Chapter One #2
“And all those years of you writing those illegible prescriptions, Doc,” Mort teased.
I surveyed the competition. A team of college students wore matching sweatshirts, bearing the Greek letters of some fraternity.
A group of young professionals, dressed as if they’d come directly from the office, were seated next to a team still wearing their scrubs, who had apparently just finished a shift at the hospital.
Several tables were occupied by locals, including a group I recognized as high school teachers, and I suspected they’d be formidable opponents.
A couple of tables were occupied by teams with unfamiliar faces, and I imagined they were tourists.
Although Cabot Cove had grown over the years, I could still pick out most of the residents.
I barely had time to put on my glasses before Dan began going over the rules.
“First things first,” he said, “and I hate to do this, but we’re going to come around and collect cell phones. We live in a digital world, and it’s too tempting for some to look up answers.”
Mort raised his hand.
“Yes, Sheriff,” Dan said, “you’re excluded. Just keep it on the table, upside down, and on vibrate.”
Seth raised his hand.
“Okay, you too, Doc.” He scanned the room. “Any other first responders or health providers on call?”
Dan continued while Riley collected the cell phones into special numbered bins: “Since this is our first night, we’re doing just three rounds of ten questions each.
Instead of breaking after each round, I’ll read off all the clues, then give you time to hash it out, so if you don’t know the answer at first, you might want to jot down a few notes.
Maybe discussing it with your teammates will help jog some memories.
Then the scribes—for those new to trivia, that’s what we call the person who records your responses—will fill in your official answer sheet.
After you all have a chance to deliberate and duke it out—hopefully not literally—I’ll read off the correct responses.
The winning team will receive two great prizes tonight.
The first is a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Riley’s.
And the second”—he pulled a small white envelope from his breast pocket and held it up to his forehead, in the style of the comedian Johnny Carson doing his old Carnac the Magnificent routine—“is an unforgettable surprise.”
Since there wouldn’t be time for discussion until all the questions were read, I quickly distributed my hoard of paper and pencils around the table.
One of the college boys raised his hand. “How will you know if a team tries to change their answers when you’re reading off the right ones?”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking because he feared others might cheat, or if he was exploring loopholes to use himself.
“That’s where technology helps,” Dan replied. “Just before I reveal the answers, we’ll come take a cell-phone photo of your answer sheets. Fair enough?”
Dan plucked an envelope at random from a pile of about a dozen in front of him and said, “The first category is Books and Authors.” He looked at me and shook his head, then pulled a card from the envelope.
“Question one: Which fictional Belgian detective is known for using his ‘little gray cells’ to solve complicated mysteries?”
I’d started writing Poirot as soon as he’d uttered the words “Belgian detective.” This was an easy category—I’d actually met two of the authors in my travels to various publishing and reader events—and the majority of the rest were names I’d either read or taught in one of my high school English classes.
I wish I could say I did as well in the other two categories—Name that Century and Award Winners, but as I watched my teammates scribbling down their answers, I was optimistic.
Both Mort and Seth were ardent armchair historians.
I knew that Mort also diligently kept up with sports and current events, and Seth, as a physician, knew his science.
I caught Maureen smiling while writing the answer to what I thought was a particularly challenging pop culture question—at least for our demographic—and realized what a well-rounded team we were.
Maybe we had a chance at a decent showing.
When it came time for discussions, our team had little, except for some conversation on the history questions.
Even then, Mort and Seth weren’t exactly disagreeing as much as they seemed to enjoy expounding on their answers.
A little friendly one-upmanship in action.
Only one question was in danger of coming to blows: a tricky one with Mort insisting the clue referred to the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, while Seth countered that it better described an early twentieth-century German philosopher named Heidegger, who was influenced by Kierkegaard.
“Can you argue a little more quietly?” Maureen urged. “I don’t think any of these other teams will have a clue on this one, and I don’t want to give anything away.”
“Flip a coin?” Mort asked.
Seth nodded, the result was heads, and the answer I wrote down was the twentieth century.
I compiled all of our team’s official answers in my tidiest cursive, and Dan expressed appreciation when he came to take a photo of our answers. “I wish more were as neat as yours.”
“Not even the group of teachers?” I asked, tilting my head toward their table.
Dan leaned in closer. “They might have gone a little hard on the Guinness tonight,” he whispered.
Mort raised an eyebrow.
Dan put his hand on Mort’s shoulder. “No designated driver either. We plan to ask for their car keys.”
“Let me know if they put up a fuss,” he said.
“Thanks, Sheriff.” Dan then moved on to the next table.
