Hi, everybody! This time I felt inspired by a previous prompt #104 Suspense. It inmediately pictured a story on my mind I couldn't resist to write. Even tough, it might have some of blind ambition itself, too. Hope you like it, anyways.
"Mr. Dublin Villa, your presence at Oxford Road is a light into the darkness," the police officer on duty told me upon my arrival at the victim's house.
"Thank you, officer! But, tell me, why are there so many people gathered at the entrance of the house?"
"None of them have stopped crying for Mrs. Dorothy, and they didn't want her body to be taken to the morgue," he replied coldly.
With both respect and curiosity I made my way through the sea of sobs and saw, with horror, how Mrs. Dorothy was almost unrecognizable. Had it not been for standing in front of her house and her designer clothes, no one would have known it was her.
It was a shocking scene, but I was even more shocked to hear faint voices and giggles inside the house.
In desperation I turned the handle of the front door, and when I looked around I found that the whole house was dark, except for the living room.
The light coming from there was dim, but still bright enough to guide my anxious steps toward what I had heard earlier.
No sooner had I set foot in the living room than I felt a hundred glances upon me. The voices from before were, no less, from the ladies of the Book Club.
"Who are you, young man?" asked one with a shadowed face, while the others looked at me from head to toe.
"I am detective Dublin Villa, but the important thing is to know why you are here when the owner of the house is lying dead in the front entrance," I replied waiting for some suspicious reaction. Almost all of them gasped. Only one fainted.
Just then I realized that they were only waiting for Mrs. Dorothy, but never knew of her fatal outcome.
It was a strange feeling that came over me. On the one hand, I felt that no one around me was to blame. On the other, I began to think that the perpetrator of the crime was too close.
In any case, my meditations were interrupted when I felt a strong tap on my shoulder.
"I'm afraid you'll have to come with me, detective Villa," the officer who had previously guarded the entrance asked me in a gruff voice.
"What are you talking about?" I haven't finished my work. In fact, it's just beginning," I replied without a title.
"It seems that Jules Etz, a resident of the town of Brights and now Mrs. Dorothy's widower, has reported you as one of the possible suspects in her death," the police officer declared, pulling out handcuffs.
Faced with this nonsense, I glanced outside the house, and bingo! In the back windows lay a dazzling gaze with a pair of yellow eyes staring at me. I shook the cop off as fast as I could and took off in pursuit of that thing staring out of the yard of Mrs. Dorothy's house.
I think I ran after that thing for about ten minutes, until I tripped over a rock in the grove of trees that extended beyond the deceased's house.
Many would think that this series of events intimidated me but, on the contrary, it aroused in me the greatest fire of righteousness I had ever felt in my twenty-five years of life.
From where I had fallen, I could hear the Lower River flowing, and that immediately reminded me of the Victorian tavern. There I would be safe for at least the rest of the night.
All the early hours of the morning I spent thinking about who on earth it could be that was prowling Oxford Road. The drinks didn't seem to have any effect on me, the tension in my head was increasing and the music was getting worse and worse.
So I decided to get some fresh air and when I set foot outside, I realized it was already dawn.
In my childlike surprise, I felt something hit my chest. It was Brights Morning newspaper.
The news of Mrs. Dorothy's passing was among the front pages, and of the entire article, I was struck by the end:
"It is estimated that the estate of one of the founders of Brights, Mrs. Dorothy, will go to a distant cousin or failing that, to Mayor Milton, who claims that she never returned a gold loan.
I had found another piece of the puzzle, and still sleep deprived, and as empty as the streets of Brights were at that hour, I decided to visit the mayor's office.
At first security didn't want to let me in, but then Mayor Milton knew it was about me and welcomed me with great enthusiasm, even though it was the first time we had met.
"I cannot give you any more details than what's already in the paper, kid," the mayor commented before putting a tobacco in his mouth.
"I'm a detective and I'm going to get to the bottom of all this. It would be ideal if you would cooperate, mayor," I said staring at him.
"You don't know who you're dealing with?" he questioned me before chuckling.
"I have several documents that implicate him in disloyal acts," I replied.
The mayor became very serious and rested his tobacco in the ashtray.
"I never participated in anyone's death, and Mrs. Dorothy's is no exception. I just want my gold back," he said, watching me closely.
