How to impress a mystery writer

This week I met a fire dancer. Yeah, he actually lights things on fire and dances with them. Cool, huh?

I’ll admit, physically he wasn’t really my type – blond, pale skin, kind of metro-sexual. Generally I go for the tall dark and ruggedly handsome type (though, since I’m only 5’2” ‘tall’ is a totally relative term), but after seeing pictures of him doing his fire dancing thing, how could I not meet him? That’s just cool!

So, we tried to meet for coffee, but Starbucks was closed for some sort of staff meeting. (Seriously, I’m there enough, I think I deserve the interoffice memos when this happens.) Instead, we hopped down the street to the Borders café to grab a cup of coffee and do the first date getting-to-know-you chit-chat. But honestly, it’s clear we’re not clicking. He likes sports, I like to read. He likes to travel, I’m thrilled to be staying home this year. He’s a chai tea, I’m a double latte. We both pretty much knew it was doomed. In an effort to save the date from totally crashing and burning, I suggested popping over to the romance section to check out my books. Which he seems to think is pretty cool, I mean how many dates end in a book signing, right?

Sadly, luck was not with me. No copies of Alibi in High Heels out in the store yet. Still in a crate in the back waiting to be unpacked. I think at this point Dances With Fire is starting to wonder if I’m was really an author or just faking to impress him. (Trust me, if I was gonna lie, I’d say I’m Nora Roberts.) To save face, I finally find one old copy of Killer in High Heels shoved in the back. Aha! See, I really do write stuff.

He takes the book, turns it over. Asks, “So, are you anything like your main character?”

I hate when people ask this. Because, um, yes, I am. Exactly like her. So, I kind of hedge, “Well, a little. But I swear I’ve never stumbled over any dead bodies.”

And then he says, “I have.”

Hello. Now things are getting interesting.

He tells me about a time when he went hiking a few years ago and walked into a clearing. There, hanging from a tree, was a body. He was all alone out there and, having just watched the Blair Witch Project, freaked out, hopped on his motorcycle, and sped the whole way home before calling the police. Unfortunately, the police couldn’t locate the body on their own, so he had to drive all the way back out to the woods and lead a team of law enforcement back to the clearing where, sure enough, the dead guy was still hanging there. He got to watch the ME arrive, the CSI people go over the clearing for any little bits of evidence, the entire crime scene procedure. I think he thought I was a little weird when I yelled, “Lucky! I’m so jealous!”

And when I asked him about the body, he gave me a funny look and said, “Uh, girls usually don’t want to hear about that. It was kind of, um, decomposing.”

I think it was the way my eyes lit up and I slid onto the edge of my seat to ask, “What stage of decomp was he in?” that had him ending the date early.

Moral of the story – you gotta have a strong stomach to date a mystery writer.

So, any of you ever had experiences with a crime before?

~Trigger Happy Halliday