Case 024: Framed

Celest St. Claire's Notes

Hey,

As I mentioned in my note, I’m sure that my conclusions will match Sullivan’s. That being the case, if you’ve already asked him about these clues, you probably won’t learn anything new here.

If you do choose to use this site, you’ll still need to email Sullivan about the Location where Reid was murdered. You’ll also need to email him the case’s Solution once you’ve figured out who killed Reid. 

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-024 to send him your first email. When you want to address either of the issues above, just include the appropriate underlined word from above in the body of your email.

If you want to see my thoughts on any of the clues in your case file, just click the corresponding button below.

I’ve made some progress here, but I haven’t been able to make any coherent words out of the letters yet.

I’m pretty sure that what we need to do is to group the words on the list by color. I’m starting with the orange words, since the first word is orange. After that, next will be the purple words, followed by gray, turquoise, and then pink.

The problem is, when I group all of the orange words together in the order they appear on the list and then read the first letter of each item, it says “TSIH,” which doesn’t mean anything to me. If we want to make sense out of this, we’re going to need to figure out the correct order to arrange each color’s letters. The quantities beside each item might help with that.

I got it! After we group the words by color, the trick is to arrange them in order by their quantities, from least to greatest. When you do that with the orange words, you get:

“T – 1

H – 2

I – 3

S – 4”

Once I followed that pattern for each of the words, I got the message:

“This week’s keyword is popcorn.”

What kind of a movie theater needs a keyword? I wonder if Reid was involved with something he shouldn’t have been. If so, maybe that’s why someone killed him.

For now, it’s probably a good idea to write the message down. Something tells me that we might need the keyword later on.

It’s not much but, so far, I’ve decoded the first word. “QJHOJIO” spells “someone.”

There’s got to be an easier way to do this than to figure out what each letter stands for individually. Do you think the line that says “Start things off right with Marlowe” might be giving us some kind of hint about how to rearrange the alphabet so that we can read this?

I think I just figured it out!

“Start things off right with Marlowe” is telling us to begin the alphabet with “Marlowe” like this:

m a r l o w e b c d f g h i j k n p q s t u v x y z

That means M = A, A = B, R = C, and so on. When I used that alphabet to decode the letters, I got the message:

“Someone claiming to be a detective sent me a hidden message. If I die, it will tell you where I was murdered. Spell this week’s keyword with the top line of columns from first letters.”  

I feel like we’re really starting to make some progress now! If Reid knew that the door hanger was suspicious, I wonder why he didn’t just ignore it. I guess the only way to figure that out is to find the hidden message on Clue 3.

I think the door hanger might tell us where Reid met his killer – which is probably where he was murdered, too. Once you’ve figured out the location, let Sullivan know where he should check. If you haven’t already sent him an email, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-024. When you want to tell him where Reid was killed, be sure to include the word Location in the body of your email.

Clue 2’s message told us to use the first letter of each word in the “columns” on the front and back of the door hanger, right? If we do that, the trick will be to arrange them by using a keyword in the top row. When the columns are arranged correctly, we should be able to read the rest of the message.

One thing I should mention is that there might be a few extra columns on the door hanger that aren’t a part of the keyword. If there are, I think you can just ignore those columns.

I think I’m on to something.

Clue 1 gave us the keyword “popcorn,” didn’t it? When I spelled that out with the letters in the top row and rearranged the columns accordingly, I was able to read the message! Of course, it took me a couple of tries since there are 2 P’s and 2 O’s, but I was still able to work it out. The message says:

“I know what they make  you do. We  can stop them. Meet me at Monster  Tower.”

Wow, that sure is cryptic. Reid must have been involved with something – or someone – dangerous. Judging from this message, maybe he wanted Sullivan’s help getting out of whatever the situation was. Poor guy. I really feel bad for him. Even though we weren’t able to help him while he was alive, hopefully we can get justice for him now and clear Sully’s name.

The message mentions a place called “Monster Tower,” but I’ve never heard of it before. Still, I think that’s probably where he was murdered.

If you let Sullivan know that Reid met his murderer at “Monster Tower,” maybe he’ll know where that is. If you haven’t already sent him an email, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-024. When you do, make sure to include the word Location in the body of your email when you mention “Monster Tower” so that he knows what you’re talking about. With any luck, that should be enough for him to go off of.

So far, what I’ve realized is that the symbols on the poster match symbols drawn on several other documents. The poster’s symbol colors also match the colors of certain letters on the other documents.

I think that if we want to read this, we need to match the poster’s colored symbols to the appropriate letters on the documents.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that the documents in the case file have all of the symbols that we’ll need. Maybe, if we’re lucky, Reid will have left the remainder near wherever he was murdered.

If you haven’t already, let Sullivan know where Reid was killed once you’ve figured it out. When you do, hopefully he (or someone else) can check the area to see if they can find any other symbols. If you haven’t sent Sullivan an email yet, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-024. When you want to tell him where Reid was killed, be sure to include the word Location in the body of your email.

The missing symbols really are keeping me from figuring this one out.

So far, I’ve found symbols on Clue 1’s supply list, the back of Clue 2’s ad, the employee schedule, the “no cell phone” sign, and the back of the movie ticket.

I know that the way we’re supposed to make sense out of this is to find the letter next to the appropriate symbol that matches the symbol’s color on Clue 4’s poster. The problem is that, without the missing symbols, I can’t put the whole thing together.

Like I mentioned before, I’m holding out hope that Reid left the remaining symbols near wherever he was murdered. The only way to find them, however, is to figure out where that was and to let Sullivan know so that he can check the area out. I think Clue 3 should help us figure out where Reid was killed.

If you haven’t sent Sullivan an email yet, you can do so at www.SleuthKings.com/Case-024. When you want to tell him where Reid was killed, be sure to include the word Location in the body of your email.