The Party’s Over

Tony had promised to clean up after the party, and Tony was a man of his word. Still nursing a hangover, Tony dragged himself over to Fernando’s house. The two men had coffee, then walked into the fenced-in yard, scene of last night’s birthday revels.

The lawn was strewn with blown-up balloons and bottles and streamers, but after an hour of work, they managed to get it cleaned up. “Darn,” Fernando said, pointing up to a tree by the edge of the eight-foot-high wooden fence. A balloon was stuck in a top branch.

“I’d wait for a breeze to blow it off, but there hasn’t been a breeze in days.” Fernando climbed the tree. He was just a few inches from knocking free the balloon when he glanced into a window of Gil Dover’s house next door.

“Looks like a robbery,” he yelled down. “Broken window. A big mess. Tony my phone’s not working. Go to the corner and call 911. I’ll meet you by Gill’s rear gate.” When the police arrived, Tony and Fernando were waiting outside the splintered gate to Gil Dover’s back yard.

“That’s how we found it,” Fernando explained. “We didn’t go in.” Upon entering, the police found what Fernando had said: a broken window, a big mess in the den—plus ten missing rare coins worth $ 100,000.

Gil Dover wasn’t too disturbed. “The coins were insured,” he reported. “My uncle left me the collection, and frankly I’d rather have the money. I usually put the alarm on. But today’s cleaning day. I don’t put it on when the house cleaner comes.”

But the cleaner had never come. AL, of Al’s domestic service, was at his own house across town. He said he got a message from his answering service to skip this week.

A sergeant checked his notes. “Dover says he left home at his usual time, 11a.m. Fernando looked over the fence at 11:30. Anyone could have broken in during that half-hour period.”

“Maybe,” his captain replied. “But I have a good idea who’s responsible.” Whodunit? And How?