I stopped pretending to study the corpse as we waited a bit before Jon was summoned to join us.

He was a somewhat smaller-framed man who was pretty thicc, I mean the guy looked like he was carrying some density to him. Not fat, just thick. He was wearing glasses and… suspenders? Man, I wish there was a perception stat. I kind of sucked at this.

My Salt skill didn’t trigger, or at least I didn’t think so. I didn’t know what that meant beyond that he wouldn’t be a good fit for Ontiveros.

“So, you found…”

“Westley, yeah. Yes.”

“Did you kill him?”

His head shot back, “What? No, of course not.”

“You know who killed him though, don’t you?”

His head shot back but he didn’t break eye contact, he seemed firm in his assertion, “What? No, why would I know that?”

Right. He wasn’t under the same Obligation as Morrigan. Was it supposed to be firm eye contact or scattered eye contact that meant someone was lying? I felt another rush of annoyance that I didn’t pay more attention to that tv show Duck had watched but it was a little late for that.

Still, my experience with body-language studies, reinforced by having met Duck through my own interest in body-language, tickled something in my mind. My bullshit-detector was flaring up, just a bit.

“When did you find him?”

“Yesterday, when you were arriving. I came down here to bring a barrel up for your welcoming.”

“Was he like that,” I gestured toward the half-frozen corpse, “when you found him?”

Jon nodded, “Exactly so, though the wine wasn’t frozen and the lid was over the top of his head.”

Yeah, that had been moved, but I didn’t know how that would have made a difference. Might have been easier to hold him under if you just had to hold the lid down on top of him.

“How’d the body look when you found him?”

“I’m… I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Same positioning? Notice anything specific?”

“No, just the same as he was now, but not frozen.”

“Nothing? You didn’t notice anything?”

“Sincerest apologies, but no, I did not.”

I narrowed my eyes, but… I believed him.

I waved a hand, “Alright, well unless you have other bodies laying around then I think we’re done here.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, I mean I can’t call on eldritch powers to summon testimony from his spirit. Well actually…”

I let the pause hang in the air, neither showed any sense of… anything, but there was some sort of… disunity between the two? Maybe it was nothing. I guess the Columbo trick doesn’t always work, or I need more practice with it. To be fair, it could also be from the fact that they might think I’m capable of summoning spirits.

“You know what, nevermind. I forgot what I was going to say.”

I heard a huff behind me, two huffs from two sets of nostrils. That reminded me…

“Actually, you know what? I remember…” I whirled again on the two and Jon flinched a bit, “What’s for lunch?”

Maybe Columbo was onto something after all.

----------------------------------------

The rest of the day was… pretty uneventful.

I casually questioned a few people… and met a few people. I was fairly deep in the wine and had been gorging myself on salt for like… days at this point. I was feeling extremely relaxed. It felt kind of… wrong to be enjoying myself in the guest of honor role while almost assuredly the rest of the world was falling apart.

I missed my Duck. Speaking of, I have no idea how Duck could have taken as much salt as she had for as long as she had. She didn’t even have high blood pressure from it either. Built different I guess. Oh yeah, my parents too, another stab of guilt; always a good thing to get moody and drunk.

Morrigan excused himself at some point after lunch, it was sandwiches by the way. Some sort of roast beef with au jus, pretty good. I took a chance to wander the grounds afterwards, prodding a few people, asking a few questions. Didn’t get much from the entire experience besides a lot of denial. Whether it was true or not, I couldn’t tell in such a short period of time.

I found… Tracey when I eventually made my way back to the dining area, she was standing on the patio outside of it, alone and staring at nothing over the endless grapevines that looked like a floor of green leaves. She quickly composed herself to wipe off something on her face when my footsteps gave me away.

I didn’t look directly at her, to give her some privacy.

“Were you crying?” Nice one, Tom. Real smooth intro. Following up poor breakfast interaction with a real winner.

I could feel her frigid gaze as it burrowed into the side of my head, “What are you doing here?”

She’s obviously not in the mood to talk, but it’s not like I was super eager to talk to her either. Needs must or something like that.

“Just trying to figure out who’s killing people around here.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

She scoffed and I turned to face her. I thought a ‘sneer’ was just something that people wrote about. I had been wrong, she was definitely sneering at me.

“That’s an ugly face you’re making, you’ll give yourself even more wrinkles.”

Horror. Once I saw the look of abject horror on her face I turned away to hide my smile. The smile dropped from my face when I remembered I was trying to gather information and not openly being a dickhead would probably be conducive to that end.

“Do you know who’s going around killing people?”

“Besides the people Morrigan has killed?” A surprisingly delicate laugh trailed from her lips, “Even if I did, why would I tell you?”

I turned back, her eyes had returned to the vineyard, “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I have no idea who you are or what you’re doing for Morrigan or even what your true goals are. Why would I trust you?”

Loot primarily but, “Fair. Do you think he’s doing a good job here?”

Her eyebrow crooked, “It’s the apocalypse, I don’t think anyone is doing a good job. Though, decent enough, I suppose.”

Fair enough, “Fair enough. You think you can do better?”

Her eyes flared for a second before settling back into her only other facial state, pompous unaffected boredom, “Maybe, who knows.”

While I was thinking of something else to say she turned on her heels and walked away.

I stood there for a bit, trying to settle my thoughts and took a deep drink of the wine glass that was somehow still in my hand. I had definitely added too much salt to it. The cheek pinch brought memories with it.

I wasn’t paying much attention as I pulled myself from salty memories, turned to leave and subsequently found a wine glass emptying itself onto my shirt. There was a brown haired, mousey girl twittering her fingers.

