The Adventure of the St Patrick’s Day Chicken

by Jeff Baker

We had the case wrapped up by noon. We had to.

Josh and I had been hired to find some missing jewelry, gems that hadn’t even been reported stolen yet, the owner felt he was to embarrassed to do what he should have done and called the police.

Early Breakfast usually had more customers in the morning but that was the morning of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade downtown. I had said something about the big rooster on top of the building being the Saint Patrick’s Day Chicken and Josh grumbled something about sticking to business.

In this case, “business” meant sipping coffee at a back corner table and keeping track of everyone in the restaurant. Including the owner.

We hadn’t been able to really track down the thieves but we’d found one strange bit of evidence at one of the jewelry stores that had been hit; an old photograph of the building with the chicken on it that was used as an advertising flier.

And there was a date written on this one: March 17^th. A. M.

“So far, those guys are the only customers in here, Adam,” Josh said.

“Everybody else is downtown drinking green beer,” I said to my husband and partner.

Some crooks are clever, but not totally clever. These guys had apparently been meeting here after every robbery and disposing of the jewels under the owner’s nose. These guys had actually been stopped and questioned but they had alibis and no evidence on them. They were wrapping the jewels up in small paper bags and tossing them in with the trash along with the leftovers as they left the place. Their accomplices pick up the little bag of jewels from the dumpster after hours and nobody suspected a thing.

We texted the police. They nabbed the bad guys.

After the police arrived and we explained everything to the owners, we had lunch.

On the house.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: My happily-ensconced P. I.’s, Josh and Adam have appeared in this space before. Check the link under “categories” to the side to read their earlier adventures.

And thanks for reading this one! ——jeff