“This is just painful. They have us here doing their laundry?” Arianne groaned.

My hands moved swiftly, picking up each item from the dirty bin, and sifting through them almost nearly as fast. The majority of it was black suits. They were filthy, to say the least. One of the suits had a copious amount of red stains, which after putting it to my nose, I deducted was wine…Thankfully.

Many, many suits later, I had long lost count, there had to be hundreds, and the bin wasn’t even half empty. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining too much, looking over at Quinn, it seemed he was drowned in a crap ton of dirty underwear. Every minute or so I could hear the muffled gags coming from him, frankly I was surprised that they were actually dirty laundry.

An hour more and I think that I would have genuinely given up. I sat down on the table for a moment to clear my head, I was growing even more annoyed by the second, and after a while, all the suits were becoming a blur.

“I can’t do this anymore!”

Arianne was rightfully getting angry as well. She mumbled something about being here for hours, but I was pretty sure it was only about forty-five minutes. But in the midst of it, she tossed the dress she was holding onto the floor. When it landed, a small sound could be heard, like a hard object colliding with the floor.

I walked over and picked it up, It was a key alright.

“Finally, I was going to lose my mind if we had to sort through these disgusting clothes anymore.” She said.

The key was a shiny bronze color. I walked over to the locked door, and attempted to insert the key, but…

“It won’t fit,” I said taking it out and looking back at them.

“Wait what? Let me see,” Quinn said. I handed him the key, and much like me five seconds ago, he walked back over to us with a slightly defeated look on his face. I was slightly annoyed, did he think I didn’t know how to use a key? That aside, we were now faced with a new objective, where exactly does this thing go to?

“Hey wait a second, If you notice, the washer doors are all able to be opened,” Quinn said tugging at the handle of one of them, peering into the empty container. He pulled on the rest, every one of them popped open pretty easily. He then walked over to the dryers on the opposing side of the room, opening every single lid, and when he got to one of them in the center, it wouldn’t budge.

It seemed that Quinn was a pretty sharp guy. We examined the dryer, but we couldn’t find anything unusual. I tried pressing the buttons on the machine, but nothing worked, and it quickly became obvious why.

The “buttons” weren’t buttons at all, it was a sticker. I peeled it off, revealing a small keyhole.

“It works,”

I turned the key and opened the dryer, inside, was a pair of black pants, as well as a black and white suit, with a simple red tie. I took it out and laid the shirt on the table. Arianne examined it as I went to grab the pants, but quickly realized that something was inside.

Quinn and Arianne's expressions quickly changed. Their eyes widened as I pulled out the object in my hands.

“Hey Leilani, I would put that down,” Quinn suggested, his tone of voice a little nervous.

I held in my hand, a revolver, I couldn’t tell you anything more like the model. I fumbled around with it, every new angle I moved, the other two flinched and moved back a little more. Finally, after fumbling with it for a little, I managed to pop open the chamber, it was empty.

“Looks like this was the murder weapon, but is it a real gun?” Arianne said. None of us knew the answer to that.

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Quinn ruffled around the top half of the suit, and after reaching into the breast pocket, he pulled out a small note, taped to a silver key.

“It seems in their haste, the murderer dumped the weapon inside the laundry along with his bloody clothes, now, to find the murderer himself,” Quinn read out loud. What kind of murderer just leaves their gun inside the laundry? This was honestly just bad writing at this point. But I suppose it’s not a real investigation, so I just let it be.

Quinn unlocked the door using the key and quickly pushed it open. No one bothered to take the gun from me, although, I never did offer it, so I merely just held it close to my waist, hoping that there was nobody nearby for the time being. It was likely a prop, so it should be fine if someone saw us.

It was a hallway, the same color pallet as the rest, but it was much shorter, and only had two doors, one to our left, and the other to our right. After a quick discussion, we all decided to head to the one on the left first.

I opened the door and was met with a cool breeze of air. The first thing I noticed, the room was a complete mess. The room's smell was pleasant, a candle was most definitely lit in there, but there was no candle in sight. The walls were a cobalt blue, and the floor and roof were a dark brown color and squeaked slightly as we walked on it. There was also a door to the right, likely a storage or closet room. It was an office room, with a large wooden desk in the center, with a computer monitor facing away from us. The desk was sat upon a round red carpet, it seemed the owner of this place liked red. Other than that, there was electronic lighting on the four corners, they each were made to look like old-school lamps. Behind the monitor, was a gigantic window, cracked slightly open.

I walked over behind the desk, a simple black office chair was used for the seating. On top of the desk, the computer of course, as well as a messy clusterfuck of papers. There were drawers on each side of the desk, all of them opened, and their contents spilled everywhere on the floor.

“Looks like someone was looking for something,” Arianne said taking a look around. She was right, this place looked like it had been robbed. It was likely part of the setup, but wow, it looked almost real, like someone was trying to rob the Donners.

“Seems like someone wanted access to his files,”

It was the most likely conclusion, they were searching for something in the drawers.

“But how will we know what they took if it’s gone?” Arianne said.

“Not to worry, I think I figured it out,” Quinn said sitting down at the chair. I looked over at the monitor, it seemed that it was already logged in. Ah, It all made sense.

“They were looking for a password to unlock the computer,” Quinn said. He mindlessly tapped away on the keyboard, closing out window after window that had already popped up, until he stopped.

“Hey, take a look at this,” Quinn said.

I peered over the chair, looking at the search engine that Quinn had pulled up. It was a news article headline.

Governor Joseph Donner was elected for another term!

“So, the host is a governor, what about it?” Arianne asked. Quinn closed out the window, leaving only one remaining. A lot of numbers were laid out on a spreadsheet, It was bank accounts. Wow, most of them were deposits, and all of them were very large sums. Upon further inspection, there were dozens of them, all of them into accounts across the world.

Switzerland, The Netherlands, Moscow, Singapore, Italy, and even Antarctica? That one was a little strange, who was he paying, a cartel made up of penguins? Either way, it all pointed to something illegal.

“Wait a second, is any of this part of the party?” Arianne took a step back.

All signs pointed to no, but there was no way to tell. It could have been, and we were just overreacting a little. But my gut told me there was much more to it than that. The others seemed to agree with me based on the looks on their faces.

“This feels weird,” Quinn said.

“I agree, I know it might be part of the play, but still, this just feels a little too realistic, don’t you guys think?” Arianne said. I nodded my head in agreement.

After a little searching through documents, we learned a couple of things about Joshep Donner. He was a governor and was just re-elected. We found statements of large purchases, things like Jets, new sets of vintage silverware, and luxury pools. We also found blueprints of houses, which after further research, we found that they were those of his direct competitors. All of this was on his computer, there was no doubt about it, he was a corrupt son of a bitch.

“This is not part of the script, Arianne, hurry up and check the closet before we get out of here,” Quinn said. She nodded and headed over to the other door in the room, opening it.

Both me and Quinn turned our heads. Arianne was shaking and pointing inside the closet. Quinn’s face was shocked, stammering and looking for the right words. I took a peek in and understood why they were so surprised.

He’s dead, that’s for sure.

It was Joseph Donner, dead, not faking death for the party. He was dead. His face and his hands were pale, his eyes wide open, and his body was in a slumped position sitting down.

There we have it, the actual murder mystery. Just great.