“Your mustache is all crooked,” he said with a smile, reaching up to straighten it on my face. Oh great, his fingers just accidentally brushed my lips. I was practically salivating in the hallway with a random cook looking on.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I? You really shouldn’t just stand behind that door. That’s a safety hazard,” the cook said, starting to ramble on like I was a complete idiot for idling behind a swinging metal door.
I shook my head clear of thoughts about sexing Sawyer in the hallway and turned to the chef.
“We were on our way into the kitchen for the murder mystery game,” I explained.
The chef glanced over our costumes, as if seeing them for the first time. Before that moment, he probably just thought I was a girl wearing a mouse ears, aviators, and a fake mustache for fun.
“Oh, right, right. You can go on in, just don’t get in anyone’s way,” he warned before stepping around us to deliver the platter of food that he was carrying.
I watched him walk away for another second before Sawyer pressed his hand to my lower back and gently nudged me forward.
“Let’s go, Detective,” he said.
The sounds coming from the kitchen made me assume that it was packed inside, but when we stepped in, it looked like most of the staff had gone home for the day, probably to celebrate Halloween with their families. The kitchen was large and industrial with clean, metal surfaces and a few oversized refrigerators. Along the back wall there was a massive assembly line of dishes being run through a machine to wash and dry them. A man stood at the very end overseeing the process. He nodded his head in greeting at us before going back to his task.
“Where should we look?” I asked, continuing to glance around the space. Shouldn’t the clue have been obvious considering we weren’t actual detectives and this was just a game? I wanted to ask one of the men in the kitchen, but the man had warned us to stay out of everyone’s way.
“You take that half,” Sawyer said, pointing toward the industrial washer. “And I’ll take this half.”
Before he could even finish his instructions, my eyes landed on a large knife block sitting in one corner of the kitchen. It held dozens of kitchen knives, but there was one slot notoriously empty at the very bottom of the block.
“Ah-hah!” I said, pointing toward it, at once proud of myself for being an actual sleuth, but also concerned that George had incorporated an actual knife into our murder mystery game.
“What is it?” Sawyer asked, his gaze following my outstretched finger.
I didn’t bother responding. I headed toward the knife block like a detective on the trail. Which I guess I actually was. Hah.
From across the kitchen I’d only seen the knife block and the empty slot, but as I stepped closer to the chromed surface, I noticed a folded note stuck beneath the heavy wooden block. I twisted around, unsure of whether or not the letter belonged to a staff member in the kitchen or if I had actually found another clue for the murder mystery game.
“Do you think we should touch it?” Sawyer asked from behind me. I jumped at his voice, not realizing how close he was to me. When I glanced over my shoulder, our mouths were only a few inches away from one another and my shoulder hit his chest.
“I think it’s our next clue,” I said, feeling more confident about it once I peered back around and saw that the handwriting on the front looked like George’s.
Sawyer reached forward and tilted the block back so that I could slide the letter out.
I read it aloud as Sawyer searched around the area for any more clues.
“Dear Mrs. Fitzgerald,
I am very busy with clients for the next few days, but I do have a few spare moments to help you update your will. However, I will need you to come down to my office at your earliest convenience, as you will need to sign off on the changes you requested in person.
Sincerely,
Jerry P. Lane, Esq.
Office 113”
I flipped the note over, looking for more hints, but the back of the paper was blank.
“Who is Jerry P. Lane?” Sawyer asked, resting his hip against the chrome countertop after concluding his search for more clues. The letter was the only thing we had to go on.
“I don’t know, but he’s a lawyer and he was going to update Gwyneth’s will. Maybe the will had something to do with her murder.”
Sawyer’s lips split into a shit-eating grin. “Of course it does. I think every murder ever has had to do with a will.”
I laughed and shook my head, rereading the letter once more.
“Where should we go next?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “We can either go back to the room and tell everyone what we found, or we can try and find office 113.”
Office 113. I liked that idea. It meant I got more alone time with Sawyer, and I also didn’t have to stare at Sandy in a Catwoman outfit any longer than necessary.
“Okay. George might have just meant the office at Paradise Springs, so we can head there,” I said.
Sawyer nodded and put his hand on my lower back again to guide me toward the kitchen door.
“We make a good team,” he said with a confident tone.
I tried to concentrate on walking through the door to the kitchen without having the metal chrome smack me in the face, but there was a question nagging me, and before I thought better of it, I decided to bring up the subject while I was feeling ballsy.
“So, Anne told me you and your girlfriend broke up?” The second the question was out, I instantly paled. Could I have asked that in a smoother way? Or should I have just kept my mouth shut? We weren’t on a date, or even hanging out as friends. No, instead we were walking around a nursing home solving a pretend murder. Oh wait, I’m sorry, retirement community.
Sawyer’s face twisted into a funny expression before he answered. “Does my grandma blab about my love life to everyone?”
“No! She’s not like, ‘Hey everyone, Sawyer is single and ready to mingle.’ She and I just talk a lot,” I shrugged, trying to play it cool.
Sawyer laughed. “Ah, well she always talks about you to me, so I figured it probably worked both ways.”
