Velma and Daphne kept their distance from Professor Mullenix over the next few days. Even if he and Electona weren't together anymore, it was surely an emotional time for him. It was all so sudden: one moment they were hunting him down, and the next, they were watching his plane fall to earth, wreathed in flames.

Police were able to identify the bodies, but Velma and Daphne had no chance of finding any evidence from it—for starters, they'd somehow have to get access to the charred plane; and the chances that anything survived the inferno were slim.

No, if this mystery were to continue, they would need a different angle, and at the moment, it didn't seem like there was one.

For the next few days, Daphne's speaker in Velma's room played 30 by Adele almost exclusively. Velma thought it an odd choice, since neither of them had experienced any heartbreak (at least in the last week). Perhaps Daphne was memorializing Electona in her own way. Whatever the case, it was a bleak few days scored by bleak songs. Except for "Oh My God," which the girls agreed bopped, and bopped fucking hard.

It was a week later when Daphne reported that her online class with Mullenix had resumed. They were sitting in Velma's room when she saw this.

"What do you think?" said Daphne. "Should we send him an email?"

"Saying what?"

"I don't know, 'Sorry for your loss' or something."

"Yeah, maybe so."

Daphne composed a solemn email giving their condolences and sent it. Within five minutes, her laptop dinged with a notification.

"Velma."

"Yeah?"

"Look. He said thanks, and then that he wants us to come meet him ASAP."

"Oh?"

"Well, are you busy today?"

"No. Are you?"

"No. Are you?"

"Daphne."

"Sorry."

They hastily drove to Coolsville University and walked to Mullenix's office. He was sitting at his desk looking rather put-together: eyes weren't red, posture was straight, he seemed to be doing okay.

"Oh, good," he said upon seeing them enter. As the girls sat down, he added, "And thank you for the email, Daphne, that was very sweet of you." He smiled, but his brow was furrowed with concern. "Anyhow, this week has been…complicated, to say the very least."

"Velma and I are here for you, whatever you need, Professor," offered Daphne.

"No, no, it's not that—I'm going okay. Things are complicated in a different way."

"How?" asked Velma.

"Well, after Electona's funeral, I was called to be at his will reading."

"He left you something?"

"Oh, did he."

"What do you mean?"

"He left me his goddamn house."

"What?"

"Believe me, I'm just as surprised as you. I didn't even know he'd written a will. He's only a few years older than me. Should I have a will already?"

"Um…I don't think so."

"That's interesting, though," said Daphne. "Like, when is it appropriate to write a will? Is there a specific age when it's 'time' to write one?"

"That's what I'm saying," agreed Mullenix.

"No, wait," said Velma. "Maybe he had one because he thought he might die soon."

"Oh. Oh shit."

Daphne sat up in her seat and turned to Velma. "Wait, do you think the plane crash was deliberate?"

"It's possible, but I guess there's no way to be sure."

"Well," said Mullenix, "there might be. Or at least, there might be something we can find. You know…at his house that's my house now."

Daphne and Velma's eyes widened. This was it. The mystery wasn't over—at least not for sure.

After meeting at Mullenix's office, the three of them traveled to the Coolsville suburbs to a blue two-story house. It looked nice, expensive.

"So this is yours now?" said Daphne.

"Yeah. I wish he hadn't left it to me, though."

"Why?"

"'Cause his family is pretty shook that his house went to his coworker."

"Oof. Yeah, I can see why that's tough."

"I'm probably going to give it back to the family anyway, but first I wanted to search it with you two just in case there's something we can find out."

The three of them got out of Mullenix's car and entered the house. It was mostly bare inside: not many decorations, the bare minimum of furniture, nothing framed.

"Guess he was a minimalist," Daphne said to Velma.

"Well, it should make searching the place easier, at least."

Mullenix turned back to the girls. "We should start upstairs. His bedroom's up there."

So they ascended the staircase, the steps creaking with each step they took. Down the hall and to the left was Electona's bedroom, just as barebones as the rest of the house. At the far wall was a neatly made queen-sized bed.

"He was always a clean freak," Mullenix said, almost to himself.

He opened the drawer of the bedside table and started rummaging through it. Meanwhile, Daphne and Velma started searching through other drawers. Daphne had begun working through a chest of drawers. "Hey, Velma," she said quietly.

Velma stepped over.

"Look here," said Daphne.

