome men. “We still haven’t learned her full name yet. Inka something. She’s the date of a shipping magnate named Konstantin Brask, and she’s acting squirrely.”

“Squirrely?” Brielle repeated, glancing at Spencer.

“He might be right. The woman is playing off like nothing is the matter, but she seems jittery,” the current Velma Dinkley explained.

“I do wonder. I suspected a possible intelligence agent or corporate spy, but she’s definitely not the former. The latter is still plausible, if she’s a rookie,” Graham speculated, causing Brielle to think he’d either gone insane or watched too many movies. Spencer merely shrugged again.

“Any idea what this assistant is dressed as?” the school actress inquired.

“Uh, no. Hold on,” Brielle said, sending off another message. Twenty seconds passed before she had an incoming reply. “It looks like Kay got her phone back. Um, Keever said it’s a Daphne Blake costume from Scooby-Doo. Well, look at that!”

“Great. I'd better not get accused of something by Gem Girl,” Spencer replied, gesturing at her costume.

“That means they found Elliot,” Graham noted, watching as Inka air-kissed the cheeks of a Geisha. Immediately, the crime hobbyist stiffened. “That newcomer just slipped an item into Inka’s palm.”

“Was it the necklace?” Spencer asked.

“Couldn’t tell. Perhaps if it were folded up, we need to check,” Graham stated, already moving toward the pretty pair. Several of the hopeful young men still surrounded the women.

“How are we going to do that?” Spencer questioned, hesitantly following him.

Brielle scanned the crowd for Daphne or her friends before joining her two classmates. She arrived in time to hear Graham order the two women to freeze. The entire group seemed taken aback for a moment, then shifted to amused expressions.

“Pardon?” the Roman Concubine queried.

“I saw the pass-off. Let me see your hands,” Graham ordered, mustering every ounce of courage and confidence he could find.

“Excusez-moi?” the Geisha responded, feigning confusion while her eyes shifted to glance around.

“Did you just accuse me of what?” Inka challenged. Her outraged tone caused one admirer to jostle past the others to step between the Finnish beauty and the Orange Pumpkin.

“Is this tubby bothering you?” the Punisher inquired, glancing at the brunette. Receiving a nod, the wannabe tough guy tried to growl a warning like his character would. “Move along, kid. Unless you want to get smashed.”

“Or carved,” one of his friends snickered.

“Uh, if you don’t mind, my good man. I’ve been hired by Miss Raddatz to pursue an investigation into the theft tonight. Thusly, I have permission to search this potential suspect–”

“You hearing this?” Punisher asked, laughing while he looked over at his friend. “This fat fuck thinks he’s Sherlock–”

SLAP

“Listen up, Pussyfoot!” Spencer roared in one of her stage voices. After the backhanded slap, she shoved him in the chest. “We work for Miss Raddatz. If you want to obstruct an investigation, then go ahead. But we’ll slap you in handcuffs, and for what? This piece of hired eye candy isn’t going to spread her legs for you. She’s already on the clock for Mr. Brask, whom I doubt you can outbid. So back the fuck up, or I’ll sic security on you. Got that?”

“Did you just call me an escort?”

“Am I talking to you right now? I didn’t think so!” Spencer snapped at Inka, then turned her attention back to the poor man’s Frank Castle. “I asked if you got that, Bootlicker?”

“Uh, I don’t have a problem. Sorry,” Punisher said, throwing up his hands after Spencer cocked her hand in the air. Backing away, he patted two of his friends, indicating that they should find their fun elsewhere.

“Very well,” Velma Dinkley stated, turning again toward the two women. “You heard the detective. Let’s see those hands. Both of you!”

“He’s a détective?” Geisha questioned with an incredulous expression.

“I will not be talked to in this manner. Do you know who I am? I am not an escort, and if you lay a finger on me, I’ll–Hey!”

“I’m a close family friend to the Raddatzes, and this is like a second home to me,” Brielle said, clutching Inka’s hand. “That means I can do what I want. So open your hand, thief.”

