Fic: Suspect, Weapon, Room (7/15)
Title: Suspect, Weapon, Room
Author:a_glass_parade
Beta:idoltina
Artist:gwladus
Word Count: 43,000+
Rating: R - people die, it's a murder mystery!
Characters/Pairings: Blaine Anderson, Brittany Pierce, Finn Hudson, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Kurt Hummel, Santana Lopez, with cameo appearances galore!
Warnings: People die. Repeat: people DIE. People you like die. This is an AU based off of the murder mystery movie 'Clue'. So...people die. Just...letting you know. Also warning for slapstick humor and terrible jokes.
Summary: Mysterious invitations have been sent to certain notorious citizens of the Chicago area, asking them to gather at creepy Dalton Manor for a dinner party with an unknown host. Blaine Anderson, masquerading as humble butler Wadsworth, must exert all his considerable efforts and charms to keep everything under control and solve a significant problem when guests, servants and unexpected visitors start to turn up dead by various means! A modern riff on the 1985 cult classic film 'Clue' finds our beloved McKinley misfits reluctantly banding together to try and escape dinner with their lives.
Chapter Seven - The Soup Was Great But The Main Course Was Killer
Quinn would have laughed at everyone getting trapped in the kitchen door if she hadn't been caught herself in between Professor Plum - who smelled like cheap body spray and testosterone, or were they the same thing? - and Ms. Peacock, whose sequined obnoxiousness was pulling snags in Quinn's bodice. Damn it.
Mr. Green was the only one who'd escaped the tangle in the door way, gliding down the steps into the kitchen proper and looking around. “Well, she doesn't seem to be in here,” he observed, drumming his fingers on the steel countertop. “I suppose we should just -”
He cut off when the door to the walk-in freezer began to creak open to his right. Quinn caught a glimpse of his eyes widening in surprise just before he yelped and reached out his arms to catch the body of a large woman in a plain dress and apron as it fell out of the freezer. Ms. Scarlet let out an impressively bloodcurdling scream when they all caught sight of the dagger in the middle of her her wide back, a blot of blood staining the fabric of her torn dress around the wound.
“I didn't do it,” Mr. Green gasped, beginning to crumple under the woman's dead weight. “I didn't...gah, help, somebody!”
But everyone was still too stunned to do anything more than mill around him as he collapsed to the floor and immediately pushed away from the corpse, rolling the cook over onto her stomach. Ms. Scarlet reached out as if to pull the knife out, only to look capable of murder herself when Colonel Mustard slapped her hand away.
“We shouldn't touch it,” he mumbled, scooting back a few feet in evident fear. “It's, like, evidence.”
“Not for us,” Quinn snapped, astounded at how dim a man could be sometimes. “We can't take fingerprints!”
Apparently deciding to cover up his fumbling with bravado, the Colonel lurched to his feet and moved to confront Wadsworth, who was still staring in shock from the top of the steps. “I think you need to explain stuff, Wadsworth,” Mustard blustered, obviously trying to look threatening but coming off as nothing so much as constipated.
The butler blinked. “Why me?” he asked, eyes wide and surprised like a Disney character. “What have I done?”
“Who would want to kill the cook?” Mr. Green wondered aloud, brushing a bloodstained apron string away from his trouser leg.
“Dinner wasn't that bad,” Ms. Scarlet opined, sniffing out a laugh.
Colonel Mustard rounded on her. “How can you make jokes at a time like this?”
“How can you walk around looking like a joke and ask that?” the woman shot back, a malicious smirk curving her lips as she got to her feet. “Whatever. It's my defense mechanism.”
“Some defense,” Colonel Mustard huffed, glancing around the room as if trying to gather the agreement of the others. “If I was the killer, I'd kill you next.”
Well, Quinn thought, feeling her eyebrows shoot up as she exchanged incredulous looks with Ms. Scarlet and Mr. Green. Aren't you a smooth operator?
Ms. Scarlet crossed her arms over her chest, and Quinn had to admire how good she was at glaring daggers at people. “Oh?”
Finally realizing what he'd said, the Colonel lifted a hand to his throat and tugged at his tie as Quinn and Mr. Green stood up and waited for his answer. “Er...I mean...I said if.”
