CHAPTER 1
Truly spoken, the incident of the night before left the town in a state of anarchy and confusion. It practically ruined the summer plans of all the kids in the town because all the parents were freaking out about the safety of their children. By 6 o’clock, the whole neighborhood was filled with reports, journalists, the FBI, and concerned citizens. Instead of the usual sounds of teenagers and kids rushing to the parks or beaches, riding their bikes, playing games, and causing their usual trouble, the sounds of sirens and a crucial curfew were put in place.
Now, this is my favorite part of the story. WHY? This isbecause this is where I come in. The Smiths’ mansion is right beside my house. When the gunshot was heard, I was in my room wide awake, working on the ideas for a YouTube video I was meant to shoot the next day. The FBI officers came to question my dad on whether or not we saw anything suspicious but we answered in negative- which is true, by the way. Mr. Smith who unfortunately didn’t survive the gunshot wound was mourned adequately by the whole town. His son, Adrian Smith, was invited over to my house to stay with us for the time being. He was unusually quiet and looked so gloomy. Nothing I did could even cheer him up at all. I don’t blame him; it is very tough losing your dad after a year of losing your mother.
The Smiths have been our neighbor for ten years now and throughout the period that I have been friends with Adrian, I have not heard of Mr. Smith engaging in any illegal dealings. The mystery that kept turning in my mind is who exactly would want Mr. Smith dead. Luckily for me, I was able to convince my dad to pick up my best friends from their houses ‘so we can work on our pitch video on a competition we registered for’. This is partially true but the main reason I wanted them to come is so we can work on this mystery case together. A million questions came to my mind about the case which I wrote down for future references. To keep me from running insane, I cleaned out my room, prepared cookies and orange juices for our meeting.
When I had finished setting up the snacks, I ensured that Adrian was away from my room so that he wouldn’t eavesdrop on the conversation. Twenty minutes later, my dad pulled up into the driveway, and at that moment, I could hear the excited chattering of my besties as they ran towards the porch.
“Heyyyyyy!” shouted Iris who was always very competitive and adventurous. She loved mystery novels especially murder ones. “Look whom we have here.” She took my face into her hands and started making repulsive expressions.
“Hey, guys! Why don’t we go upstairs to my room?” I said after managing to free myself from the hard grip of Iris who was popping a bubble gum into her mouth and flipping her waist-length blond hair.
When we got into my room, we started working on the video which took a very short time because I already did it last night. After that, we started talking about the murder case which by the way was started by Vivienne.
“Guys, is it true that Mr. Smith was involved in an illegal business?” Vivienne asked uncertainly.
“What?” I replied unbelievably. “Who told you that?”
“Look I am not sure ok? I just overheard my mom talking to my dad about it.” She answered biting her fingers nervously.
Vivienne is practically the opposite of Iris. Instead of being confident, a fashion diva, a talkative and boy magnet, she was shy, had low self-esteem, gets scared easily, and is always very nervous that she hardly speaks.
“I don’t think so,” I said trying to calm my nerves.
“Well… don’t want to disagree with you Fiona, but I think it is true.” Evelyn butted in.
“Same here though,” Iris added as she took a sip of her orange drink.
“You can’t be serious. I can’t believe you guys would say something like that about Mr. Smith.” I yelled at them in frustration. “He has been very nice to all of us and you all know that.”
“Fiona, you need to calm down ok?” Vivienne requested with a concerned expression on her face.
“I don’t think you know anything about criminals. Even the ones with the most ferocious crimes can be the nicest.” Evelyn stated.
“What do you mean that I should calm down?” I asked staring at Vivienne angrily “last night I heard a terrifying gunshot and the next morning my best friends are trying to convince me that I have been living with a criminal for ten years.”
“Listen, Fiona, I might not understand how you are feeling right now, but we need you to calm down,” Evelyn said.
“Why don’t we end the topic and play a game of cards, all right?” Iris suggested as she took the card stack from her fanny pack.
Ten minutes later, I became calm and relaxed after playing a game of cards with my friends. The truth was that I had expected that inviting my friends over to talk about the whole thing would help but it didn’t. It just made me a whole lot more confused.
After the game, I showed them the list of questions I had written out earlier. They answered very few of them with little or no knowledge of the whole story.
“You know what? I am thinking we should probably speak to Adrian about this.” Iris said chewing another piece of gum.
“Oh…yeah? And tell him what?” I asked, “that we are trying to investigate his father as a criminal mastermind?”
“Of course not, we would just try to talk to him about his stay in the smiths’ mansion,” Evelyn said. “If you don’t want to do it, I can do it myself.”
“No way! I suggest Iris.” I suggested dusting the cookie crumbs from my shirt. “I mean Adrian has had a crush on Iris for like forever.”
“Really?” Iris asked pretending to be flattered. “Fine, I will do it.”
So it was agreed. Iris went to Adrian`s room to speak to him while I secretly prayed that nothing incriminating would come out from this. I watched as Evelyn took out her pocket knife and began to carve her initials on the frame of my bed. Evelyn is what one would call a tom-boy. She was as courageous and as brave as Iris but extremely aggressive which is very helpful because she had the habit of beating up anyone who messes with us. She always dressed like a boy and even acts like one.
We call ourselves F.I.V.E because of the beginning of our names; Fiona, Iris, Vivienne, and Evelyn. Normally, we spend our summer hanging out in Evelyn’s treehouse investigating cases like the newspaper thief, the mystery of the stolen bike in the park, etc. those were all small cases but this case is the biggest so far and I am kind of excited about it. When Iris returned, she told us that all Adrian said was that his father manufactured honey and nothing more.
“See?” I said in triumph looking directly at Vivienne. I was secretly excited that nothing bad had come out of this whole thing. Unknown to me, the worst was yet to come. While I was pouring another glass of orange juice, Evelyn made another statement that made me spill it.
“We can search the smiths’ mansion for evidence though!” She said.
“That would have been a good idea but what would we find that the police haven’t found?” Vivienne inquired thoughtfully.
“And the house has been marked a crime scene” I added as we tried to clean up the mess “there is no way whatsoever we would be able to get in. There are journalists not to even mention the FBI agents out there. They even questioned my dad today.”
“Good point!” Iris exclaimed in support.
“Then we go at midnight!” Evelyn stressed frustrated.
“Now you are talking!” Iris told her as she reached out to give her a high five “I am in the mood for some midnight adventure.”
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