This is my favourite episode, although mystery movies aren't my thing. They're okay, I guess, but not really anything special. Well, does Rear Window or other psychological thrillers count? Book mysteries can be good, too. Thanks for reviewing, lordgemini, iwashere01 and AnonBrowser.

The free day before the next reward challenge was much more relaxing, now that I had a secure alliance and two friends to hang out with. Neither girl was as much fun as Duncan was, but I couldn't have everything. And what mattered is that they were nice people, and they were pretty fun in their own way.

I also did my best to return to my fake friendliness towards Courtney. It did seem to put her more on edge then being cross with her did, so hopefully I could keep it up this time. Every time she looked at me, I smiled at her once again. At the end of the day when we were all getting ready for bed in the trailer, I took a breath and decided to bite the bullet. I approached Courtney and said "Hey, I'm really sorry I kept rising to your bait. I should have been more mature than that, and I promise I won't do it again. Unless I forget again." I decided to wait for an answer then.

Courtney's expression was suspicious again. She seemed to be thinking what to say, so I kept waiting. Then she asked me the last question I expected. "Was it really just a few kisses on camera? And was it really in the script?"

I shrugged and smiled. "Of course. That's what I've been saying all along."

I couldn't tell if Courtney finally believed me or not. There was something not quite right about the way she returned my smile, but she said "Then I'm sorry too. I guess I didn't give you a chance. But, you know, that could change some time..." she let herself tail off.

I frowned. "Are you talking alliance, or friendship?"

Courtney shrugged, but I could tell she was trying really hard to appear casual. So she wasn't succeeding. "Either. I just thought you might want an alliance."

I shrugged back. "I'm open to friendship, but I already have an alliance, thanks. Maybe if it doesn't work out. And no," I added as Courtney opened her mouth, "I'm not going to say who they are. Maybe you'll figure it out." Except since I was friends with all the girls and was doing nothing but voting with my allies, that would be trickier than it sounded.

I have to say, even at breakfast that morning, Harold didn't seem the least bit worried about being the only guy left in the company of five girls. In fact, he seemed less guarded with Leshawna, as if she'd won him back completely, and seemed to sort of enjoy having only girls around him. I suppose he hadn't exactly gotten along with the last guy mergers.

We were eating our egg tacos as usual, when Harold found a memory stick in his. Something for the next challenge, as it turned out. When we first asked Courtney to plug it into her PDA, she started to refuse, so I plucked it out of her hands before she could do anything. "Hey!"

"Five of us want to win." I told her. "Are you with us or do you want to lose?"

Courtney gave a sigh. "Do what you have to do." I flashed a thumbs up at the others, and plugged the memory stick in. Immediately, Chris flashed up on the screen.

"I hope you all had a filling breakfast." he said. "It was so delish. I was practically on Cloud Nine! I could have had a dozen of those. But enough about breakfast, it's time to eighty-six this combination, I mean, conversation."

"So weird." Beth said, frowning. "I think maybe Chris needs a vacation."

I frowned, too. "Nah, I know Chrissy. He's trying to make some point."

"Right now," Chris went on, "I'm going to relax in a nice safe and secure place and get ready for today's challenge. You're probably wondering what the challenge is. It will remain a mystery until you find me. Hopefully you'll clue in and track me down, but in the meantime, I'm gonna crack open a soda and ya."

"There's no way I'm gonna bother looking for that guy until I feel like it." Leshawna said, crossing her arms.

"I'm with her." Harold added. "Let Chris wait for us."

I shrugged. "I'd say the same, except you two obviously have no idea what he was trying to tell us. He said combination, then safe, so he's obviously locked himself up."

"And I know where, and how to get him out." Courtney added. "Did you get that part?" She eyeballed me, just daring me to steal her fire. It was actually lucky that I hadn't remembered.

I frowned. "Dammit, I got so sidetracked with that part, I missed whatever the combination was."
"Well, luckily, I remembered." Courtney said importantly. We all followed her to the bank heist set, and she opened the safe, using the combination 9-12-86. Of course!

As soon as Chris emerged in a Sherlock Holmes hat and holding a pipe, Courtney's question was "What's my prize?"

"I hardly recall having mentioned any sort of prize." Chris said in an Engilsh accent. After that, he took a drag of the pipe, coughed and said in his normal voice "But thanks for releasing me, it was getting stuffy in there."

"You're not smoking?" Courtney exclaimed.

I paused. "Yeah, Chrissy, you haven't smoked since that one company asked Fametown to promote them. And I've seen the outtakes you did when I was little. You couldn't make it look any more like lung cancer with all that coughing."

Yeah, I mentioned Fametown, but even though the cast didn't ask any questions, Chris gave me an angry stare before tossing the pipe into his mouth and swallowing. The pipe was actually black licorice. Well, it was still disgusting, but at least Chris wasn't trying to smoke.

Of course, it was mystery movie day. We'd meet Chris at the train station set that night, and during the day, we all had to try and gather DNA and fingerprints from one other contestant, and try to stop them from getting ours, too.