While Dan was busy with that, Riley came over again to ask about dessert.
Seth and Mort ordered, claiming they’d worked up an appetite with all that thinking.
I asked for the apple cake in a to-go container, thinking it might make a lovely breakfast with a nice cup of strong coffee. Maureen did the same.
“Okay, folks, let’s see how you did!” Dan announced upon his return to the microphone.
As he read off the correct answers, I was pleased to see that I’d aced the Books and Authors category. I’m not exactly uber-competitive, as my nephew’s son, Frank, might say, but I’d hate to let my team down.
“How we doin’?” Mort whispered after we were asked to tabulate the first-round results.
I gave him a thumbs-up.
I continued to put pluses next to the correct answers in the remaining two categories, and felt a shiver run up my spine.
I didn’t need a symbol for an incorrect answer.
Our responses were all correct, including the twentieth-century reference to Heidegger, the announcement of which prompted a loud throat-clearing from Seth.
The scribes were asked to total the number of correct answers and write the sum at the top of the page, and as I wrote 30 at the top and held it up for my teammates, Maureen smiled and nudged Mort.
Seth leaned contentedly back in his chair.
Although he hadn’t enjoyed the noise at the beginning of the evening, the free dessert—and the promise of more if we won that gift certificate—would increase my friend’s rating of the new establishment, and I had little doubt that Riley’s would become a new haunt of his.
But then, there was still a possibility that another team had tied us.
“Okay, scribes,” Dan said, “how many teams got at least fifteen questions right?”
I raised my hand.
Raucous laughter erupted from the teachers’ table, but I noticed nobody there lifted a hand. A person at the table in scrubs had a hand up, as did one of the frat boys and someone from one table of tourists.
“Leave those hands up if you got at least twenty questions right.”
The tourist’s hand went down.
“Leave them up if you got at least twenty-five right.”
And suddenly it was between us and the frat boys.
“Twenty-seven?”
Both hands remained up. The young men eyed us anxiously. I almost felt guilty. Our group could easily afford outings like this. But then someone at their table sent a crude gesture, and my sympathy for them dissipated.
“Twenty-eight?”
Both hands still up.
“I’m impressed,” Dan said. “Twenty-nine?”
I kept my hand up, but the other scribe dropped his and his team groaned.
“What have you got, Jess?” Dan asked.
“Thirty,” I admitted quietly, proud of my team but not wanting to appear boastful.
The Cabot Covers in the room cheered for us.
“Thanks for playing pub trivia at Riley’s,” Dan announced. “We plan to make this a regular event on Tuesday nights and hope you’ll join us again. Runners-up, stick around for a minute until we verify the results.”
Riley came to slip a check on our table, which Mort grabbed, not that Seth put up much of a struggle. “Congratulations,” she said, as she also returned Maureen’s and my cell phones.
I held up our answer sheet. “Does Dan need this?” I asked.
“I think he’ll use the photos he took, so you can hold on to it as a souvenir if you wish.”
Mort grabbed that too. “Can I? That was a lot of fun.”
Maureen and Seth agreed.
“We made a really great team,” I said.
I looked over at Dan, who was sitting in an empty booth with his phone and the answer key. I saw him laugh and shake his head, then walk over to the table of frat boys. “Sorry, fellas. They got you this time. I hope you’ll come back.”
He came to our table with two envelopes. “Who wants the gift certificate?”
Seth already had his hand out, but I said, “Maybe Mort, since he picked up dinner tonight.”
Seth agreed but kept his hand out. “I’m curious what’s in that other envelope, the so-called unforgettable surprise. May I?”
“Just a second.” Dan flagged over a young man with an oversized camera around his neck. “I’d like to get a picture of your reactions for the newspaper.”
“That must be some prize, Dan,” Mort said.
“It just kind of fell in our lap,” Dan said, “but we’re excited about it.”
I noticed that Riley and Pierce were also hovering nearby.
Seth took the envelope and ripped it open at the top before pulling out a white card. He blinked at it through his bifocals.
A flash went off, but I doubted that was the reaction Dan had anticipated.
Seth handed the card to Maureen, and she placed it on the table between Mort and herself.
Maureen squealed and hugged Mort as another flash went off.
I suspected that was the photo that would grace the next Cabot Cove Gazette.
Finally, Mort passed me the card.
You are invited to compete in the first season of Pub Trivia Live, a new trivia game show filming at Starlight Studios in Los Angeles.
It went on to list the dates and contact information.
I felt my jaw drop, and a flash went off.