Let the chips fall (by Heather)

You and a friend break into your neighbourhood swim club late one night to go for an after-hours dip. While splashing around in the pool, you go into shock when a dead body floats to the top. Worse yet—it's someone you know.

Bryan reached for Chet’s shoulder and leaned against it, panting. The swimming pool glimmered in the darkness ahead, gently roiling and reflecting light from the street lights outside.

“Well, that was a blast,” he puffed. He looked back at the chain mail fence they’d just climbed, with the dark shadow at the top where Chet had heaved a car mat to ease their crossing. The old friends grinned at each other. In the distance they could hear the loud laughter and music of their 25th high school reunion.

Bryan chortled. It had been a while since he had done anything as physical as that scramble up the fence, the swing across the top and the erratic slide and drop getting down again. As a matter of fact, it had been an even 25 years since he’d tried that particular trick. He and Chet had done this climb fairly regularly on hot summer nights during their high school years (often in those days with Marlese, who was a crackerjack swimmer and on her way into a short-lived marriage with Bryan). Back in the big gym, hot and sweaty and feeling claustrophobic with Marlese and her despised current husband Marcus around the place -- well, it had seemed like a good idea to renew the old practice.

It hadn’t taken much to get Chet out of the gym and to the pool. “Over the wall,” they’d shouted, sounding the old battle-cry, “and let the chips fall where they may!”

He could hear Chet’s chuckle in the darkness. “Well, I can tell you we’re going OUT the front door when we leave! But first, the reward for our effort!” With a whoop and a holler, both men peeled off their clothing, found their way to the pool’s edge and dived in with robust splashes.

The water felt wonderful. Bryan exploded to the surface with a gasp. “Race you to the end,” he shouted, and the battle was on. Compared with Chet he was badly out of shape; nonethless, he put his heart into it and went hell bent for leather.

…So it was a shock when, about half way down the length of the pool, he collided hard into something. He stopped and felt about him, expecting to find a large flotation device of some kind, but instead fingering what seemed to be a head and shoulder. He sputtered upright. “Chet?” he queried. But he could hear Chet shouting triumphantly from the end of the pool. With an increasing sense of panic, he pushed at the object, becoming more and more convinced it was a floating body. “Chet, come here,” he shouted.

Chet side-stroked his way back to where Bryan tread water.

“Holy shit. Maybe he’s still alive, let’s get him to the edge.”

Together, they hauled the body to the edge of the pool and shoved it up onto the side. “I’ll get the light,” Bryan said, dashing to the entrance where he felt around for the switch and flooded the place with light.

Blinking, he returned to the side of the pool where the crumpled, dripping, fully-clothed body lay. Wordless, he and Chet grabbed the body and flipped it over.

“HOLY SHIT!” they both exclaimed in unison.

“Marcus,” Bryan breathed.

“Marcus Lavinski,” Chet whispered beside him.

The two men looked at each other in the glare of the florescent lighting.

Marcus Lavinski, the husband of Bryan’s ex-wife, possibly the most hated man in Bryan’s life.

Marcus Lavinski, the developer who was in the process of screwing Chet out of almost a million dollars in an unhappy real estate deal.

“Christ almighty,” Chet coughed, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Laugh because of the fucking irony of our discovering him HERE in the exact condition we’d have both loved to find him in….”

“…Or cry because we’re quite possibly looking at Murder One,” supplied Chet.

They glanced at each other and edged back from the body.

“Maybe we should just get the hell out of here,” Chet said.

“This is going to become a crime scene. Our fingerprints are all over the place; my car mat is still hanging over the fence, for chrissake.”

Wordlessly, they pulled their clothing back on.

“Jeez, Chet, what are we going to do?”

“How’d he GET here? What the fuck is he DOING here?” Chet exploded. “We saw him at the reunion; we saw him leave with Marlese, what, an hour or so ago? He looked all too alive then.”

At that moment, Bryan noticed a glitter of something at the edge of the pool. While Chet struggled with his belt, Bryan studied the object. An earring.

Flashback: Marlese had come over; they had had a few words of cordial conversation; he had noticed the exact partner of this earring glinting in her ear. He'd also noticed a peculiar glint in her eye when Marcus had cruised up and summoned her.

He scooped up the earring and stuck it into his pocket. “We’re going to stay here and call the police,” he said. “And then we let the chips fall where they may.”