Chapter Text
On the morning of Summer 1, a man named Reese Overland went swimming in the Gem Sea off of Pelican Town. Overland was a poor swimmer — there wasn't a single natural body of water in Zuzu City that was inhabitable for humans (not unless you wanted more eyes than you went in with) and a backyard pool was out of the Overlands' humble middle class budget, so he hadn't had all that much practice. But even so, he was giving it his very best effort, flopping and rolling about in the gentle waves like a pale, perishing porpoise. It was a sight to behold at a crisp 7:45am.
Reese Overland was only out that early to appease his wife, Pamela. They'd arrived with the rest of Reese's real estate group two days before, trying to beat the summer crowds. The highway to Pelican Town was still in the early stages of construction, after all, leaving a single, one lane road down to the beach town. They'd read the horror stories of the backups that lasted miles when preparing for the trip, and had talked Reese's company into starting their trip a few days early as a result.
The first two days of their vacation were perfectly normal. Pamela had gotten a base burn on the pool deck of their two star hotel on their very first day, which had quickly turned a painful pink that she swore was the beginning of her tan and didn't hurt at all. Reese had eaten his weight and then some in fresh crab legs on the company card, noting every time his wife winced and shifted in her chair with a barely suppressed grin.
Base tan, his ass.
On the second night, the wives and children — the latter of which Reese and Pamela had none — had gone to see a movie while the men went to the casino. Their respective trips culminated in the women making it to bed at a punctual 10:30pm and the men — specifically, Reese — staggering home at precisely 3:42am. Woken by the sharp ray of light from the hallway smacking her square in the eye and the stench of booze, having just fallen back asleep from her third bathroom trip of the night, Pamela was feeling particularly petty that morning.
So when the alarm clock on Reese's bedside had gone off at 6am, Pamela had slapped him squarely in the middle of the back and hauled him up and out of bed.
"Beach day!" she had declared cheerfully. "Come on honey, I want to beat the crowds and get a good spot! You know how they fill up so fast here."
Each word had landed like a sledgehammer in Reese's head, pounding in time with his hammering pulse. Sweaty and nauseous and still more than a little drunk, Reese had tried to talk his way out of the outing, but Pamela was not to be shaken. The glint in her eyes had said that she knew exactly what he had gotten up to the night before: namely, ignoring her — and his doctors' — warnings against excessive drinking for the sake of his flagging liver.
So tugging on too tight, horrendously orange board shorts at 6:45 after the world's least refreshing shower was his penance, trailing after his wife down to the beach like a sick puppy, begging to be put down and out of his misery. They were the only people visible on the pure white sand. Even the lifeguards stands were empty, still pulled back from the water and laid on their sides to discourage nighttime teenage use.
Pamela set up their towels and chairs and umbrella with military grade precision, staking their claim, then dropped her ass in a chair and shooed Reese away, book in hand. His ruddy face and hazy eyes were the last thing she wanted to see at that moment, her point made.
"Go on, dear. You first: tell me if it's warm enough."
Maybe that will sober him up, she thought privately.
And so Reese had stumbled into the water, the temperature already a pleasantly warm bathwater, even on the first day of summer. It hadn't done much to ease the hangover, but it was still better than hearing Pamela's endless quips and jabs. Floating on his back, struggling to keep his face above the water level, Reese closed his eyes and tried to relax.
This was, however, the worst thing he possibly could have done.
Because while Reese was generally perceived as dim-witted and simple by his friends and peers, he wasn't a complete idiot. He had a working sense of self-preservation on most days: certainly enough to know that he didn't want to collide with the gross, cloudy looking plastic bag floating towards him on the waves. Who knew where it had been? It might have drifted all the way down from those thugs in Gotoro, for all he knew.
But with his eyes closed, there was no way of seeing the bag before it collided with his shoulder, wrapping itself across his chest. And when the burning began, Reese realized that it was not, in fact, a plastic bag at all, but rather a jellyfish. What kind didn't particularly matter, just that it hurt like a bitch.
Pamela, truth be told, didn't even realize anything was wrong at first. The flailing and splashing was par for the course with Reese attempting to swim: it wasn't until he tumbled into a heap at the water's edge that she realized the gasping was not due to the fact that the only shape her husband was in was a circle, but rather coming with the tears streaming out of his eyes. His chest was a mass of red welts. The jellyfish was still stuck to him.
Hands protected in a beach towel, Pamela did her best to dislodge the barely sentient goo, shrieking the whole while, hoping the waves would wash away the clinging tentacles. When it was finally gone, Pamela wrapped Reese in that same towel and cradled him in her lap, subsequently rubbing more of the toxins into his skin. But Reese was already blubbering, so she never realized her mistake.
Thankfully, only a few minutes later, two lifeguards showed up with a first aid kit.
