Of all the private investigators, the grieving widow chose me.

I use “grieving” loosely, because Gloria wore a pink dress when she hired me to solve her husband’s murder. The cops already have a suspect—her. Gloria’s prints were on the bottle of poison-laced pills he downed, and police knew about her flings. But she said she was framed.

Days later, Gloria answered my knock on her door. A younger man was with her.

“I found the killer,” I announced. “At the county clerk’s, I obtained a recent forgery of your husband’s will. It leaves everything to…him.”

The younger man bolted.

Officer Pierce peered through the window. "Kids are on the floor."

"Are they hurt?"

"Can't tell. I'm going in."

Junior was comforting little Jeannie whose arms were bruised, her feet bare, bloody.

"You alright?"

They stared, mute.

"Mama here?"

Jeannie nodded.

"Daddy?"

Jeannie looked at Junior. He nodded.

"Pierce, I've got Lacey here. Looks like Adam went too far this time. Her head..."

"Got it. Any sign of Adam?"

"Kids room, Pierce. Briefs around the ankles, multiple shots to the groin. No pulse. Kid-sized bloody footprints."

"Weapon?"

Junior let go of Jeannie and pushed his daddy's glock across the floor.

The professor lay slumped on his desk, dead. One hand hung down; a finger hooking an empty coffee mug. His other arm pointed to his MacBook laptop. Before the man of letters drew his last breath he had been engaged in a game of WORDLE. His final game guesses:

BIKER

BITER

BOWER

BAYER

FUDGE

Detective Jeanette Fowler noted the last clue seemed strange. She understood BAKER as the next guess, but FUDGE? She grabbed pen and pad. Rearranging the letters, she looked at suspect Doug Fletcher, the chemistry professor. “I know you poisoned him. I guess your feud is over.”

My mandatory investigating partner is an AI-bot, and I haven’t solved a case in months before the machine does. One notorious thief, who leaves a cryptic signature behind, has eluded us both though.

At this crime-scene, random objects hang from the ceiling.

“Based on the MO, here's a list of suspects.” My partner crackles and rattles off names.

"Ha!” I scoff and walk to the entrance.

“I sense disagreement.”

“Don’t you see the burglar’s signature?”

“No.”

I take a picture of the room and the bandit's smirking face, a juxtaposition of random objects, mocks me with all of its notoriety.

Abbot held himself in a strict straight backed posture, his chest heaving certain that to this red-headed teenage girl-- this teenager they'd ABDUCTED!-- must have seen a monster baring down onto her.

She didn't look petrified. She didn't beg or cry.

She just took another dollop of pudding to her lips.

Blinking balefully at him.

"I'm sorry, and also sorry," she said as she began to pull at the hem of her plaid skirt, "that my friends and Adam absolutely won't give up the evidence."

Abbot just groaned, continuing his guard duty of Molly Jones seated.

"Tell me about you."

"Okay." I laugh humorlessly, spinning back to my co-workers, jabbing my sausage-y finger at them. (The middle one). "Who the fuck took my pudding."

The people at the office look up from their cubicles at me, standing on my wheelie chair.

Angelina, the secretary looks nervous. "Do you need your meds?"

"Are you talking back to me, slave?!" I screech.

"T'was I!" Paul says from the back. I snap my gaze to him before realizing that he's just attention-grabbing again.

"Shut the fuck up Paul." I yell. "Whoever took the pudding better confess in ten seconds or you're all FIRED!"