No one budged.
The Colonel began to fidget under the scrutiny. “Look,” he tried, pulling his shoulders back and trying to recover, “There's only one admitted killer here and it's not me!”
Oh, this ought to be good, Quinn laughed to herself as the man worked himself more and more into a frantic bluster. I wonder who he -
It was quite a shock when he spun around and pointed directly at her. “It's her!”
Taken aback, all Quinn could do was back away from everyone, holding on to the kitchen island for support. “Me? I...” She heard her voice falter and cursed silently. “I've admitted nothing!”
In immediate retrospect, she understood that perhaps that hadn't been quite the brightest thing she could have said.
“Well, you've paid the blackmail,” Colonel Mustard pointed out, keeping pace with her as she stepped backwards. “How many husbands have you had?”
“Mine or other people's?” she asked before she thought, and wow, she used to be better at being put on the spot than this.
“Yours,” the Colonel replied, managing to almost but not quite hide his astonishment and mild terror.
“Five. Just five,” Quinn replied, deciding to give up on even trying to have a filter at this point. Might as well go for the gold - the look on his face should be priceless. “Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable.”
Perfect. That expression was probably the best thing she'd seen all night. “You lure men to their deaths! Like...like...” He groped for words, eventually blurting, “Like a spider with flies!”
He was obviously very proud of himself for that analogy, and so Quinn rather relished shooting him down with, “Flies are where men are most vulnerable.”
“Right!” The Colonel shot back - and then blanched, stepping back and trying to discreetly cover his crotch without it looking like he was groping himself.
He failed.
“Well, if it wasn't you,” he finally reasoned, “then who did it? Who had the dagger?” In the next instant, he answered the question himself, realization dawning on his face like he'd been hit in the back of the head. “You did, Ms. Peacock!”
Quinn felt gratified and relieved both to have the attention off of her and turned instead to the obnoxious little Peacock, who rather uncharacteristically looked like she absolutely wanted none of it. “Well...I...yes! But I put it down!”
“Where?” asked Professor Plum, leaning in close and making her look even more uncomfortable and distressed.
Okay, it would be lying to admit that Quinn wasn't enjoying this, and lying was a sin, so she just bit her lip and kept her eyes focused on the floor as she tried not to laugh too obviously.
“I don't know,” Ms. Peacock floundered. “In the study? Before the poisoning thing? Or after. I don't know! But I didn't do it! Anyone could have picked it up, just like the gun!”
This was true. No one had any sort of rebuttal for it.
Wadsworth came to a decision first. “Well. I suggest we take the cook's body into the study.”
“Why?” Quinn asked, puzzled. She'd thought that crime scenes were supposed to stay intact, and weren't the police coming?
But Wadsworth just looked at her like she was the crazy one for even asking. “I'm the butler,” he replied, brushing hands down his lapels. “I like to keep the kitchen tidy.”
Among the many things Noah Puckerman had not signed up for in his life, helping to haul around the dead body of a crappy cook who was built like a linebacker was right up there.
Next to it was carrying the body into a room where they'd left another dead body - that wasn't there anymore. “Son of a bitch,” Puck howled, letting go his grip on the cook's arm and sending her plummeting to the floor. “The fuck did the body go?”
“It's right here, we're holding it,” Wadsworth answered before following Puck's glance and dropping the cook's other arm. “Oh, no, this is bad.”
“What is?” Ms. Peacock's arm came through and shoved at Wadsworth's shoulder. “What's going on? What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Green answered, sounding like he was about ready to pass out. “Nothing...”
“Then who's there?” she persisted, reaching through to shove now at Colonel Mustard. The other women behind her began to murmur with annoyance clear in their tones, but seemed content to let her take the lead in questioning. “Who?”
“Nobody,” gurgled Colonel Mustard, and when Puck looked over his shoulder, the football hero actually looked ready to pass out. Wimp.
“Nobody. No Boddy, that's what we mean,” squeaked out the butler, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Mr. Boddy's body, it's gone!”
