The Penthouse Clue

Mochi dozed off on the bus ride home. The moment she stepped into her apartment, though, energy surged back into her body like a second wind.

“Alright,” she said aloud, dropping her bag by the door and laying out the three evidence pouches on her kitchen table. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

She decided to start with the simplest one: the monogrammed handkerchief.

“Who even uses these anymore?” she muttered, holding it up. The delicate stitching read M.M. in blue thread. “Maybe the old-school vibe will help narrow it down.”

She Googled monogramming services for handkerchiefs, assuming it would lead her to a boutique tailor or upscale store. To her surprise, only two physical stores in all of North America still specialized in that service. Most listings were online retailers.

She called both brick-and-mortar stores first. The first one politely refused to share customer information. The second clerk, more casual, offered a little more.

“Don’t think we’ve had any ‘M.M.’s lately,” he said. “Not many people order these anymore.”

Dead end.
She searched through a few online stores next, trying to match fonts or stitching patterns, but came up empty.

Fine, she thought. I’ll come back to it.

Next up: the name.

She typed “Peter Radcliff” into Google.

The top hit was Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, a British physician-scientist and Nobel Prize winner.

“Well, that’s definitely not the guy staying in a blood-soaked penthouse.”

Other than that? Nothing. No social media, no articles, no local listings. It was as if the name didn’t exist outside that hotel booking.

“That’s weird,” she said aloud. “Too weird.”

She moved on to the third clue: the torn piece of letter from the trash.
She pulled it from the evidence pouch and smoothed it across the table.

“…meet you soon with my money, darling.”

There was no name or signature, but the corner of the paper bore a faint watermark. She took a picture of it and enhanced the contrast on her phone. A logo appeared—three lowercase words inside a grid:
what3words

She blinked. “Wait… like the app?”

She Googled it.

what3words turned out to be a geolocation service. It divides the entire world into three-meter squares and assigns each square a unique three-word combination as its address. She’d never used it, but she remembered hearing about it somewhere.

She checked the company’s website—only one physical office listed. London, UK.

She hesitated, then opened the WhatsApp number provided under their “Contact Us” page. Worth a shot.

The line rang three times before someone picked up.

“Hi—um, sorry for the random message,” she said quickly. “Do you have any employees by the name Peter Radcliff? Or maybe someone with the initials M.M.?”

There was a pause, then a clipped response:
“I’m afraid we can’t provide any personnel details.”

“Right, of course. Sorry. One more thing—do you have any offices in North America?”

“No. Only our UK location. Thank you.”
Click.

She set her phone down. “Okay… another dead end.”

One clue left. The strange note she found in the office.

She retrieved it, unfolded it, and laid it flat.

She read it again.

“The whole sentence sounds like something from a poetry class,” she murmured. “But it doesn’t mean anything.”

Still, something caught her eye. Several words were written in different colors, with numbers beneath them. The rest were plain.

She grabbed a pen and started jotting down what matched:

Red words:

1. empires
2. Stewing
3. Pencils

Green words:

4. Postures
5. Ladybug
6. Bedclothes

That couldn’t be random.

“What if the colors are groupings?” she whispered. “And the numbers are the order?”

She rearranged the red words first:
Empires. Stewing. Pencils.

Then the green ones:
Postures. Ladybug. Bedclothes.

“They still don’t mean anything… unless…” Her eyes widened. “Unless they’re locations.”

She grabbed her phone and opened the what3words app.

She typed in:

empires.stewing.pencils

A location popped up on the map.

It was real.

Her heart thudded once.

She typed in the second set:

postures.ladybug.bedclothes

Another location.

Another real place.

“Oh my god.”

Just as she was about to investigate further, a knock echoed through the apartment.

She froze.

Her eyes flicked to the clock. Too early for Lai. Way too early.
She wasn’t expecting anyone. She didn’t have packages coming.
She barely spoke to her neighbors.

Another knock.

Her pulse spiked.

Was this related to the room? To the clues? Did someone know she’d been investigating?

She stepped back from the table, her breath suddenly short.

And waited.