Under some of the clothes was…something. It was wrapped in a dish towel, but it was plain to see something was held in it.

This could be it, thought Velma.

Carefully, Daphne started to unfurl the dish towel. As the fabric came away with her hand, its contents dropped out to the bottom of the drawer. Daphne had a puzzled expression on her face. She reached in to pick up the object that had fallen out. "Do you know what this is?"

Velma's jaw dropped. For a few seconds, she wasn't able to say anything. Eventually, she whispered in an urgent tone, "Put that back, Daphne, just put it back."

"What? What is it?" She held the purple, somewhat L-shaped object in her hand.

"Daphne, please, for the love of God, put it down."

"Okay, okay, geez." She did as Velma had asked. "What's the matter?"

"It's...it's a prostate massager."

In the blink of an eye, Daphne's face morphed to match Velma's look of horror and discomfort. "Oh, my God. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew—"

While Daphne walked to the bathroom with her hands held away from her body like a scrub nurse keeping sterile, Velma wondered what the ethics of all of this were. Yeah, we're trying to solve a mystery, but we're also digging through a dead man's sex toys.

Mullenix didn't seem to have a problem searching through Electona's things. Chances were he'd been to the house when they were still an item, so that made a little more sense.

For a while, the three of them continued searching (Daphne and Velma doing so with more caution now). Eventually, the girls heard an "Aha" from Mullenix, so they turned to see what he'd found.

Mullenix had found a notepad hidden in one of the pillowcases. "His diary." He started flipping through the pages, looking for anything of note. Daphne and Velma moved to look over his shoulder. Mullenix stopped on one of the pages:

"I think I ought to leave the house to Tim. If I bite the dust, at least he could find it. Of course, I'd rather find it myself. Tim might be too much of a queen to get involved in all this. But I can't bring myself to leave him 100% out of the loop, in death at least. And I don't think I'll kick the bucket any time soon. Nothing would suggest anyone's after me. Still, I feel like there's more at play than a treasure everyone wants to find. More like a treasure no one wants to find. They've gone through a lot of trouble to bury it. Should I even keep this up?"

It was a lot of information to process all at once. "We were still together when he wrote this," said Mullenix.

"And he was calling you a 'queen' even then?" asked Daphne.

"He wasn't a nice guy. Hence the breakup."

"I thought he broke it off with you because he thought you were keeping secrets."

Mullenix was quiet. Velma turned to Daphne. "Way to rub it in, Daph."

Mullenix turned the page:

"How in the FUCK did Tim find that statuette??? I spend a year looking for any sign of Nisroch and Tim just walks in with the thing? It's not a coincidence. No way. Tim's in on this. How long has he been in on it? Is that what this is? Why is it so hard to find a good guy in this fucking town!?"

Mullenix flipped another page:

"I feel bad stealing the statuette from Tim, but if he's dating me just to beat me to a discovery, fuck him anyway. The statuette opens with a five-note sequence on a reed flute. It's an old statuette, so I have no idea how it has sound recognition, but it does."

Under this paragraph, Electona wrote out his solution to the riddle contained in the statuette. Then, his writing continued:

"Nisroch. Now I know two things. 1: Tim's in on this. 2: I have to go to Iraq. The riddle doesn't give any hints to the temple's location, so I'll have to try process of elimination until I find the right place. This could take months. Maybe years if I'm unlucky. I don't even really know what I'm looking for. For all I know, Nisroch is a damn typo. An ancient typo, no less."

Velma and Daphne glanced up at Mullenix.

"Do you know what he's talking about here?" asked Velma.

"No clue," he replied, sounding deflated. "I didn't know he thought I was using him. I could've explained it to him, or…" Mullenix sat down on the bed and placed a hand to his temple.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Velma said, trying her best to console the sullen professor.

"Yeah, he just had trust issues," added Daphne.

"He thought I was trying to con him," said Mullenix, still despondent. "He was so focused on me that somebody else got to him."

"But what is Nisroch?" asked Velma. "And how did a statue of it end up in your garden?"

Before anyone could say anything, a thunderous knocking began at the front door of the house, almost as an answer to Velma's question.

When Mullenix looked out the window to see who it was, his eyes went wide as saucers. "Oh, fuck."

"What? Who is it?" asked Daphne.

"His cousin."

"Why's that a problem?" asked Velma.

Mullenix shook his head. "I don't even know how to—look, you two just need to hide until I deal with this."

