By Jeni Gort

A&E Assistant Editor

Have you ever wondered who really did it? In this dinner mystery theatre, put on by Deadwood Productions LLC out of Muskegon, Mich., the mystery is revealed every Saturday night and the audience is put on the trail of a killer.

For the old passenger train that ran between Coopersville and Marne, retirement is not as peaceful as it is for many other old boxcars. Two cars of this five-car train are filled every weekend with about 32 people per car, all waiting to be fed, entertained, and taken on the ride from Coopersville to Marne and back. The other three cars are used for caterers and storage space for props and costumes.

The adventurous evening starts out with dinner served on the train at 6:30 p.m., and the train starts moving at the end of dinner, at about 7:30 p.m. Diners are seated in groups of four and are served a dinner salad, turkey with cranberry sauce, sweet and sour meatballs, corn, rice, and an apple crisp for dessert.

``It's a lot better than Knollcrest,'' says Susan Lyon, a junior. ``and it's four hours of quality entertainment.''

The mystery unfolds as actors take diners through the back-story and then proceed with the mystery as the train travels down the rails. Even as it stops in Marne, the train does not simply reverse direction; the actors lead diners off the train for an introduction to ``new evidence,'' given in an interactive scene built in a warehouse in Marne. After that, dessert is served and the mystery resumes when the train rolls out of the Marne depot.

The current murder mystery is an unsolved crime from 1906. Colonel Harley Retreat is traveling on a train from Chicago to Termination Point. During the train ride, the colonel stops once in Michigan City, Ind., and once in Holland, Mich. In Michigan City no one gets on or off the train. However, in Holland the colonel jaunts off into town and buys his favorite cigarettes, which he only buys from a specific shop in Holland. The cigarettes are thrown out of the train, however, and replaced with some that have been laced with a pesticide that is deadly when inhaled with smoke. No one got on the train at the stop in Holland, and no one besides the colonel got off, either.

The detective on duty learned that the cononel was gathering the family together for a reading of his newly-revised will. Hint: the will was newly revised to exclude certain family members whom he felt to be lazy or otherwise undeserving.

When the detective sent Colonel Retreat's lawyer for a copy of the will, he discovered that the will and the lawyer had come to an untimely end resulting from an earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco. After two years of investigating this case, the detective retired andthe murderer is still free.

So where does the inheritance go? And who killed the colonel? Was it the niece, Constance Fundamore, who has been in a boarding school in Austria since the age of eight? The German cook, Mrs. Slopenberg? The gardener, Grover Weeds? The sister, Nellie Retreat? Or the French maid, Nanette DoMestic? All of these questions are left for the audience to answer for themselves by the end of the trip.

To polish off this evening filled with motive, suspense and stereotypes, the audience is given a chance to write down who they think did it before the true murderer is revealed. Diners write down their guess, along with other comments about the show, and then a winner is picked from the number of correct answers. ``Sorry people,'' the audience is told. ``There is no butler, the conductor really does drive the train, and people, why would the detective do it?'' The winner is then made an official detective of the Deadwood Production LLC, but third class, of course.

All in all, it's a great evening of laughs and it actually gets you thinking. So if you feel like something a little more suspenseful than your daily scramble to get homework turned in, you might think about this as an escape or a date idea.

As Lyon put it, ``It beats just a movie at Studio 28!''

For more information call (231) 759-2434.