A Game of Murder (21 page)

Faith picked up the pitcher of tea and poured herself a glass as Hope returned to the kitchen. Despite her best intentions, Faith hadn’t started coding her game yet. Paying work came first. She doubted she would be able to finish a game in a week, and she hoped Derek would forget she’d declared herself in the competition at the last meeting. She didn’t raise her hand. Dennis did.

Derek gave him a withering look. “Do us a favor and don’t bother. If there aren’t any Twine games in the competition, we won’t have to deal with the issue of whether they’re real games or not.”

“Or we could put Twine games in their own division. Then I’ll win.” Dennis guffawed as he grabbed a fistful of tortilla chips from the basket and stuffed them in his mouth.

Faith didn’t feel like laughing. Derek’s superior attitude and his contempt-laden expression annoyed her.

“Mine’s almost ready,” Paul said, drawing attention away from the Dennis-Derek confrontation. “I should be able to upload it tonight.”

“Great, Hawk.” Derek smiled benevolently at his friend. “I know you’ll enter a great game. You might even win the trophy this year.”

“That’s my plan.” Paul leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.

“Don’t be so sure,” Bob said. “I’ve got a game in the comp, too.”

All eyes turned toward Bob. Faith noticed when Isaac flicked a glance toward Paul, as if wondering whether there’d be another hostile confrontation at this meeting. Only that turned out not to be what his concern was.

“Don’t forget my game,” Isaac said. “I think Zombie Wars has just as good a chance of winning as your games do.”

Derek was nodding. “I’m sure you all wrote worthy games,” he said sagely. “Except Dennis. He probably put fluffy kittens and strawberry ice cream in his.”

Faith’s blood simmered close to the boiling point. She’d had enough of Derek belittling Dennis, who, although he might be a clown, didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. Ignoring her pending work contract with Derek’s company, she blurted out, “Did you forget I’m entering a game, too? A
Twine
game.”

Six heads swiveled in her direction, staring at her as if she were a cockroach that had crawled onto the restaurant table. Her heart pounded in her chest. What possessed her to say that?

So much for hoping Derek wouldn’t remember the last time. For the second time in as many weeks, she let anger get the better of good judgment. She hadn’t even thought about the story line for her class game, had never coded a text adventure in her life. At least she didn’t tell them she was entering an Inform game. While she might be able to fake something in Twine, learning Inform would take a lot longer than a week.

“You are, are you?” Derek said. “Do you really think you can compete with real programmers?”

“I
am
a real programmer, as you very well know. You may have intimidated every other woman into leaving the club, but I’m not every other woman.” Her fingertips gripped the edge of the table, her nerves strung taut as a barbed wire fence. Her skin prickled as if the barbs were sticking through it.

Derek’s eyes narrowed and the hint of a nasty smile tugged at his lips. “Just remember the deadline is next Friday. If you don’t get your game uploaded by midnight, you’ll be disqualified.”

Faith’s unwavering stare met his. “I’ll make it.”
 

* * *

Faith stood outside the restroom door, checking the messages on her cell while she waited her turn. The gamers had taken a break from the meeting to let Hope serve the meal before wrapping up any other club business.

Hope stopped on her way back from delivering the first set of plates. “What was going on out here?”

“Derek,” Faith said, as if that explained everything. “He’s a pain in the butt. I reminded him I intend to enter the game competition and he blew up. He gets so nasty sometimes, I’m half convinced he’s the one who harassed and murdered Mira.”

Hope regarded her with concern. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to antagonize him? Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Faith said with a lot more confidence than she felt. Two women associated with the gamer group had wound up dead. She couldn’t help but worry a tiny bit if she might become the third.

“Be careful. I know your tendency to charge into situations and try to fix them.” Hope put her hand on Faith’s arm. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, girlfriend.”

“I’ll be careful,” Faith promised.

Stan shuffled up next to them. “Is this the line for the restroom?”

Hope gave Faith one last look, which flickered from doubt to concern to resignation, then continued on her way to the kitchen.

“It is,” Faith answered Stan. “I wonder what’s taking him so long.”

“Who’s in there?” Stan asked.

