Chapter 16: The Excuse

"Get off me, woman!" Duke shouted as he tried to get Julia off him, a piece of fruit hitting him in the chest. "And stop throwing things at me!"

Andi and Whiskey were shouting incoherent things at Duke while Julia was being yanked off by Lionel, Blanc quickly coming over to assist while Miles was leaning on the staircase laughing loudly. "Chickapen, c'mon," the detective said as he gathered Julia into his arms.

Julia was practically foaming at the mouth, she was so mad. "This guy is a fucking moron!" she screamed ferociously.

"What happens between Whiskey and me isn't your business!" Duke snarled loudly.

"You can't stop me from doing what I want, Duke!" Whiskey shouted.

"He's a son of a bitch, Whiskey! Leave his ass!" Andi urged.

Duke, Whiskey and Andi were all arguing with one another while Blanc looked at Julia in shock. "What did he do now?"

Julia grumbled. "Whiskey wants to become a politician, Duke said no. Then he went off saying how his "eye candy" can't do politics. That's when Whiskey lost it, and Andi and I joined in."

"Guys, guys, guys!" Miles raised his voice, waving his hands about. "Enough with the fighting. We're supposed to be having a good time. Can we save the arguing for after the weekend? Please? C'mon. Bring it in."

Nobody moved.

"If I may," Blanc interjected. "I do apologize for solving the mystery prematurely. And I'd feel terrible, absolutely terrible if I wa-"

"Why the hell would you want to be like Claire?" Duke snapped. "Claire is boring!"

Blanc literally felt the room get chillier from the dead silence that filled the room. Claire stood up slowly, glaring at Duke in incredulous shock. "Excuse me?"

Duke grumbled and looked at her with a rolling of his eyes. "I meant your job is boring, Claire."

"Well at least I didn't go around selling rhino filled Viagra to boys!" Claire shouted.

"There were ZERO rhino in those pills!"

"Oh, like that's the only problem with that!" Claire sneered. "The other problem was the demographic you were selling to!"

Lionel rolled his eyes, looking quite bored with the whole thing. Then again, Blanc figured the scientist was used to this sort of thing. He wrapped an arm around Julia and she grinned at him a little as the bickering continued.

"Kinda reminds me of my family," Julia offered humorously, making Benoit chuckle.

"If this is family, then Duke is definitely your nephew."

Julia cackled and playfully slapped Benoit on the chest. "We should try to break it up."

Blanc shook his head as Miles went to try and intervene. "Nah, we need to get Helen involved so that she has an excuse to leave and search the rooms."

"I could go with her, it'd go faster that way."

Blanc smiled at Julia before kissing her cheek. "Please be careful. I know you can handle yourself, but be careful."

"Duke, don't try to discourage a woman from doing her own thing," Birdie interjected suddenly. "What I do is no different than politics. You don't have a problem with me making my own way, do you?"

Julia puckered in her lips and raised her eyebrows. That was going to make things much worse.

"And Andi, she-"

"What about Andi? She shouldn't even be here," Duke said.

Julia and Blanc both looked at Andi aka Helen, as did everyone else. The detective was curious as to why Duke would say that. Was he the killer after all?

"Yeah," Lionel said, looking at Andi questioningly. "What'd you come for, Andi? Given the circumstances, I think it's a fair question."

"Fair?" Andi whispered softly, her eyes squinting with repressed anger in Lionel's direction.

Claire decided to then turn her anger towards Andi. "Oh my God. Yes, no, fine. Nothing about any of this is fair!"

"Here we go," Julia whispered to Blanc softly.

"Congratulations! Now you know!" Claire began making her way towards Andi. "And we all stuck with Miles! What do you want? Do you wanna know why we did it? Hmm? Really? Why? Do the math. It's easy math."

Andi nodded, clearly getting angrier by the second as Claire continued with her tangent.

"So you come here, in your Gucci flats, telling us that we owe you? You made money off of Alpha all those years. You did fine. You got yours."

"I got?" Andi asked, pointing at herself before pointing at Claire. "No, he got his from me! All of it! My life was taken away from me by someone, but everyone in this room! My life! Do you even know what that means? Huh?!"

"What Claire's trying to say," Birdie began as Claire clearly started backing off. "Is we're sorry. We feel bad for you. What do you want?"

Blanc shook his head. These people were very selfish people.

"Are you really asking me that?" Andi questioned Birdie.

"Yes!" Claire barked. "What do you want? A check? You want performative pity? Just tell us the right words that we can use so that we can get on with our lives. You want revenge? You want to slit Miles' throat? You wanna take us all down? What? Just drop the bombshell! Say it! Say it!"

"I want the truth!" Andi screamed, causing the glass shielding to go back up over the Mona Lisa painting again. "I. Want. The truth."

People looked down in shock, not sure what to say. "I can give you that," Duke said, making his way over with his drink in hand. "I'll be the asshole. The truth is...is that we are all holding on to that golden tit. We're all playing the same game here, honey. You lost. So you can go ahead and put yourself up on a cross like some unspeakable crime has been committed against you that none of us could possibly imagine. But me, I'm tired of pretending like you're the victim in this game. You just couldn't hack it. You're the loser. There. That's the truth." Duke ended his speech with a smug smile before taking a drink.

Andi, who was visibly enraged, knocked past Duke and out of the room. Julia followed quickly, also knocking into Duke. Duke grunted both times when they knocked into him. "There she is. There's the Andi I know."

"Please be careful, Julia," Benoit thought to himself as he watched his woman go after Andi.