Later on, Pamela would realize that these were not your average lifeguards: at least, only one of them was. The man was tall and lanky. Surfer's build, golden bronze skin, beach blond hair sticking out at odd angles from a mullet… he looked like he lived on the beach. He greeted Pamela with a bright smile and an assurance that they'd fix her husband right up. The girl was the one that looked out of place. Pale as all get out — worse than Pamela had started before their trip — purple hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a face of piercings that was grimacing at the sand in her shoes. She looked like she couldn't give two shits about Reese, letting her partner do the talking.
After working over Reese for a few minutes, still smiling, the man said, "It looks like the jelly got him good. It's best if we take him to a real first aid station: we've got this great salve there that'll clear all this up in no time."
He and the girl were already hauling Reese up to his feet by the time Pamela started gathering their things, but the man waved her off. "You stay here. It'll only take a few minutes, really, it's nothing that serious! Happens all the time. I'll have him back to you in a jiffy."
"Yeah," Reese croaked weakly. "Stay here and work on your tan, dearest."
Reese was honestly more embarrassed than anything: the hit to his ego hurt just as much as the sting. He didn't like Pamela seeing him like this.
So, against her better judgment, Pamela settled back down onto her towel and picked her book back up, trying to find her place again and salvage the last of her peace.
Pamela Overland never saw her husband again.
At 10am sharp, realizing that her Reese had been gone for nearly two hours, Pamela went looking for those lifeguards, to no avail. There was no first aid station anywhere in sight. The lifeguards that were now setting up the watchtowers for the day claimed to not recognize the description of their colleagues that Pamela gave.
After walking nearly an entire mile of coastline with no success, Pamela decided to go to the police and file a missing persons report.
Pelican Town was still small enough that the police station was simply the mayor's house, the mayor doubling as the single deputy. When Pamela conveyed her husband's hangover and how much of a lousy swimmer he was, the mayor had given her a placating smile and suggested that he must have tried to go back into the water and run into some trouble. But, not to worry, he'd let the lifeguards know to keep an eye out. The door was then promptly closed in Pamela Overland's face.
The case of Reese Overland was not given top priority among the authorities of Pelican Town, where all hands were on deck dealing with much more catastrophic things than a drunken tourist missing in the sea. He'd likely turn up eventually with some girl young enough to be his daughter, red as a lobster: they'd watched the same scene play out over and over again for years.
Mayor Lewis and his top advisor, Morris Tod, were instead consumed with establishing the whereabouts of J.J. Carper, one of the most important persons in all of Pelican Town — or rather, the place that Pelican Town had become — who had failed to show up at his office that morning. It was the first day of summer, which marked the beginning of the most important season of the year in Pelican Town: tourist season. The thought that Carper would suddenly take a sick day without calling was near laughable in its absurdity. Every available person even adjacently connected to the mayor's office was out shaking trees across Pelican Town, hunting for Carper.
When it became clear that they were too preoccupied to launch a manhunt for her husband, Pamela mobilized the realtors. They invaded the beach in a pack, some on foot, some on rental bikes with fat tires meant to ride on the sand. They swept up and down the beach, questioning every soul they came across, accosting every lifeguard until they were collectively asked to leave, or else.
But they were thorough, and they got results: Pamela broke down into tears when she heard the news.
They had found Reese's orange shorts on the beach, at the water's edge.
So he really drowned, Pamela thought, the big nut.
Later that day, the realtors gathered for an impromptu prayer at the town's Shrine to Yoba. Located within a rundown shop, the local man running the place had only begrudgingly let them in when they turned up just before closing time. He attempted to sell them on his wares, but the realtors were hearing none of it. They'd just lost one of their own to a watery grave, had he no shame?
Nobody could have dreamed of what actually had happened to Reese Overland. But that was just the beginning.
—
They found J.J. Carper that same day, a few hours before the realtors had turned up at Pierre's General Store. It had turned into a beautiful beach day: Pamela had had the right idea after all, staking an early claim to their spot on the sand. The beach parking lots were full by 10:30, the marina lot not far behind.
A cool breeze sweeping in from the snow-capped peaks of the Stardew Mountains had kicked up a light chop on the Gem Sea: nothing unmanageable, so long as you were in something bigger than a jon boat. The occasional whitecaps and rolling waves were, however, more than enough to obscure the suitcase floating in the middle of the channel, half submerged and bobbing in and out of sight. It was all but invisible to the teenager forging out ahead of his friends on a rental jet ski, twisted in his seat to call back a taunt that was immediately lost on the breeze. He was skimming along at forty knots when he hit the suitcase, stopping the jet ski in place and launching him over the handlebars in a spectacular triple front flip.
His friends wheeled back around and hauled him out of the water, where they offered their congratulations on the sick trick. They delivered him to his jet ski — which was no worse for wear — and then doubled back for the suitcase. It took all three of the boys to haul it aboard one of the jet skis: they figured it had to be stuffed with gold, drugs, or — hopefully — both.
