Hallas' brow creased with worry. After getting back to the station and checking out information on the Salvation Society Hallas had signed up for another car and headed toward Boddy Manor. The problem? Hallas was currently lost.
Why am I so bad with directions?
Hallas pulled over and once again called for directions.
De Tanga was checking out Mr. Boddy's lab when Death came back from his trip to Melissa Potiron's home. Mr. Boddy had been quite a famed scientist and had made quite a bit of money with his discoveries.
"Detective Tealson?" Death called from the hallway.
"I'm in the lab Death."
Death poked his head in the lab. "Oh hi. So whatcha doing in here?"
"I'm just checking out some of the rooms of the Boddy Manor."
"Find anything useful?"
"So far, no. But I've got a few interesting ideas things noted that I'm going to check out later. So what did you find about Sergeant Gray's story?"
Death pulled out his notepad and looked it over for a few moments. "Well it looks like his story checks out. There was a prowler sneaking around Miss Potiron's home and she first called the police and then called Sergeant Gray."
"Why?"
"Well the police thought she was just being a basket case so she called Sergeant Gray afterwards and he came by."
De Tanga raised an eyebrow. "Why did she call him?"
"She's known him for quite some time. Her mother apparently used to baby-sit Sergeant Gray when he was little."
"So he came to check things out and left once he noticed that the prowler wasn't in the area and ended up here right?" De Tanga asked more to himself then to Death.
"That's what Miss Potiron said."
Interesting... so Sergeant Gray knew Melissa Potiron. He made a mental note that he also needed to talk to Zelgadis later on too. "Hmm... anything else?"
"Yeah it was something weird that Miss Potiron said when I was about to leave."
"What did she say?"
"Well she asked me to deliver a message to Sergeant Gray. She wanted me to tell him that she's sorry that Mr. Boddy is dead."
De Tanga raised an eyebrow. "Why would she ask you to do that?"
"That's what I was thinking when she asked me." Death put his notepad back in his jacket.
"Hmm... more questions to be answered... well good work. So where's Hallas?"
"Well when you sent us off on our tasks we realized that this wasn't going to work out right with only one car. So we decided that I would drive Hallas over to the station and while he's there he would get another car."
"So basically you dropped him off there and went to Melissa Potiron's home?"
"Yes that would be correct."
De Tanga shook his head and lightly chuckled. "Well then I guess we'll be seeing Hallas for a little while."
"Why do you say that?" Death looked at De Tanga in confusion.
"Because Hallas is directionally impaired. He can't find his way around town if his life depended on it. He always gets himself lost."
Death sweatdropped. "Then how does he manage to get to work on time?"
"Carpool. He gets pick up at home and taken to work. Otherwise he probably wouldn't get to work at all."
"Oh great, meaning he's probably lost on the road right now."
"Yup probably. Well Death I want you to go check around the rooms of the Boddy Manor. If you find anything suspicious looking I want you to write it down and tell it to me later, alright?"
"Okay. But are you going to do?"
"Right now I'm going to see if I can have a little one on one chat with Miss Amelia White."
"Well then you can find her over in the kitchen, I saw her head over there on my way here."
"I'll see you later then."
De Tanga after a few minutes found his way over to the kitchen. Amelia was inside doing some cleaning. "Miss White may I speak to you for a few minutes?"
Amelia whom had been unaware of De Tanga coming in was startled by his voice. "Oh my! Detective Tealson you scared me!"
"I do apologize Miss White." De Tanga walked over to the kitchen table and motioned for Amelia to join him.
"So Detective De Tanga how can I help you?" Amelia asked while taking a chair at the table.
"Well I was hoping that you could clear up a few things with me. So if you don't mind I'd like to ask you a few questions." De Tanga pulled out his notepad and pen.
"I don't mind at all. What do you want to ask me?"
"First of all I want know about Mr. Boddy's relationship with Professor Xellos Plum."
Amelia frowned at the mention of Xellos' name. "What do you want to know about it?"
"Well when I was talking to Professor Plum back in the living room with everyone else you seemed to regard him with suspicion. I take it you don't trust him that much?" De Tanga looked up from his notepad.
"That's putting it mildly... Well I'm aware that Professor Plum and Mr. Boddy have been friends for quite some time. I learned that when I started working her a few years ago. Only I've always found Professor Plum... odd."
"Odd? In what way?"
"Well the way he speaks, the way he acts around people... He acts so suspicious all the time that sometimes I wonder if he's up to something rotten. And look at him today. Here his best friend of many years is dead, murdered by one of the people in this building and he doesn't seem worried, angry or upset even. All he can do is act cheerful." Amelia mentally shuddered. Xellos' constant grin always gives her the creeps.
