Consistency

I knew I was getting close to cracking the case. I just needed to ask a few more questions to my main suspects.

First up was the victim's widow. She had the most obvious motive - she stood to inherit his fortune. Of course, I also didn't have a clear idea of whether she'd really cared for him or not, so I decided to just ask her how she felt about him. She said,

Let's never talk about One Direction again.

That was all I really needed to hear from Mrs. Direction. I excused myself and decided to look for the butler.

It was no secret that the victim had treated him horribly, but he hadn't been working there for long and had plenty of other job prospects. Why bother murdering his current employer when he could just quit? Had the abuse been that terrible?

So I decided to ask him if any of the victim's actions had been especially traumatizing for him. He shook his head and said,

Especially not when there are other boy bands to swoon over.

Another very informative answer. I took a note of it, left, and consulted my suspect list again.

The business partner was next. There were rumors he and the victim had been close. Real close. As in "secret homosexual relationship" close. Might have lead to a passionate argument or something.

I didn't have much evidence, but I figured I'd heard enough that it was worth flat-out asking if the rumors were true. He said,

Yeah, like 2gether!

I hadn't been expecting such an enthusiastic response, but of course it didn't directly implicate him as the murderer. Still, it was an important piece of the puzzle. I thanked him for his time.

At this point, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going on here, but I felt like I needed a second opinion. So I called in my assistant and showed him my suspect list, and asked if he thought it was exhaustive enough. He glanced over it, nodded, then suddenly declared,

Or Ein 4's Feld!

And I realized that was a possibility I'd completely overlooked. Feld, the neighbor who had made the call in the first place. How was it, exactly, that he was the first one who noticed the murder?

So I decided to pay a visit to Ein 4 next door and ask Mr. Feld how exactly he was informed of Mr. Direction's murder, to which he replied,

We're just having a conversation now.

And then it became clear. Feld was a self-proclaimed psychic, claiming that he and One were talking at that very moment. Maybe he was for real, maybe it was bunk and he'd gotten lucky and decided to make that call just after the murder.

Or maybe he'd done the deed himself in hopes of making his psychic act seem better. To clear things up, I asked Feld if Mr. Direction had any idea who murdered him. Feld concentrated for a few minutes, and then told me, speaking in Direction's voice,

So4mores in college

Unfortunately, even if that was meaningful, it didn't help. There wasn't a single person involved in this case who wasn't currently taking their sophomore year in college.

Then it struck me - he'd used the plural. Did that mean there was more than one murderer? I tried to ask for clarification, but at that moment a gunshot rang through the air and Feld collapsed, clasping a hand to his chest.

Maybe I was on to something after all. I tried to help Feld, but he only said

i heard that baskin robins has over 31 flavors of beer

and then he died. You'd think a psychic would have seen that coming.

I felt like I was getting further from the answers, not closer. At the same time, I felt like if I looked over all the clues I had, something would fall into place. Maybe I just needed to check something again.

But what was it? Evidence? Testimony? The basic facts of the case?

What was I going to look at?