"Oh, damn," said Daphne.

"Hurry!" he whispered before rushing down the stairs to the front door.

When he opened it, there stood Dolores Garcia, a mere five feet, three inches, yet still perfectly intimidating. She stood with her arms crossed and one foot tapping, dressed in her usual professional attire. When her eyes met Mullenix's, her glare darkened.

"Good afternoon, Timothy," she said. Her voice was like poisoned honey.

"Ah, Dolly, nice to see you," said Mullenix. He did his best not to seem terrified. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, you can step aside and let me in."

"…Oh?"

"I left my rosary here after the funeral."

"Oh, sure, come in." Internally, Mullenix was losing it. "Do you remember where you le—"

"Tim, are you sweating?"

"Huh?" He brought a hand to his forehead to check. He was. "Oh, it's nothing," he said, forcing a smile, "I went for a bike ride."

"You don't work?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I took the day off."

Dolly held her stare for a few moments. It was as if she was testing his resolve. Mullenix did his best to hold himself together, to look as calm as possible.

Upstairs, Daphne and Velma, hidden in Electona's closet, were able to hear the whole exchange.

"Why's he so scared?" whispered Daphne. "She doesn't sound that scary, she hasn't done anything."

"I don't know," said Velma. "But I don't wanna find out."

"Hey, what does a prostate massager do?"

"What?"

"Like what's the purpose?"

"Later—we need to listen."

Dolly walked further into the house. "I think I left it in the kitchen," she said to Mullenix.

"I can help you loo—"

"No thanks." She started opening drawers in the kitchen.

Mullenix felt his heart beating against his ribcage. The Electona family didn't really feel one way or the other about Mullenix, but Dolly had been wary of him since she first laid eyes on him. And she didn't mind letting him know she wasn't very trusting of him.

"Maybe upstairs," said Dolly under her breath. "I went up there for a little bit."

"Oh, I don't think it'd be up there."

Dolly turned on her heel to look back at him. "You don't think, Tim?"

He didn't say a word.

"I get it's your house now, but at least show some courtesy."

"About that, I—"

"I don't give a shit, Tim, it's not me that wants the house. I'm sure Manny had his reasons." She turned back to start up the staircase.

Daphne and Velma hugged the back wall of the closet having heard Dolly's footsteps come up the stairs. Thankfully, she turned to walk into the bathroom. It didn't take long for her to find her rosary there. She grabbed it and prepared to walk out when she stopped. Something had caught her eye.

"Oh, fuck," whispered Daphne.

"What?"

"I think I left my phone in there."

"Daphne!"

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

Dolly tapped the screen to see a photo of Daphne and Velma as the screensaver. He has a girl over? she thought. Manny never mentioned he was bi.

She walked slowly towards the bedroom. Through the slits of the closet door, Daphne and Velma watched her approach the bed. She inspected the sheets, then placed the back of her hand against a spot that looked like it'd been sat on. Still warm, she thought. He's got the girl hidden here right now.

"Find it?" Mullenix walked into the bedroom.

"Yeah, I found it, Tim." She looked over her shoulder. "Got anything you wanna confess?"

"Sorry?"

Dolly held up the phone. "Still wanna play dumb, slut?"

Velma couldn't see, but she assumed Mullenix was sweating bullets by now.

"Oh," he said, "that's for a student of mine." The second he'd said it he knew he shouldn't have.

Dolly's cold stare penetrated him. "A student? Even better."

"No, not like that."

"What's it like, then?"

"I…"

"Choose your next words very carefully."

Daphne had decided enough was enough. She thrust open the closet door. "He's not a slut!" she proclaimed.

Dolly and Mullenix both jumped. Dolly moved towards Daphne, her face suddenly sympathetic. "You're not to blame," she said to her.

"No, he's not sleeping with me," explained Daphne.

"It's true. He's not." Velma stepped out of the closet.

Dolly's eyes widened. "Two? Is she a student?"

"Miss, please," said Daphne, "he's not a pervert. And we're not even his type." Velma looked at her with confusion, prompting Daphne to add, "Female."

"Then why is he hiding you two here?"

"Dolly, it's a really long story," said Mullenix.

"I've got an hour for lunch break."

"Um…"

Daphne looked to Mullenix with worry, but he looked back with a face as if to say, "It's okay."

And then he literally said, "It's okay. Dolly's a lawyer."