Mrs. White actually pushed her way through all of them to get into the study. “Ridiculous,” she scoffed, throwing them all a contemptuous glare. “That's imp -”
Puck wouldn't have thought she could have gone any more pale than she was, but wow, would you look at that. “So, you were saying?” he sniped at her, enjoying how horrified she looked. No chick got to question the word of Noah Puckerman, guitar hero and sex shark, damn it.
She spun back around, tilting her sharp little chin into the air and looking at him like she'd just scraped him off the bottom of her shoe. “Well. Maybe he wasn't dead.”
Aw, hell no. “He totally was!” Puck protested, cricking his neck and stepping up to face down Mrs. Bad News. “I checked.”
“Yes, but you're not exactly a licensed physician,” she sneered back, and man, he was having a hard time choosing who gave the better death glare, her or the Scarlet chick that frankly scared him to death - went without saying that Peacock's death glare was about as deadly as a mosquito bite so she wasn't even in the race. Right now, Mrs. White was definitely edging out Scarlet though, for sure. “Lifeguarding doesn't really require an MD.”
Ms. Scarlet stepped over the cook and into the room, coming to stare at the blank spot on the floor. She made sure to shoot Puck her own nasty look and seriously, what the fuck, man? “We should have made sure of it ourselves.”
“How?” Great, now Ms. Peacock had to try and add her voice to the mess. This was seriously harshing his Puckzilla buzz. “By cutting his head off, I suppose.”
Okay, that was a stellar burn on Peacock's part. Maybe she was in the bitch race after all.
Mrs. White's pretty face was turning bright red. “That was completely uncalled for,” she began, only to be stopped by Wadsworth.
“We should really look for Mr. Boddy,” he informed them, gently putting a hand on Mrs. White's shoulder and patting her in an attempt to soothe her temper. “Dead or not, he's clearly not here.”
“Seriously, I was sure he was dead,” Puck groaned. He really had been. Well. Mostly. “I mean, he looked dead. He wasn't moving! Or breathing or anything...” No one was listening to him. Oh, fine. “What difference does it even make now?”
“Pretty sure it makes a hell of a lot of difference to him, Mr. T,” came Ms. Scarlet's acid reply, and he channeled his desire to punch her into chalking up another mental point for the bitch race. “Maybe there is life after death.”
Mrs. White had wandered off and was poking through the papers on the desk. “Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage,” she sniffed absently, picking up a manila envelope and reading it with a curious expression on her face.
And another point for the Black Widow.
A gasp from the other side of the room drew everyone's attention to Mr. Green. “What if Mr. Boddy killed the cook?”
“Uh, how, exactly?” Ms. Scarlet looked up from where she'd joined Mrs. White in rummaging through everything laying on the desktop and snorted in derision. “No seriously, Fashion Plate, I wanna hear this.”
Perhaps wisely, Mr. Green said nothing. Puck added another point to his scorecard for Ms. Scarlet, who was starting to pull ahead.
It was a disappointment when Ms. Peacock finally spoke up and Puck couldn't give her a point. She'd been on a roll. “Excuse me,” Ms. Peacock hissed, tapping the hot blonde maid on the arm. “Is there a little girl's room...?”
“No, I don't think the house owner has kids,” the maid replied, without so much as a facial twitch to tell Puck whether or not she was joking.
He was pretty sure...not.
Wadsworth touched Ms. Peacock's arm to get her attention. “There's a powder room by the kitchen,” he directed, pointing out the study door. “Just down there.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a smile, vanishing in the indicated direction, and Puck took her back off the tally board. She had potential, but no bitch follow through. Just as well, made things less complicated in his head.
A nasty laugh from the desk had them all turning to face Ms. Scarlet, who had what looked like a stack of photos in her hand and was going through them. “Oh boy,” she snickered, flipping to the next picture. “What's all this, Wadsworth?”
“Oh, I'm afraid those are the photos to which Colonel Mustard was alluding earlier,” replied the butler, coming around to try and confiscate the pictures. Ms. Scarlet held him off easily, giggling harder and harder as she went through the stack. “I really must insist you -”
“Give them to me!” the Colonel howled, lurching around the sofa and lunging towards Ms. Scarlet. She merely giggled some more - Puck felt that deserved a point because damn - and dodged out of the way, grinning at Yvette.
