House of Wax

THE OPENING SCENE

The Player Characters (PCs) have some sort of position as law officers, detectives or general security personnel. In the middle of the night, they receive a call from a Mr. Charles Rylings, co-owner of a gigantic wax museum. He reports that a security alarm has been tripped at his museum. A storm has cut the museum's main power, so the team has to bring their own lighting.

The PCs and Rylings rush over to find a grizzly sight: a wax figure called "The Strangler" is towering over a dead man in a night watchman's uniform. The PCs examine the man and find bruises and wax on his crushed neck. He also has a bruise on the back of his head. The dead watchman is sloppily dressed, with the buttons on his shirt in the wrong button holes. Rylings says he does not recognize the watchman, so he must be someone who was recently hired.

One of the PCs notices a candle on the floor. The candle is still warm.

THE INVESTIGATION

By talking with Rylings, and possibly doing their own investigation, the PCs learn the following details:

• Rylings is paranoid of banks and stocks. For this reason, he and a museum security guard named Leigh Wilkins installed a hidden safe that requires a key to open. That safe has been found, opened without any damage, and emptied.
• A woman named Susan Bartholomew is the other co-owner of the museum. She and Rylings are the only ones with keys to the safe, but Susan has never been shown where the safe is hidden. Susan lives out of town and has recently made an offer to sell part of her ownership to a business investor named Mr. Kline. Rylings has never met Mr. Kline.
• The museum is supervised during the day by a man named Chuck Tanner. Tanner is also responsible for most of the company's hiring.
• Rodrigue Belanse, a former day-time security guard, was recently laid off by Tanner, since the museum was overspending. Rodrigue was very upset, and has made open threats to ruin the museum.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Mr. Kline, the business investor, found out through Susan about Mr. Ryling's practice of keeping the museum's money in a hidden safe. He also found out that Susan had keys. He borrowed the keys from her with the intention of finding the safe and robbing it.

Since the main lighting had gone out, Kline lit a candle and used it to search the museum's office. Leigh Wilkins, who was handling security that night, found out what Kline was trying to do and knocked him cold with a blow to the back of the head. Leigh then took the keys and, having helped install the safe, knew exactly where to go to clean the thing out.

In an attempt to cause confusion, Leigh traded clothes with Kline and then dragged him to the gruesome "Strangler" wax figure. Leigh strangled Kline, and poured wax from Kline's candle onto Kline's neck. It was at this moment that Leigh heard the PCs enter the area, so he fled with the stolen money.

CLUES

These clues can help the PCs solve the crime:

• Mr. Rylings had never met Mr. Kline, which explains why he did not recognize the dead man.
• When Mr. Rylings could not recognize the corpse in the night watchman uniform, he assumed he was a new hire. But if the museum just barely laid off Rodrigue, they would not be hiring new security guards.
• The candle that was used to pour hot wax on the dead body's neck was still warm from having recently been lit. This should dispel the idea that the wax might be from the wax figure's strangling hands.
• Leigh was in such a hurry when he traded clothes with Mr. Kline that he did not button up the security uniform's shirt correctly.
• Leigh was the only one besides Mr. Rylings who knew exactly where the safe was hidden. (He helped install it.)
• Since the safe was undamaged, the correct keys were probably used.
• Ms. Bartholomew did have keys to the safe, but she didn't know where the safe was hidden. Even though Mr. Kline took the keys from her, she could not have told him where the safe was located.
• The victim's head was bruised from the initial blow that Leigh served.