I had just finished putting on my blush when Eden kissed my cheek from behind me and smile
"You you look deadly my bibi" I smiled
"Those preppies better be ready cause it's about to all come out oh hey did you?"
"Got that search going why yes my bibi and with your friend half brother and FP help his here" I smiled then he drove me to the woods where we meet up with Betty
"Ready"
"Ready and thanks"
"We're like sister crazy you didn't think I'll let you do this alone" then we went to the bunker and when in
"Jug?"
"Jug? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, sorry, I was just going over everything one more time. What's up, did Eden find him?"
"Yeah, yes. We did."
"Well, I mean, Me Charles and FP did." Said Eden
"And did he agree?"
"Completely. He's showering as we speak." He hugged me shakes eden hand and kissed betty
"So are we doing this or what?"
"Oh, yeah. We are gonna blow Stonewall Prep out of the water." We left and entered stone wall and entered the class
"Hello Stonewall jerkoffs."I spoke they turned and see jug and man were their face priceless
"Hey, guys. Well, what, did you even miss me?"
"You gotta be kidding me."
"Mr. Jones. I... I don't understand. We all thought..."
"That I was dead?"
"Well... Yeah, actually for a minute there, I did too."
"Yeah."
"Hey, what's that oft-used Mark Twain quote? "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
"What is happening right now?"
"It is called "getting your comeuppance", Joan." I tell her patting her head
"You guys are reading Crime and Punishment, huh? How apropos. You know, the one kind of crime story that we never really touched upon in this seminar was the time-tested genre of a locked room mystery."
"Where all the suspects are sequestered in a room. One or more of them could be the killer, but the door is not unlocked until the identity is revealed." I ended
"Betty, Eden could you two do the honors?" They go and lock the door
"The next bell doesn't ring for half an hour. So for the next minutes, your asses belong to us."
"I knew you weren't really dead."
"Good job, Donna. And yet since you failed to prove it or find Jughead, we had time to figure out all the twists and turns of this murder-mystery that we've all been living for the past few months."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't worry 'cause I'm gonna take you through it,"
"step by step." I said
"No, this is ridiculous. Mr. DuPont, I'm calling security." Eden grab his phone
"Shut the hell up, Bret. Like we said, for the next minutes, we're in charge. So, give me your cellphones."
"Why the hell..."
"Joan, just do what she says. We have nothing to hide."
"I'd get comfortable if I were you guys 'cause we're going to take you through it from the very beginning. Starting with that very curious fact that both Moose Mason and myself were invited to Stonewall Prep during our senior year." I sat on the teacher desk
Jughead?
Moose!
What the hell? It's good to see you.
"Was it like that when you met my grandfather, Forsythe the First? He was asked to study at Stonewall too. You were roommates with him, weren't you, Mr. DuPont?"
"Yes. And you're very much like him, Mr. Jones. Your grandfather was an arrogant fool too." I rolled my eyes pathetic
"Why do you say that, huh? Because he had the gall to consider himself worthy of your little inner circle? The first iteration of Stonewall's Literary Society."
"What exactly is this proving, Mr. Jones?"
"That this is not a story about a murder. This is a story about grandparents and their grandchildren."
"Of the sins from one generation being passed on to the next." I study a bit Donna face and man did we hit a nail
"Cycles of violence."
"Which brings me neatly to my next point. Halloween. When I was drugged by you psychos."
I think I... I think I need some air
No. You need to lie down.
Say hello to the Stonewall Four for us.
"Only to wake up in a coffin and be let out a day later. To return to my dorm."
Moose, you are not going to believe what Bret...
"And find that Moose had vanished. So naturally, I assumed he went out the same way as the Stonewall Four, that group of students that mysteriously vanished while attending Stonewall Prep over a few decades."
"Oh, here we go again."
"Now, Moose's fate was more banal."
"He joined the Army. But there's a twist!" I said
"Mr. Chipping was the one who encouraged Moose to enlist. But it was more like forced him to."
He was encouraging me to leave. Until Halloween night, when it became more than a suggestion. I mean, he practically shoved me out the door.
"So, what was the connection between Moose and Chipping that would make him take his advice?" I question knwoing the answer
He recruited me. To play football. Wait. Mr. Chipping's the reason why you went to Stonewall Prep?
