Barbara Lawlor, Gold Hill. I love a good whodunit. Not the dark, bloody kind of mystery, but the kind which includes quirky small-town characters, the foibles of human nature, and secrets of the past being revealed.

So I was intrigued when Maggie Simms of  ‘Til Death Do Us Party Productions invited me to attend the first Gold Hill Mystery Dinner of the season: “Murder 1973: Vengeance is Mayan,” a far-out tale of greed and retribution.

On Saturday night, July 18, a Gold Hill resident friend of mine and I walked into the Bluebird Lodge next to the Gold Hill Inn, and found ourselves standing on Oriental rugs in a turn-of-the-century parlor with a glass of champagne in one hand a brie rollup in the other. The conversation among the 30 or so people was energetic, questioning, as the guests wondered what would happen next.

When everyone had gathered, a man in a sports jacket – a rather suave, wealthy looking man named Rod Sterling, welcomed everybody, gave a few hints about the night’s agenda, and warned everyone not to touch the evidence. Soon the participants were seated at long tables in two rooms, and served a salad with fresh homemade bread and wine. It was not your ordinary dinner theater fare; even the salad was fresh, crunchy, and served with the savory home dressing of the Gold Hill Inn.

By this time everyone had been divided into teams and had been handed notebooks and pens. Beginning the investigatory process, the guests began questioning the cast of characters who wandered in and out of the room, exchanging places and chatting with the wannabe detectives.

The characters included eccentric archeologist Wolf Marmot, played by David Brigham; fellow archeologist and whip carrier Alabama Brown, played by Julie Excell; the haughty inn owner Rod Sterling, played by Dave Blumenstock; spoiled, flighty Jade Sterling, played by Sammi Gagnon; high-flying hippie Angus Porterhouse, played by Jason Baughn; and humble, overworked, abused housekeeper Bessie Porterhouse, played by Carol Lopez.

Maggie Simms played Krystal Gazer, the ethereal, turquoise-scarved, out-there Age-of-Aquarius being who had a lovely, evasive way of avoiding answers to the questions.

As the guests worked on their salads, the teams were taken one by one back into the parlor, where a body with a bullet hole in his right chest lay sprawled across the Oriental rug, an old gun in his hand. Sterling asked the participants to note the shiny metal ball in the body’s hand and the piece of paper with hieroglyphics lying next to him.

The actors were fantastically witty and in-character, taking in the questions that were probed for clues, making up answers as they went. Shouts of laughter burst from each of the dining rooms as the characters played their roles and ad-libbed as called for.

When the main course was served—chicken or thin-sliced roast beef dribbled with a sauce that made one yearn for more, wild rice, sautéed and julienned fresh vegetables—another body was found in the parlor and the plot quickened.

This time it was the beaver-toothed professor, Wolf Marmot, with black and blue ligature marks around his neck.

And suddenly, the characters assumed a different take on their roles. Spoiled Jade Sterling became humble and anxious and very innocently young; Rod Sterling lost the arrogance and became slow and subservient; the housekeeper, Carol Lopez, was in charge of things and demanding obedience; Alabama Brown stayed Alabama Brown, with her Southern drawl and flirtatious insertions; and Krystal Gazer was the same ephemeral Naropa flower child as in the beginning, ready to put a nirvanic spin on everything.

After the flourless chocolate cake that melted in their mouths in rich bursts of flavor, the teams were given a questionnaire to fill out, describing who murdered whom, how, and why.

Logic flew out the window as the various theories mingled and became clues, then evidence, and then solutions to the mystery.

When all the questionnaires were turned in and evaluated, the party gathered for the results and the choosing of the winning team, which received a special prize. The winning plot involved time travel, Mayan artifacts, and greed among two families in the small mining town.

The actors joined the guests, plus those who wanted to continue speculating on and adding to the mystery, as they traveled next door to the Gold Hill Inn for after-dinner drinks in the old log dining room.

It was a delicious dinner, a compelling mystery, a warm conversation with talented actors, and a great gathering of strangers from all parts of the county.

Denver resident Jim Graham was celebrating his 50th birthday. His wife, Amy Pacey, make him pack a suitcase for an overnight and then blindfolded him, wanting to ensure a surprise. He had never been to Gold Hill before and had begun to wonder if he was going to be dumped somewhere in the canyon and left.

By the time dinner was over, he didn’t care who murdered whom, because he was having a great time in the mountains saying goodbye to his 40s. It was a night he will remember as a unique and let’s-do-it-again-soon experience.

Maggie Simms and David Brigham founded the ‘Til Death Do We Party in 1990, when the owners of the Gold Hill Inn, the Finn family, asked David to write a mystery to be performed at the Blue Bird Lodge. That first season began with four shows.

By 2000 they were performing over 32 mysteries a year at the Bluebird Lodge and at private parties and hotels in the Denver metro area. The first show was “Murder 1940: The Gathering Storm.”

Most of the plots are based loosely on world, US, Colorado, and Gold Hill history, weaving strains of historical fact into the fictitious story lines. Brigham is a history buff, so he includes the politics, inventions, social restrictions, and the events of the year the mystery is placed in.

The present show takes place in 1973 and the characters were fully costumed for the period. Guests were encouraged to dress appropriately for the year.

On August 29, “Murder 1873: a Hearse of a Different Color” will be offered. In each of the mysteries there are up to 18 different clues embedded in the action. They are visual, historical, prop-tracking, murder scene set-ups, character names, and riddles or puzzles.

Simms says, “We are different from most mystery theater companies, in that we take teams to the site of the murder and allow them to handle clues and see the body up close and personal. Most companies hand you a raft of copied papers and expect the teams to sort it out, based on mimeographed gobbledegook.

“David and I pride ourselves on our classical theater background, studying Shakespeare, Shaw, Wilde, and Moliere. We build our solid characters, complicated story lines and plausible endings, difficult enough so that not everybody gets them, but feasible enough that at least one team always solves enough to win.”

For more information contact Maggie Simms at 443-6461 or www.goldhillinn.com