I ask for water the third time. My voice sounds quiet and slightly anxious even to my ears, and I accept the waitress will ignore me. She manages a nod, but it doesn’t take a detective to deduce her meaning. The café’s manager has been making noises in my direction, pointing and talking to the waitress. She tried to push me to leave five times already, making motions to bring the check, asking if I wanted anything else, probing with her eyes whether I planned to take her table all day and repay her lost tips. Her eyes are too close together and look like they are squeezing her bony nose. I ignore her motions and requests and silent remarks. I know I’m not the most appetizing of sights sitting by the front entrance—I take up most of the booth’s bench and parts of me leak out past the edge of the table—but I was here first, and, besides, I haven’t found my story yet.

The Sunday paper’s eight sections are sprawled across the table next to my closed notebook. I turn the newspaper pages rhythmically, not reading the words. Why read the newspaper, stuff that happened the previous day, when I can live what will happen tomorrow? If anyone watched me—and while people tend to stare, few actually look—they would discover that I turn the page every forty-five seconds. With practice, anyone can learn to tell time by the ticks of their subliminal clock, a very useful skill for those who know how to use it.

I’m a news junky, and it’s here that I find the latest news, when people are at their most vulnerable, when they think they’re eating a safe meal at a safe place. I switch through the conversations around me, turning my head like the knob on a radio, tuning into each table like a radio station, focusing in for a few moments before moving on. From a good table, I can tune into eight conversations without much effort, and, if the acoustics are just right and the background noise minimal, I can listen to four additional conversations. They put me against the wall today, and I’m stuck with four tables within range. There’s not much going on: reminiscing of a high school football game from the seventies, travel plans of what sounds like a to-be-divorced woman and her teenage son, quiet elderly couple that ran out of talk years ago.

And then I find it. Across from me is a table occupied by an middle-aged man and woman. It takes me only seconds of sorting through their emotions to realize that this is my story. A casual listener might not notice the glorious mystery leaking from the conversation. The man wears a satiny blue spring jacket and large sunglasses. His hands are folded in front of him over a burgundy sweater, and his legs dangle outside the cushioned bench. He has gray hair and a pink face. His head keeps moving but you can’t tell which way he’s looking because of his glasses. He speaks out of the side of his mouth, giving his words an unformed feel.

“Brad’s been working on mother,” the man says. “She’s going to change her will again, I know it.”

I let my eyes lose focus and turn my head to the left so that my right ear is closer to their table. After years of practice, I learned that the right ear is better for eavesdropping than the left.

“She threatens to change her will every week,” the woman responds. “Your inheritance is safe. Eleanor just uses it as a weapon. It’s not going to work, we won’t fall for it.”

The man grunts and takes a large bite from his egg salad sandwich.

“What did she say this time?” the woman asks.

“Mother didn’t say anything specific, but she kept saying how happy she was that Brad visited. She said they talked about his future.”

“Brad doesn’t have a future.”

“Unless mother changes her will,” the man says, his mouth full of crumbling eggs.

I shake the final drops of coffee from my mug. If I owned a restaurant, I would see my type coming a mile away and refuse service. Those signs don’t lie, restaurateurs can refuse service to whomever they want, like casinos who refuse card counters, or clothing stores who refuse ladies who buy outfits for a weekend affair only to return them on Monday. But they don’t, and I rotate through the coffee houses and diners. I sit with my family-sized breakfast and bottomless coffee mug at seven in the morning each Sunday, and I’m there for the day. I have a wonderful bladder, and I can hold my coffee all day if need be. I’ve found a few diners who don’t mind me taking up so much of their space and eating into their profits. But those high-minded establishments are far and few between, and it is only in those places where I’ll chance getting up to drain the morning’s coffee. In the other establishments, if I do get up, I’ll return to my seat and find my table occupied by a family of four trying to decide what type of syrup-delivery systems they should order, square or round.

Except for a pile of bushy dyed hair, I can’t see what the woman looks like. “How is she doing? Any closer to, you know, passing?” the woman asks.

“Not that I noticed. Mother forbid the doctors from talking to us, and with Brad starting in again, it can’t happen too soon.”

