cough syrup | clue - fi&indy

For all of his grandstanding, Malcom Nox had seemed small in death. It was different, visceral. Strange. It was one thing to watch tributes fall every year. It was another to be confronted with a corpse in the same house he’d been sleeping in. The others had departed, save for Fiora, who seemed deep in thought herself. She offered him a lozenge for his thoughts but Indigo waved it away, his mouth was too dry to enjoy sucking on a hard candy. He would share his thoughts regardless.

“I want to believe that this was the work of a disgruntled employee, but I can’t see one of them sneaking into the house late at night, not unless they knew how to disable the perimeter security--he’s been dead for hours,” he continued, changing tact mid-sentence as all of his thoughts warred for dominance.

“The amount of people living in the house—this doesn’t seem planned. Robbery gone wrong? Foolish. Spur of the moment? Nobody wants to be sent home. Public humiliation.” Indigo clasped his hands together in front of his face and closed his eyes. There were too many things he needed to verbalize and not enough frame of mind to say them in a way that made more sense.

“If the murderer is one of our fellow interns, then we need to warn the others not to wander the house alone. But if we let the killer know we’re onto them, that would be tipping our hand. But if we don’t say anything it could make things worse. On the other hand, if we do say something, it could also make things worse. On the third hand…”

Indigo trailed off, the muttering under his breath increasing in pace as the pendulum in his brain swinging rapidly between a rapidly growing list of suspects and his desire to stay one step ahead and alive.

There was such a thing as too much mental stimulation.

It was nice of her to try to keep him grounded. There was a quiet authority in her voice, like she was used to people listening. That was good. Hadn’t he told Malcom just the previous night that Fiora would do well in HR? Yesterday. God, last night felt like two months ago. Malcom’s frozen eyes were still staring at him from the floor and he shook his head to clear it of the mental image. It helped a little, but not as much as he would have liked.

Indigo did his best to silence his thoughts and focus on her voice instead. She was right of course; It was very likely one of the interns. And without being able to determine an exact time of death, no one had a clear alibi. If he had to guess, he’d have said the murder took place a few hours after Malcom’s deadline for voting, but that was still a huge window of time. Establishing a motive was key.

If it was as petty as not wanting to lose, Fiora was correct again. Besides him, Beryl and Poppy had the best chance at winning the competition. It would make little sense for any of the three of them to throw their shot at the company into the garbage. It couldn’t be Adrien either. He’d studied his friend’s face when the news broke. The pain and confusion had been real. However rocky their relationship had been, Adrien wasn’t capable of such evil. That left seven suspects. Potentially eight, but he was doubtful that this was Fiora’s doing.

His partner neglected to voice who her three suspects were, but he didn’t blame her. Trust was a hard thing to earn even under normal circumstances, and these were not. But what other motive could there be? Indigo was starting to regret playing the game instead of getting to know the other interns better. Were there things hidden in their history that could shed some light on this? His mind went back to the riddle in the folder that he and Adrien had looked at. Did it mean anything? It was a travesty that he'd been high at the time. It was like trying to remember smoke.

“That is an issue,” he said at last. “If they’re smart, then we have to be smarter. Good thing I’m the smartest one here. Of course, if they are unpredictable, then we’ll need to predict the future.” Indigo raised an eyebrow warily. “That is your area of expertise, is it not?” If he was being honest, the only other person he’d put in the same category as himself was Amrin. But Fiora was rapidly proving his estimation of her intellect wrong, and if her hobby wasn’t bullshit; if it boiled down to looking for patterns like any other card game, maybe it would come in handy.

“Three. Three is good," he went on. "If we move in groups of three, then it could dissuade someone from doing something insane. Going in twos might lead to someone disappearing.” Indigo rubbed at his temples. “We need to keep tabs on everyone’s movements from this point forward. The next question is how.”