Illustration by Tanya Jain
Recap of part 1:
Bill and his family (along with his cousin’s boss, Amelia) sit down to eat Thanksgiving dinner, but Amelia suddenly chokes and dies! After Bill investigates the family, he reveals that her cause of death was actually an allergic reaction to cranberries, which occurred because someone switched her wine with cranberry juice.
Part 2:
“Nina!” I snapped. “You said you gave her wine?”
“Yes,” she whispered timidly. “I poured it for all of the grown-ups.”
Uncle Joe raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t blame her for this. She’s just a kid.”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s a kid.” I stalked toward him. “She said she gave Amelia wine but there is no wine in this cup!”
The dining room exploded with whispers of shock. “What do you mean, there’s no wine? That looks like wine to me!” My dad contested.
“Smell it.” I tilted the cup toward him. “Cranberry juice. She did have an allergy. It was cranberries. And somebody here swapped her wine with this.” I lifted the cup so everyone could see.
“I don’t believe it!” Emilio shouted, madly waving his hands through the air.
“Well, start believing it,” I muttered, turning to face Nina again. “Nina, I think I remember that you poured the drinks when we were getting our food, right? Only a few minutes before we all sat down?” She nodded in response. “So that means that you and Emma got your food, and then you poured the drinks while Emma was sitting. So, Amelia’s original glass was full of wine that you gave her, but someone swapped it with a glass of cranberry juice at some point before we started eating,” I announced before muttering, “I can’t imagine how that would have happened without anyone noticing, especially Amelia.”
Everyone became quiet, probably thinking about the same things I was.
“Wait!” Uncle Joe broke the silence. “Nina poured the drinks before we got our food. That means that there were at least a few minutes where nobody was paying attention to the table. Someone could easily have swapped her glass then,” he slowly nodded, looking proud of the conclusion that he’d drawn.
But if that was when the switch had happened, then the person who did it must have been toward the front of the line. Maybe even the first in line. Someone who could have switched the glasses while Nina was busy pouring the rest.
My gaze whirled toward the person who had sprinted and shoved in order to be the first in line. The person who had cared so much about it. “Emma—”
“Don’t even start, Bill!” Aunt Maria shouted, pushing Emma behind her. “Don’t get her involved in this. You already looped Nina into your crazy questions. Emma hasn’t done anything, and don’t try to interrogate Tina either!”
“We can’t rule anything out,” I replied, but I looked down at my shoes. “You never know—wait, where is Tina?” I looked around, searching for her in the small crowd before I eventually spotted her.
“She’s been sleeping on that couch since you started this whole investigation thing. She said the loudness was making her head hurt. So thanks a lot, Bill,” she scoffed.
So she had slunk away before she could be questioned. Well, now I certainly didn’t think that we could rule out Emma or Tina. Kids or not, they were suspicious. But I’d let it go for now, there were other people to focus on.
“Who was after Nina in line?” I asked the family.
Greg raised his hand. “I was,” he voiced. “I think Emilio and Grandma went after me.”
Interesting. Grandma wasn’t in the room anymore, so I couldn’t ask if she saw anything, but my cousins were still here. “Emilio, Greg, did either of you see anything happen to Amelia’s drink?” I asked, assuming that they would say no.
They both shook their heads, frowning.
Then Emilio froze, his eyes wide, like he had just been jolted awake from a nightmare.
“When I went to sit down, Emma and Nina were fighting, so I took them outside for a minute to calm down. We were just sitting on the front porch for a minute, maybe, but Greg was the only person in the dining room.”
What?
I just stood there for a moment, no thoughts going through my head, before I swiveled to face Greg.
He was staring straight at me.
“I obviously didn’t kill her! Yeah, I was in the dining room alone for a minute, but how would that have been enough time for me to switch her glass without anyone noticing?” He looked around frantically at the rest of the family. “I didn’t do it!”
“So who did, Greg?” My mom questioned. “Who did?”
“I—I don’t know.” He quieted for a second. “Grandma! It was Grandma! She’s the only person who hasn’t forgiven Amelia for what she did!”
It couldn’t have been Grandma. She may still have held a grudge against Amelia, but she would never have done this. Though, I didn’t think that Greg would have, either.
It was hard to accept that Greg could be a killer.
“What did Amelia do? She always seemed nice to me,” Nina shrugged.
“This isn’t the time to talk about it, Nina,” Wren began to steer her away.
“No, it’s okay,” I affirmed. I knew this wasn’t a good time, but I needed to think about something other than Greg for a second. So I could clear my head. So I could solve this. “Just tell her.”
