The day started like any other at House Rules Lounge, a speakeasy in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids. Chef Wesley opened the doors at 11:00 am to begin preparing food, and receive a delivery from Scipio around 11:45. Alice Cartwright, the bartender, was the next to arrive around that same time to start setting up the bar and front of house. She noticed they were low on red wine, so she asked Scipio if he could deliver some later. He agreed to come back when his deliveries were through, but swapped his beater van for Brian Murray’s nice car he left for employees to use.
Eventually, you should have been able to confirm that Brian Murray was, in fact, out of town by calling him on the number on the matchbook.
The bar opened to the public at 2pm, and that’s when Benny Drone arrived, who is a regular there as well as a doorman from time-to-time. Scipio came back to House Rules with a box of red wine an hour after they opened, hung the keys back up, and stuck around to chat, drink, and listen to music. Ivy Gosling came in with the flappers that she manages around 5pm to get ready for the 7pm and 9pm floor shows. They sat at the bar and played a few games of Sorry, where instead of following the rules and forfeiting her turn, Ivy kept drawing cards until she could play.
Jameson Fields, who is a mama’s boy and a wealthy investor of some seedy establishments including House Rules Speakeasy, arrived at the lounge just after Ivy with his mother and some of her friends to play Clue. Jameson likes to play as Miss Scarlett because she “looks like mother.” He continued to win by making guesses from outside the room his pawn is in, which is not allowed in the rules. Evelyn Blank, a well-to-do business woman, who is also a mob boss, walked into House Rules with some friends to play Monopoly around 5:30pm, and was greeted by her partner Chef Wesley, who, as you know by now, was well aware of the affair she was having with the much younger Jameson. Chef Wesley watched on as she laughed with friends, and won big with the free parking lot- which is against the rules. He saw her glances over to Jameson, but was secretly playing the long game- planning on marrying her and taking half her wealth in the divorce. He wasn’t about to kill a mob boss anytime soon.
At 7:00pm, the band begins to play and the flappers begin to dance for the floor show. At around 7:40, Evelyn Blank goes out the back to smoke. Benny follows her out the back door, and jumps into the car owned by House Rules owner Brian Murray- who is out of town but leaves his car at the shop for emergencies. He backs over Evelyn, jumps back out of the car, and runs back inside through the front door less than 5 minutes later. No one heard the crash or scream because the band was so loud, but Chef Wesley does see Benny walking back in while he is on his way to the jeweler.
Around 8:00, Alice takes a break and steps out back to smoke. She is so caught up in her bookkeeping and gambling ring that she doesn’t see Evelyn’s body under the car, and comes back in ten minutes later. During the beginning of her ring, Alice loaned out a considerable amount of money to regular gamblers, including Ivy Gosling, and now she needs to collect and pay back the loan she took from Evelyn. Meanwhile, she’s been working on becoming a co-owner of House Rules, but Brian has already promised that to his investor, Jameson. While it would be easier if Evelyn and Jameson were out of the equation, Alice isn’t the murdering type.
You also probably know by now that Scipio also took a smoke break just a few minutes before Alice, and did see Evelyn’s body, but because they are in rival gangs, he decided not to report it. When he heard the back door open, he ran around the corner and back through the front door. Scipio has been looking for a chance to be “made” by completing a hit, but it wasn’t tonight.
At the floor show break, around 8:30, Benny cut the power and shot Jameson in the dark with a revolver. He had marked him with radium earlier in the night, and the glow of the radium helped Benny locate Jameson- who was hit in the leg by the shot, and bludgeoned him with a wrench, a lead pipe, and a candlestick, wrapped a rope around his neck, and stabbed him with a dagger. The bullet ricocheted, and hit Scipio in the back of the shoulder. Benny then hit himself in the head with a pipe to throw off the trail.
Chef Wesley reconnects the power, and as the lights come back up, the crowd gathered around an injured Scipio, and not one, but two dead bodies. Jameson’s which is in a gruesome condition, and Ivy’s which is on the other side of the venue in the women’s room without any markings. Benny had dropped some arsenic into her drink just before cutting the lights, and its hold took effect on her quickly. Soon after, someone discovers Evelyn’s body, and the private detectives are summoned to investigate these three murders.
See Benny was always an outcast with an obsession with rules. He would see these people come in and play the games however they wanted, with no respect for the rules and no recourse for breaking them. Something had to be done, and someone had to do it.
And that someone was Benny Drone.