During the day, I decided to use a booby-trap. I knew this was something Harold would do, so I spied on him for the whole time instead of going back to the trailer with the other girls, then set up a way to trap him when hs own trap activated. He'd be waiting nearby, I knew, so I had the empty bottomless barrel he was using to trap people to pull on its side, and rolled it towards him.

And it worked. Harold was too dazed and hurt to resist when I powdered his hand with my blusher, printed it on a prepared sheet of paper and pulled out a few coppery hairs. I followed this up by helping him to his feet and saying "Sorry, dude, but those are the rules."

The day passed. While I'd been spying on Harold, Courtney tricked Lindsay into allowing her to get the details. When she took a shower, Lindsay tried to get her to walk through paint and on paper. Courtney did so, but got wise and wrung the water out of her hair right on the paper. At lunch, Beth pretended to lose her retainer in the meal so Lindsay reached in, and Beth got the prints from the sauce and pulled out one of Lindsay's hairs. Harold later used the same trap for her that I'd almost walked into, but in the confessional. Leshawna made a last ditch attempt to get Courtney's prints, but only succeeded in getting her own prints stolen.

Now, I knew that Courtney had gotten Leshawna's prints, but not Lindsay's at the time, so I wasn't suspicious when she offered to give me a facial. I mean, she wouldn't need another set of prints, right? Well, guess what. She did.

"Why do you need another set of prints?" I snapped at her. "What was the point?"

Courtney shrugged. "It was so much fun the first two times, I just couldn't help myself."

Leshawna eventually did get Harold's prints, so when we got to the train set, Lindsay was the only one who had no prints to show. Courtney held out three proudly.

"So, where's my prize?" she demanded.

"Sorry, Courtney," Chris replied, "It's not prize time yet."

"Make it prize time!"

"I'm trying to do my job here..."
"Maybe I should get my lawyers to do their job."

"Moving on..."

"I want a prize. I want a prize! I WANT A PRIZE!"

"All right already!" Chris finally yelled at her, giving her a bag of cheesy chips. "Here! I was gonna eat 'em on the train but you're welcome to them if they will shut you up!"

He did have to get Courtney's prints before she got on the train, by the way, but apart from that, we were all happily on set, sitting in the spacious benches and...get this...partying with actual good food that Chef served us. Courtney wouldn't eat any of it, insisting on eating the chips without sharing them (when Beth asked, Courtney just said "Did you win them?"). Fine with me, actually. Once again, the food included a favourite of mine – snickerdoodle cookies, full of sugar and cinnamon. I knew Chef could cook nicely, he just chose not to most of the time. He'd come up trumps with the cookies, lollipops, toffee apples and tonnes of other goodies. There were even shop-bought snacks, including BBQ-flavoured Pringles and nacho cheese Doritos.

But just as I was taking my first bite of a cookie, the lights shut off, and we heard some strange sounds. Chris' voice saying "Um, you can't kill the host!" Some other strange shuffling, punching and kicking sounds. And then the lights came back on.

"Look!" Beth almost screamed. "Chris is dead!" Sure enough, my cousin lay on the floor, blue and lifeless.

Okay, let's be fair. I knew it wasn't really Chris. It didn't look quite right for a corpse. Not a fresh one, anyway. But I kept quiet. This was a mystery challenge after all, and it looked like the challenge was a whodunnit. One of us would appear to be the killer, and whether we could find the (probably planted) evidence was what mattered here.

As it was, Courtney immediately exclaimed "No, that's not possible! I never got a decent prize! Harold, give him CPR!"

Harold tried, but it didn't really work. Well, like I said, it wasn't the real Chris. He could easily have slipped out after declaring that "you" couldn't kill him when the lights were out and used a fake custom-made model of him appearing dead. But while everyone else was panicking (well, Beth and Harold started running around yelling and Lindsay squealed about a corpse in the car), I just glanced around for evidence, and kicked the fake cadaver in the side, just to make sure it wasn't Chris in makeup (it was just a little kick, enough to make him twitch if it was him). It wasn't.

"Pull yourselves together!" Leshawna yelled at the screamers. "We've gotta do something!"

Lindsay spouted some story about someone at cheer camp fainting and coming to with fruit punch, but that didn't make any sense, since it was someone dead, not in a faint.

There was a phone, and Harold suggested it would go the train conductor. "Beth, try the phone to the engine." he said.

Beth tried the phone, but said there was no dial tone, so we couldn't reach anyone.

Courtney, after her first outburst, said she thought it was all a setup and Chris was messing with us. She even suggested that the train was fake and wasn't moving, so we opened the hatch at the top. She was wrong about that, first of all. She tried calling her lawyers, but there was no signal.

"Well, I'm gonna draw Chris' shadow outline thing, just like they do in the movies!" Lindsay announced. She paused as she started outlining him in lipstick. "Why do they do that, anyway? Do we colour it in later, or something?"

"You do it so the crime scene is clear." I told her, although I wasn't sure of it myself.

While the hatch was still open, the light went off again, and when it came back on, Chris' body had disappeared. Okay, that was strange. No one could have had time to move it, right? Was he real and in makeup and left? What else could it have been?

