Yay! New chapter!Chapter 22-Not on the List
A friendly waitress escorted the four to a table on the other side of the restaurant. Again, Mario was disappointed; a table.
"So…can I start you off with a drink?" The waitress asked, handing each of them a reddish colored menu. The four scanned quickly through it, and all ordered their desired beverages.
Luigi desperately wanted to talk to Mario as to why he had thought that their solution was incorrect, but he knew it was best not to. So, instead, he merely followed along in the group's conversation, trying to eliminate his desire to bring up the mystery.
In a few minutes, he waitress had returned, carrying the four drinks that they had ordered in her hands. She gently placed them on the table and exchanged 'you're welcomes' as they politely thanked her, "Do you all know what you want to eat?"
Peach ordered first, then Daisy, and then Luigi. When it came to Mario, though, he had his 'I'm not satisfied with the food on the menu' kind of look on his face. Peach sighed and shook her head, hoping that Mario would just order and not make a big fuss out of it. Once, Mario had gotten into a huge argument with a waitress in some restaurant he and Peach were at. He wound up screaming at her so much that they got kicked out of the restaurant!
"You see here…" Mario pointed to a page on the menu. The waitress bent down next to him and curiously looked at what he was pointing to, "There's all of this pasta in the pasta list, but no lasagna. I'm guessing that you don't serve it here?"
"Yes, that's correct. It was removed from the menu about two weeks ago," The waitress explained. Mario stared at her, which was beginning to make her uncomfortable. Apparently he was trying to comprehend the fact that they were stupid enough, as he put it, to remove lasagna from the menu…
"You removed it from the pasta list?!" Mario asked, awfully loudly. He was in shock, even though there was nothing shocking about the matter…
"Umm…well, yes, we did," The waitress repeated, stating quite firmly now that they did, indeed, remove lasagna from the menu, "It turned out that no one was buying any lasagna…and then, when only a few people would order it throughout the nights, it would anger the chef that he made a lot of lasagna, and that it would go to waste, you know? So he wound up asking us waitresses to try and get the manager to get it off the pasta list…who knows why he just couldn't do it himself. But anyway, he just said that it would make the night go easier…"
Mario blinked, a shocked expression thrust upon his face. Normally, Peach would ask him to 'cut it out', but she could tell that this shocked expression wasn't because they didn't have any lasagna. The waitress had definitely said something that triggered something in his mind.
He quickly mumbled his order and pushed the menus aside for the waitress to take. She was a little surprised that he gave the whole lasagna thing up…
"Guys!" Mario exclaimed as soon as the waitress walked away, "I've figured something out!"
Either Mario had truly solved some dilemma in the case, or he just planned to continue talking about the lasagna. He looked at them with excitement as they stared at him in bewilderment.
"Now, just listen to this: let's reenact the night of the murder, okay? So, let's assume that the chef the waitresses were talking about is Toadiko…"
The three others just stared at him. They couldn't really find any words to try and continue the conversation, so Mario merely went on without any interruption, "Now, we can obviously imagine that it was Toadiko's plan to take me off the list, like the chef and the lasagna. So, as the waitress had said, the chef wanted them to have the manager take it off the list, right? We can kind of say that the waitresses were the chef's 'accomplices' in this action. Toadiko had an accomplice, too…the Goomba bouncer…"
"But that doesn't make any sense…" Luigi butted in, hoping that, for one time, he could counter a solution that Mario was trying to make, "The Goomba bouncer couldn't have been Toadiko's accomplice, because he was dead!"
Mario shook his head, "You don't understand…Toadiko must have had two accomplices…I'm guessing that she had a shooter, who we think is another Toad or Toadette worker at your castle, Peach. But anyway, she must have bribed the Goomba bouncer to remove me from the list, an-,"
"Why?" Peach butted in. That was one thing that was still unanswerable in the case, and she was dying to know the reason as to why Mario had been removed from the list…
"I have a possible solution, for that, but I will not reveal it yet. For now, I'd like to continue and explain that at the end. So, as I was saying, Toadiko had the Goomba bouncer remove me from the list. I'm guessing that she had the shooter kill him at the party so he wouldn't get the chance to feel guilty and reveal her intentions to the police. Now, I wouldn't have figured this out, if it wasn't for one thing that the waitress said: it would make the night go easier. Obviously, I could somehow ruin Toadiko's plans during the party, and that she didn't want me there. This led me to the possible solution I was talking about, Peach…"
The three pulled themselves close to the table to hear Mario's thought on the case. They were getting very excited and hoped that they could finally solve something in the mystery.
"Now, I know that this solution might be incorrect, but I'd just like to offer it to you guys: I'm guessing that I played a key part in stopping her plan. It's not from my observant nature. It's not from my superior ways in solving mysteries. No…it was where I was standing…"
"Standing?" Peach asked.
"Yes… now don't you remember that there were balloons all around the stage? Well, almost all around the stage, except here I would be standing…I must have been in perfect view to see the shooter!"
"That…makes perfect sense…" Peach admitted, looking at Mario and smiling. Could they have truly had figured something out? "I mean, why else wouldn't they let you into the party?"
"Yeah!" Daisy agreed. Obviously the girls favored Mario's idea greatly, which pleased him. He had hoped that they wouldn't merely shrug and mumble unsatisfied complaints, and it was quite clear that that wasn't what they were doing…
The red-capped plumber had broken his promise; they did, indeed, talk about the case. But it had definitely been a wise decision…