“No way I’m coming with you to hang out with that berryhole!” Sweet Corn yelled at me. She was clearly not happy with the cooperation I had started with Cinnamon. She even called me a traitor when I told her about it. In my head, that accusation didn’t make any sense. How could one be a traitor if they worked for the same goal?

“Fine, I’ll go on my own then” I ended the conversation by walking out of the room and towards the library where I would meet up with Cinnamon. Sometimes I didn’t get my sister, and the fact that we were twins was unbelievable sometimes.

“You’re late” Cinnamon stated and looked at her watch when I approached the stairs up to the library where she was waiting for me. I looked at my own watch, it was 10.02 which meant I was two minutes late. I shrugged and walked past her in to the library. It seemed like the little healing our relation had got the other day wasn’t enough for her to trust me completely. We would have to work on that.

Cinnamon took place in front of one of the computers and looked around before hastily typing something in to the browser. She ended up on a plain blue page with a search box in the middle. In the search box she typed Sourz and hit enter. After a moment of loading time, a list of articles appeared on the screen. “This is all the articles published about that family during the last two years” Cinnamon explained and scrolled through the links without clicking on a single one.

“Hm, doesn’t seem to contain anything out of the ordinary” she mumbled and kept scrolling. “Sourz open a new gallery. Sourz new hospital for children.” She kept reading some of what I suspected were headlines while scrolling. Within no time she had come to the bottom of the page.

“Nothing?” I wondered, still not quite understanding what she was doing, or what she was looking for.

“I’ll have to go further back” she replied and went back to the first page where she clicked a few boxes, that I hadn’t noticed earlier, and hit Enter once again.

A new list of articles appeared and I stepped closer to the screen to help her read them as she scrolled. Most of them were about donations made by the family, or companies started by them. It was clear that they had a good reputation in town and that they had a lot of power. I was starting to think this wouldn’t lead anywhere when another headline caught my eye. “Wait, stop there!” I shouted and pointed at the screen. Cinnamon looked around worried, but it seemed like no one cared about my little outburst.

“Sourz cousins in trouble” I read out loud and Cinnamon’s eyes grew wide in shock as she clicked on the link. It took us to a newspaper based in Briocheport and the article reported how the Sourz cousins Tiber and Heliotrope had been in a brawl at one of the more fancy clubs in Briocheport. The brawl escalated and in the end Tiber had pulled a gun to threaten the guy who they had fought with. The whole story ended with a fired gun and a ‘bow with a shot damaged leg.

“This. Is. Unbelievable” Cinnamon gasped and looked at me. “Do you realize what this means?”

“That they’re capable of such heavy crimes?” I guessed and Cinnamon nodded eagerly.

“I’ll print this and we’ll show your brother those pictures used in the article” she continued and almost jumped out of the chair out of excitement.

After that breakthrough, we parted ways. There is only so much time you can spend with someone you don’t actually trust before you need to be on your own. I think Cinnamon still found it hard to accept that me and Sweets had been the ones to suspect the Sourz at first. And by now, it certainly seemed possible that they could be guilty. With the newly acquired pictures with me, I decided to head straight to The Blank Slate and talk to Quince. That was the natural next step and depending on what he said, we could either have reached the turning point, or we could be back at square one. It made me feel quite nervous.

“Sup bro?” Quince smiled and waved across the room as I entered the pub. “Where’s Sweets? It’s not common to see you here without her.”

“Uhm, we had a little fight this morning. Nothing major. Look, I need to talk to you…” He moved over to the side of the bar where I lowered my voice to talk to him, “I think we found something.”

“Really?” His face lit up in a smile, but there was a sadness behind it. The sadness that had plagued him ever since he lost his best friend, if we had made progress in the case it would possibly make him feel a bit better.

“Look” I handed him the article and the printed pictures and watched him examine it.Once he was done he looked up with tearful eyes:

“This is them. Sunny, these are the guys who killed Affair. I can’t believe you did it Sunny! Oh how they are gonna pay!” He wiped tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand, excused himself to Mithos and pulled me outside.

The september air was cool and the skin on my arms grumbled. I shivered and was surprised to see that Quince seemed indifferent to the cold. “How did you find them?” he wondered and looked at me with the same sad eyes as before.

“We just thought it would make sense if it were them. With their history and all… And Cinnamon found the article. I think she’s a hacker or something…”

“I’ll take it from here. I need to avenge Affair on my own” Quince’s voice was firm and hard and it almost looked like he was boiling on the inside. I had never seen my brother look so angry and hurt. I was suddenly struck by fear that he would do something very, very stupid.

“No” I said calm. “You’re not going to let them hurt you that easy Quincie. I started this, and I’ll finish it. Along with Cinnamon and Sweets. You should focus on the pub. I promise, we’ll take care of this.”

He seemed surprised by the strength in my tone, and to be fair I was surprised myself. I don’t know where I found the courage, but I just knew I wouldn’t let my brother get hurt. After all, I was the one who got us all in to this mess, it was only fair that I was also the one to get us out of it.

“But… What makes you think I would put you in such danger?” Quince was grasping for a straw, something to hold on to. Something to make me change my mind, but I was determined enough to not cave for his tries. Besides…

“You’re going to be a father, Quince! And I’m not letting that little kiddo grow up without a father. And you’re not going to risk that either. It wouldn’t be fair against Bluebell or that little one.”

Quince lowered his head, I had most definitely hit his weak point. “At least promise to be careful, okay?”

I did start my own researchs. Or rather, we started our own researchs. There was no way I could do it without Sweets, not because I desperately craved her help, but because she wouldn’t let me do something that exciting on my own.

