“Wow, now those are some big balls!” Violetta said.

I didn’t want to brag or anything, but they were pretty big. Heavy too. I was holding an entire case of them, about fifteen in total. I never knew they made bocce balls out of metal like this.

The fact that the most popular sport in the demon world was just a bunch of guys throwing balls around baffled me. Alright, that description could basically be used for any sport, but my point still stood. Bocce ball was a weird choice.

“I can see how someone could use one of these as a weapon.” I grunted, setting the box back down on the storage room floor. “And this seems like the only place they store them.”

“Does that matter?” Violetta asked.

“Well, in theory, it means the killer was in the storage room at some point.” That was the most ‘in theory’ statement ever. There really could have been a bocce ball anywhere in this place. It’s not like they were nailed down here.

Violetta sighed. “Hmm… I see.”

Yaika stood awkwardly near the door, her eyes shifting back and forth. “Uhh… check out these… umm… plastic forks.” She reached over to a shelf nearby and held up a small cardboard box.

“Uhh… what are those even doing here?” As far as I knew, ‘plastic forks’ weren’t involved in bocce ball. Did I understand this sport even less than I thought I did?

“This is the storage room, silly!” Violetta giggled. “It looks like they keep all the stuff for the food stand here too.”

I looked around at the weights, lawnmowers, and bocce equipment that filled the room. It wasn’t exactly clean. Storing the food supplies here had to be against food handling laws… Oh.

Violetta walked over to the shelf, gleefully squatting down to look at everything. “Yummy, this is where they keep those hotdogs too!”

“They keep the hotdogs here?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Man, those were delicious. I could use another one of those right now. It took me longer than it should have for it to hit me. “…Wait. They keep the uncooked hotdogs here. On a shelf. Unrefrigerated?”

Violetta smiled up at me. “Looks like it.”

Oh god.

“Ryley.” Yaika rattled around the box in her hand. “What about these forks though?”

I held my stomach, ready to blow chunks any minute. “I… kind of doubt those are involved.”

“Darn.” Yaika dropped the box, spilling plastic forks all over the floor.

Ugh. Was she seriously that obsessed with finding a clue again? She really helped out last time with her ‘dance routine’ comment, but come on. She was disturbing the crime scene. More importantly, she was pissing me off.

The king had really fucked up in the parenting department. He was so insistent on his kids getting exactly what they wanted, they were spoiled to the core. Maybe if I pointed her in the right direction of a clue, she’d feel like she helped and stop acting like this.

I looked around the room again. In the corner, there was a cart up against the wall. It had a section that looked like it could be moved down to help load up heavy objects. This must have been what Suza claimed she had used to steal the safe. The safe she hadn’t actually stolen, of course. Did she know about it from casing the stadium beforehand?

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Whatever. This was something easy enough to bring up.

“Princess Yaika.” She perked up as I said her name. “What do you think of that cart? Don’t you think… it’s suspicious?” I felt like I was in one of those children’s shows. The kind where the characters looked at the screen and asked, ‘do you see a hat?’ when the fucking hat was right in front of them. That’s right, anger at children’s shows. My petty rage knew no bounds.

“Oh, I noticed that cart too!” Violetta started. I quickly threw my hand over her mouth to shut her up. Apparently, this whole mouth covering thing was going to be a regular activity for us.

Yaika took a step toward the cart so slowly that a snail would be frustrated. I quickly took it by the handles and wheeled it over to her. If Yaika moved slowly on purpose so that people would bring her things, she was extremely effective at it.

“Here,” I said.

“Now let’s see…” Yaika put her hand on her chin and cocked her head to the side. Maybe this was what everyone in the Brinestein family did when they ‘thought’. “What if… no. Hmm…” She moved her finger through the air like she was writing. “That would make sense. Carry the three… Uhh… Science. Square the… route.” What the fuck?

Alright, I guess she really did need a ‘do you see a hat’ comment.

I let out a long sigh. “Do you think this might have been used to carry the safe?”

Yaika hit her fist down on her open hand. “Yes. I helped!” Great. Good job, princess. Yaika looked overjoyed. Well, it was more like the whirlpools she had for eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly curled up at the sides. This was ‘Yaika’ happy.

“That would make sense,” Violetta added, smiling at the princess. “That safe sounds really heavy.”

“Yeah… heavy.” I looked around the room again. “The safe… wasn’t stored here though.”

“Hmm?”

“The safe was down the hall in the Janitor locker room’s office, right?” My god, the team name turned that sentence into a word salad. “If they had to use the cart from the storage room, why didn’t they just use something here to weigh down Prowteg’s body? There’s tons of heavy stuff around. Why use the safe down the hall?”

“Oh! I have an idea!” Violetta’s brain must have been working overtime today. “Maybe the killer was in the office stealing the safe when Prowteg found them.” She bent down and grabbed one of the bocce balls, holding it up with both hands. “And that’s when they hit Prowteg on the head to keep him from telling!”

I expected Yaika to be angry at Violetta’s idea, but it looked like my plan had really worked. She still looked high off of her ‘help’ from earlier.

“That seems like the most likely scenario,” I said. “They killed Prowteg, stole what was in the safe, brought the cart here, and then disposed of the empty safe and the body all at once.” They wouldn’t have thrown it away if they hadn’t opened it yet, after all.

“Good thinking!” Violetta smiled. It was pretty good thinking, I wasn’t going to lie. Still, there was something that didn’t quite add up.

“If that’s what happened, the murder weapon… doesn’t really make sense.” I pointed at the ball in her hands. “If they came to steal the safe, and they were ready to kill someone over it, you’d expect them to have a knife or something. Why would they use a bocce ball?”

“Hmm…” Violetta set the bocce ball back in the box. “Maybe… he had to? Like he and Prowteg got into a fight and he just had to grab the bocce ball?” That actually wasn’t half bad.

“Of course, that only makes sense if the office was the scene of the murder,” I said.

“We just need to check the office then.” Yaika snatched my and Yaika’s hands. “We’re on a roll. Let’s go!” She pulled us out of the storage room and started down the hall. The only problem was that if she led the way, it was going to take five years to get there. I moved to the front and pulled them both along, forming a weird ‘let’s hold hands so we don’t get lost’ line.

It didn’t take long for us to find the Janitor locker room’s office. Fortunately, the guards had left the door open for us. Unfortunately, it was pretty unremarkable.

Yaika put her finger on her bottom lip. “This isn’t quite as memorable as the Succy office was.” Yeah, that place sucked.

She was right though. This was unexpectedly small, and it looked completely undisturbed other than the corner where the safe must have been. There were a few knickknacks and trophies on the desk, but no papers or anything. If there was a struggle here, it must have been over pretty fast. That or the killer was really good at cleaning things up. A… janitor, if you would. Heh.

We spent a few minutes rummaging around, but there really didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. If there were clues to find here, they weren’t jumping out at me.

“What should we do?” Violetta pouted.

“Let’s head back to the entrance,” I said. “There’s a security guard stationed there.”

It was time to find out who our suspects were.