I smiled, imagining all of the insane things Anne probably told Sawyer about me.
“But yes, I’m single,” he added as we turned down the corridor that led to the main office for Paradise Springs. It would probably be locked since it was after hours, but maybe there was something waiting for us on the door. “What about you?”
My heart stopped. “Me?”
He nudged my shoulder, playfully. “Yeah, are you seeing anyone? My grandma never gives me any details when I ask about you.”
My heart stopped again. Am I dead?
“You ask Anne about me?”
“You’re really good at answering questions with more questions,” he laughed, his eyes locked on me for a moment before they drifted to something behind my head and his brows tugged together.
I spun around to see what he was looking at, and that’s when I saw a small piece of paper taped to a janitor’s closet. On it, someone had scribbled “Office 113”.
***
The hallway surrounding the janitor’s closet was dead quiet. The normal sounds that accompanied life at Paradise Springs were absent.
“Why does it feel like an actual murder has happened?” I asked, stepping up to the brass-handled door, suddenly too nervous to open it.
“Are you scared?” Sawyer asked, stepping beside me to reach for the handle so that our arms brushed together. Goosebumps bloomed across my skin as I nodded.
“A little. George is a bit out there, and I have no clue how serious he took this whole game,” I admitted. “I feel like something is going to jump out at me as soon as we open the door.”
Sawyer took a pretend puff of his pipe, studying the door. “I’ll check it out first then.”
His tone was confident, as if he was taking the game as seriously as I was.
“Step back, Detecti
ve,” he said, the slight upturn of his mouth pulling him out of character.
When he turned the handle and pulled open the door, the small space was pitch black. The scent of cleaning products and cardboard storage boxes stung my nostrils as he pulled the door open even wider.
I reached out to touch his shoulder just before he stepped inside. He turned to look back at me, his green eyes catching hold of mine.
“Be careful,” I mocked in the same tone a wife would use when she sent her husband off to war.
Sawyer dipped his head and stepped inside, his shoes hitting the tiled floor with a soft clap. He dipped out of site for a moment, and then his head popped back into view when he pulled the long cord to turn on the overhead light.
“Oh,” I sighed, a bit disappointed with the contents surrounding him.
Brooms and buckets and boxes were piled up high in the corner. Not a decaying dead body or a spooky ghost like I’d been anticipating.
Sawyer turned in a circle, inspecting his surroundings, before his eyes fell to something at his feet. He squatted down to grab it and I leaned forward, trying to see what it was. When he stood back up, he had a piece of silky material in one hand and what I recognized to be a tube of lipstick in the other. I reached forward for the tube, opening up the lid to see a bright red color. When I glanced back to Sawyer, he’d unfolded the silky material and was holding it between his thumb and pointer finger with both hands.
“Oh my god.”
It was a banana hammock, a bright yellow banana hammock, and when our eyes met on top of the material, we both completely lost it in a fit of hysterics.
“Don’t touch it! What if that isn’t even a clue and you’re just touching some random janitor’s underwear!” By that point I was practically on the ground laughing so hard. Sawyer instantly dropped the material and it fell the ground, still splayed out enough for me to read what was on the front: Sexy Thang. Yes it said “thang” as in “thing”, but with an A instead of a I. Oh boy, I really hoped it was a clue for our murder mystery game or I wouldn’t be able to make contact with any of the janitors for a few months at the very least.
“You still have your gloves on,” Sawyer pointed out. “You carry the underwear back and I’ll take the lipstick.”
I groaned, but reached down for the thong anyway.
“What if it belongs to George,” Sawyer asked, making the disturbing images playing in my mind even more disgusting than before.
“No! Stop,” I groaned, closing my eyes as if that would help.
Sawyer laughed, enjoying my misery far too much.
***
We were almost back to the room when Sawyer glanced over to me. “You never answered my question from earlier,” he pointed out.
“What question?” I asked, even though I knew what question he was referring to.
“Are you single? Or are you seeing someone?”
I blew out a puff of air and decided to give him a straight answer. “Single. Super single. I don’t think people get more single than me. Your grandmother is my best friend and the last person she tried to set me up with was forty years older than me and was getting fitted for dentures.”
Sawyer burst out laughing, forcing me to crack a smile. If I couldn’t laugh at my sorry excuse for a dating life, then who could? Oh right, everyone.
“Well, once you solve this case, you’ll have people banging down your door for dates.”
I rolled my eyes playfully. “Yeah, but no one will be able to understand my life as a detective. They’ll want to pin me down and force me to start a family. They won’t understand my craving to get out there and clean up the streets.”
Sawyer nodded. “Ah, yes. The life of a detective.”
“I didn’t choose the detective life. The detective life chose me.”
His smile widened. “Maybe when you get tired of the grind, you can come see me.”
We were skirting toward dangerous territory, and I wasn’t sure where our jokes ended and our true feelings began.
“You’re too young to wait for me. You deserve to have someone who can be there for you now,” I mocked with a serious tone.
“Don’t you tell me what I need,” Sawyer quipped.
