Sheriff Brown surveyed the crime scene through sleepy and bloodshot eyes: Professor Wolf’s books, papers, and household goods had been thrown around his formerly neat cottage seemingly at random, much of his exceptional china now broken, antiquarian books from his carefully curated library torn at the spine.
Old Professor Wolf explained to Sheriff Brown that he’d come home from his dawn Naturspaziergang to find his home in shambles. Wolf swore up and down that Dr. Crowley, a professional rival, was the one who had broken into his home, torn through everything he owned, and stolen his secret blueprints for the new space station. If Professor Wolf was to be believed, Dr. Crowley had even ripped up Professor Wolf’s tomato plants in the garden, searching for his classified plans!
But while Sheriff Brown could see the state of Professor Wolf’s house, he couldn’t find any clues as to who had broken in, or why. Sheriff Brown, as always in the mornings, was not at his best, and struggled to fight off a hangover. Alcoholism makes detecting hard! So Cynthia Silverton, the best teen detective in the world, was called to the case.
Cynthia pulled up in her canary-yellow Cadillac, matching yellow-framed sunglasses on her face, in a charming white sundress and white kitten heels. In her yellow handbag was a Saturday night special, a deck of tarot cards, and a cyanide pill for worst-case scenarios. But today, she wouldn’t need any of them.
“Hey, Cynthia,” Sheriff Brown said, bleary-eyed, full of self-loathing and gin in equal measure.
Cynthia rolled her eyes. Alcoholics would always break your heart!
“Cynthia Silverton!” Professor Wolf exclaimed. “You look the spitting image of your mother. No one here seems to believe me. A very dangerous man named Dr. Crowley has broken into my home and stolen the blueprints to the space station we’re building. I demand that Sheriff Brown arrest him immediately! And I seem to be missing some very valuable gold coins from my safe—Crowley must have taken them while he was here.”
Cynthia spent exactly one minute evaluating the scene before she solved the case. But instead of telling Sheriff Brown the solution, she called Professor Wolf’s estranged daughter, Elaine, on the telephone, and had a long and mysterious talk with her in the kitchen.
After her talk, Cynthia turned back to Sheriff Brown, whose hands were starting to shake as the morning wore on without a drink.
“We don’t need a detective,” Cynthia said to the confused and dehydrated sheriff. “There’s no crime here. You can go home and sleep it off now.”
What was the solution?
Highlight the text below to see the solution.
SOLUTION
Cynthia knew every PhD in the Rapid Falls Tri-State Area, and she knew there was no Dr. Crowley. She did, however, remember a villainous Dr. Crowley from one of the old detective movies she used to watch on TV as a child. And she knew that the last time Professor Wolf designed an important space station was thirty years in the past, during his heyday at the Rapid Falls Community College Department of Reverse Engineering. In a fit of confusion and terror, he had ripped up his own tomato plants, looking for gold coins he’d buried twenty years past, believing a societal collapse was near.
“You need to come and see your father,” Cynthia said to Professor Wolf’s daughter, Elaine, on the phone. “He has dementia. He’s dying.”
“Fuck this world,” Elaine cried. “I guess death really does come for everyone!”
“I know,” Cynthia said. “All things must die, and no amount of love can save them. It’s impossible. Fuck this world indeed!”
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