“Nice,” she commented, waving a handful of the prints in the air. “Wanna take a look, Yvette?”
“Um, no, I stopped looking at pictures when I watched the Harry Potter documentaries, moving photographs freak me out,” was the improbable reply and Jesus, was she for real?
Ms. Scarlet didn't seem to know what to say to that, giving Puck the chance to get a word in edgewise. “So what kind of photos are they?”
“They're my photos, and I want them - ow!” Colonel Mustard was once again thwarted in his quest to claim the pictures, this time by the pointed toe of a high heeled shoe to his shin. Another point, damn, Mrs. White was going to have to do some serious work to catch up now.
“Nope, Frankenteen, these concern me, too,” Ms. Scarlet informed him as she sauntered off. But her getaway path took her too close to Puck, who reached out and snatched the pictures right out of her hands.
“What could - oh holy crap.” Puck let out a low wolf whistle and a laugh as he flipped through the pictures. “Nice work, Mustard. I might forgive you for costing me money yet.”
Mrs. White's voice nearly scared him out of his skin, he hadn't realized she was coming up behind him. “No one can get into that position,” she sniffed, tugging one of the photos away to get a closer look.
Well, if there was one thing the Puckzilla liked, it was a challenge. “Sure you can,” he told her, handing Ms. Scarlet the pictures back. “Check it out.” And before the Ice Queen could do anything more than squeak, he had her down on the couch with one slender leg hiked up almost to his shoulder.
The slap to the face she gave him was worth it just to see her lose her cool. He gave her two points for that one. “Get the hell off me,” she snapped, shoving at his arms until he got up, grinning down at her. He'd just opened his mouth to shoot back a cocky retort when a high pitched scream sounded from the hallway. Down near the kitchen. Specifically it seemed to be coming from what Puck guessed was the bathroom area.
Reluctantly, he mentally erased the Bitch Race tally board and replaced it with one titled Ms. Peacock's Nightmare On Elm Street Screamfest.
Chapter Eight - Why'd You Have To Go And Make Things So Complicated?
Author:a_glass_parade
Beta:idoltina
Artist:gwladus
Word Count: 43,000+
Rating: R - people die, it's a murder mystery!
Characters/Pairings: Blaine Anderson, Brittany Pierce, Finn Hudson, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Kurt Hummel, Santana Lopez, with cameo appearances galore!
Warnings: People die. Repeat: people DIE. People you like die. This is an AU based off of the murder mystery movie 'Clue'. So...people die. Just...letting you know. Also warning for slapstick humor and terrible jokes.
Summary: Mysterious invitations have been sent to certain notorious citizens of the Chicago area, asking them to gather at creepy Dalton Manor for a dinner party with an unknown host. Blaine Anderson, masquerading as humble butler Wadsworth, must exert all his considerable efforts and charms to keep everything under control and solve a significant problem when guests, servants and unexpected visitors start to turn up dead by various means! A modern riff on the 1985 cult classic film 'Clue' finds our beloved McKinley misfits reluctantly banding together to try and escape dinner with their lives.
Chapter Seven - The Soup Was Great But The Main Course Was Killer
Quinn would have laughed at everyone getting trapped in the kitchen door if she hadn't been caught herself in between Professor Plum - who smelled like cheap body spray and testosterone, or were they the same thing? - and Ms. Peacock, whose sequined obnoxiousness was pulling snags in Quinn's bodice. Damn it.
Mr. Green was the only one who'd escaped the tangle in the door way, gliding down the steps into the kitchen proper and looking around. “Well, she doesn't seem to be in here,” he observed, drumming his fingers on the steel countertop. “I suppose we should just -”
He cut off when the door to the walk-in freezer began to creak open to his right. Quinn caught a glimpse of his eyes widening in surprise just before he yelped and reached out his arms to catch the body of a large woman in a plain dress and apron as it fell out of the freezer. Ms. Scarlet let out an impressively bloodcurdling scream when they all caught sight of the dagger in the middle of her her wide back, a blot of blood staining the fabric of her torn dress around the wound.