By now, even a casual listener would see why this conversation is interesting. I jot down in my notebook the framework of the detective story: a family fights over the last will and testament of the matriarch. She probably has a fortune stored away. Grubby old women usually do, the grubbier the bigger the fortune, or so the suspects always believe. If she dies unnaturally, there is a whole family of suspects. From the sounds of it, any of them might do it. But would they? I get too far ahead of myself. I try to slow my breathing but find it difficult. I wasn’t always this big. Largeness, like most great things in life, happens slowly, almost too slowly to notice the change. I never minded the girth, but there are a few things that I find difficult to get used to: one is that inertia increases with one’s size. Stopping becomes a big challenge, and once I grow excited, calming myself feels like trying to stop a moving train with nothing but shallow breaths.

“I wish she’d just die already,” the woman says. “This is killing me. Her sitting on top of her oversized bank books in her oversized house looking down her nose at us.”

“Oh, she doesn’t look down on me so much. She never thought you were good enough for me. I sometimes wonder if she was right about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the woman asks, her voice rising in register until the other tables turn and look.

The man lowers his voice and leans toward the woman, “I’ve asked one small favor of you in this, and you still refuse to do it.”

“I spy on your brother and sister. Isn’t that enough?”

“This won’t be over until it’s over,” the man says ominously.

I’m a mystery buff. Ever since I was a child, when I read my first mystery book, The Mystery of the Watermelon Thief, I have spent my life trying to recapture that initial feeling, the feeling of living in a mystery, not knowing everything. Mystery books provide little mystery for me now. When the author provides the clues, the suspects seem to whisper in my ear their guilt. It’s little challenge, and besides, it’s not real. Not real like this is real.

The waitress refreshes the man and woman’s coffee, and I continue to jot down notes in my notebook. I never became a detective because of physical limitations. I was a big child and I knew early on that I would have to find mysteries in a different way. The waitress stops by my table with the coffee pot. I keep my head down, continue to scribble, and point at empty mug of coffee. I feel her shake her head and hear her breathe out an annoyed sigh. I know I’m not the most appetizing-looking customer, and I know she prefers if I sit, slap on the feedbag, and leave as quick as possible. A fat customer, like a fat chef, should never dawdle with his food.

“Of course, she might die of natural causes soon enough,” the man says unconvincingly. “Hopefully before she changes her will again.”

“We just need to stay on top of things until then. Brad won’t be able to keep up his acting. You know he can’t stand the old hag. Now, eat up and let’s get going. Her birthday is this week and we need to buy something special, something to make her not think of Brad anymore.”

The newspapers will have a field day with this story. So many suspects, I begin to speculate about the facts and clues and characters. Time to get started. I squeeze out of the booth and walk over to the man and woman’s table.

“Mr. Thomas,” I say when I’m in front of their table. “Is that you Mr. Thomas?”

The man looks at me, confused and the woman looks down. She’s much younger than I suspected. As I look closer, I realize that it’s not that she’s younger, it’s that her face is frozen unnaturally, giving her a perpetual surprised look.

“I’m sorry,” the man says. “You must have me mistaken for someone else.”

“Don’t you recognize me? I’m George, George McCord. I work at the post office down the road. You always stop in to pay your bills. It must be the uniform, you don’t recognize me without the blues.”

“Again, I’m sorry, but you have me confused with someone. My name is not Mr. Thomas and I don’t live around here. Janice and I are visiting my mother in the neighborhood.” Janice doesn’t look at me, instead choosing to pick at her food with the fork.

“I am so ashamed. I’m sorry, Mr. . .”

“Mr. Nielson,” the man says.

“I’m so embarrassed, Mr. Nielson. Please forgive me. I’ll crawl back to my table and hide under the, well, the tablecloth.” I smile and pat my stomach familiarly. Mr. Nielson laughs and I turn to catch the waitress clearing the dishes off my table. No matter, I have what I need. I grab the coffee mug and shake it over my mouth, hoping to find a few more drops. It’s empty.

I lean over the table and grab my notebook. “Mr. and Janice Nielson, son and daughter-in-law of Eleanor Nielson,” I write in my book. This week, they will receive an unexpected gift from me, a gift they will wish they never asked for. Their mother, Eleanor, will finally rest in peace. And then the real mystery will begin. Lots of investigations and clues and alibis ahead of me. For such a fat man, I have a surprising way with mysteries. I busy myself counting the number of torn-out mysteries in my notebook: thirty-two. Soon there will be thirty-three.