"Let go, cunt!"

Inka attempted to strike Brielle with her free hand. Instead, her slap turned into a fistful of hair, turning their struggle into an impromptu hair-tugging gladiator match. A yank on tonight's Elsa's blonde locks elicited a piercing shriek. Then, it morphed into a growl as the cheerleader co-captain lunged forward to headbutt the other woman. Startled gasps filled the air around them.

Now dazed, Inka’s grip loosened enough for Brielle to start prying her fingers open.

“That’s not a necklace,” Spencer remarked.

“It does appear to be a crime. Or will you claim that’s flour?” Graham challenged, studying the vial containing white powder that Brielle held between her fingers.

“Give that back,” Inka hissed, attempting to recover what the others assumed to be drugs.

“What the hell is going on here?” Mercedes questioned, appearing with Kayla and Elliot.

“These people robbed me,” Inka accused.

“We thought that one passed the necklace off to this one,” Graham explained, pointing to the Geisha and Roman Concubine. “Instead, we caught a drug deal going down.”

“You can’t prove that, and it’s my property. Give it back, or I’ll cause a world of trouble for all three of you,” Inka warned.

“You’re going to cause trouble? Please, tell me how,” Mercedes directed, fighting back a laugh.

“I’m the guest of Konstantin Brask, who you might know is–”

“A scumbag that I don’t like,” the red-haired heiress said, snatching the vial from Brielle. Then she took several steps before whipping it toward the west wall. “Now, make like a good bitch and fetch.”

“You’re dead! I’m going to have–”

“You’ll do nothing, Brask’s latest in an infinite line of playthings. This is my home. Oh, yeah. You didn’t realize you threatened Mercedes Raddatz, did you? Collard! Detain this woman for now. Throw her in the storage room inside your headquarters.”

“Right away, miss,” a security guard replied, hurrying over. Collard ended up taking the Geisha, too, after Brielle suggested adding her.

“You’ll pay for this!”

“Yada, yada, yada,” Mercedes sounded before turning her attention to her friends and classmates. “Where are the others? Somebody call them. That whore and the others are no longer suspects. My father’s personal assistant, Holland Bishop, stole the necklace. Keever can provide the sordid details as to how he knows later.”

“What should we do now?” Brielle inquired.

“Davidson tried to call Fleeman on his radio. However, that damn interference is back again, and stronger than ever. That forced Davidson to use his phone to reach Fleeman, who said he’d tell my father in person,” Mercedes relayed before muttering. “Dumb FBI protocols.”

“Huh?”

“The FBI is involved?” Spencer questioned.

“Cede is complaining that Mr. Fleeman wouldn’t wait to let her deliver the news to her dad. She’s pouting over it,” Kayla revealed.

“I am not!” the spoiled rich redhead snapped. “But he deserves the gloating.”

“Interference? We heard the guards mention it’s been an issue for nearly two months,” the crime hobbyist recalled about their arrival at the front gate.

“That’s right. They had to call the mansion’s phone to find your dad to let us through the gates,” Elliot recalled, while Graham raised an eyebrow at him. “Holy shit! Didn’t Miss Bishop start working here three months ago?”

“I had a vital question: Was the theft a spur-of-the-moment crime, or is Miss Bishop connected to the Seeper?” Graham inquired. “However, based on her apparent planning to disrupt the security’s communications, I think that question has already been answered.”

“That two-faced bitch!” Mercedes screamed. “She planned all of this! I bet she even wrote that letter.”

“No, she’s not the Seeper. Holland seemed annoyed, if not pissed, at the Seeper,” Elliot explained.

“Just because she told you that doesn’t make it true. People lie,” Mercedes shot back.

“I already told you that Holland planned to break into your vault, but the letter ruined her plans. The Frost necklace sounds like Plan B. If anything, she came across like a veteran thief. Mentioned crashing numerous parties like this one, which makes it sound like the vault was the reason she worked for your family’s company for the three months,” Elliot clarified.

