Watchin' The Detective: A Mystery Dinner Romance

Watchin’ the Detective:

A Mystery Dinner Romance

By Louise Hathaway

Copyright Louise Hathaway 2014

Smashwords Edition

It would be so fun to go to one of those
murder mystery shows
, Isabella Forshey tells herself on her
morning walk to work. She read about one while eating breakfast and
drinking her first cup of coffee. It’s a beautiful spring day in
downtown Santa Ana, the heart and soul (according to some people)
of Orange County, California. The jacaranda trees are in their
purple splendor and petals are drifting down, blanketing the
streets and sidewalks. Isabella lives in the Washington Square
District of Santa Ana, an oasis of beautiful homes, many built in
the 1940’s, which are often showcased on home and garden tours.
She’s a librarian at the Santa Ana Public Library.

As she walks, she feels her thigh-high black
nylons—the ones she just bought at Victoria’s Secret—slipping down
her legs.
These are supposed to stay up on their own without
having to use a garter belt,
she tells herself in frustration,
as she awkwardly tries to hike them up while walking. When she gets
to the intersection of Flower and Civic Center and waits for the
traffic light to change, unhappy and confused jurors reporting to
the courthouse for their first day of jury service complain about
jury service to each other
. I don’t know what their problem is.
I loved serving on a jury. It was interesting and fun.

One of the jurors sees the id badge that
Isabella wears on a lanyard around her neck and says, “Do you work
around here?”

“Yes I do.”

“How far is it to the courthouse?”

“You are almost there. It’s only one more
block.”

“Is my car going to be safe in that parking
garage?”

“I hope so,” she responds.
How should I
know?

Someone else who’s waiting for the traffic
light to change asks her, “Where’s building 22?”

She answers, “I’m not really sure.”
What
am I? A guided tour director here?

“But I need to get there by 8:00. I have an
appointment. It’s important.”

“I hope you make it,” she responds.

“Why don’t you know where the building is? I
thought you worked around here.”

For heaven’s sake
s. She doesn’t
respond to the rude remark. The traffic light finally changes and
she and the crowd make their way across the street. The line going
into the courthouse stretches out for almost a block. Some of the
potential jurors walking with Isabella let out a collective groan
when they see the line. One of them asks her, “Is that the line for
the jurors?”

“Afraid so.”

“Why is it so long?”

“You all have to go through the metal
detector.”

One of the ladies complains, “I don’t like
doing that. It’s too much radiation.”

Isabella says, “It’s for your own safety. You
don’t want a crazy man to come in with a gun and start shooting
people, do you?”

The lady is taken aback and says, “Is it
dangerous around here?”

When are these people going to leave me
alone?

“Not in the daytime,” she answers and then
says, “Bye,” to the crowd she’s walking with. She tries to keep in
her “happy zone” and notices how pretty the Lilies of the Nile are
in front of the courthouse. She walks by a man hawking newspapers
the old-fashioned-Norman-Rockwell way, saying, “Kelly Thomas
verdict. Read all about it.”

There is a coffee cart called “Legal Grounds”
parked in front of the courthouse, and Isabella stops to order one
of their delicious Café Lattes.

The barista sees her and says, “Hello,
sweetie. Do you want your usual?”

“Yes, Joshua. But you’d better make it a
small. I’ve already had a lot of coffee at home.”

“Got it,” he says and starts brewing. “You’re
looking very beautiful today, Isabella.”

“Oh, thanks. I just kind of threw this outfit
together.”

“It looks good on you.”

“Well, I’ve put on a few pounds lately,” she
says, adjusting her skirt.

“You look great the way you are. I like your
curves.”

“Thanks,” she says, feeling a little
embarrassed.

He continues, “I like that you’ve finally let
your hair down. You usually have it tied up in that bun, like
you’re ashamed of it or something.”

“Always the charmer. Aren’t you, Joshua?”

“Oh, Isabella,” he complains. “You are
breaking my heart. When are you finally going to say that you’ll go
out with me?”

“Joshua, you know I’m about ten years older
than you are. I’m thirty-five, for heaven’s sake. We have nothing
in common.”

“Let me take you out. Anywhere you want. You
name it. Where could we go on a fun date together?”

I’m dying to go to that mystery dinner
theater; but I couldn’t use him like that. Or could I? Hmm…

There is a man standing in line in back of
her waiting to place his coffee order who says, “Would you two
hurry it up? There’s a whole line of people waiting back here, you
know.”

Isabella turns around and says, “Oh. I’m
sorry. I had no idea.”

The man tells her, “Just tell him you’ll to
go out with him, already; and stop dancing around.”

How embarrassing.
She tells Joshua,
“Okay. Yes. Let’s go out.”

The man in back of her says, “Finally.”

Joshua says, “Awesome!! You won’t regret it!!
I promise!!”

Feeling really self-conscious, Isabella grabs
her Latte and heads out towards the library, ready to begin her
work week, and hoping her thigh-highs don’t fall down to her ankles
as Joshua watches her walking away.

There is a line of people in front of the
library, waiting until the doors open at 9:00. Isabella walks up
toward the entrance and can see her coworker, Nicole, unlocking the
front door, letting everyone inside. The crowd surges forward
trying to get first dibs on the computers. Isabella practically
gets knocked down in their mad rush.

“Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth,” her
best friend, Nicole, tells her. The guys at the library refer to
Nicole as “the smokin’ hot one” and she is wearing a short leather
skirt that the guys will definitely be noticing. She is a
twenty-five year old daughter of a Korean couple who immigrated to
the United States in the 1950’s. Isabella joins her at the
reference desk and sets down her purse. The two friends watch as
the homeless people start coming inside, making themselves at home,
and ready to camp out there until the library closes at 10:00
PM.

