Read a preview of “The Most Forbidden Vows” below!
“The Most Forbidden Vows” by Ryan Hartman
PROLOGUE
“A vow is only forbidden when it’s unbreakable but will be broken.” -Robert V. Sanzo
If I’ve learned anything in my long and mostly uneventful tenure here on Earth, it’s to keep a low profile. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, and whatever the hell you believe — keep a low profile. For me, it’s very much important, since in approximately eighteen hours, or whenever one of the imbeciles that dwells in this Victorian maze finds their beloved homeowner asleep for all eternity, police will come staggering to the scene where foul play will be most definitely suspected eventually. Yes, whoever you are reading this impeccable tale, I am indeed the murderer of this murder mystery story. I guess I could inform you of who I am, but that would take away from the story your imagination is about to be enveloped in. Like I said, it’s all about keeping a low profile, so without further ado, let the curtains open to reveal this strange, unnerving, puzzling, bloody, and most of all, entertaining mystery that I know none of you will be able to solve.
CHAPTER 1
The bliss of the early morning sights and sounds was suddenly interrupted by sirens blaring down the street, racing towards the mansion known as Caper Grounds. The ominous manor’s lone chimney raged with smoke plowing into the air. Three police cars pulled up the mostly vacant rounded driveway that followed the pristine, metal gate at the manor’s entrance. Once the cars screeched to a stop, men in uniforms raced out of the cars, hurried up the stone stairs towards the brick exterior, and through the ancient mahogany door leading to the foyer.
A woman raced down the left side of a split staircase, then down the main steps that faced the officers that were now all inside the mansion’s foyer. The only light in the small room was from the orange sunlight rolling through the large, circular window located just above the threshold, as well as a small lamp illuminating the common room to the left of the foyer.
“Oh, dear Lord,” the woman said as she completed her descent down the steep flight of stairs. “I just found him in his study. Oh, dear Lord.”
“Mr. Sanzo, what has been the biggest inspiration for your screenwriting career?”
A man in a light brown linen suit with a long, black tie checkered with thin red lines draped over it sat upward in a large, cushioned chair as another man in an identical chair mesmerizingly watched him as he spoke. A group of reporters also watched, flashing lights on their cameras after every other word the man spoke, curious about his response to their questions.
“Well, it’s – everything,” the man began. “Everything I see. I like to go on long walks around the town my home is near. It’s a quaint little town in the middle of nowhere. When I walk, I always admire the brick buildings, trees planted on the edge of sidewalks, cars calmly driving around, birds chirping a beautiful symphony. Everything inspires me, even the simplest of things.”
“Mr. Sanzo,” a reporter asked, “you’ve written so many screenplays for pictures that ended up becoming huge hits commercially and critically. How do you do it with such ease?”
“Well, every story starts with an idea, a simple one. It’s the simplest things that then branch out into other things. One thing happens, and it causes a bunch of other things to happen. That’s the basis. That thing doesn’t have to be interesting, it just has to be something so that interesting things can branch from it. Once you know one part, the other parts become much clearer and that’s when you see the whole picture. You believe one thing is something, then you see something else, and realize that thing isn’t quite what you thought it was. It’s different, and it knows it. That’s the whole point of a story. Something that someone can see and think to themselves, ‘wow, that was really something’ or ‘wow, this wasn’t anything like I thought it was’. That’s what makes a brilliant story brilliant.”
About twenty-five minutes had passed from the officers’ initial arrival to the estate to where the dead screenwriter’s body rested when two men entered the home. They walked into the common room where the police were interrogating the woman who first informed them of the death.
When the men entered the room, everyone turned and faced them. Margaret slightly jumped and wore a shocked look on her face. One officer questioned, “And who are you?”
“Good morning, officers and madam,” one of the two men spoke. “I am Detective Darell Rao Whichard, and I am the detective reported to come here to this house to check for foul play. Standard procedure.”
The detective wore a flat, black fedora on his head, as well as a thick, dark-grey jacket over a light-grey button-down shirt. His baggy, maroon pants draped over his black dress shoes that could certainly be heard anywhere in the house when they stomped onto the common room’s floorboards. The reading glasses resting on both his earlobes were small with thin, rectangular lenses outlined in a thick dark-blue.
He then motioned to the man standing next to him, who was in near identical attire but had a much more concerned and anxious expression on his face. “This here is my partner, Detective Ken Kramer.”
Ken nodded at the sound of his name, muttering a soft “hello”.
“I apologize, detectives,” an officer started, “but we do not need detectives at this moment. We barely have any knowledge of, well, anything.”
“We still must find any evidence of foul play, officer. Standard procedure.”
“Pardon me,” the woman said as she rose from her large brown chair that was drowning in festive pillows, “but you believe that someone might have murdered my dear Robert? Oh, please. No one would dare murder the most esteemed screenwriter of today.”
“Madam, I apologize, but like I said, standard procedure. We just have to make sure.”
Despite her willingness to fight back, the woman returned to her comfortable chair wearing a look of disgust on her face.
“Excuse me, madam, but you wouldn’t happen to know if any family is nearby would you? If so, is it possible to have close family gathered here? I’d like to get to know the family.”
“Family? Why do you want to see any of our family? What involvement would they have in this?”
“Is it possible?”
“I suppose it is, but none of them would ever—”
“Like I said, madam, standard procedure.”
As the woman left to inform her loved ones of their desired presence, two officers waited patiently in the common room with the two detectives.
“Detectives, we know very little of what happened here, but I’ll tell you what we do know.” The police officer speaking was a dark-skinned man who carried lots of intimidating muscle, especially compared to his tall but thinner accomplice, who was as white as a sheet of paper and wore a uniform that looked noticeably oversized. “I am Officer McKinley, and this is Officer Foster. We arrived here with other officers this morning at approximately eight-ten in the morning. We had received a call prior to that from the woman whom you’ve just met, telling us her husband was dead in his study upstairs.”
The other officer joined in on the retelling. “That woman is Margaret Sanzo, her husband being the famous screenwriter Robert Sanzo. She said he was just lying on his chair in the study. We checked, no gunshot or incised wound was found on his body. The medical examiner we called this morning told us that the body can be overlooked on Wednesday.”
“Do you know if he had any medical problems, like heart issues perhaps?” Darell asked.
“We don’t know,” Officer McKinley responded. “Ask Mrs. Sanzo when she’s finished calling her family.”
“What about this house? Anything special about it?”
“Pretty special, actually. Robert basically built it himself about forty or so years ago. It’s the strangest house you’ll ever see — like a Clue board sprang to life.”
Read the full story this Thursday, exclusively on Ryan’s Fortress.