Partners in Crime

Before Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers starred in “Hart to Hart” or William Powell and Myrna Loy played Nick and Nora Charles, Agatha Christie created the characters Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.

Thomas and Prudence  — as they are known in polite company — are the seminal fast-talking husband and wife who solve crimes because they love slumming, chasing leads and being right, not because they need the work nor believe in “justice.”

Pulp Fiction

A voracious reader, a modern gentleman realized some time ago that literature alone could not slake his concupiscence.

I am reading this series by Kathy Reichs, books on which the Fox television show "Bones" is based.

Still, he strives for some semblance of decency, requiring he read one great work of fiction for every mystery novel.

Mustaches

I currently sport the "modified lampshade," which I also call the "big Little Richard" or "G. Thomson Caddingham."

A well-groomed mustache instantly ages a modern gentleman by about four years — which is not insignificant when he is baby-faced.

It also gives him an aura of mystery. Women who meet a mustachioed modern gentleman wonder: Will he sweep me off my feet or steal my purse?

Proverbs

A modern gentleman has found that absence rarely makes the heart grow fonder — nostalgic, certainly, but that’s less inspirational.

Anyway, I had no more chapters to share and no inclination to write any more.

A recent example of this is the brief hiatus of The Grover Cleveland Detective Agency.

Indeed, its absence went as unnoticed as its presence. Readers needn’t view the literary endeavors of an amateur mystery novelist, and a modern gentleman shall no longer force them to do so every Tuesday.

Chapter Nine

Campus legends about Northwestern University's Bobb-McCulloch Hall are the inspiration for Hanscom College's Benn-MacLachlan Hall.

While Candace filled her spare time dispensing advice to lovelorn co-eds, I spent mine avoiding people: Kate, who had actually called me about a second date despite what I could only assume was completely underwhelming sex; PimpFlyG, for whom my investigation was going nowhere; and the inseparable Julian and Sophia.

So I was more than a little relieved when I received a series of emails forwarded from the listserv of Hanscom College’s Benn-MacLachlan Hall.  One of the emails was from a Sydney Green:

Subject: WHO STOLE MY PANTIES FROM THE DOWNSTAIRS DRYERS?!

Actually, I don’t care who took them. I went commando to class today — in a skirt because jeans chafe — and am pretty sure I flashed my professor. He’s hot, but this was not the way I’d imagined him seeing my Sanjay Gupta.

I digress.

Please put my 17 pairs of missing panties in a bag outside my room (1139) … their matching bras and I miss them terribly.

I’m clearly not the first, but let’s make me the last.

She wasn’t.

It had happened again in the week since Sydney’s email, making a total of four women whose undergarments had disappeared from the public dryers in the basement of the dorm.

The student newspaper reported that Hanscom College’s department of residential life had interviewed the victims but hadn’t moved much further for fear of inciting a witch hunt.  The case had been handed off to the police, but with murderers and robberies to solve, The Case of the Missing Panties was not a priority.

So the women of Benn-MacLachlan Hall decided to hire a private investigator.  They also decided that I was the man for the job.

I met them at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday in the main lobby of Benn-Mac.

About two dozen women sat in a semi-circle around me in overstuffed chairs.  The ten women seated closest to me were the six victims and their roommates or friends — one of whom was Lindsay, a coworker at the student center and the woman I assumed had suggested me for the investigation.  All of them were beautiful.

Those seated behind them were less attractive but didn’t know it.  They spoke about the potential that they would be next, less out of fear than of pride.  I wanted to tell them no one wanted their panties.

Those most distant had heard about the meeting and were intrigued by the prospect of a private investigation occurring in their dorm.

I asked the victims to tell me the details of each of the thefts.  There was no significant overlap among their stories.  Two had the same major and three were the same year, but otherwise they lived on different floors, traveled in different circles, dined at different sororities and dorms, laundered on different days, and had different relationship statuses.  And all had at least three different suspects — male and female — who could have stolen their undergarments.

So it came down to one thing:

“Please describe the items stolen.”

They stared back at me, stone-faced.

“I’m looking for trends here, profiling and whatnot.  So come on.  Thongs, polka dots, days of the week, the French cut kind actresses wore during sex scenes in ‘80s movies?”

They answered, and the only thing that surprised me was that Sydney Green wrote such an impassioned email for the return of white cotton panties.  There was no overlap here either.

“No need to worry, then.  Obviously you’d like your panties returned, but you shouldn’t worry that you’ve been specifically targeted.  These were crimes of opportunity.”

They wondered how I could be so certain.

“In my experience, guilty parties are either idiots or assholes.  Assholes are devious but rare.  They mastermind conspiracies that generally take advantage of idiots.  There is a chance that this person wanted only one of your panties and stole the others to make the crimes appear random.  But I’m also of the mind that most people, even assholes, do what’s easiest, and four thefts to obfuscate one is overkill.  Idiots are far more common — even here.  Because the simplest explanation is generally the right one, we’re dealing with a garden-variety idiot.  He, or she, is some misguided individual who thinks this is either hilarious or, because this is Hanscom, a statement about our social values — probably the former because even an idiot would recognize the flaw of targeting only women with this message.”

Lindsay interrupted, which I appreciated because I had begun to ramble, “What do you plan to do about it?”

“Well, you’ve come to the right asshole because I know how to catch idiots.”

Sydney asked how, but I didn’t explain further.  My plan would never work if everyone in the audience, and by extension the dorm, knew what was going to happen.

I excused myself and hurried back to my dorm for my laptop and a webcam.

* * * * *