Isabella whispers to her friend, “Don’t
libraries have any ‘regular people’ coming in anymore?” The two
librarians would love it if a patron came up and asked them if they
have any books on Renaissance painters or global warming. You know,
the good old-fashioned reference questions, like the ones “Merriam
the Librarian” was asked in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Instead, the
comments they usually get are, “The copier ate my quarter. I want
my money back.” Or “That homeless guy stinks. Kick him out of
here!”

The two librarians begin catching up on their
email.

Isabella tells her friend about the mystery
dinner theatre article she read in the paper. “Wouldn’t it be fun
to go? I read that it’s supposed to take place in the early 1960’s
on the French Riviera. Somebody gets murdered in the show, and the
audience has to try to figure out whodunit.”

Nicole, ever the fashionista, says, “We could
buy some long black gloves like Audrey Hepburn wore in ‘Breakfast
at Tiffany’s’ and wear them with a little black dress.”

Isabella says, “I can see you in that little
black dress for sure. You’d look so cute in it. You could get your
hair done in an updo and wear a tiara, like Audrey did.”

Her friend is really getting interested, now
that clothes are being discussed. She tells Isabella, “You could go
for the ‘Mad Men’ look. You’d be a perfect Joan.”

“You mean because of my big butt?”

“That’s not the only thing that big about
Joan’s body. Or yours.”

“Well, I think I could have some fun with
trying to look like the women in ‘Mad Men’. Hmm…”

Nicole says, “Oh…let’s do it. Let’s go!” She
starts Googling “Mad Men clothing” and sees that Banana Republic
has a whole line of clothes inspired by the TV show. They waste a
good part of their first hour of work looking at clothes on the
Internet, before their boss walks in. When they see her, they start
checking in books that were left overnight in the book drop.

“Good morning ladies,” their boss tells them
as she walks by on her way to her office, as they continue looking
industrious.

“Well, the party’s over,” Isabella tells her
friend. When she looks up from her computer, she notices that a lot
more people have come inside the library. It’s supposed to be a hot
day, so these folks are probably just looking for a place to cool
off.

A middle-aged lady who looks very angry
approaches the reference desk. She storms up to Isabella and says,
“There’s a man at the computers who’s looking at pornography!!”

Isabella secretly groans.
Men can be such
scumbags
. She stands up and follows the lady over to “the
culprit”. Isabella can’t see the computer screen from the vantage
point where she’s walking, but takes the lady’s word for it. She
whispers to the offender, “If you don’t stop looking at
pornography, you are going to have to leave.”

He answers, “I’m not look at
pornography!”

She puts her finger to her lip and shushes
him. “Keep your voice down,” she whispers. “We’ve been getting
complaints about you.”

“Who said?”

“It doesn’t matter. You are upsetting other
patrons.” She points to a sign on the wall which tells the rules
for using the library’s internet.

Getting very defensive, he says, “I was
looking up information on breast cancer. My wife has it. That’s the
only reason I was looking at breasts.”

Oh, boy. That’s a good one
. She tells
him, “I’m going to trust you right now to know the difference
between what a legitimate website is and what’s not. But if I get
any more complaints, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

She tries to trust him but can’t help
noticing that he’s spending a lot of time looking at her breasts.
She walks away, feeling like she needs to wash her hands or
something. She sits back down at the reference desk and tells
Nicole, “The next one’s yours.”

Fifteen minutes later, a very angry man
approaches them with an empty coffee pot.

“Hello, Bill,” Nicole says to the library’s
cataloger.

He says, “Why wasn’t any coffee made?! There
are all sorts of us here this morning who are in the coffee club,
and the first one to arrive is supposed to make coffee for everyone
else.”

“Don’t look at me,” Isabella says. “I bought
my coffee off the cart in front of the courthouse.”

“Well, you still should have made coffee for
everyone else when you got here.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

Nicole tries to butter him up and says,
“Bill, give me the coffee pot. I’ll go make you some coffee.”

He is putty in her hands and says, “Well, it
won’t be just for me, you know. It’ll be for everybody, too.”

“That’s right,” Nicole says, and winks at
Isabella as she goes off to the staff lounge to make coffee.

When she returns, Isabella says, “Is the
little boy happy now?”

“He is really grumpy today.”

“Who designated him ‘the coffee Nazi’?”

They both start laughing. One of the library
patrons comes up to them and says, “The toilets are overflowing and
there’s water all over the floor.”

“Good grief,” Isabella says. “What a day!”
She follows the lady into the bathroom, sees that it is indeed a
plumbing emergency. She puts some paper towels on the floor, writes
a sign saying, “Restroom Closed”, and calls the city facilities’
guys to request that a plumber be sent there as soon as
possible.

She walks to her boss’s office and reports
what happened.

Her boss asks her, “Did you put up the hazard
sign? Did you use a mop?”

“No. I didn’t use the mop, just paper
towels.”

“We have two mops in the janitor’s closet.
Ask Bill to help you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she tells her boss.

He isn’t going to like this,
she says
under her breath and goes off to find him.

After much grumbling, he follows her to the
restroom and they spend the next half hour mopping the floor until
the plumber finally arrives to fix the leak.

When Isabella returns to the Reference Desk,
she tells Nicole, “I hope the rest of the day isn’t going to be
like this.” She bends down to grab her purse on the floor and
searches for her cell phone.