"Chipping had recruited Moose the same way he had Jughead and then ran him out of Stonewall Prep."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning Chipping knew Moose was going to get murdered and was trying to save his life."
"And I would remember that next point. It's gonna be on the qu..."
"Oh, Mr. J..."
"Shut up!" I barked at him scaring him a bit
"Thank you Celeste, Mr. DuPont, as they say in Lord of the Flies, I have the conch. Now, after Halloween is when things got really interesting. See, that's when you announced the writing competition."
Chipping has written the last four Baxter Brothers books. It's time he pass on the torch.
"And someone in this very room is going to be anointed the next ghostwriter. You had already taken a shine to me, Mr. DuPont. You were asking about my father and my grandfather."
Your grandfather was an excellent writer. Tell me, how's he doing? Does he still write?
"So imagine my surprise... when I found out that my good-for-nothing drop-out grandfather had actually written the original Baxter Brothers novel. Which a young Francis DuPont would then steal from him."
"It was a 100% legal transaction. A sale."
"It's highway robbery. A measly five grand for an idea that generated millions of dollars." I lean down next to him
"You exploited Forsythe, Mr. DuPont. You took advantage of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. And if that secret ever came out, can you imagine the damage that would do to the very valuable Baxter Brothers brand? Hell." I whisper
"Someone might kill to keep that secret." I stood up
"Which is exactly what we thought happened with Mr. Chipping."
"I told Chipping about my gramps. And then he talked to you, Mr. DuPont. And the next day, well... I think we all remember his dive out the window. I thought you had urged him to do it. I thought you had some leverage over Chipping. I mean, you guys were all part of the same secret society, Quill and Skull. But it was actually you guys. It was your blank expressions as you watched him jump."
Call an ambulance!
"I just couldn't shake it. That's when I knew there was a deeper game afoot."
"No, Chipping suicided 'cause he was messing around with Donna, she ended it, and he short-circuited."
"Oh honey please Donna!." I laughed
"I think anyone can get a better deal than this"
"Except... they never really had a physical relationship. Isn't that right, Donna?"
"We had an affair and it got out of hand."
"Mmm-hmm. Yes, an affair that went down exactly like the affair that you had with Mr. Kotter."
"Uh..."
"Except, I looked into it personally and... turns out there is no Mr. Kotter." I told her
"Rupert, Rupert had demons."
"Oh, he did. Mrs. Chipping filled us in on all of those. Yeah, she said that he had been drinking more. And having trouble sleeping."
... complaining about the Baxter Brothers books. Wishing he'd never gotten the contract.
"So then, we started to ask ourselves, what would turn the opportunity of a lifetime, winning the Baxter Brothers contract, into a burden? An albatross? Any ideas? Your ghostwriter challenge was to devise the perfect murder. What if the real challenge, the real price that someone had to pay was to commit the perfect murder? In order to prove that you could write it, first you had to do it. I mean, it kind of makes a twisted, pathological sense, no?"
"And that's what was tormenting Mr. Chipping. The guilt of what he had done, the blood that he had shed, in order to win the contract."
"Mr. Chipping invited Moose to Stonewall Prep to be the next victim. To be killed by the next ghostwriter. One of you. And Moose was the perfect candidate. I mean, he was a messed-up kid, he had no family, he couldn't handle the stresses of life."
After my dad was arrested for impersonating the Gargoyle King, it, uh, kinda blew up my life, my family, everything. I even ended up in a facility for a couple of months.
"Chipping ran Moose out of town. You said it yourself."
"Good, you remember. Okay, we think Chipping couldn't go through with it. And-or, maybe he just wanted to atone for what he had done. I mean, whatever the reason. He ran Moose the hell away from Stonewall Prep and then killed himself, it was his only escape." I said
"Pure demented conjecture."
"Well, yes and no. Chipping's behavior is hypothesis, but if proven, it shows a pattern of how the previous ghostwriters won their contract."
"Same year, same month as Chipping was awarded his contract, a Stonewall student disappeared."
"One of the so-called Stonewall Four. We believe this student was murdered by Mr. Chipping. Ryan Allan, the previous ghostwriter, who took up the mantle the same month another one of the Stonewall Four disappeared. The sequence holds true for every ghostwriter who preceded them. It's... It's actually incredibly simple."