The first few steps were easy as we were in the “inner circle” where the murder had taken place. Quince told us it was two men who killed Affair. He didn’t exactly know who they were, but he knew that one of them was a teal berry and the other one was purple. He also thought that they were no more than a couple of years older than him. Those few steps had been easy, as had it been to question the berries we knew had been at The Blank Slate at the time. The thing was that those steps didn’t provide any more information than what Quince could give us.

So, after just a day, we were stuck. We didn’t know how to continue, especially not since the actual murder had taken place many years ago and every potential trace that could have been left on the crime scene was since long gone. We didn’t exactly work in a professional way, but we did what we could by mapping out all purple and teal male ‘bows in Fondant Fields. There were more than you would imagine, but still an amount that was actually possible to investigate within a decent amount of time.

The first approach was actually Sweet Corn’s idea. She wanted to see if any of them were real antagonists so she simply walked up to a few of them, trying to make conversation. Unfortunately for us, most berries were still having racist thoughts so we couldn’t exclude more than a few ‘bows that way. In our world, a ‘bow who cared top help us couldn’t be guilty of that one aweful crime.

After two weeks of investigating we had a list with names on potential offenders. It consisted of 12 names, mixed between purple and teal berries. Some of them were known to us, especially to mention the Sourz family, where two of the cousins were exactly teal and purple. Even though we tried not to, I must say they ended up on the top of our suspected list. The Sourz were known for being madly color racists and every kid born in that house was fueled the same thoughts with the breast milk. It was safe to say, they really hated us.

As if the family’s long-term political views wasn’t enough, they were also one of the most influental families in Fondant Fields. If they wished to keep the police of their back, all they had to do was say so. Their money pretty much ruled this town. Besides, momma Sourz was the secretary of Mayor Bloom. They were a powerful, rich and pure racist family, from who nothing good could come.

“Why don’t we just ask them?” Sweets said and sighed. Being stuck didn’t suit her person, she demanded action of life and she must have gone in to this whole thing thinking it would be an endless adventure of excitement and suspense.

“Because they won’t tell you the truth. They’re actually more likely to hurt you if you accuse them” I explained, as calm as always when it came to my sister. As much as I loved her, there were times when she really got on my nerves with her restlessness.

“Then what do we do?!”

“We wait, observe. Map out what happened, where people went after the shooting. We talk to the police, try to figure why they never cared.”

“Sounds boring!”

“Ye, but that’s because it’s smart.”

But Sweets was right, it was boring. We followed teal and purple berries around for a few days, without quite knowing what we were looking for. They went to work, shopping, fishing, partying just like any ordinary ‘bow. None of them really seemed to be potential killers. But then, two of them probably was and we never really observed any interaction between any of them and colorless ‘bows. Not other than when Sweets was asking for made up directions and we watched them all ignore her, one way or another.

Even I got bored eventually. I had never tried solving a crime before and I had no clue of what I was supposed to do. We took our retreat to The Blank Slate, where Quince offered comfort in form of drinks and encouraging words. And best of all, I could clear my thoughts by playing darts. I had recently discovered how much I enjoyed it, mostly because no one else ever played so I could be on my own, in the background. But also because it offered peace for my mind, a pause from everything else.

That’s not to say I was very good at it, ’cause I sure wasn’t. In fact, I was happy if the dart even hit the board. No matter, I enjoyed it and I couldn’t think of many other things that I enjoyed doing because it was fun to me, and not because someone else wanted me to do it.

“Uhm…” Someone cleared her throat behind me just as I was about to throw my last dart in this set and it made me lose focus so the dart flew in to the stone wall next to the board with a loud sound. I sighed, just my luck.

I turned around and saw Cinnamon standing there, scratching her head and blushing slightly. “So, I hear you’re researching too” she said and dropped her hand in front of her. Her body rocked back and forth and she actually seemed nervous.

“Mhm” I mumbled and went towards the dart board to pick up my darts for another set. I was still a bit frightened of her since she screamed at me that one time.

“Are you getting anywhere?”

“I thought that was a topic you’re not supposed to talk about in the open” I snapped, annoyed because she got to make her own rules in this matter.

“Well, there’s no one else close” she said and twisted her body. “I just… Maybe we could help each other out? Cooperate?

I stopped trying to play and turned around again. Even though she somewhat scared me, I knew we needed her help. Three brains would be better than two, besides, she probably had some ideas already and I just wanted the whole thing solved so I could go back to doing nothing with a clear consience again. “What made you change your mind?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. Guess you seem quite cool” she shrugged.

“You really think the Sourz did it?” she asked me a while later. I don’t know if she played darts with me because she felt like she had things to make up for, or if she actually liked it. But I must say, she had more talent than me.

“I don’t know. It seems possible. I mean, they do hate colorless. They always have.”

“But still, the most powerful family in Fondant Fields? Not even them could get away with murder!”

I laughed, “You’re forgetting that whoever did this actually did get away with murder. Easily.”

“I mean, they must have some kind of conscience. Even them.”

“You don’t think they did it?”

“Well, the thought crossed my mind. But I… Dunno. Do they have access to guns?”

“Doesn’t every privilegied family in this town do?”

WEd finished the game and Cinnamon pretty much humiliated me with several bulls-eyes. It was fun, though, and it felt like we had got a fresh start. We promised to meet again tomorrow, just to investigate the Sourz family even more. We wanted as much information as we could possibly gather, and our main goal was to find their passport pictures to show Quince. With some luck, he could tell us if they were the ones who had done it.