Murder Mystery RP

Mei
The sound of footsteps coming out of the forest caught her attention and she turned from staring into the pitch darkness on the other side. She stood, prepared to ready her bow if needed, but relaxed when Outlaw stepped out from the tree line. When the newcomers followed she sighed, crossing the clearing to meet everyone. "Hello, I'm assuming you got invitations, too," she greeted the two new faces. "My name's Mei. I hope they told you about the dead body?"

Penn
Penn adjusted his collar. "Uh, yeah. I'm, how dead are we talking?"

Mei
Mei turned her attention more fully to Penn, looking him over curiously. "Oh, you've come a long way, beau gosse. I like your accent." She handed him the obituary she was still carrying, glancing at the recorder in his hand. "I think the body's probably only a few hours old, it looks like rigor mortis may have started to set in. But that says they died ten years ago, apparently. Are you recording?" 

Last edited on 2022-07-20 at 19:18:04 by oswin

Penn
Penn froze. Was she flirting? He felt like she was. There was French involved, so - but speaking French didn't mean that she was flirting with him. Either way, he felt slightly like melting into the ground. He cleared his throat. "Um - thanks." He scanned the obituary. Like she said, it was ancient, with yellowing edges and smudged ink in horrible typeface. This was going to get interesting. Penn stuck the recorder in his shirt pocket, pointedly ignoring her question. "Well, where do we start? Does the invitation have any clues?"

Last edited on 2022-07-20 at 19:31:33 by 🎶𝓑𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓽🎶

Mei
She frowned. "Hold on, pretty boy, you didn't answer my question. I don't want to be tied to some murder case and have my career ruined before I even get started."

Penn
She was definitely flirting. "No no- I wouldn't-" Gall, he had to speak a full sentence sometime. He took a breath. "I run a podcast. It's kinda my side job? But I won't use anyone's audio. Just mine."

Mei
After studying him a moment she seemed satisfied with his answer. "My invite had very little on it, but you can look at it if you want. There were a couple other papers on the body but the obituary was the only one that seemed important? Solving mysteries isn't exactly my strong suit, though, so maybe I missed something."

Penn
The way she studied him made a lump in his throat. Not a bad one - a weird mix of what's going on and she's very pretty and I think she thinks I'm cute? and a whole lot of I don't know how I feel about this. The only immediate solution was to ignore her obviously misplaced intentions and throw himself into this murder mystery. 
"You didn't move them, did you?"

Mei
"The body? No. I set the other papers down somewhere." She clicked her flashlight back on and scanned the clearing until she found the tiny stack not too far from Payton Francis (the deceased), weighed down by a pebble to keep them from flying away. "There." 

Penn
The original placement of the papers could have been helpful, but it would have to do. He studied each paper in the stack - a torn page from a pulp-paper copy of a book that he couldn't immediately place, a receipt from a store he didn't recognize, and a  collections notice. The address and date on it caught his attention. September 24, 2040, 110 Astoria Blvd East Elmhurst, New York City, NY. A landlord was requesting payment on an apartment - almost two thousand dollars worth. Penn cringed. "That's a lot," he muttered. 

Mei
She followed Penn over to the body, leaning over to see what he was looking at and just catching his quiet remark. "Yeah, that's New York. Hopefully they got lucky and it's actually decent." Living in New York City, Mei hadn't thought much of the notice besides the fact that the deceased was a little ways from where they assumedly lived.

Last edited on 2022-07-20 at 21:17:05 by oswin

Penn
He could feel her breath on his skin. "Maybe it's not one payment." He went back to the rest of the pile. "This isn't helpful," he said. "Everyone has a pulp edition of the classics on their shelf." At least, he assumed it was a classic. The writing style was too niche not to be. "What about this receipt? There's nothing off about it either."

Mei
Mei looked over the receipt before shrugging. "I'm not good with this stuff, it all seems pretty normal to me. Maybe a little odd they ripped a page out of a book, but that's all I noticed."

Penn
Penn shifted very carefully so as not to bump Mei. "I guess we'll just have to keep looking around us," he said. "There's not much else here "

Mei
She nodded, looking up at Penn thoughtfully after a moment. "You almost seem to be enjoying this. Do you do this often, charmant? Like an aspiring Sherlock Holmes."