“S…S….Sor-”

Some of her tension might have been because my shotgun, even with my finger off the trigger, instinctively found its barrel directly under her chin.

“Gah.” My entirely too salty wine kicked in a sudden second wave attack. Despite that, I found myself desiring more. I really need to cut back on my salt intake, my body was kind of going haywire with the quantity.

“I’m sorry!”

I looked down at my shirt, ‘Big City Smol Kitty’.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

I walked off absent-mindedly pawing at the purple stain. Overly salted and craving salt? Okay actually though, I really should lay off.

----------------------------------------

I ran into Vivi as I was rummaging through a trash can. Or more like she ran into me.

“Is that… what you did before the apocalypse?”

I jolted out of the bin, “No, uh…” I actually had the thought that I might find a clue or something but it seemed like all I managed was to cover myself with trash. I don’t know why I had thought that, too much wine.

“No, I sold insurance.” She gave me a look and I shrugged, “Digging through trash is just a hobby.”

I kept my face serious and earnest. She winced. A bit of an awkward silence ensued, at least for her, before she broke it.

“Do you always wear your shield?”

I looked at my left arm, I hardly even noticed that fact. If anything I felt kind of naked when I took it off at night.

“It’s comfortable,” I diverted the conversation, “What did you do? Before?”

She started, then stopped, then started again, “I was Tracey’s personal assistant.” Right, she had already told me that.

I made a ‘oh ok sure’ face and nodded softly, “She’s kind of a bitch, eh?”

She laughed then stopped herself and looked around, “Uh no, I mean, I can see how you’d think that, but most of the time she’s alright.”

I rolled my eyes, “Give me a tour of the place?”

Her arm slipped through mine before I had a chance to stop it. She showed me wherever I wanted, besides a few hallways that she tried to avoid and one particular one that, if I was remembering correctly, was somewhere around the area where Morrigan’s study had been all those nights… yesterday. It was yesterday.

That kinda hit me, I was drinking entirely too much wine, I’m going to shit in a hurry. The general confusion of the apocalypse wasn’t helping much either.

Dang, the apocalypse was brutal. Before, I could have spent half a week in my apartment before I even started to notice that time was passing. Here? Every day stretched beyond.

That and the lack of technology meant that I wasn’t really tracking time, even with a watch. Checking it just made time pass slower.

“You aren’t still her assistant right? I mean, it’s the apocalypse after all.”

She shook her head, “No, I’m not her assistant anymore.”

“Morrigan’s now, yeah?”

She… had some reaction, though, I couldn’t really read into it much.

“I just help out, you know, it being the apocalypse and all.”

I nodded as we continued to walk around.

“What do you think about Morrigan?”

“He’s the only person keeping this place together. We’d be in trouble without him.”

“Have you known him long?”

She nodded, “Yes, Master Morrigan and Tracey grew up together and I worked for Tracey for years.”

“They must be close.”

Vivi gave me the ‘so-so’ hand gesture.

“They don’t like each other?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Tracey has always been… a bit jealous of him. More like ‘frenemies’.”

That made sense, ish. Super-rich people couldn’t just be friends, they had to be frenemies. I guess, I mean, it wasn’t like I had personal experience. Well, that much personal experience.

There were groups of people leaving the building, some patrolled the edges of the vineyards while a few of the more put together, and better armed, entered the grape forest themselves.

“What are they doing?”

“Patrols.”

“Why?”

She nodded towards the sound of combat, “Animals and there are other vineyards as well.”

“Other people?”

“Yeah, not everyone is as friendly as us.” I somewhat remembered Morrigan mentioning there weren’t other people around the estate… Maybe my memory was fuzzy on that, but I felt like it wasn’t. Why was she lying about that? Was she even lying about that? Maybe she didn’t know that Morrigan couldn’t lie to me? Moving on.

To be fair about her words, people here really didn’t seem all that friendly. I guess my reception was better than Ontiveros, at least from the beginning, though not having a younger Mortician did likely have something to do with that. Ontiveros started hostile but ended up friendly, Morrigan-house started as friendly… would it end hostile? Well based on last night… and I don’t even know why I was asking myself that question. The real question was how bad it would get by the end.

We continued to watch and I felt like I should help, maybe a bit. I didn’t though, I was here to find the murderer… that stuck in my head. Actually, I wasn’t. I was here to find the ‘Usurper’. I had been assuming that they were the same because… Why?

Morrigan had mentioned them in the same breath, conflated the two even, I had added to it with all my Clue shit, but were they necessarily the same? If we were talking about murderers then I already knew that he had killed, or arranged to be killed, several people. The darker side of me suspected many more than he had let on.

“Have other people died or gone missing?”

Vivi froze, for just a split second, then nodded, “Yeah, of course. It’s dangerous. Either animals get them or the other vineyard takes them.”

“Why would they take people?”

She shook her head, “Nothing good, I’d imagine.”

I nodded, it was a much more dangerous world. Still something stuck in my craw, was that true? Maybe she was unintentionally lying to me but my Dad had a saying, ‘if you can’t understand what someone is saying, it’s bullshit’. There was a lot I wasn’t getting which meant that there was a lot of bullshit flying around.

Several of the stronger-looking people teamed up in twos and entered the brush. Vivi went off for a bit to talk to Fork- er, ‘Ron’, and their conversation lasted a good while before he broke off to enter the brush with two other people I didn’t recognize. I looked around and didn’t see the stereotypical serial murderer, Mark, anywhere. I did catch sight of another pair, bitch Tracey and suspender Jon, as they entered the grape trees.