THE COOKIEDUSTER CASE, ENTRY 3

The trail had gone cold almost from the get-go, as a tip from our longtime, cataract-riddled mailman—who for years had delivered us mail from the exact opposite side of town with an affableness that was nothing short of spectacular, bestowing upon us some dentist’s mail and a snootful of nonsensical aphorisms in a woodsy drawl—had been based on what he insisted the kids called a ‘vibe pancake’, which is almost certainly not at all what any kids called anything, and with the sureness of a man who only measured distances by how the crow flew, while pinching at the faded-ginger and nicotine-stained moustache that covered the bottom of his face to such an extent that I was never clear whether it was him or the moustache talking, he stated, ‘it’s not what the snow covers but the admixture that makes up the snow itself,’ another in a long line of pithy-yet-hollow adages that nevertheless dropped me to me hands and knees like I had been shot, an action that stunned the mailman into an awkward silence that followed him like an odour as he delicately left me to lick the top layer of snow into a meticulous grid of quickly-melting archaeology from which I could only hope to glean a general directionality of suspicion, despite my renown as a top-tier truth-taster.

I had worked the snow surrounding the front of the building into a blanket of fractals by the time Brandi emerged from the office, hitting me with a jeering ‘whatcha doing?’ while crouching against the doorframe to watch my efforts from afar, the aroma of her coffee permeating the air and clinging to me like the stench of failure, and I stood to declare that the cookieduster case was then officially in full swing.

‘As you can clearly see,’ I began, wiping snow from my knees, ‘there is a through-line in the snow fractals I have created that denotes the pathway of the perpetrator.’

‘But,’ Brandi said, frowning heavily, ‘doesn’t a perpetrator need to perpetuate to be considered such?’

‘Oh, there is perpetration in abundance,’ I said. ‘Make no mistake.’

‘I see,’ said Brandi, sliding up the doorframe in a shall-I-say charming way. ‘I assume you want me to check the office for clues of a perpetrating nature to corroborate your theory?’

‘Not with that attitude, I don’t,’ I said, crossing my arms and putting on my serious face, which consisted of setting my jaw square and letting my electric eyes simmer under a barrage of eyebrow twitches. ‘But yes, I do indeed want that because there is evidence of powdered sugar leading away from—or, as I posit, towards—the building.’

And that was that, though I somehow continued talking for reasons that absolutely had nothing to do with the serpentine way she had used the wall to get to her feet, and managed to say, ‘I found it with my tongue,’ before extending said tongue in what would be the most unprofessional moment of my entire career had I not also pointed at it multiple times, which was without question the nadir that pushed the original moment into second place.

‘You did not.’

‘I did too!’ I shrieked, all at once catching myself and lowering my voice to regain control of the situation, which only resulted in a series of guttural intonations that resembled words in the same way that the lottery resembled a retirement plan. I looked up to find Brandi laughing with a heartiness so powerful it rendered her mostly silent save for the initial quake that sent her coffee-mug crashing to the ground in a shattering display of composure lost.

‘And your plan,’ she said, between gasps of air and renewed giggles as I surveyed the coffee-melted snow near the base of the building, ‘is to lick your way to the culprit?’

‘You have been pulling the lever at the agreed-upon intervals, yes?’

‘That,’ she said, trying to physically drag her mouth out of a smile, ‘I have not.’

‘Don’t you realize—’

‘Grumble grumble grumble,’ she said, mimicking my voice in a way that was only achievable, apparently, by tucking her chin into her neck and spreading her arms like an ape, and as I watched her grumble-waddle into the office, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this case, like the building itself, was going straight to hell.