Dolly looked more concerned now. "Shit, are you in legal trouble? You could've asked me for help. I know we don't know each other super well, but you were close to Manny."

That surprised Mullenix.

"What?" said Dolly.

"I didn't think you particularly cared for me."

"I mean, I didn't, but I didn't dislike you. I've only met you, like, twice. Did I come off that way?"

Daphne, Velma, and Mullenix explained the entire situation to Dolly. She sat and listened to the whole tale; her face did not reveal her feelings. After they'd finished, Dolly said, "Well…"

"Yeah, it's a lot," said Mullenix.

"To be honest, if not for the diary, I probably wouldn't believe you. But at the very least, Manny was involved with all this nonsense."

"Dolly, I don't think his death was an accident."

Dolly sat up straighter. No doubt she was still mourning her cousin, and hearing that he may have been murdered couldn't have been easy. "…Then I want to help."

Daphne and Velma sighed with relief.

"What about your firm?" said Mullenix.

"It's my firm, I can take off if I want to. I don't think I've taken a vacation since 2019."

"2019?" said Daphne. "Damn, girl."

Either Dolly didn't hear this or she ignored it. She continued, "What you—we—need to do is find out what or who Nisroch is. If you still have that statue, that'd help."

Before Velma could speak, Daphne did it for her: "Velma broke it."

"Oh."

"But we have pictures."

"Good." Dolly looked at her watch. "My break's almost up. I'm gonna finish up today so I can tell everyone I'll be taking off for a while." She got up to leave. "By the way, Tim, I genuinely don't care about you getting the house."

"I'm giving it back to the Electonas."

"You don't have to."

"I want to."

"Okay. Well, see you guys later."

The day's events were difficult to fully gauge. Sure, the mystery wasn't over, but they hadn't really made any progress, either.

In the evening, Daphne and Velma sat up in Velma's room. Daphne held Potey on her lap. "I Googled her firm: she's an insurance lawyer. And she's thirty-two."

"Why's that relevant?"

"She looks good for thirty-two."

"Daphne, Adele's thirty-four."

"Adele's rich and famous."

Good point, thought Velma.

"Velma, do you think Electona was really murdered?"

"I don't know, but it's possible. So we've got to be careful."

"Since when aren't we careful?"

"Daphne, you're aware of your reputation, right?"

"Reputation?"

"For being clumsy."

"Clumsy?"

Oh, she really doesn't know. So Velma explained that during their Mystery, Inc. days, Daphne had developed a reputation, at least in popular media, for being clumsy. Daphne, incredulous, searched her own name in Google (which made her feel weird). She clicked a YouTube video of a local news story on the gang, then scrolled down to the comments.

" 'The ginger has an IQ in the double digits,' " she read aloud. " 'Redhead needs physical therapy.' 'Ms. Blake would trip without friction.' 'Thank God Daphne has such nice caregivers.' What the fuck! How long has this been a thing?"

"I thought you knew."

"Am I that clumsy?"

"I mean, I think it's exaggerated, but you're a little clumsy."

Daphne huffed and crossed her arms. "What else do people believe about me?"

"Daph, I wouldn't go looking for stuff like that, it's not good for you."

"I just want to know."

"Daphne…"

She returned to her laptop, searching for more. She found a Mystery, Inc. fanpage and searched her name. "What the fuck! I'm not that clumsy!" She kept reading. "This post says I broke up the gang? 'Seems like she's dramatic in real life. Bet she didn't get enough attention, so she thought she could go solo.' We weren't a fucking band."

"Really, Daph, it's not worth it. It's bullshit."

" '100% an attention whore. Always loved showing off her relationship with Fred. Hope he finds a way to get away from her.' Oh, this is so fucked."

Velma reached over and shut the laptop. "Enough. You don't need to worry about what some nobodies think about you. They're just jealous."

"Ugh… You're right."

Daphne's speaker, shuffling through 30, started to play "Strangers by Nature."

"Ooh, this is his favorite," said Daphne, standing up with Potey in his arms. She began to sway this way and that, rocking the lizard like a baby, singing, " 'I'll…be taking flowers…to the cemetery of my heart…' "

Something about seeing Daphne sing to her monitor lizard about her heart being a graveyard made Velma smile. After the song finished, Daphne grabbed her phone and switched it to "Willow."

Hearing Taylor Swift felt like the return to normalcy the girls needed: after a dreary, uncertain period, all was well, at least for the moment.