I couldn’t keep it together after that. I cracked up and shook my head as we turned the corner into the dining hall.
“Finally!” George called.
“There you guys are,” Anne sang.
“We’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for you guys,” Sandy groaned, still sitting on the floor, but looking less like a corpse than she had when we’d left.
Everyone was talking over one another as we walked in, clearly annoyed with how long we’d been gone.
“I’m sorry! We were on the trail and we couldn’t stop. But we found some clues,” I said, gesturing to Sawyer to lay them down on the table in the front of the room.
In a perfect row they all sat there together: the bloody knife, the letter from the lawyer about the will, the tube of red lipstick, and the awesomely out-of-place banana hammock.
“What? What is this thing on the end? It looks like a headband or something,” Anne said, reaching down to pick it up and already aiming it for her head.
“No!” I yelled, stepping forward to yank it out of her hand. “Anne, that goes on someone’s butt. It’s underwear.”
Her eyes grew two sizes as she realized her mistake. Sawyer couldn’t stop laughing for a solid minute.
“There’s still something missing,” I said as I strolled up and down the table, eyeing the evidence and mulling it all over in my head. Someone wanted Gwyneth dead so that they could reap the benefits of her will, but who? I ran through the evidence in my head again.
“Yeah, I have nothing,” I said, throwing up my hands in defeat and turning around to look around the room. No one else seemed to know what was going on either, and a part of me, a very big part, suspected that maybe George hadn’t actually made it so the case could be solved anyway. He probably just wanted to lead us on a wild goose chase to teach us the art of acting or some bullshit like that.
“Has she had that purse the whole time?” Sawyer asked, drawing my attention over to Sandy, aka Gwyneth, who was still sitting on the floor. Directly next to her there was a small brown leather purse. I’d noticed it earlier, but I hadn’t realized that it was part of the game. I thought she’d just brought her purse with her.
I glanced over to George to see his eyes light up, and I knew that Sawyer was on the right track.
“Get the purse!” I shouted dramatically. Sawyer grabbed it and flipped it open as I watched over his shoulder. The only thing inside was a small folded piece of paper. The contents of which were the final clue we needed to solve the mystery.
The letter inside of Gwyneth’s purse was short and straight to the point.
“Dear Mrs. Fitzgerald,
Per your request and signature, we’ve adjusted the funds in your will. Ms. Izzie Jenkins will now be the sole heir to your fortune effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Jerry P. Lane, Esq.”
“Oh my god! Gertie you are such a hussie! Or rather, your character is,” I said, pointing to the older woman who was wearing a sly smile. Our suspicions were confirmed even more when we saw that Gertie was wearing bright red lipstick in the exact shade that we’d found inside of the lawyer’s office, aka the janitor’s closet.
But still, the underwear didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the evidence.
Not until I ran through the character cards again inside of our packets.
Antonio Ricardo: Hannah Fitzpatrick’s lover. He’s a Latin underwear model currently between jobs.
“Latin underwear model!” I read aloud, watching as Sawyer connected the pieces at the precise moment I did. “They were in on it together!”
Gertie threw her head back dramatically and rested the back of her hand on her forehead like a bad soap opera actress. Her maid’s outfit only made her appearance even better.
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“You have no proof!” Gertie protested with a dramatic flare. “Antonio is my lover, not Hannah’s and we’re going to run away together! There’s nothing you can do to stop us!”
“That’s what you think.”
I reached into my packet to pull out the very last item: a pair of plastic handcuffs. I circled one around Mr. Tennon’s wrist (Antonio Ricardo) and one around Gertie’s wrist (Izzie Jenkins).
“You have the right to remain silent, anything you say, can and will be used against you in the court of law.” I paused and looked up at Sawyer. “Is that how it goes? I really want to sound like a detective.”
He laughed, pretending to puff on his pipe. “I honestly don’t know, but we solved the murder and I think it’s time to celebrate.”
***
After we took a group picture with big cheesy grins, everyone stuffed their props back into the packets and headed toward a table of refreshments set up along the back wall of the dining room. There was lemonade and coffee on one side and little finger sandwiches, cookies, and bite sized candy on the other.
I tossed a few things on my plate and then went to sit down, ravenous from all of my detective work.
I didn’t notice Sawyer approaching me until he sat down across from me at the table.
When I glanced up, he feigned shock. “You were a girl this entire time?!”
I laughed and shook my head as if he were ridiculous. Which he kind of was. “I know. It’s scary how well I can pull off looking like a dude.”
He winked and then took a bite of his cookie, and by bite, I mean he ate half the cookie and then wolfed down the other half immediately after. I would eat cookies like that too if I could have gotten away with it. Sandy would have called me a lesbian if I ate that quickly. Which made me think, Sandy probably didn’t even know the definition of a lesbian.
“So are you going to head to that party of yours soon, Sawyer?” Anne asked as she sat down on the empty seat beside me at the table.
I purposely kept my eyes trained on my plate while he answered. He would have seen the hope in my sad, non-aviatored eyes.
“Um, actually, I thought I’d hang out here for a little while longer. I wasn’t really looking forward to that party anyway.”