“And the Killer is…”

  One weekend, Lori and I decided to throw a ‘Murder Mystery Party’. You know, one of those boxed games where everyone plays a character that may or may not be the killer, but they all have a motive. We had thrown one a year or so earlier with Eric, Lucinda, Jennifer, and Bill, but the problem is that there are limited parts for these kind of parties so you generally have to keep the guest list low.

  This time around we invited other people who we were unable to include at the last one. This time around we invited Amanda and her husband Nate, Alan, Claudia and her husband Carlos. Shortly after we were underway, Jennifer’s  brother Tom (Ed. Note: From the Entry: Netfriends & More) called us out of the blue asking if anything was going on. He never usually called, but I didn’t see a problem inviting him over. I told him we were having a murder mystery party and all the roles were taken, but he was more than welcome to come and socialize. He asked if he could bring two friends with him and we informed him that he could, of course.

  The party was a lot of fun and a good time was had by all. It turned out that I was the ‘killer’ which was a surprise to me. And afterwards everyone just hung out and partied. At one point, Tom started to fall asleep in a chair. Lori called out to Tom to see if he was okay and make sure he didn’t drink to much. When he didn’t respond immediately, Lori tossed one of those mini-pretzels at him to get his attention. Lori missed. So Nate, tossed one and it hit him. Tom suddenly jumped up and lunged at Nate pushing the two of them into the aquarium that house my two guinea pigs.

  Now normally, each guinea pig had their own cage, but in order to conserve space we put the both of them into the bigger one. A beautiful 20 gallon, short but long one that was hard to find. It was a direct hit and the two guys crashed through the middle. Luckily for the animals, each one had their own plastic hut that they were hiding in when this occurred.

  Lori was furious and immediately kicked Tom out of the house and on the phone calling Jennifer to get her brother. I was doing damage control and moving the animals to the smaller cage. Nate was so apologetic despite it not being his fault at all. We didn’t know what got into Tom, but thinking back, drugs may have been involved. I had not wanted to get Jennifer or Bill involved as I already felt guilty for not inviting them in the first place. Lori only got their answering machine.

   Shortly after we calmed Lori down, albeit only mildly, we went to find Tom, but he would hide, ring the doorbell, hide, break lights around the complex, pound on the front door, hide. It was bad. Tom’s two friends also apologized for his behavior, yet stayed at the party because they were having a good time.

  After all was said and done, I told Lori she wasn’t allowed to throw food at parties ever again. The previous party someone had dropped some popcorn on the rug. To show it wasn’t a big deal, Lori started throwing handfuls of popcorn into the air. The next morning while trying to vacuum it all up, the motor died. Causing us to joke “Release the Pigs!” in reference to the guinea pigs in the style of “The Clash of the Titans” movie. To actually implement that remedy would have left us with a totally different rug cleaning problem, so we opted not to.

  As for Tom, he was on the outs with Lori for a long time. I don’t recall her ever speaking with him again. I did see him a few more times when socializing with Jennifer and Bill the next few years, but even Jennifer and her sister wrote him off after a few years. Whatever he did, they didn’t want to talk about it.