Party for Murder

2. Welcome to Creepy Town

Chapter 2

The next stop was the town of Riverview; Maria left the train station and walked into one of the weirdest places she's ever been to. The town felt abandoned and discarded, probably too neglected by the government over the years. Very few people were in the streets and they weren't that friendly to outsiders either. Maria walked for a while pulling behind her luggage struggling in the low lit streets till she finally found a hotel which she thought didn't even deserve that one star rating it had.

After checking in for the night, Maria went to the hotel's restaurant for dinner. Generally, she was a really picky person, so basically none of the food available seemed editble for her, she was absolutely disgusted from the whole place.

"This restaurant must have at least a D rating" she said to herself, but still she decided to eat a canned soup better than nothing. Maria sat at one of the tables and started eating her soup when an older man approached her.

"Can I join you?" he said

"Well, first of all, I'm taken and secondly, aren't you a little too old to be flirting with me?"

He laughed and took off his coat, so Maria noticed his police badge.

"I need a place to sit and eat cause there are only four tables in this nasty restaurant and the other three are full." He put down his coat on the back of the chair "I'm detective James by the way"

"Oh, I'm really sorry detective. Please take a seat" she smiled at him then continued saying "I'm Maria." She placed a lock of her hair behind her ear "So, you're not from here either?"

"No. I'm not." He sat down "I was supposed to go to Sunset Valley for my new job, but I overslept at the train and missed the station"

"It must be hard moving to Sunset Valley, for a detective I mean, cause I hear it's a really quiet place, sort of crime-free."

"Actually, I was the one who asked to be moved there; I wanted some peace and quiet after..." He paused an for a moment Maria could see the agony in his eyes "after the accident that took away my wife and daughter"

"Oh my God, I'm really sorry for your loss" She wanted to change the subject, so she told him about Jessica and her mission to Sunset valley, so they decided to take the first train there in the morning together.

Maria went to her room and tried to get some sleep, but she couldn't fall asleep; she kept thinking about the many little creatures that were probably crawling everywhere around her in the room. Soon enough she started feeling little tingles on her body which felt like insects, so she took her stuff and decided to stay at the lobby till morning.

She took a seat and grabbed a book out of her handbag 'And Then There Were None' and started reading. A while later, she fell asleep on her seat, but she woke up later by the creepy lobby man standing too close to her.

"Don't touch me, I have a rape whistle" she shouted

"Calm down crazy, I was just checking if you're alive" he said and went back to his desk but still kept staring at her which freaked her out.

"This town can't get any scarier," she let out a long breath "ugh, can't wait till the morning so I can leave this place." She said to herself.

A few hours passed and Maria was at the edge of her seat reading her book when she heard detective James' voice

"Agatha Christie ha?" he said

"Yeah I love her books, I basically love all book, but she's an exception she's a queen on her own." She sounded excited "Anyways, I'm glad you're finally up, let's just leave."

They went to the train station and on their way, they got some caffeine in their systems to be able to continue their journey.

They took the train and in less than an hour, they reached Sunset Valley. Maria and Detective James shared a cab from the station to the address from the notebook where Jessica was supposed to be.

As soon as they reached the street from the address, the cab stopped which was a few block away from the house they were heading to because there were several police cars blocking the street, as well as an ambulance and a crowd of people, both policemen and civilians.

Doctors came out of the house with an ambulance bed and a body laying on top of it, a dead body covered with a white sheet stained with blood from the face and neck area.

Detective James left the cab and went to talk to the policemen to see what happened. However, Maria couldn't move, she was terrified since she has never seen that amount of blood in real life before and most certainly a dead body.

However, she kept looking through the cab window observing the situation from a distance. All of a sudden, the wind blew away part of the sheet covering the body, only to shock Maria that the dead body was Jessica, the woman she met on the train.