“Bluh—Dennis,” Faith corrected herself. Yeah, she had to admit, she more often thought of Dennis as Blubber Belly since she’d watched a couple of his YouTube videos, but she felt she owed him more respect, especially since they were now allies against the inner circle.

“Uh oh. Maybe I don’t need to use the restroom that badly.”

“What do you mean?” Faith asked.

Stan wrinkled his nose and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.

Faith got the message. “Oh.” She wondered if she should come back later and let Stan go ahead. But Hope kept a can of room freshener in the bathroom. With any luck, it would be potent enough to combat any unpleasantness Dennis left behind.

Just then she heard the sound of the toilet flushing, the splash of running water, and finally the squeak of a hinge as the door opened.

Stan reminded Faith of a cavalier as he gestured with a sweep of his arm, palm up and fingers extended, toward the open door, when Dennis came out and headed toward the table. “After you.”

Faith mimicked the gesture back at Stan when she exited the restroom. The ambience hadn’t been as bad as Stan intimated it might be.

Derek, Bob, and Paul stood off to the side, engrossed in conversation. That left Dennis and Isaac at the table, and Faith a chance to question one more of her potential suspects.

“Hi,” she said to Isaac as she sat down. She gave him a warm smile. “We haven’t had a chance to get to know one another.”

Isaac’s face turned red.

Good, thought Faith. She might not be Angelina Jolie, but she was attractive enough to put a geek off balance. She smiled wider and rested two fingers on his forearm. “Your game—Zombie Wars, was it?”

Isaac nodded, speechless.

“Sounds interesting. Tell me more about it.”

“Don’t you want to hear about my game?” Dennis said. Wet splotches adorned the front of his purple shirt.

She turned her smile on Dennis. “Maybe later.”

Isaac, realizing he’d better speak up if he didn’t want to lose Faith’s attention, said, “It’s a great game. See, all the people in the world—except one—have turned into zombies. There are two different tribes. One has blue skin and the other has green skin. They’re battling for world domination.”

“Really?” Faith gave the word an emphasis which implied it was the most novel idea for a game she’d ever heard. In truth, it sounded like a million other plots for games, movies, and bad novels.

Isaac nodded. “See, the hero’s girlfriend has been changed into a zombie, but he doesn’t know which color. So he has to solve a bunch of puzzles to figure that out, and then he joins the blue side because she’s a blue zombie and you have to defeat the green zombies, and then you have to save your girlfriend and yourself from the blue zombies.”

“So the hero gets the girl in the end?”
As if there could be any other outcome.
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and folded her hands demurely in front of her.

“Yes. You have to be really smart though, to win.”

“What if you’re a girl and you’re playing the game?”

Isaac looked confused for a minute, then brightened. “I suppose you could pretend to be the hero anyway.”

Faith had had enough of this conversation. While hardly a feminist, Isaac displayed none of the antagonism of the other gamers. He didn’t hate women, didn’t even dislike them, not enough to be a killer.

Stan returned to the table. Now how could she engage him? She doubted the flirty method would work on Stan, but decided she’d give it a try.

He started to lower himself into his seat.

She gazed up at him from under hooded eyes, pitched her voice low and throaty. “So I hear you work up in Mesa?”

Stan, surprised, paused his motion, legs bent, and answered, “That’s right.” He finished sitting down.

“Isn’t it a long commute?” Faith asked.

Stan straightened his knife, then lined up his spoon next to it, keeping his eyes on the flatware. “Not the way I do it. I work remotely from Tucson part of the time. I only go to Mesa for three or four days every other week. I rented a small apartment up there so I don’t have to drive each day.”

The engineering job must pay pretty well, thought Faith, if Stan could afford two places to live. “I see. So what do you do, drive up on Monday and back on Friday?”

“Usually I drive up Sunday night the weeks I’m onsite. I’d have to get up extremely early to do it on Monday.”

“What exactly do you do up there?” Faith asked, hoping he’d reveal something that would tell her if he had direct access to sodium azide or not.

“Why are you so curious about my job?” Stan looked suspicious.

Faith eased off a bit. She would try again later. “No particular reason.”