A jet skier got a screwdriver from the toolbox fastened to the back of each rental for emergencies and chiseled at the lock on the suitcase excitedly. "Let's see what's inside!"
And there, folded up like the Sunday newspaper, was J.J. Carper.
"A dead little person!" one of the girls gasped, covering her mouth in horror.
"That's not a little person. That's… oh Yoba, I'm going to be sick."
"We've gotta get the cops. Come on, help me shut this damn thing."
But the proverbial Pandora's box had been opened, and Carper was already beginning to swell. The suitcase wouldn't close, and the latches were broken anyway. So, all the way back to the marina, both of the girls clung to the jet ski's seat and sat on the luggage to keep the dead little person inside, gagging the whole time.
—
An ambulance had stopped in Pelican Town on the way back to Grampleton to get lunch after a medical transport to Zuzu City. It was those two unlucky paramedics that got the privilege of delivering the red, hard-sided suitcase to the town doctor at the urgent care, under Mayor Lewis' instructions. Lewis had jotted down a statement from the jet skiers, taken one peek into the suitcase, and promptly ordered it to be shut and loaded up immediately. Thankfully, the paramedics had a ratchet strap aboard that they'd stolen from a firetruck, which they used in place of the broken latches.
One of the paramedics walked the ratchet strapped suitcase into the urgent care as if nothing was wrong. "Is this the bag check?" he asked the girl at the front desk, who's eyes went wide behind her glasses.
"Dr. Harvey!" she called. This was far above her pay grade.
The suitcase was taken to the operating room that doubled as the morgue and placed on a shiny steel table. Dr. Harvey Allen, the chief medical examiner, lead doctor, and only person with a medical degree that permanently lived in the town, recognized J.J. Carper immediately.
With a grimace, Dr. Harvey offered the ratchet strap back to the paramedic, who put his hands up and took several steps back. Harvey threw it in the trash instead.
"The first thing we have to do," he declared, taking a steadying breath, "is get him out of there."
"We?" the paramedic repeated. "Fuck that. I'm out of here."
Whoever had murdered the president of the Pelican Town Chamber of Commerce had gone through considerable trouble to pack him into the red suitcase. J.J. was only five foot five on a good day, but carried a considerable amount of girth around the midsection. To have squeezed him into a suitcase, even a spacious one such as this, was a feat that drew reluctant admiration from both Harvey and his nurse/secretary/assistant, Maru. She took photographs of each step of the extraction, using two entire rolls of film in the process.
When the corpse was finally removed and spread out, more or less, the amazement at the squeeze was dissolved. Carper's legs were missing below the kneecaps, explaining how the killer had fit him into the suitcase.
"What are those clothes?" Maru asked, lowering her camera and frowning.
J.J. Carper was well known among the locals of Pelican Town as one of the year-round transplants. All things considered, he was one of the better ones. Generally jolly, he was a chronic penny pincher with a penchant for seafood and pretty women, but remained overall harmless. He'd propositioned Maru several times over the years, though she'd yet to accept — and now never would. But the most memorable thing about Carper was the way that he dressed.
He favored tweed, sweltering in the summer heat but standing by his terrible fashion decisions all the same. Maru didn't think she'd ever seen him without a waistcoat straining at its buttons, but she'd certainly never seen him in an obnoxious tropical button down. Swimming trunks and cheap, dollar store sunglasses rounded out the picture, depicting him as nothing more than a Zuzu tourist leaning too hard into the beach vibes on their vacation.
The autopsy took two hours and thirty seven minutes, in which Dr. Harvey diligently recorded a quarry of kidney stones, thirty ounces of partially digested shrimp, and a BAC of 0.07%. He did not record any bullet holes, stab wounds, nor any other signs of trauma — besides the amputations, of course — because there weren't any to be found.
"He must've died from blood loss, then," Maru surmised, pulling off her gloves.
"I don't know about that…" Harvey hummed, brow furrowed.
"Drowned, then."
"No water in the lungs. He was already dead when he went into that suitcase."
"Then… what? And why does it smell like coconuts in here?"
Dr. Harvey didn't find a cause of death in any obvious place, because it was not one that anyone could possibly dream up. It came in the form of a small rubber toy, lodged in the trachea. Purple and supple, Harvey thought it was a chunk of food at first. But, upon closer inspection and subsequent extraction, he found that he was very far off.
It was a toy Stardrop, like the ones you could purchase at any roadside gas station across the entirety of Stardew Valley. The orange tag was still attached, proclaiming the egregiously criminal price of 199g.
J.J. Carper, the president of the most profitable chamber of commerce in all of Stardew Valley, had choked to death on a rubber Stardrop.
"Well, at least I'll have a good story for next season's convention," Harvey muttered, holding the danging toy by its stem.
Maru's flash clicked one more time.