Complex Numbers

The Butler Did It

Yeah, I'm going with the cliché here. Or am I?

PROMPT November 17^th

You have been invited to a posh dinner party hosted by one of the wealthiest people in your small town. When you arrive, your host is does not greet you, and the butler informs you they have been missing last night. A quick search by all the party goers finds him/her dead. Their body is in a small clearing in the woods behind the mansion. Being a modern day Nancy Drew/Joe Hardy type of person, you begin your own investigation. What do you find that leads you to the murderer. Who is the murderer? How was the host killed?

I mean, come on, everyone knows the butler did it. But since everyone knows that, obviously the butler wouldn't have done it because he'd be the prime suspect. But knowing that everyone knows the butler did it, thus removing suspicion from the butler, brings suspicion back on the butler because they know that he knows that they know that he knows...

Obviously, this is fiction, because I don't get invited to those sorts of parties. But see, the host was trying to make nice to me because he wanted to hire me as a ghost writer. What Mr. Grabcash didn't remember was that, about ten years ago, he hired me to do some web design work, which I did, and it was remarkable (for the time).

And the cheap bastard stiffed me out of my fee.

Since then, I've been waiting for a chance to exact revenge, but Grabcash is surrounded by flunkies, minions, and bodyguards, so what could I do?

Well, I took a page out of the disinformation playbook, and started spreading rumors. This was only partially successful, at first, as Grabcash became convinced that the gardener, Elrod, was boning Mrs. Grabcash. I was hoping to hear about a divorce, but no, all he did was fire Elrod, which wasn't my intent (I made sure to hook him up with a venture capitalist in another town, but he really did shag that one's wife and I have no idea what happened to him after that).

Thing is, though, I believe in asymmetric warfare and nuclear revenge -- provided, of course, that I'm on the giving end and not the receiving end. Still salty about the $799.95 he owed me -- closer to $1000 now, because of interest and late fees -- I had to hatch the perfect plan.

Grabcash liked to take a stroll around the grounds most evenings. I know in stories you always hear about "oh, so-and-so goes out at the same time every single day and does the exact same thing, so that's when we move." This is often the most unrealistic part of heist or mystery dramas, because seriously, no one is that regular, even if they eat nothing but Fiber One. Mr. G's evening constitutional schedule was nowhere near predictable, except that it was always sometime after 3 pm and before whatever time sunset happened to be at that time of year. If, of course, he bothered to go out at all.

Oh, yeah, how did I know this? Because I was boning Mrs. Grabcash, and she told me.

Anyway, the whole thing was her idea, which was a good thing, because she was the only one able to stash the silver and some of her jewelry in a secret compartment in the butler's quarters that even the butler didn't know about. After what happened to Elrod, clearly Mr. G would, upon finding out about the butler's secret stash (which of course even the butler wasn't aware of), fire the butler, and of course the butler (I suppose I should note that his name was Aragorn, because even his parents hated him) didn't want to be fired, so he did the only thing that made any sense, which was to wait in hiding with Torgo the bodyguard's sniper rifle from Afghanistan. One shot to the head, bam, no more threat of being fired and Torgo (not his real name; he got it from a movie) gets fingered.

Only problem is Torgo didn't do it; that's an obvious setup. Once Aragorn's secret stash is discovered - much to everyone's surprise, especially Aragorn's, though everyone will think he's faking it - it will be absolutely clear that the butler did it, using Torgo's rifle which happened to have Aragorn's fingerprints all over the barrel because Mrs. G had put them there late one night while Aragorn slept.

No one knew I had sniper training; that was a different life and I've changed names three times since then. And no one could possibly suspect that anyone would off Mr. Grabcash over a measly $1000 unpaid bill, but hey, it's the principle of the thing. Plus now me and the former Mrs. G can scramble off to Tahiti once the dust settles.

I'll even give Torgo a raise.