"Which brings us to a couple months ago, when I was awarded the contract. But why? To put a target on my back. Probably because I was already circling the truth, so he gave you guys a new challenge. To commit the perfect murder, against me, and be awarded the contract."
"So, the million dollar question is... who was going to kill Jughead? And how?"
"So, which one of you heartless bastards killed me? It was actually Mr. DuPont that gave me a clue. When I asked who had re-written my Baxter Brothers novel, you told me they all had a crack at it."
Well, actually, all of your classmates collaborated on it.
"And that suggested to me that each one of you had a hand in my murder."
"Oh, this should be good."
"Donna, you kept Betty busy."
Oh, good, you made it.
"Bret, you led me deeper into the woods, where I took off the bunny mask I was wearing and put on my beanie. And was it that beanie that kept my head from being completely cracked open when Joan crept up behind me... and hit me with a baseball-sized rock?"
"What? How do you know it was me? Why couldn't it have been Jonathan?"
"Well, I don't recall Jonathan wearing your perfume."
"Yeah, where... Where is Jonathan again? Or did you kill him because he started to develop a conscience?" I asked
"He had food poisoning, he still has food poisoning."
"Okay, Jonathan aside, you had a fool-proof plan, air-tight alibis. It all should have worked so perfectly, but it didn't. Why?"
"Because in all your plotting, all of your lurid conspiring and your brilliance, you didn't kill me."
"I mean, whose job was it to check my pulse?" I said stunned
"Jonathan!" Spoke joan
"Wow and the birdy crumble *ding ding ding*" i said shocked
"Oh, you Einsteins. All you had to do was hit me in the back of the head hard enough with a rock. You failed spectacularly."
"Yeah, meanwhile, Donna was blowing Devil's Breath in my face to set me up as the ultimate fall-girl."
"Devil's Breath? Really?"
"Yeah, the technical term being scopolamine, which leaves a person highly suggestive and in a drunken state. Which is why I don't remember when Donna led me into the clearing where Jughead's body was and placed the bloody rock in my hand, leaving me literally red-handed with the murder weapon."
"After which, the four of you returned to the party and ran into Archie Veronica and me." I said
Hey, have you guys seen Betty and Jughead?
I think they went that way, into the clearing behind those trees.
Thanks.
"And pointed them to where you knew they would find me. Standing over Jughead's corpse. "
Oh, my God, Betty, what happened?
Jug! Is he breathing?
He's dead.
"At which point, one of two scenarios could've played out. One, Archie Veronica and Celeste could turn me in. Two, they could help me cover up the "murder" that I had just committed. Either way, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. But honestly, you guys could've gotten away with it too."
"Yeah, except, again... You guys didn't kill me."
Archie...
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Betty, what happened?
Juggie
All right, start pounding on his chest. Right now, okay? Vee, use the beanie to stop the bleeding.
Go, one, two, three, four, five.
Come on, Jug.
... four, five...
Come on, come on, Jug! Come on!
Betty, he's...
Come back to me, Jug.
Jug, hey, hey, hey.
Hey, we're gonna get you to a hospital, okay?
No... No hospital.
Hey, stay awake, stay with me, please, Jug. Hey. Stay awake, okay?
"Though I didn't regain consciousness for 36 another hours."
"The worst hours of my life."
"Why would you say that, Jones? "No hospital." Why would a man on death's door say that?"
"I honestly don't know. Maybe I had some small feeling that you were going to try and frame Betty. And I wanted her to have a fighting chance with Celeste help" he wraps his arm around me, I smiled
I'm... I'm calling Charles, I'm calling Charles.
What?
Why?
We can trust him.
He'll help us, okay? Hey, Jug. Charles, I'm in the woods with Archie Celeste and Veronica. Jughead, he's hurt really badly, we need help. We need your help, please!
"We carried Jug through the woods to the old postal road, where my brother Charles was waiting for us with an FBI med-van."
What happened to him, Betty?
A head wound. We slowed the bleeding, we did chest compressions and CPR.
You think he's gonna make it?
We're gonna do everything that we can.
What about us? What do we do?
Go back to where you found him. Clean the scene. Make absolutely certain that you don't leave anything behind, all right? Also, your clothes are covered with blood. You need to get rid of those and get washed up, okay?
Okay.
"And then we did what Charles asked. We went back to the clearing. Threw the bloody rock in the swimming hole. Took off our clothes and started a bonfire."