"I'm afraid you won't be able to do that, if you don't help me find out who the real perpetrator of this crime is."
"Why not?"
"This guy, whoever he is, is after that gold of yours and more," I made it clear to the mayor.
After this conversation, I was able to rest peacefully to the point of forgetting that the worst case of my life was resting on my back.
After many hours of bizarre dreams, I woke up not knowing if I had been sleeping in my house or under a bridge.
Patrick, the tavern owner, woke me up and handed me my cell phone that kept ringing. It was Mayor Milton telling me everything was ready as I had requested.
Again I went to his office at night. This time there was no resistance from security, but a mixture of friendliness and suspicion. You could definitely cut the air with a feather.
Already standing in the mayor's living room, he promptly tossed me the ultraviolet light flashlight I had asked for, and lights a tobacco.
"So, are you a detective or a criminal? I heard recently that the police are looking for you because they say you are responsible for what happened to Mrs. Dorothy, according to her widower," he commented to me after coughing foully because of his vice.
"That Jules Etz guy is dead," I replied before pulling out a newspaper article from twenty years ago where they mentioned a farmer by the same name who briefly had contact with Mrs. Dorothy.
Mayor Milton frowned, and with an unnatural haste for his giant body came over to see if it was true what I was telling him.
"What's the point of all this?" My head is exploding, detective Vill," the mayor blasphemed.
"I've just about got it figured out. If you go with me all the way, you can find out what it's all about," I said before setting off with the mayor's security team.
The house on Oxford Road was supposed to be looked after by the butler Prince Charleston, but in reality there was no one there.
This facilitated my plan, and in less time than I expected, the mayor's security was deployed in and around the house, while he lay attentively watching from his car.
As for me, I used the ultraviolet flashlight all around the entrance, until, indeed, I found the missing piece of the puzzle.
Right on the ceiling of the entrance you could see how there were footprints of six toes. Judging by the trajectory, the guy in question was extremely nervous until he jumped on the victim.
I wanted to go to the mayor to confess the discovery, but screams of terror stopped me. They came from inside the house. Something was attacking violently.
In the midst of the poor visibility I had that night, I could see the guys who were outside came in to confront what was attacking inside.
Even though there were several of them, that thing was stronger than them, and as soon as it got the suspicion of my presence, it looked at me. It set its yellow eyes on me just like that time.
Fear and I were one and the same being trying to flee as fast as we could. I rushed towards the entrance of the house and at the top of my lungs shouted "throw it now".
That's when the security man hiding on the roof threw the electrified web over whatever was chasing me.
The tremendously heavy footsteps that were stalking me stopped for an instant and then I heard a great scream of pain.
My heart pounding, I turned to see the catch of the century, and confirmed what I had suspected since the night before: Mrs. Dorothy had died at the hand of her own son.
But it wasn't just any son. This guy was a son unacknowledged by Mrs. Dorothy due to his mutant condition of his hairy face, bear body and six-toed feet.
The image I saw of such a man was one that no one would believe, but we had captured him at last, and the truth would be revealed.
"Without too much ado, could you tell us how you did it, Detective Villa?" asked one of the reporters surrounding me the next morning on Oxford Road.
"Basically it was always about Peter Luke, unacknowledged son of Mrs Dorothy and Clark Luke, a war veteran," I said calmly.
A hubbub followed my words, but waving my hands as if asking for quiet, I managed to keep talking.
"We never knew about this son of Mrs. Dorothy because she rejected Peter's mutant status from the beginning. However, this guy learned as time went by that his mother was a moneyed woman, and he wanted to take revenge by taking her out of the way, besides projecting himself as a false lover in the other side of the country so as not to generate fear with his sad story or figure, as he himself admitted after his capture," I finished explaining.
"And didn't it shock you Peter blamed you?"
"Yes, but his lust for money quickly unmasked him, making me wonder if she didn't have a greedy relative behind it all, which indeed she did."
Other questions came up, but I lost interest in answering.
At all this, the ladies of the Book Club congratulated me, and Mayor Milton approached me again to do the same, and aside from offering me some of the gold that had returned to his hands.
"Thank you, Mayor, but money is not what drives me," I told him with complete honesty.
"Then what?"
"Call me when you hear about some impossible-to-solve case," I finally said before putting on my blazer and heading out for coffee.