“Okay,” she paused. “A few years ago, Greg forgot to bring his lunch to work. Amelia has a rule that her employees aren’t allowed to leave the office to grab lunch, for some reason, so Grandma drove to his office to bring it to him. When Grandma got there, she couldn’t find Greg’s office, but she could find Amelia’s, so Grandma asked her to bring Greg his lunch. But she never did. So Greg starved that day,” she said, pinching her eyes shut sorrowfully.
Nobody spoke, remembering the upsetting event.
“What is this, kindergarten?” Emma interjected. “That is so not a big deal. Me and Tina wouldn’t get upset over lunch. That’s crazy.”
“Maybe you’re right, but maybe it’s still important,” I felt some pieces start to click. “Who else would have been upset by the lunch incident? The person who was even more affected?” We all looked at Greg, who looked more guilty with each passing second.
“It wasn’t me!” he exclaimed.
That’s when it hit me. “And not only that. Emilio, you said something earlier. Something about Greg always asking Amelia for a raise?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. Me and Amelia were laughing about how he’s been asking for a raise ever since he got hired. Which is funny, because she said that he’s a horrible employee, and the only reason why she didn’t fire him was because she liked to give people a chance to improve, to be a better person and employee.” He looked right at Greg. “Seems like he never took that chance.”
“So not only was he upset about the lunch thing, but Amelia also never granted his request for a raise. But how would he have known that she was allergic to cranberries?”
“I didn’t! I didn’t know! I didn’t do it!” He pleaded.
“Oh, you really didn’t think this through. You might as well stop trying to convince us of your innocence. Who else would have killed her?”
“Yeah,” Aunt Barb agreed, “and you were so quick to accuse Bill when he hadn’t done anything suspicious.”
“You were also quick to say that Bill was wrong about Amelia’s cause of death,” Wren affirmed.
“And you accused Grandma. Twice!” Nina cried.
Greg looked like he had stopped breathing. He frantically looked around the room, eyes wide. “No, no, no,” he mumbled in repetition.
“And she was your boss, too! You had the most reason to kill her out of any of us!” my mother added.
His hands tugging at his hair, he threw his head back, maniacally staring at the ceiling as he screamed. “Fine! I did kill her!” The discord of gasps and cries heard through the room was more unsettling than any sound I had ever heard before. We all knew it was him, but hearing him confess made it so real. “I heard her assistant tell an intern to make sure that Amelia’s lunch didn’t have any cranberries in it because she’s allergic! So I swapped her wine with cranberry juice.” He started to cry as he dropped to his knees. “It’s not a big deal though. She deserved it.” His head dropped like it was magnetically pulled to the ground.
Nina and Emma were undisturbed, the strange kids that they were, but the rest of my family was freaking out. I, of course, was composed, but looking around the room, I could see the disaster that Greg had caused. My parents and aunts were weeping, Wren was scrambling to call the police, and Emilio just stared vacantly at Greg. Uncle Joe had a different reaction. His face reddened while he worked his jaw, preparing for a fight.
I grabbed his arm, preventing him from moving toward the killer.
Aunt Maria smacked Greg on the head, sobbing. “I can’t believe my son would ever do something like this! Get him out of here! I never want to see him again!” She turned away.
“Gladly,” Uncle Joe muttered, wrenching his arm out of my grasp and dragging a pathetic Greg out of the house.
Within a few minutes, the police arrived. I stepped outside to talk to them, since Uncle Joe was clearly not in the right headspace for it. After I gave them the report of Greg’s crimes, they put him in handcuffs and shoved him into the backseat of their vehicle.
The mystery was solved, and the murderer was dealt with, but all wasn’t alright. The family would never be the same again. And we all had Greg to thank for that.
Four years later:
No perspective
“What’s good, Greg? How’s prison treating you?”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” Greg slammed his palm against the glass that was separating him from his visitor. “You better leave.”
“You know what the best thing about your imprisonment is?” He laughed. “You can’t make me leave. You can’t do anything from that side of the glass.”
“I have been putting up with your visits for years. When will you stop bragging that I got caught and you didn’t? I sacrificed 20 years of incarceration to protect you!”
“We made a great team, didn’t we? Sure, Amelia’s murder was sloppy, and they caught on to you pretty quick, but it was overall a success. Given that, of course, I’m not behind bars.”
“You were my partner,” Greg’s voice broke on the last word. “And my brother. I took the fall for you, and you still sold me out! You never cared about me.”
“Yeah, I never did.” He stood to leave. As he turned away, Greg’s gaze snagged on his visitor’s name tag.
A name tag that read Emilio.
The Roar 