Nancy Drew and The Case of the Unknown Spoon

– Columns –

I love mysteries and grew up watching

Perry Mason (Who is THE coolest...and quite good looking, if I do say so myself!), Matlock, Murder She Wrote and Father Dowling Mysteries.

I enjoy mystery stories even more, and read and re-read Benni Harper, Jane Austen, Aunt Dimity and Nancy Drew mystery books. Almost every time, I “solve” the case within the first couple chapters. In fact, except for Perry Mason (Dang, those writers are GOOD!), if not for the enjoyment of the program/book, I could stop early on and know I had pin-pointed “who dunnit.”

Real-life mysteries are somewhat similar. There are clues if you search hard enough and use your noggin, and people usually wear guilty looks, so it’s not too hard to ferret out the truth in most situations.

Such as the recent time a single rubber band was left overnight on each of our office desks and no one admitted to leaving them. We were a little freaked out and rushed around making sure nothing had been taken.

We then rationally realized a Rubber Band Bandit would also have probably taken the more valuable things, like the lava lamp or the photos of myself on my desk – or wrecked the office when he saw that the only thing of value we keep here, is the lava lamp. (Although, I think those photos of me are priceless, I mean, come on.) We even sent out a question to our sister office, to see if anyone had come over after-hours and was playing a joke on us. No one had a clue.

Eventually, a co-worker’s daughter “fessed up” and admitted she had left the rubber bands the one night she came in with her mom to drop something off. She thought it was hysterical to blame it on the office phantom we call the Ghost Cat, who gets all the blame when weird things take place. Hysterical. Right.

One office case really had us all fooled, though, and lasted some weeks before it was solved.

All of a sudden, random spoons started appearing in the utensil drawer in the kitchen. When the new building was constructed, I went to the local dollar store and purchased a fork, spoon and knife set, complete with a drawer divider (No more plastic throw away spoons, yay!). So, all the eating utensils are the same style.

Then the random ones appeared.

One by one, we questioned each other. Is this your spoon? One by one, we all denied it.

Every day thereafter, we’d look at those random spoons and think, whose is it? We decided to go over the facts again.

One co-worker rents the apartment behind the office, so she doesn’t need to bring stuff for lunch, she can just walk 20 feet down the hall and grab her meal from her own kitchen.

I never bring eating utensils from home. Why would I, when we have a full set (and some extra, apparently) here? So, I was out on the suspects list.

The other two, at times, bring in a fork or spoon with their noontime meal, but denied any knowledge of ownership. Finally, we just chalked it up to the Ghost Cat.

Then, a few weeks later, one of the co-workers was using the spoon, standing in the middle of the floor. As she studied it intently, she cocked her head and said, “Hey, I think this IS my spoon!”

Of course, we all asked her how she could not recognize her own spoon, but she just shrugged and said she would have to look at home, to double check that it matched her set. On the following day, she marched through the door, proudly declaring, “Yep, it’s mine!”

The other three of us shared a collective face-palm to the forehead and agreed that at least the mystery had been solved. Although it wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering revelation of our office mystery, it might make a fun story.

I can see the book’s title now: Nancy Drew and The Case of the Unknown Spoon. Has a ring to it, don’t you think? Better pre-order your copies now, those babies are gonna sell out fast!