“Whatever. I’ll wait to hear it with my own ears, not from a guy who got seduced by that ho.”

“You were seduced?” Spencer questioned, while Brielle eyed Elliot differently as Kayla blushed.

“Kinda. It’s slightly embarrassing.”

“I believe Elliot is correct,” Graham announced, earning him odd looks. “Not about the seduction; I mean, Holland Bishop’s identity. I presume that’s an alias.”

“She straight-up said so,” Elliot agreed, nodding.

“And she specifically used the word ‘crashed’ about those parties?” Another nod answered the crime hobbyist’s questions. “Very well. If my deduction is correct, then you were seduced by the Gatecrasher.”

“Who?” Spencer blurted out.

“Don’t I know that name?” Kayla asked, still sounding a little drunk.

“Wait…You mentioned that name before!” Mercedes recalled.

“Yes. And if my theory is correct, an up-and-comer stole Ms. Horne's necklace. The Gatecrasher and the Seeper have shown some overlap, which is why authorities and amateur groups can’t say for sure whether the latter has committed more than four thefts. However, as we know, all four of the Seeper’s crimes have ties to Raddatz & Padfield. Which could mean…”

“That this creep is also here tonight!” Mercedes exclaimed. “He could be the person who robbed me.”

“I think it’s time that I get all the details,” Elliot demanded.

Bash and Reese joined the small group as Mercedes and Graham filled Elliot in on what happened in the woods. The bookworm also explained in detail how they found Freddie in the art studio and left him to recover in the pool house, with a few people keeping an eye on him. Details about the hunt that eventually discovered Spencer’s impersonation, along with the discovery of a second Iron Man being at the party.

“Two? Only Corbin is listed as Iron Man,” Mercedes insisted, recalling any near overlaps from memory.

“Which could mean that after stealing your jewels, the perpetrator may have switched the Mummy costume to the second Iron Man,” Graham speculated.

“Then we need to find Iron Man!” Mercedes ordered.

“I have an idea,” Spencer interrupted. “For my test, I brought three costumes. I’d expect an experienced criminal to plan ahead as well. Wouldn’t he or she bring a second costume?”

“He has two,” Brielle replied.

“No, the Mummy doesn’t count,” Graham agreed. “That was stolen from Freddie. Spencer is correct. It’s possible Iron Man might not be the only costume our villain brought. Actually, the same could apply to Holland Bishop.”

“Great! How are we going to find the piece of shit?” Mercedes questioned.

“For starters, we search for Iron Man and Daphne Blake,” Elliot decided. “We can put the word out to our friends to help watch for them.”

“Awesome idea, Ellie!” Kayla squealed, already pulling out her phone. “I’ll send Linus a message.”

“You and Brielle need to send group messages. We don’t have time to send personal ones,” the heiress criticized.

“I doubt the Gatecrasher is still on the premises. If she sabotaged communications, then I’d expect she had an escape route already planned,” Graham stated, sounding impressed by the thief. “However, we can still possibly find the other culprit in time.”

“Let’s move,” Elliot declared, ready to race around the grounds.

“Stop!” Spencer ordered before anyone could move. “The person we’re looking for probably has worn more than one outfit at a time. Or at least they’re not naked or in their underwear, especially when they stole Freddie’s costume.”

“I’d assume that to be correct,” Graham agreed. “Even in the Iron Man armor, I’d think you’d want regular clothes underneath for a quick change.”

“Right. Now, that’s something I do during plays if I have on a dress like Mercedes is wearing,” Spencer continued.

“So?”

“So, I don’t know about tonight, but under those lights on stage and rushing around, I get sweaty…fast,” Spencer revealed.

“And if our thief is running around in the woods, setting traps, changing costumes, and so on, I bet they’d be sweating. Hell, I train in weather like this, and I get the same,” Reese said.

“Shit, these Jedi robes are hot as fuck, and I’m only wearing briefs under them,” Bash complained.

“Has anyone noticed a person really sweaty?” Spencer inquired.

“I bet Nellie would know. That girl notices everything,” Brielle muttered.

