Arc II, Chapter 31: Bobby’s Other Wife

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted Jedediah Geist dead?” Antoine asked. He wasn’t going to waste any time beating around the bush.

Dr. Howard Halle smiled. “In fact, I do. His whole family bore one grudge or another, but as they all famously predeceased him, that might not be useful information to you. Then there were the townsfolk who developed a sort of… superstition about the Geists and their fabulous wealth and good fortune. Those people are too many to name and too nameless to remember. You’ll have to recall the animosity between the Geists and Geist-nots. Sure, nowadays we talk about the Geists like they are our founders and mascots, but when they were living, jealousy brewed in every pot. Did any of you grow up here? You must know.”

He looked at each of us. Of course, none of us had.

I wanted to ask what had happened to the Geists. We had seen snippets, but there was much we did not know. The problem was, my character should know if he was a historian of the Geists. I wondered if there would be a problem if I decided to break character in a small way like that.

Luckily, I didn’t have to.

“How did all the Geists die out?” Kimberly asked. “I know a lot of them died in that fire at their manor.”

Halle looked directly at her. “Yes, Bartholomew and his sons were always building new mansions to live in. Most of them are still intact. It was strange that they never could find a place to settle down. Most of the final Geists were dispatched that day, just over a decade ago. Very sad. The ruins have been left just as they were when the fire went out. I’m sure a look over what remains would be an important stop on your crime-solving tour. But it is true, the Geists were known for their dying long before they were all dead, in odd and unfortunate ways. Some suspected a serial killer taking revenge on the bloodline. Others believed that unlimited wealth led to recklessness. I suppose the idea was that they died in strange ways because they weren’t busy making a living. I couldn’t say, myself. I was the family doctor. Most were in good health until they passed. Physical health, at least. Something weighty lay on their minds that I was not qualified nor interested to understand. It was the type of knowledge that led to an early grave, perhaps.”

It was another line about the Geists and their secrets.

I tried aiming my beefy Moxie stat at his dense speeches, but he spoke quickly and smoothly at an odd but soothing cadence. I couldn’t tell what, if anything, he was lying about.

“Did you kill him?” Dina asked. She must have been tired of his winding answers too.

“No.”

Even with a one-word answer, I had no idea if he was telling the truth. He was an elegant speaker with a finely tuned and artificial warmth that I had no idea how to interpret. I could tell he saw the whole conversation as a sort of game, but that didn’t mean he was lying. It just meant he enjoyed the conversation.

“Jedediah was called the black sheep of the family. How does one go about getting a nickname like that in a family like the Geists?” I asked. Halle knew Jed. He might have some piece of information we needed.

Halle seemed to appreciate my question. “Jedediah hated his family more than the townsfolk did. I’ll never know why. He knew something about them, something that… well I don’t think is in the purview of your investigation. Truthfully, the only family members Geist cared about were his nieces and nephews. He liked to think them blameless, at least when they were young.

“I suppose the first odd thing about him was that he got a job. An actual job at that, not a vanity project funded by the Geist largess. He was an accountant or something similarly unremarkable. I couldn’t say. Bartholomew founded the college for his children to attend in hopes that they wouldn’t leave him. If memory serves, Jedediah was the only one to graduate. The others decided to go play entrepreneur with their father’s money. They opened restaurants and hotels, factories and even skateparks. Not Jed. He didn’t want their money.

“Strangely, I think that Jedediah was more like his father than any of his siblings. Similar personality. Similar interests. Despite this, it was his siblings that ran his father’s businesses and productions after Bartholomew passed. Jedediah was content in his home on the other side of the hill, his back toward Carousel. He never left if he could avoid it in his golden years. He rented much of his property to a resort on the condition that they cater his meals and clean his home. I always wondered if he was hiding from something up there on that hill. Perhaps, he just couldn’t face the town his father had built.”

So far, we had learned more about the Geist family than we had about the murder itself. That either meant we weren’t asking the right questions or that this storyline was not a straightforward murder mystery. It might not have been a murder mystery at all. Perhaps the answer would be revealed without our efforts. This was the Tutorial, after all. New players would hardly be interested in playing detective.

There was an important part left to ask, even if we already knew the answer.

“Can you tell us what you were doing at the time of the murder?” Antoine asked. We knew it was sometime in the early morning the day before the Centennial. The actual date kept moving forward thanks to Carousel’s trickery.

“I was performing emergency surgery,” Halle said. “A man had impaled himself with the help of a tractor. I have provided my notes of the event to the previous investigators.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

We had read them. Assuming the documentation was correct, he was busy during the hours the medical examiner had estimated Jed’s time of death.

“Thank you for your time, doctor,” Officer Willis said. “I know that you are a busy man and I do appreciate your indulging us.”

“I will always be available to help. I may have been Jed Geist’s last friend in the world. I may also be one of the few who cheers when the truth is revealed. I think many prefer that this and the other Geist mysteries remain unsolved. The truth is finite. It’s absence is full of possibilities.”

Halle turned to leave and we went Off-Screen. I noticed that he went to speak with Cecilia, the woman whose entire face was covered in a veil.

“I can’t tell,” Kimberly said. “I didn’t find any obvious lies.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“I was too distracted,” Cassie admitted. “I couldn’t help thinking about the needle ticking toward First Blood.”

Kimberly went to comfort her. Isaac was frozen, no doubt watching the needle just as Cassie had been.

“Finding lies gets easy as you go along,” Willis said. “Knowing the truth when you hear it, though, that’s always hard.”

Halle stuck around talking to other guests. Willis kept us there. He was waiting for something.

On-Screen.

There was yelling in the distance—a storm of it. I would have thought it was a crowd of people, but as it moved to the banquet hall, it turned out to just be one woman who was pulling her way past two large security personnel.

“Please someone talk to me!” she screamed. “Someone, please! Just let me talk to someone in charge.”

NPCs at the party who were administrators of the hospital all worked in unison to calm the remaining guests.

“This is a hospital,” one man said, “You have to expect things like this.”

The woman, whose name was Donna on the red wallpaper, said, “No one will answer my questions. I need to talk to someone in charge.”

She was extremely distressed. Her hair was pinned up tightly except for a few flyaway clumps. She wore a brown pea coat and jeans. She had a piece of paper in her hands. As she drew close, I realized exactly what it was.

A missing poster.

It looked just like the ones posted for deceased players. The only thing that stood out about it was that unlike all of those we had seen on the boards near the diner, this one did not have a dead player on it.

It was Bobby. His face was plastered on it along with his name and other details.

“Please,” she yelled, “My husband is missing. I know he’s here. I just need to talk to someone.”

Officer Willis picked his time to shine. He strutted up to the woman and the security guards and said, “I’ll take it from here, fellas. Thanks for all of your help.”