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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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BY JENNY TRAIG AND PETER MCGRATH - - - - Cases 25-26 (3/3/04) #25: The Case of the Poor TV Reception
Like many shut-ins, Peter and Jenny spend a lot of time watching television. TV is their link to the outside world, and they depend on it for information, entertainment, and human warmth. One morning, however, they woke to find the link had been severed. Who had committed this sabotage? Jenny thought it might have been the cable company itself. "I've heard they occasionally send out these signals to check for splices, and the signals fry your TV. And we've spliced it, like, a thousand times. We're lucky the apartment didn't blow up." Peter thought that was nonsense. "Those signals destroy pirated boxes. When we finally save up enough to buy one, we can worry about that, but in the meantime you can stop blaming the Great Comcast or whatever all-powerful entity it is you fear. The connection probably just needs tightening or oiling or something." "Okay, Einstein, you fix it, then." Jenny returned, handing her cousin a screwdriver and a can of WD-40. Thirty minutes later, when the reception still hadn't been restored, the cousins panicked and lost control of their faculties. Their roommate Angela returned home to find the well-greased pair using the screwdriver to bore peepholes in the wall. "They cut us off because we know too much," the cousins explained. "Soon they'll be coming to teach us a lesson. Don't answer the door." At this point Angela calmly dialed the cable provider and learned that the outage was due to service upgrades being done in the area. By early afternoon the cable was up and running again, with even more channels. The mystery was solved and all was well. The detectives settled in for a marathon of Nero Wolfe—the eighties version, with Lee Horsley—and agreed never to speak of the terrible incident again. - - - - #26: The Case of the Soiled Carpet
The Shut-In Detectives enjoy nature as much as the next person, and one recent evening, when they heard a flock of birds fighting over a tuna wrap in the backyard, they rushed outside to catch the spectacle. It was highly entertaining and the cousins were quite pleased with the outcome. When they came back inside, however, they found noodles and peanut sauce all over the living room rug. Who had soiled the carpet? Jenny felt sure the cause was animal. "As we've just seen, nature can be cruel and messy," she said. "It was probably mice, or maybe a couple birds that got bored during the fight and wandered inside." Peter thought that humans were to blame. "Probably clumsy thieves or vandals. Or maybe the neighbors broke in and messed stuff up, just for fun. For all we know they could have staged the bird fight to get us out of the house. I wouldn't be a bit surprised." The mystery was solved when their roommate Daniel wandered in and asked who'd dumped his dinner on the floor. The peanut sauce on Jenny's shoe suggested she might be involved. "I guess I kicked it over without noticing, in my haste to get to the backyard," she said. "Mystery solved. You can go ahead and clean up the evidence now." At this point Daniel reminded Jenny that he was not the one who kicked the food all over the carpet. "Nor," he added, "am I the one who then ground it into the carpet with her great big stampy feet." Jenny could see that his point was a good one and agreed to clean the mess up herself. In the process she discovered that it was, in fact, quite salvageable, and she and her cousin proceeded to enjoy a fine Thai meal. Because they are civilized humans, they ate with utensils, and when only one piece of tofu was left, they did not peck at each other for it, but resorted instead to making passive-aggressive comments about each other's weight.
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