“Hey, where did she go?” Kayla began to ask, but Elliot’s shout interrupted the question.

“I know! Your company’s account, uh, Smith Stithers. When I followed your dad and the butler to the billiard room, he came running in dressed as Dracula. His white makeup had already started to smear,” Elliot recounted.

“Stithers' work for the company would be as useful, if not more than Miss Bishop’s, when it came to identifying potential targets,” Graham noted.

“Wrong!” Mercedes proclaimed. “I’ve known Stithers since I was little. That man does not have the strength to pull me up and down on that rope. Nor does he have the agility to climb that tree to set the trap.”

“Trees. We discovered a second trap on the far west path,” Graham divulged.

“Which we left Quirke still up there,” Bash winced, having forgotten about his teammate.

Nobody appeared in a rush to help get the bully down.

“Anyone else sweaty besides Mr. Stithers?” Kayla asked, wondering if she should send her boyfriend another name to watch out for.

“I got nothing,” Reese admitted, with Bash nodding.

“The only other person I noticed was Mullen, the security guard who tried to throw me out. But you kept pestering him to find Freddie, so he was racing around to locate him,” Elliot recalled.

“I didn’t pester Mullen. I only asked him to find Freddie one time before he messaged me that he’d been spotted in the forest near the art…studio…son of a bitch!” Mercedes exclaimed.

“What’s wrong?” Kayla asked, moving closer to her friend.

“Mullen set you up?” Elliot asked before glancing at Graham. “Mullen set you up.”

“Huh?” Bash sounded. “Who’s Mullen?”

“The security guard that I ordered to find Illig after he spiked the punch. The asshole sent me to the woods while saying he couldn’t get there yet, since my dad had him doing something. Instead, he was probably waiting for me. I’m going to turn him into a real mummy!” the irate heiress hissed.

“But why did he want to kick Ellie out of the party so badly? Did he want a reason to claim that he found Freddie and removed him?” Kayla asked.

“You said he was very insistent about escorting you outside, right? Not that you only needed to be kicked out,” Graham questioned.

“Yeah, he claimed he needed to escort me personally so that he fulfilled Mercedes’s orders,” Elliot recounted. “Do you think he wanted to make a run for it?”

“Bowers and the other guards would notice his absence within minutes. That’s not enough time to get away,” Mercedes scoffed, well aware of the security detail and the neighborhood.

“No, but let’s say he has your jewelry on him. Wouldn’t the smart thing be to hide it outside near the wall in the shrubbery?” Graham inquired. “You get rid of the evidence, and could recover it later on or the next day.”

“That’s not a bad idea. If you stash it in a spot easy to remember, you’d just need to bend down to fake tie your shoe and snatch it,” Reese speculated.

“But he didn’t get outside,” Spencer pointed out. “If it is this guard, then he’d still need to hide the jewels.”

“And if the front gate isn’t an option…” Elliot trailed off.

“The back!” Mercedes declared. “Crap, I bet he’s going to use the cemetery. It’s where I’ve hidden stuff in the past.”

“Like what?” Kayla questioned.

“Don’t worry about that right now.”

“Actually, if Mullen thinks he got away without anyone noticing, he wouldn’t need to go outside. He’d only need to hide a small bag somewhere,” Graham suggested.

“And we know a place with a lot of hiding spots,” Spencer said, nodding.

“The woods!” Reese exclaimed, figuring it out.

“Okay, we should split up,” Elliot decided. “You mentioned several paths, right? We should have pairs take each one, while a group heads to this rear gate by the cemetery.”

“We should tell people about the change,” Kayla pointed out. “Bree and I told our friends to watch out for Iron Man and Daphne.”

“Right. We need to update with this Mullen’s description,” Spencer agreed. “Um, what does he look like?”

“Can I have your phone for a moment again?” Graham asked, holding out his phone to the school actress.

“Who are you calling, Higbee?” Mercedes questioned.

“The loudest person I know.”

“Oh, no,” Reese moaned.