“We’ll see,” I said, moving out of the street so that I didn’t get hit by a car before the date even started, which would absolutely be my luck.
“You wore purple,” he said, nodding toward my dress and the cluster of orchid blossoms on a single stem, pinned above my ear. I’d stolen it from a large potted orchid my grandmother never in a million years would let me touch. Cutting it was a small rebellion. Daniel opened the diagonal zipper on his thin leather jacket to expose a short-sleeve shirt—typical Northwest flannel, except it was dark purple and black. “See?” he said. “We match perfectly.”
“And that’s not weird because...?”
He grinned. “All in good time, my dear Birdie. Ready? Parking’s going to be rough, so we better shake a leg.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he said, running around to open the passenger door for me.
A couple of minutes later, we were heading away from the waterfront as the sky darkened. I was telling him about Aunt Mona’s Ukrainian gallery owner and how she was trying to get us a lunch meeting with him to see if he could translate our mysterious spreadsheet—to which his response was, “Seriously? That’s brilliant!” Right about that time, what started as a ho-hum drizzle on my window quickly changed over to real, actual rain.
Daniel flicked on his windshield wipers and suddenly it was pouring. Like, cats and dogs and herds of buffalos. It almost never storms here. Misting and gray skies for days on end, until you feel as if you’ll never see the sun again? Absolutely. Storms, however, not so much. And because it’s so rare, when it actuallydoeshappen, it’s either thrilling or apocalyptic. Right now, it was both. When lightning flashed, Daniel joked, “Ominous start to a first date!”
“You told me it wasn’t a real date,” I said in a loud voice to be heard over the onslaught of rain on the windows. I couldn’t see the road through the metronomic swish of the windshield wipers, which was mildly worrisome.
“I changed my mind!” he yelled back, hunched over the steering wheel and squinting. “Now help me watch for the interstate overpass so I don’t miss the turn.”
When an accident blocked the road, Daniel navigated down several side streets, and I was completely turned around. Then the rain slacked off. And after a block or two, when it was down to a tamer, less explosive rainfall, I asked him where we were. First Hill. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been in this part of the city. Nothing looked familiar, just a lot of hospitals and apartment high-rises. And tucked away behind some trees at the corner of a brisk intersection that housed a pizza place and a drugstore sat a stately Victorian mansion.
We drove around the block once, until a car serendipitously pulled out of one of a handful of private spaces behind the mansion. Spotting it, Daniel quickly parked there before someone else could nab it. “How lucky are we? I was starting to worry that we would have to walk blocks in the rain,” he said, shutting off the engine. But when I asked him for the hundredth time where in God’s name we were going, he just told me to trust him and make a run for it with him.
“Now, Birdie!”
We jumped out of the car and jogged through the rain, pulling our jackets over our heads and splashing through puddles on the crooked sidewalk. I screeched when a spray of splash-back from a car’s tire hit the hem of my dress and sprayed my shoes. Daniel hurried me through an iron gate and up a private sidewalk shrouded by trees, and then we were dashing beneath a covered entry, shaking off water like drowned rats.
A fancy sign by the front doors read:
BY INVITATION ONLY.
TONIGHT’S PRIVATE EVENT BEGINS AT 7:30 P.M. SHARP,
AT WHICH TIME THE DOORS WILL BE LOCKED.
GOOD LUCK. YOU’LL NEED IT.
Clearly this wasn’t a normal home with people living inside, but a restored historical house rented out for private functions. Was this some sort of stage magic performance? A party?
Daniel ushered me into a foyer with a high ceiling. A chandelier winked above us as we crossed the marble floor, passing doorways to other rooms. We headed to a tiny reception desk that sat in the crook of a grand staircase, where a tall, big-chested man with umber skin and a rich voice greeted us.
“Welcome to the Boddy mansion. I’m Mr. Wadsworth,” he said, nodding politely. His dark gray tuxedo looked like something out ofDownton Abbey. He gestured with white gloves. “Are you here for the dinner?”
“I have a reservation,” Daniel said. “Aoki.”
The man checked a tablet and smiled. “Ah, the Plums. Of course. You’re assigned to my group. Let me just get your name tags and envelope.”
Boddy. Plums. Why did this all sound wildly familiar? While the man bent behind the desk, Daniel retrieved a dark purple clip-on bow tie from his pocket and fastened it to his collar. “Is it straight?”
I nodded dumbly, and when Mr. Wadsworth stood up, he said approvingly of Daniel’s bow tie, “That’s more like it. Now, what names should I write on your name tags? Professor and Mrs.? Professor and Mr.? Both professors?”
“Professor Nick Plum and Professor Nora Plum,” Daniel said.
I stared at him.
“Is this...?”
Daniel bit his lower lip and squinted at me before saying, “Live-action Clue game.”
