Captain Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was eyeballing something he should not have been eyeballing. It would have made his wife grow purple with indignation. What he was eyeballing, in fact, was not another woman of any age but a too-large piece of cheesecake. It was sequestered behind a sturdy Plexiglass window on a glass stand in the Sandersonville Cake Shoppe and it was plaintively calling his name.

Loudly.

But Lorelei’s voice was louder so, with regret, he wandered on down the sidewalk with only a single, sad, lamentable backward glance.

He was still fixating on that delicious, delectable, delicate 1/8th slice when it, so to speak, came back to haunt him. In came in form of a phone call – on the land line, not the electronic Beelzebub – from a police lieutenant in Turtle. Thieves had broken into a pastry shop at 3 a.m. and stolen 20 cheesecakes. Just the cheesecakes. They had not bothered to even open the cash register. Why, the lieutenant wanted to know, would anyone steal 20 cheesecakes?

* * *

“That, lieutenant, is a very good question. But a better one is, ‘Why are you calling me?’ That’s a crime in Turtle, out of my jurisdiction.”

“You’re the ‘Bearded Holmes,’ the man who can solve any weird crime. I’ve having a hard time writing up the police report without laughing. I mean ‘cheesecake!’”

Noonan kind of chuckled. “OK, let me see what I can do without coming to Turtle. Here are some questions for you. When you have the answers, give me a call back.”

“Shoot, Luke, I’ve got the pencil.”

“OK, was there forced entry, was anything else stolen, was anything else out of place, how old is building where the pastry shop is located, is any filming going on in Turtle, is there a homeless shelter in Turtle, is there a fair or some other outdoor social event happening in Turtle, how many cheesecakes are normally ready for sale at the time the cheesecakes were stolen, how many police officers are there in Turtle, was the dishwasher in the pastry shop on at the time of the robbery, and, let me see, any tire tracks in either the front or back of the pastry store?”

“I can give you some of those answers right . . .”

“Nope, I want all the answers at the same time. How long do you think it will take?” “An hour or so.”

“I will await you call.”

* * *

It actually took a good day for the lieutenant to get back with Noonan. He apologized and then broke into his answers. “Getting the answers was not as easy as I thought. Here goes, in the order you gave. And I had to number them to keep them straight. Do you mind if I give them by number?”

“Fine with me.”

“Here goes,

1. As far as forced entry is concerned, no one knows. The pastry shop is in a very old building and the doors are badly damaged. They don’t really lock the shop in the conventional sense of the term because there is always someone there. The cooking crew, if that’s what pastry makers are called, run a shift from about eight at night to five in the morning. There are janitors from midnight to eight a.m. and the shop opens for business at six a.m. There is no time when there is no one in the shop. So, no, there was no forced entry. But someone stole the 20 cheesecakes while the pastry cooks were in the kitchen. The theft was discovered when the sales crew came in at six a.m.

2. Nothing else was stolen.

3. The pastry shop is in one of those been-here-since-dirt buildings. It and the rest of the business in what could only be described as a strip mall, were part of a railroad repair operation in the 1920s. Since then the mall has every kind of imaginable business, from clothing to hamburgers and daycare to a state liquor store. Right now there are six side-by-side stores, six other than the pastry shop. There’s a jewelry store at one end of the mall and a maternity clothing boutique at the other. The pastry shop is in the center between a mailbox rental outlet and a five-and dime. On either side of them are a t-shirt shop and a bike repair operation. Just in case you are wondering, there has been no suspicious activity in any of the other businesses.

“Go on,” Noonan said as he scratched in his notebook.

4. There is no filming going on in Turtle or near it. I’m assuming you thought the cheesecake might be used as gag, like a pie-throwing scene. If that’s the case, the gag is being done far from Turtle. There is a homeless shelter in Turtle but no cheesecake has shown up there and we have a number of homeless camps in the vicinity. Since the pastry shop doors are never locked, per se, a homeless person could have come in and snagged a cheesecake. But not 20. I asked the social workers who frequent the camps if any pie tins have shown up. They say ‘Yes, a lot of them,’ but none I could say for certain had continued cheesecake.

5. There are a number of outdoor activity going on in Turtle and some involve pastry. I mean, you know, like you buy a slice of cheesecake for, say, $2.50. We, that is the Turtle Police, did a walk-through and none of the vendors had 20 cheesecakes. Oh, and there are six Turtle officers on the street, three more in the office. We’re not a big city operation.

6. Your last two questions were odd. No, the dishwasher was not on at the time of the robbery. That’s because all of the dishes or pans or whatever were being used in the kitchen. The dishwasher was not turned on until after the cooks have finished making pastry. The dishwasher was then turned on at about seven a.m.

7. Finally, no, there were no tracks of the perpetrators because the parking lot in front is asphalt and the back entrance has all manner of tracks in the dust. There would be no way to identify any specific track of any specific vehicle.”

“Just a couple more questions. When did the theft occur and right after the theft, what did the Turtle Police do?”

“The actual reporting of the theft was last Wednesday, two days ago. Then, and since then, we, the officers have been scouring the community for clues.”

“Well, do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“You’ve solved the case?!”

“No, I just came up with a guess. That’s as good as I can do.”

“I’ll take anything you’ve got.”

Noonan took a moment to write in his notebook and then shut it. “Here’s what I think is happening. There never was a theft of the 20 cheesecake.”

“But . . .”