“I didn't do it,” Mr. Green gasped, beginning to crumple under the woman's dead weight. “I didn't...gah, help, somebody!”
But everyone was still too stunned to do anything more than mill around him as he collapsed to the floor and immediately pushed away from the corpse, rolling the cook over onto her stomach. Ms. Scarlet reached out as if to pull the knife out, only to look capable of murder herself when Colonel Mustard slapped her hand away.
“We shouldn't touch it,” he mumbled, scooting back a few feet in evident fear. “It's, like, evidence.”
“Not for us,” Quinn snapped, astounded at how dim a man could be sometimes. “We can't take fingerprints!”
Apparently deciding to cover up his fumbling with bravado, the Colonel lurched to his feet and moved to confront Wadsworth, who was still staring in shock from the top of the steps. “I think you need to explain stuff, Wadsworth,” Mustard blustered, obviously trying to look threatening but coming off as nothing so much as constipated.
The butler blinked. “Why me?” he asked, eyes wide and surprised like a Disney character. “What have I done?”
“Who would want to kill the cook?” Mr. Green wondered aloud, brushing a bloodstained apron string away from his trouser leg.
“Dinner wasn't that bad,” Ms. Scarlet opined, sniffing out a laugh.
Colonel Mustard rounded on her. “How can you make jokes at a time like this?”
“How can you walk around looking like a joke and ask that?” the woman shot back, a malicious smirk curving her lips as she got to her feet. “Whatever. It's my defense mechanism.”
“Some defense,” Colonel Mustard huffed, glancing around the room as if trying to gather the agreement of the others. “If I was the killer, I'd kill you next.”
Well, Quinn thought, feeling her eyebrows shoot up as she exchanged incredulous looks with Ms. Scarlet and Mr. Green. Aren't you a smooth operator?
Ms. Scarlet crossed her arms over her chest, and Quinn had to admire how good she was at glaring daggers at people. “Oh?”
Finally realizing what he'd said, the Colonel lifted a hand to his throat and tugged at his tie as Quinn and Mr. Green stood up and waited for his answer. “Er...I mean...I said if.”
No one budged.
The Colonel began to fidget under the scrutiny. “Look,” he tried, pulling his shoulders back and trying to recover, “There's only one admitted killer here and it's not me!”
Oh, this ought to be good, Quinn laughed to herself as the man worked himself more and more into a frantic bluster. I wonder who he -
It was quite a shock when he spun around and pointed directly at her. “It's her!”
Taken aback, all Quinn could do was back away from everyone, holding on to the kitchen island for support. “Me? I...” She heard her voice falter and cursed silently. “I've admitted nothing!”
In immediate retrospect, she understood that perhaps that hadn't been quite the brightest thing she could have said.
“Well, you've paid the blackmail,” Colonel Mustard pointed out, keeping pace with her as she stepped backwards. “How many husbands have you had?”
“Mine or other people's?” she asked before she thought, and wow, she used to be better at being put on the spot than this.
“Yours,” the Colonel replied, managing to almost but not quite hide his astonishment and mild terror.
“Five. Just five,” Quinn replied, deciding to give up on even trying to have a filter at this point. Might as well go for the gold - the look on his face should be priceless. “Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable.”
Perfect. That expression was probably the best thing she'd seen all night. “You lure men to their deaths! Like...like...” He groped for words, eventually blurting, “Like a spider with flies!”
He was obviously very proud of himself for that analogy, and so Quinn rather relished shooting him down with, “Flies are where men are most vulnerable.”
“Right!” The Colonel shot back - and then blanched, stepping back and trying to discreetly cover his crotch without it looking like he was groping himself.
He failed.
“Well, if it wasn't you,” he finally reasoned, “then who did it? Who had the dagger?” In the next instant, he answered the question himself, realization dawning on his face like he'd been hit in the back of the head. “You did, Ms. Peacock!”
Quinn felt gratified and relieved both to have the attention off of her and turned instead to the obnoxious little Peacock, who rather uncharacteristically looked like she absolutely wanted none of it. “Well...I...yes! But I put it down!”
“Where?” asked Professor Plum, leaning in close and making her look even more uncomfortable and distressed.