"If this is real," Harold said, walking over to a little bag and pulling out a magnifying glass, "And if we are really stuck in this car, then somebody must be –" He held up the glass to his eye. "The murderer."

"Oh, can't you be serious?" Courtney scoffed.

"I am! What can be more serious than," and he struck the pose again, "A murder?"

Courtney insisted that Chris had just walked off. "You're all idiots. This is a setup. Toni, go check to see if he's in one of the other cars!"

I scowled at her. "Courtney, why don't you go check if you're so sure?"

"Because someone has to keep a level head here." snapped Courtney. "And since you're not doing anything, it's the perfect time for you to stop lazing around and help out."

"I'm pretty sure Leshawna is more levelheaded than you right now." I shot back. "Fine, I'll check, but if anyone's in a panic when I come back, you have to admit you're not as levelheaded as you think and step down."

As it was, no one was in a panic when I got back. No one was in any of the other cars, as a matter of fact, but as I approached the door, I heard the raspy murmur of Harold's voice and a chord play.

I heard Courtney's shrill voice clearly. "Where's that annoying music coming from?"

I took this as my cue to come back in. "No one's in the other cars." I told them. No one seemed to hear. They were all givng me looks of heavy suspicion. "What? What's wrong?"

"They all think you did it." Courtney explained. "And actually, if this isn't a setup, I wouldn't be surprised if it was you."

"You're kidding!" I exclaimed. "Why would I kill my own cousin?"

"Are you kidding?" Harold retorted. "It's usually someone close to the killer. I haven't noticed you two being particularly nice to each other."

"And he's been picking on you more than the rest of us!" added Lindsay. "We've noticed him taking more points off you than anyone else. He's always harder on you than he is on us."

"That's called a motive!" finished Beth.

"And where was the evidence?" I said quickly. For one thing, I knew I hadn't done it. I didn't know who had, but someone must have.

"One of your hairs, for one thing!" Harold declared, holding a wavy, wiry dark hair aloft. One that only could have been mine. It wasn't long enough to be Leshawna's, and anyway, the only person with hair longer than mine was Lindsay, and there was no way the hair could be considered blonde.

I was handcuffed to the wall while under suspicion, but Lindsay, my saviour, said they should look for extra evidence in case they were wrong. "We still have to figure out how Chris died."

While Leharold and Courtney tried to figure out how to stop the train, Lindsay actually did find something to figure out the true killer. She found a napkin with orange fingerprints, held like it was suffocating someone. "And here," she said, showing a picture, "We have Courtney eating a bag of orange Cheesies, which she refused to share. Therefore, Courtney was the only one to have orange cheesy fingers!" And then, she pulled out the prints Chris had taken of Courtney and compared them to the napkin fingerprints. A match! Courtney was the killer. Even though it was a setup, as she'd said, she's sort of acted like the killer, pinning it on me and pouring scorn on the idea of looking for extra evidence.

At that moment, the train stopped, and the door opened. "Oh, I really had you guys! I look good in rubber, don't you think?" Chris was dragging the dead corpse version of him as he walked in.

"How did you get in and out with that in five seconds without making a sound?" I questioned immediately. "I thought it was a fake, or you in makeup, but I wasn't sure."

"A good magician never reveals his secrets, Toni," Chris said in a patronising tone. He then declared Lindsay the winner, and told her she'd get the reward – a night at the movies with a friend of her choice.

So, of course I thought she'd take Beth, Beth did, too. But then, Lindsay came over, took the handcuffs off me and said "Sorry we all accused you. Want to come to the movies with me?"

I smiled, but shook my head. "I'd love to accept, but I think you should take Beth." I told her. "I have a feeling I know which movie you'll be seeing, and I've seen it a few times already. Otherwise I'd say yes." It had to be a movie Chris starred in, and I'd seen them all. Multiple times.

Lindsay's eyes lit up, and she gave me a hug, clearly wanting to have invited Beth all along but also having wanted to make things up to me.

Courtney was in a mood all night, since she got virtually nothing for getting three sets of prints, finding Chris and knowing he wasn't actually dead. Leharold both seemed all right, although Leshawna whispered to me that Lindsay winning was worth us losing just because Courtney was so cross about it. She'd spent the whole day telling anyone who would listen how stupid Lindsay was, and then karma came and struck her down by proving that blondes sometimes did know what they were talking about. Harold said nothing as we went back to the trailers, but he seemed happy enough, keyboard in hand.

While the murder mystery challenge was kind of fun, I was glad it was over. Maybe next challenge, we could finally send Courtney home, or split up the duo.

As there are six people for the moment, Owen will not reappear next episode. I don't hate him being back or anything, but it was a pretty pointless addition and even though he was voted out unfairly, I feel like halfway was the right place to take him out this time around. As for this episode, I don't know why I rushed it, but it was nice to give Lindsay the win once again. Just to be clear, she asked Toni to the movies first because she felt bad about accusing her, and because they're friends. Beth was her first natural choice, but Toni being her second choice and her guilt over accusing Toni trumped that until Toni gave her full permission to take Beth instead. See you later, and Merry Christmas!