“Nope. No theft. Those cheesecake were never made. First, in most restaurants, the dishwasher is run all the time. That’s because there is always a need for pans and utensils. And, having worked in a restaurant as a college student, everyone has their favorite pen, knife, mixer, whatever. So, for the dishwasher to be run just once at the end of the shift of the pastry makers is odd. Why? Because whatever is going on, needed noise to cover something. What they something is, I’m guessing now, is the jewelry store. The pastry shop is in a very old building and probably has interconnecting basements. I’m betting the doorways are still there. That is, the doorways between the businesses in the basement.”

Noonan took a breath and continued. “I’m betting the noise of the dishwasher was to cover the breaking into the basement door of the jewelry store. I don’t know which shops are between the pastry shop and the jewelry store but none of them sounded like someone needed to spend a lot of time in the basement. Whoever wanted to get to the jewelry store just figured a way to get through the basement doors.”

The lieutenant was confused. “But after the robbery of the jewelry store, which hasn’t happened, aren’t we going to know it was someone from the pastry shop? We are going to figure out the how the thieves got in.”

“Probably not,” Noonan replied. “See, I’m betting the locks on the door in the basement are really old. Since no store has the key to their own basement door, any old replacement lock will look just like the original. You can find antique padlocks in any antique store in Virginia Beach, Washington or Greenville. When you do your due diligence, I’ll bet you’ll find that the pastry shop has had some kind of electrical or plumbing problem lately. This would have given the pastry shop people  the excuse to get into the basements of the two stores between the pastry shop and the jewelry store. While they were in the basement, I’ll bet they cut off the original antique padlocks.. They probably left the door unlocked when they left the basements. None of the businesses check those doors for security purposes. Why should they? So no one would know they were missing padlocks.

“The only door that had to be forced – the reason for the dishwasher running late – was the one into the jewelry store basement. That store was security conscious so the cooks could not come up with a good reason to get into the jewelry story basement.  So the cooks probably spent quite a bit of time taking the jewelry store basement door apart from the adjacent basement. When they reached a point when they had to apply pressure to get the door open they needed to make sure there were no police anywhere near the building. That was the morning when the cheesecake were supposedly stolen. So they came up with the cheesecake ruse to send the police scrambling away from the building.  Chasing imaginary thieves.

“After they had forced door open, they repaired it well enough to pass inspection. Then they returned, basement by basement, to the pastry shop. This Sunday, when the jewelry store is closed, they’ll rob the jewelry store. I’ll bet the burglar alarm is not set for the basement.”

“Could be. But won’t we figure out how the thieves made it into the jewelry store?”

Noonan closed his notebook.  “I’d say, ‘no.’ The thieves will go basement to basement and rob the store. After the jewels are well away from the mall, they’ll do something like ram a truck into the store front. The alarm will go off and it will take the police a dozen minutes to arrive. By then the truck will be long gone. The assumption will be the thieves used the truck to break into the store grabbed gems and fled.

My bet, just before the truck hits the store, the thieves will open the jewelry store vault doors. And they will put an antique lock on the inside of jewelry story side of the basement door before they flee. This will be done to convince the police that the thieves came in the front, through the broken windows and door on the street level.  The thieves will then return to the pastry store, basement by basement. As they return they will be putting the antique padlocks they purchased behind them as they go.

When the police check the basement door to the jewelry store, they will find it locked with an antique lock and assume the door has not been opened since the jewelry story moved into the mall.  When they check the other side of the basement door, there will be another antique padlock. This will solidify their belief that the jewelry store was not robbed from the basement. The cooks will have perfect alibis. They were all cooking at the same time.”

There was silence on the line for a moment. Then the lieutenant said, “Well, we’ll be waiting.”

“Don’t make it obvious. The reason the cheesecake story has been floated is to keep you spinning your wheels. I’ll bet you’ll get another tip on Sunday morning. That’s to reduce the number of officers on patrol at that time in Turtle. If you want to time it right, just wait until the dishwasher comes on in the pastry shop. That’s when the perps will make their move.”

“How will I know when the dishwasher comes on?”

“Simple. Visit the pastry shop at about seven in the morning on Sunday. That’s when you’ll get the hot tip on the stolen cheesecakes. As you leave the store, I’m betting the dishwasher will be turned on.”

“Well, we’ll be ready.”

* * *

Two weeks later Noonan’s administrative assistant, Harriett, came into his office with a hand-sized ceramic turtle. “Guess what came in the mail today?”

“Guess? You come walking into my office with a ceramic turtle and you want me to guess?! OK, I’ll guess. A ceramic turtle.”

“Oh, but aren’t you clever! Now, let me guess. It has something to do with the missing cheesecake in Turtle.”

“You should be a detective!”

“I am! I’m just not paid to be a detective. But I’m just as smart. The cheesecake theft was just a ruse.”

“You are a detective.”

“And this is the thanks you get from the Turtle Police Department,” Harriet said as she showed him the return address on the package, “because they cannot give you a thing of value in thanks.”

“A Sherlock Holmes in our midst!”

“No, it’s in the note. It also says ‘No post turtles in Turtle.’ What’s a ‘post turtle?’”

“A ‘post turtle’ is a turtle that’s been put on top of a fence post. It’s stuck there.”

“I like the pun. Just for the occasion, I looked up turtle jokes. Just for you.”

“Oh, no! I can’t just plod along the rest of the day?”

“This one’s ‘specially for you. How do turtles make a phone calls?”

“I’ll bite.”

“On shellphones.”

“OK, here’s one for your daughter-in-law. A boy goes to a costume party dressed as a turtle and he’s carrying his date on his back. When he asked what his date’s name was, he said, ‘Michelle.’”

“That’s enough for today,” Harriet snapped and picked up the ceramic turtle. “You can’t take gratuities. I can. This will look good on the pile of memos I want to answer s-l-o-w-l-y.”