Okay, it would be lying to admit that Quinn wasn't enjoying this, and lying was a sin, so she just bit her lip and kept her eyes focused on the floor as she tried not to laugh too obviously.
“I don't know,” Ms. Peacock floundered. “In the study? Before the poisoning thing? Or after. I don't know! But I didn't do it! Anyone could have picked it up, just like the gun!”
This was true. No one had any sort of rebuttal for it.
Wadsworth came to a decision first. “Well. I suggest we take the cook's body into the study.”
“Why?” Quinn asked, puzzled. She'd thought that crime scenes were supposed to stay intact, and weren't the police coming?
But Wadsworth just looked at her like she was the crazy one for even asking. “I'm the butler,” he replied, brushing hands down his lapels. “I like to keep the kitchen tidy.”
Among the many things Noah Puckerman had not signed up for in his life, helping to haul around the dead body of a crappy cook who was built like a linebacker was right up there.
Next to it was carrying the body into a room where they'd left another dead body - that wasn't there anymore. “Son of a bitch,” Puck howled, letting go his grip on the cook's arm and sending her plummeting to the floor. “The fuck did the body go?”
“It's right here, we're holding it,” Wadsworth answered before following Puck's glance and dropping the cook's other arm. “Oh, no, this is bad.”
“What is?” Ms. Peacock's arm came through and shoved at Wadsworth's shoulder. “What's going on? What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Green answered, sounding like he was about ready to pass out. “Nothing...”
“Then who's there?” she persisted, reaching through to shove now at Colonel Mustard. The other women behind her began to murmur with annoyance clear in their tones, but seemed content to let her take the lead in questioning. “Who?”
“Nobody,” gurgled Colonel Mustard, and when Puck looked over his shoulder, the football hero actually looked ready to pass out. Wimp.
“Nobody. No Boddy, that's what we mean,” squeaked out the butler, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Mr. Boddy's body, it's gone!”
Mrs. White actually pushed her way through all of them to get into the study. “Ridiculous,” she scoffed, throwing them all a contemptuous glare. “That's imp -”
Puck wouldn't have thought she could have gone any more pale than she was, but wow, would you look at that. “So, you were saying?” he sniped at her, enjoying how horrified she looked. No chick got to question the word of Noah Puckerman, guitar hero and sex shark, damn it.
She spun back around, tilting her sharp little chin into the air and looking at him like she'd just scraped him off the bottom of her shoe. “Well. Maybe he wasn't dead.”
Aw, hell no. “He totally was!” Puck protested, cricking his neck and stepping up to face down Mrs. Bad News. “I checked.”
“Yes, but you're not exactly a licensed physician,” she sneered back, and man, he was having a hard time choosing who gave the better death glare, her or the Scarlet chick that frankly scared him to death - went without saying that Peacock's death glare was about as deadly as a mosquito bite so she wasn't even in the race. Right now, Mrs. White was definitely edging out Scarlet though, for sure. “Lifeguarding doesn't really require an MD.”
Ms. Scarlet stepped over the cook and into the room, coming to stare at the blank spot on the floor. She made sure to shoot Puck her own nasty look and seriously, what the fuck, man? “We should have made sure of it ourselves.”
“How?” Great, now Ms. Peacock had to try and add her voice to the mess. This was seriously harshing his Puckzilla buzz. “By cutting his head off, I suppose.”
Okay, that was a stellar burn on Peacock's part. Maybe she was in the bitch race after all.
Mrs. White's pretty face was turning bright red. “That was completely uncalled for,” she began, only to be stopped by Wadsworth.
“We should really look for Mr. Boddy,” he informed them, gently putting a hand on Mrs. White's shoulder and patting her in an attempt to soothe her temper. “Dead or not, he's clearly not here.”
“Seriously, I was sure he was dead,” Puck groaned. He really had been. Well. Mostly. “I mean, he looked dead. He wasn't moving! Or breathing or anything...” No one was listening to him. Oh, fine. “What difference does it even make now?”
“Pretty sure it makes a hell of a lot of difference to him, Mr. T,” came Ms. Scarlet's acid reply, and he channeled his desire to punch her into chalking up another mental point for the bitch race. “Maybe there is life after death.”