What happens if he doesn't make it?
He'll make it.
But what if he doesn't?
He will. But if he doesn't, then... Archie... Archie? Archie! You listening to me?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
We have to burn all of our clothes including Jughead's beanie. We'll rinse off the blood in the swimming hole. After tonight, we never speak of this. Ever. Not to each other, not to our parents. No one. We'll finish our senior year, graduate, and we'll go our separate ways. That is the only way that we won't get caught. Do it. That is how it'll have to be if Jug doesn't make it. But it won't come to that. He will pull through. He has to.
"And then, we went home. And what happened next was a waking nightmare. Not knowing if or when Jughead was going to wake up, and wondering if I had actually been responsible."
"Wait, but we saw Jughead's corpse at the coroner's office. Was he in on it?"
"Who? Dr. Curdle Jr.? Yeah, mmm-hmm, yeah. We go way back."
"You see, Bret, in a town like Riverdale, everybody's got a price." I said
"And that includes our friendly neighborhood doctor of death. And while Betty and Celeste was keeping you guys busy with a game of cat-and-mouse, I was in the underground bunker untangling this Gordian knot of a year. And it is crazy how much untangling you can get done when everyone thinks you're dead."
"Which brings us, basically, to today."
"So, Mr. DuPont, the floor is open. What do you think?"
"Oh, Mr. Jones... "A" for effort. If nothing else, this fiction is significantly more entertaining than anything you ever produced for my class."
"Oh, did we forget to mention that Betty, juggie and I went and saw the Baxter Brothers ghostwriters? And when we told them our theory, they all asked for their lawyers." I smirked
"What if you did track them down? And even if you found one who corroborated your wild theories in some vague way, then you will know that I never explicitly directed my students or mentees to do anything criminal."
"Oh. What a canny serial killer you are, Mr. DuPont. But we haven't even gotten to the best part."
"Specifically, the three members of your original literary society... who you murdered. Jane Dallas Brown, Charles W. Chickens, Theodore Weisel..." We saw his face
"There it is."
"Let's loop back to the original sin, shall we? When Mr. DuPont stole, and I do mean stole, my grandfather's original Baxter Brothers novel."
"A fact known to you, Mr. DuPont, and of course, Jughead's grandfather but also to your inner circle, your classmates."
"The corrupt secret at the heart of an empire." I smirked
"Although it wasn't an empire just yet. It was a house of cards that you built over many decades. And the bigger it got, the more worried you became that one little slip of the tongue would send the whole thing tumbling down."
"Your life's work would be revealed as a lie, and you as a fraud. And a thief. A man of dishonor." I said
"So, you started going after people who knew the truth and started staging their accidental deaths." Eden walked over and brought out the proof
"You cut brakes. You tampered with fuselages. You compromised oxygen tanks."
"Until there was only one living member of your literary society left. Betty, Celeste I think it's time we let in our guests."
"With pleasure." We went over opened the door and in came FP Charles and the guest of the hour
"Forsythe."
"Live and in the flesh."
"Hello, Francis."
"Why don't you tell him what you told us, Grandpa?"
"Weisel came to see me before he died. He hadn't slept for days. He told me that you killed Charles and Jane 'cause they were gonna spill the truth about the damn Baxter Brothers. He said we knew too much and you were gonna off us, too."
"You and I both know Theodore was a paranoid drunk."
"But two days later, the expert diver drowned in shallow water. So he was right, and I was next. So, I went out for a pack of cigarettes... and never came back."
"What were you doing off-grid since 2002, exactly?"
"Collecting evidence that linked Francis here with the murders of Charles and Jane and Theodore. I started by calling hotels and motels near the accident sites."
"You know what the one thing I couldn't figure out at first was, Mr. DuPont? That if Moose was invited to Stonewall Prep to be the next victim, then why was I also invited?"
"He was bait to lure his grandfather out of hiding so you could finish the job that you started." I said bluntly
"Took off like a coward after Jughead found me."
"But, to my old man's credit, when Eden Charles and I found him the second time, and he heard what happened to his grandson, he figured it was finally time to take your ass down."
"While you were in here playing Agatha Christie, my team was combing through DuPont's house for the last hour. Now, given the trophies of your victims that we found in your hollowed out OED, and your ghostwriters lawyering up, not to mention Forsythe's detective work... Well, why don't you tell him?"
