Chapter 17: The Clear Center

"Find the envelope," Helen whispered. "I'll take the rooms on the left, you on the right. And thank you, Julia," she said with a grin.

"You're welcome," Julia said. They both split ways and began ransacking the rooms. All of them. There were sex toys in one of them. Great. That's the last thing she wanted to see in Birdie's room. She searched and searched, not worrying about being neat. There was no envelope in Birdie's room. She went to the next room, found nothing. Julia was really sweaty by the time she finished searching the second room, and by the time she finished the third room, she was damn near ready to collapse.

She had to keep going.

However, the power decided to shut off at that point. "Shit!" she growled.

She went running out, trying to find Blanc and others. Something felt very off and she didn't like it. Julia felt like something very bad was about to happen.

She turned the corner and ran up the stairs, spotting Helen and whispering her name. They got to each other, both out of breath.

"Did you find the envelope?" Julia breathed, bending over as she heaved a bit.

"No. You?" Helen asked.

"No," Helen replied just as breathlessly. "But Whiskey tried to kill me."

"What? Did she catch you?"

"Sort of. I think she broke up with Duke and was upset about it," Helen gasped. "Why did the power go out?"

"I don't know, but we need to find-"

"Andi! Julia!" Julia heard Blanc hiss.

"That's him! Let's go!"

The two women went running around the property halls trying to find Blanc. Eventually they both ran into the detective.

"Both of you, listen. There's great danger. Did either of you take Duke's gun?" Blanc asked.

"No, why?" Julia asked in shock. "I thought you had it."

"In all the commotion, someone took it off my person. Duke is dead."

"What?" both Helen and Julia gasped.

"No time. Did you find the envelope?"

"We both searched the rooms, it wasn't in any of them," Julia huffed.

Blanc snapped his fingers. "Oh, I've been a fool! There's one more room to search!" he said, facing the giant Glass Onion at the top of the building.

"They already gave it to Miles," Helen surmised in surprise. "It's in the Glass Onion."

"If I can distract everyone and you can get up there and find it-"

"No, but that doesn't tell us who gave it to him." Julia had to sit down, so she did while the two worked out a plan. She was exhausted. Too much drinking. "Blanc, I don't understand."

"Please. Trust me. It's all in plain sight. We only need one last piece of information, but only you can-"

A gunshot went off and Julia screamed when she saw Helen go down. "Andi!" she yelled, leaning over her. "Oh geez, Andi!"

Suddenly Helen sat up, gasping and spooking the hell out of Blanc and Julia both. "Son of a bitch!" Helen groaned, favoring her chest. She pulled out a book from her pocket, her sister's book. And it now had a bullet in it.

"Oh Jesus," Julia gulped. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Blanc, go chase him! What are you doing? Don't let him get away?"

Julia chuckled. "Quick on your feet."

Blanc reached into his pocket and pulled out some hot sauce, the same kind he had grabbed earlier. He faced the women. "The killer thinks you're dead. This is our cover." He knelt down in front of Helen. "I can buy you maybe five minutes alone in the Glass Onion, but you have to-"

Helen grabbed the open hot sauce and started pouring it on the gun shot hole. "Give he that."

"You have to find that envelope."

"I will."

Helen finished and laid back down, handing Blanc the bottle back at his prompting. He started rubbing a little bit of the sauce at the edge of his eyes. "This'll be good.". He was now complaining about the pain in his eyes and Julia couldn't help but laugh. "Shit balls!"

This made Julia laugh again but Helen hushed them both up. Julia and Blanc stood just as the lights powered back on. People started showing up and Julia didn't necessarily have to fake the tears in her eyes. The adrenaline rush and the whirlwind of emotions she felt in the past two minutes was enough. People came rushing down, Claire and Birdie both despairing audibly while the rest stared at Andi's body in shock.

"What do we do, Benoit?" Julia asked, shivering a bit.

"Everyone. Inside," he ordered.

"Shouldn't we-" Claire began but Blanc interrupted her.

"She's not going anywhere. It's time to finish this."

As they all made their way back to the dinner room, Blanc started barking orders. "What happened to Duke?" Julia asked as she looked at his dead body.

"Andi killed him," Whiskey said bitterly.

"No!" Blanc said.

"It makes no sense," Miles said.

"It all makes perfect sense," Blanc said as he removed his jacket. Julia could tell this was going to be a doozy now. "Duke, Andi, this weekend, this ridiculous game that started well before we set foot on this island."

"Will you explain it all to us then, detective?" Lionel asked as Julia went to grab some more alcohol. This weekend has only one saving grace at this point: getting back with Blanc.

"No," Blanc said, shaking his head and putting his hands in his pockets. "I can peel back the layers, I can take it to s point, but what lies at the center, only one person can tell us who killed Cassandra Brand."

"Who?" Claire demanded to know.

Julia chugged a shit of tequila and sighed. "He'll get to it, give him a minute," she sighed.

"Thank you, darlin'," Blanc said before returning his gaze to the Disruptors. "Well, I keep returning, in my mind, to the Glass Onion. Something that seems densely layered, mysterious and inscrutable. But in fact, the center is in plain sight. And that is why this case has confounded me like no other. Why every complex later peeled back has revealed another layer and another layer and come to naught," Blanc continued, walking about the room. Julia watched him with a grin. She always loved this part when he was nearing the end of a case. "And that was the problem, right there."

The other people looked confused, but Julia wasn't confused at all. Miles, however, looked a little worried. That was interesting.

"You see, I expected complexity. I expected intelligence, I expected a puzzle, a game. But thar's not what any of this is. It hides not behind complexity, but behind mind-numbing obvious clarity. Truth is, it doesn't hide at all. I was staring right at it." Blanc stopped looking at the Mona Lisa and faced the group. "The killer nearly struck my Achilles's heel. But thank high heaven, at the last moment, I realized what had teased my brain through this entire case..." Blanc paused before saying one word. "Inbreathiate. That's not a word."

Julia grinned. "Oh, that's where he's going with this," she thought.

"What?" Lionel asked.

"It's not a real word. It kind of," Blanc started waving his hand. "Sounds like one, but it's entirely made up. Now, "reclamation", now, well, that...that is a word, but it's the wrong word. This entire day," the detective held his hands outward. "A veritable minefield of malapropisms and factual errors." The man pointed towards the outside. "That is the Aegean Sea."

Claire put her hands in her hips. "Oh yeah, it is. It is."

"His dock doesn't float. His wonder-fuel is a disaster," Blanc continued explaining as he walked on by them all slowly. "His grasp of disruption theory is remedial at best. He didn't design the puzzle boxes. He didn't write the mystery. Et voilà! It all adds up. The key to this entire case. And it was staring me right in the face. Like everyone in the world, I assumed Miles Bron was a complicated genius. But why? Look into the clear center of this Glass Onion..." he turned back around to face them all with the simplest of answers. "Miles Bron is an idiot."

Julia smirked and took another shot of alcohol. "I'm gonna have this man's babies," she thought to herself.