Mrs. White had wandered off and was poking through the papers on the desk. “Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage,” she sniffed absently, picking up a manila envelope and reading it with a curious expression on her face.
And another point for the Black Widow.
A gasp from the other side of the room drew everyone's attention to Mr. Green. “What if Mr. Boddy killed the cook?”
“Uh, how, exactly?” Ms. Scarlet looked up from where she'd joined Mrs. White in rummaging through everything laying on the desktop and snorted in derision. “No seriously, Fashion Plate, I wanna hear this.”
Perhaps wisely, Mr. Green said nothing. Puck added another point to his scorecard for Ms. Scarlet, who was starting to pull ahead.
It was a disappointment when Ms. Peacock finally spoke up and Puck couldn't give her a point. She'd been on a roll. “Excuse me,” Ms. Peacock hissed, tapping the hot blonde maid on the arm. “Is there a little girl's room...?”
“No, I don't think the house owner has kids,” the maid replied, without so much as a facial twitch to tell Puck whether or not she was joking.
He was pretty sure...not.
Wadsworth touched Ms. Peacock's arm to get her attention. “There's a powder room by the kitchen,” he directed, pointing out the study door. “Just down there.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a smile, vanishing in the indicated direction, and Puck took her back off the tally board. She had potential, but no bitch follow through. Just as well, made things less complicated in his head.
A nasty laugh from the desk had them all turning to face Ms. Scarlet, who had what looked like a stack of photos in her hand and was going through them. “Oh boy,” she snickered, flipping to the next picture. “What's all this, Wadsworth?”
“Oh, I'm afraid those are the photos to which Colonel Mustard was alluding earlier,” replied the butler, coming around to try and confiscate the pictures. Ms. Scarlet held him off easily, giggling harder and harder as she went through the stack. “I really must insist you -”
“Give them to me!” the Colonel howled, lurching around the sofa and lunging towards Ms. Scarlet. She merely giggled some more - Puck felt that deserved a point because damn - and dodged out of the way, grinning at Yvette.
“Nice,” she commented, waving a handful of the prints in the air. “Wanna take a look, Yvette?”
“Um, no, I stopped looking at pictures when I watched the Harry Potter documentaries, moving photographs freak me out,” was the improbable reply and Jesus, was she for real?
Ms. Scarlet didn't seem to know what to say to that, giving Puck the chance to get a word in edgewise. “So what kind of photos are they?”
“They're my photos, and I want them - ow!” Colonel Mustard was once again thwarted in his quest to claim the pictures, this time by the pointed toe of a high heeled shoe to his shin. Another point, damn, Mrs. White was going to have to do some serious work to catch up now.
“Nope, Frankenteen, these concern me, too,” Ms. Scarlet informed him as she sauntered off. But her getaway path took her too close to Puck, who reached out and snatched the pictures right out of her hands.
“What could - oh holy crap.” Puck let out a low wolf whistle and a laugh as he flipped through the pictures. “Nice work, Mustard. I might forgive you for costing me money yet.”
Mrs. White's voice nearly scared him out of his skin, he hadn't realized she was coming up behind him. “No one can get into that position,” she sniffed, tugging one of the photos away to get a closer look.
Well, if there was one thing the Puckzilla liked, it was a challenge. “Sure you can,” he told her, handing Ms. Scarlet the pictures back. “Check it out.” And before the Ice Queen could do anything more than squeak, he had her down on the couch with one slender leg hiked up almost to his shoulder.
The slap to the face she gave him was worth it just to see her lose her cool. He gave her two points for that one. “Get the hell off me,” she snapped, shoving at his arms until he got up, grinning down at her. He'd just opened his mouth to shoot back a cocky retort when a high pitched scream sounded from the hallway. Down near the kitchen. Specifically it seemed to be coming from what Puck guessed was the bathroom area.
Reluctantly, he mentally erased the Bitch Race tally board and replaced it with one titled Ms. Peacock's Nightmare On Elm Street Screamfest.
Chapter Eight - Why'd You Have To Go And Make Things So Complicated?