Fortunately, Hope arrived with the second set of meals, giving Faith a chance to regroup. Hope placed a large, heavy bowl fragrant with garlic and oregano in front of Faith.

“Three Sisters Soup?” Faith asked as she unfolded her napkin and put it in her lap.

Hope nodded and added in a quiet voice, “I made the soup with vegetable stock instead of chicken so it wouldn’t cause a problem for your vegan.” She glanced meaningfully over at Derek. “I’ll be back with some tortillas in a minute.”

“You’re going to love this,” Faith said to her companions.

Derek and company broke up their powwow and came to join them at the table. Chairs rattled across the tile as they took their seats.

“It’s made with tepiary beans, corn, and squash.” Faith picked up her spoon and started eating. The others followed suit.

Derek lifted a spoon of liquid from his bowl and regarded it with distrust before tasting the soup. After he swallowed, he ran his tongue over his lips. “Not bad.”

Conversation dwindled as the gamers focused on their food. In the quiet, Faith contemplated her outburst. Had she been foolish in challenging the experienced game designers? Probably. Did she think she could create a game in a week? It might not be the easiest thing she had ever done, but she was used to working under tight deadlines. Given enough time, she certainly was capable of writing a winning game.

A winning game. Perhaps she could pick up the votes that would have gone to Mira. Was it possible she might win the trophy? Anticipation fluttered inside her. She imagined the Adventurer’s Torch on a shelf in her office, a shiny testimonial to her abilities. Her heart felt lighter as a smile spread across her face. She’d show these guys how good a programmer she was. Only one obstacle stood in her way. She had to come up with an idea. Quickly.

Faith clutched her largest mug, filled with hot coffee and a touch of milk, in her hands as she padded down the hall to her office. A dull headache throbbed behind her eyes. She’d spent most of the night wide awake fretting over what kind of game she could program in six days instead of sleeping peacefully. She stumbled and swore a mock oath as Pixel scooted in front of her and rolled over on his back, looking for attention.

“Pixel!” she cried accusingly. “You’re going to kill me if you keep doing that.”

“Meow,” said the little cat. Amber eyes gazed up at her plaintively and Faith’s heart melted. It was hard to stay mad at him. Like babies, cats, for survival purposes, had evolved a built-in cuteness.

“Well, okay. Come along. Just try not to trip me again.” She took a step forward and Pixel rolled onto his feet to follow.

After putting the mug on her desk, she flipped open her laptop and displayed the screen she’d been staring at last night, a Wikipedia listing of the seven basic plots. A couple of them didn’t seem to suit games at all. Two were classic in adventure games: the quest for some object and overcoming a monster. Often those two were combined in that you had to overcome a monster to retrieve the treasure. Of course, Wikipedia didn’t provide any details, although it did name examples of each.

She picked up her coffee mug, took a sip, and shut her eyes, not sure if she was trying to think or go back to dreamland. Either one would do at this point. Just as she was slipping into sleep, a random thought floated up out of her subconscious. Her eyes flew open.
Wait!
Adrenaline added itself to the caffeine pumping through her blood vessels, banishing any feeling of fatigue.

A long time ago, she’d been poking around with game programming of a different sort, something a lot more complex than text adventures, and discovered a generator site. She took a gulp from her mug and put it back on the desk to free her hands. She was sure she bookmarked the site in her browser.

The problem with having so many interests was keeping track of where you put them. With hundreds of bookmarks in dozens of folders, Faith wondered how many she’d have to go through before finding the site she remembered. Luck was on her side. She found the bookmark on her third try and, wonder of wonders, the site was still there.

She read through the plot generators and found one that held promise: the Paranormal Romance Generator. The paranormal part would make it geeky enough. The romance would clearly make her point to the misogynistic members of the gaming club. She chose to generate fifteen scenarios, the most allowed, to give her more options from which to choose. The list appeared almost instantaneously. No single idea excited her, but if she combined elements of two of them, she thought she had a plot for her game:

The brave, sensitive heroine who is afraid of water has been involved with the supernatural since she began using her paranormal abilities. After she interferes with the wrong person, she is catapulted into a deadly adventure. Will she fall for the violent, intoxicating hero who buried his own dreams long ago?