"It's over, Francis."
"Your house of cards has finally come to an end" i said
"You... call me a thief and a coward. I'm not. I'm a builder. I built the Baxter Brothers franchise and with that money, I helped build this school. Without me, neither would exist."
"Francis DuPont, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
"Never. A writer's power is in his words. Only the meek and the timid choose silence." He started to back up a bit
"Oh, I am a man of honor. To the end." My eyes widen how close he got to the window
"His gonna jump" me and jug tried to grab him but no less he did jump straight to the cement floor I sighed in the room at the station I was in standing by Charles as he spoke to Bret
"Have I actually been charged with a crime?"
"You're facing hard time for both attempted murder and the creation and possession of illegally recorded s*x tapes featuring fellow students. Including Jughead and Betty. Now, I'm willing to reduce your charge to only attempted murder if you turn over your collection of videotapes."
"Here's my counter-offer, reduce my charge to conspiracy after the fact, which my lawyer will plead down to community service, or Betty and Jughead's puerile s*x tape will be released to the world wide web."
"Interesting Charles can you give me some alone time with Bret here" he nods
"Of course" when he closed the door I went to work beating the crap out of Bret and let's say he wasn't so pretty
"Of you though I was getting all the fun your sadly mistaken Bret" I text a word to jug and in a minute him and his dad entered
"Good luck jug I left him warmed for ya"
"Thank cel" then left but before I did Betty wanted me to help her for one last job in the room of Donna she came in
"Hello, Donna. Going somewhere?"
"If you two must know, I'm transferring to a new school."
"Well, I'm glad we caught you then. We wanted to congratulate you personally. Jughead Celeste and I heard that you're taking over the Baxter Brothers."
"The brand is relaunching. As Tracy True. Jealous?"
"Your plan worked, Donna. You managed to get everyone else to do the actual dirty work. Hell, even DuPont's dead. You covered your tracks extremely well."
"Celeste... Are you really gonna let betty delusional make you would believe I would mastermind some elaborate conspiracy that caused the deaths of multiple people just to win a YA book contract?"
"No. But you would do it for revenge."
"Oh, really? Revenge for what?"
"I don't know maybe for the murder of your grandmother. Jane Dallas Brown." She had a careful but stunned look
"One of the classmates DuPont killed to cover up the ugly truth that he didn't create the Baxter Brothers. She was your grandmother."
"How could you possibly know that?" I gave a side smirk
"A friend of a friend told me. You dedicated yourself to getting into Stonewall Prep and getting into Chipping's class and each step brought you ever closer to your grandmother's killer. You wanted revenge. So what was the original plan, Donna? Win the contract no matter how many people had to die? And then stage an accident that would take care of DuPont so you could tear down the house that he built?"
"Fascinating theory, Betty and Celeste. You've both left out one minor detail. DuPont didn't merely kill my grandmother. He stole from her. The same way he did from Forsythe."
"Tracy True. The female teen detective who was introduced in the Baxter Brothers' books."
"She was your grandmother's invention." I spoke
"Now I've taken Tracy back and DuPont is rotting in a grave."
"Huh."
"How did you really find out about my grandmother?"
"My dear friend here who supplied us with the medical files that confirmed that you are the granddaughter of Jane Dallas Brown. Which gives the police a motive and links this entire web of death back to you."
"It's circumstantial at best. But I'll play one last round. What do you want, Betty? Celeste"
"We want you to walk away from the Tracy True contract."
"Why in God's name would I do that?"
"Fictional though she may be, Tracy deserves better, as does the memory of your grandmother. And you certainly don't deserve to profit off the near-death of my boyfriend."
"Or... don't walk away. That's fine." I walked up to her
"But I will make sure every newspaper of every major city gets a copy of that medical file and believe me Donna it get ugly for real quick." I smirked at her then smiled
"You play nice from now on, Donna. We'll be keeping an eye on you." Me and Betty walked out feeling victorious later at home
"Mija you we're stupendous you and friends took a school with high power and uncovered it's dark secret I couldn't be proudest"
"Thanks dad and that info really work"
"Well mijita we're just glad that who mess is behind you" said mom
"Yeah I am too so are my friends" didn't I know a dark hurricane was gonna hit Riverdale more sooner than later