De Tanga frowned. "I did notice that. And another thing I wondered about was why he refer to Mr. Boddy as Mr. Boddy? If they were such good friends then shouldn't he call him by his first name?"
"Well that's the way they had always been. Mr. Boddy called him Xellos and Professor Plum called him Mr. Boddy. Those two had a very strange friendship... like sometimes I wondered..." Amelia trailed off and didn't finish her sentence.
"You wondered what?" De Tanga prompted.
"Um well... it's just that I sometimes wondered if they were really friends at all. They acted like friends when they were around people, but that's what it appeared as, acting. It kinda looked like to me that they were only pretending that they were friends."
"Hmmm... strange. Do you think Professor Plum could have murdered Mr. Boddy?"
Amelia frowned in thought. "The night that Mr. Boddy had been killed a few hours before his death, Mr. Boddy and Professor had a discussion in Mr. Boddy's study right after Professor Plum arrived at the manor. I didn't think much of the two of them talking at the time but when I cleaning in the halls I heard Mr. Boddy raising his voice at Professor Plum. It sounded like they were having an argument."
"Do you know what it was about?"
"No I couldn't hear anything clearly. Everything was muffled."
"Alright, now I want to ask you some questions about Martina Rose. Did she really leave to go and become a medium in another country?" He looked over to Amelia and saw her flinch at the mention of Martina Rose's name.
"Actually no that wasn't the reason she left. Miss Rosen- I mean Miss Rose wasn't a very good secretary. She'd forget messages, loose papers and was generally very rude and bitter. But Mr. Boddy even though he had good reason to fire her never did. I don't know why though. Some people believed because the two of them were romantically involved, but I'm not sure. It wasn't until Mr. Boddy found that Miss Rose was stealing money and other things from the manor that Mr. Boddy finally fired her. She tried to cover up her anger and resentment for getting fired by going on about how she didn't care because she was going to go Hungry to become a medium. But even with the cover up we could still see how enraged she really was." Amelia distinctively remembered the evil look in Martina's eyes. If looks could kill...
"Do you think that she would hold a grudge and would be violent enough to get revenge and kill him?"
"I don't know... I always used to stay away from Miss Rose, she scared me."
"Tell me, what was Sergeant Zelgadis Gray's relationship with Mr. Boddy?"
"I'm not sure why, but if there was any problem around the manor where the police needed to be involved, Mr. Boddy would only trust Sergeant Gray. He wouldn't let anyone else come to his home to deal with matters. It was either Sergeant Gray or no one else."
"And you don't know why?"
"I never bothered to ask."
"Is there anything else you could tell me about any of the other people in the manor?"
Amelia tapped her finger on the table in thought. "Well Mister Brunette has sold many works of art to Mr. Boddy over the years, but I never saw him that often because whenever he was here he never stayed long. I know nothing of Miss Peacock because I only met her that night that this all happened as well with Miss Scarlet. As for Mister Green, he's never happy when he's here. He's always grouchy whenever he's dealing with Mr. Boddy, but that might be because Mr. Boddy always second-guessed his work. Now I don't really know that much about Miss Peach -- "
"You don't? I thought she was a relative of Mr. Boddy?"
"Yes I supposed she is, but they are barely related at all. Until she came that night I didn't know that Mr. Boddy had a great-step-niece named Filia Peach. I even wonder if she's even related to him at all."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean is that she could easily be pretending to be related to Mr. Boddy to get at his money."
"Well how did Mr. Boddy react when he saw her?"
"She told him who she was and he welcomed her in. But I'm pretty sure that Mr. Boddy didn't know who she was. He didn't keep good ties with his family so I doubt he would have known if someone was or wasn't part of his family."
"I see. Thank you very much for your time Miss White." De Tanga wrote that last bit of his notes before getting out of his chair.
"You're very welcome. I just hope you find the monster who killed Mr. Boddy soon."
De Tanga nodded his head and left the kitchen. He was about to head out to another room when he bumped right into an out of breath Hallas.
"Oh so you finally made it back Hallas?"
"Yes..."
"So what did you find out about the Salvation Society?"
Hallas took a few moments to catch his breath before he started to talk. "What I found out was that the Salvation Society is a solely run company that strives to preserve endangered or rare birds in wildlife."
"So the story checks out?"
"Yeah only the Salvation Society is run by its only member, Miss Sylphiel Peacock."