While Henry Makepeace frosted cupcakes, Jennifer Thackeray was frowning into a microscope, examining something which really should not have been there. Were her boss to notice this, Jennifer realized, she could experience some awkward questions, something along the line of what exactly she’d been doing at the back bench all these months, and why the seedlings under the window appeared to be moving, despite the fact that the lab was sealed up tighter than a Republican’s anus on 15 April.

Jennifer Makepeace hadn’t always worked in biology. Originally, she studied philosophy, and when she found herself exploring the nature of consciousness in plants, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to learn what she wanted to know from the staff at the philosophy department, so she started taking biology instead, and participating in some decidedly unscientific experiments.

The lab was already viewed with disdain by most of the faculty at the university, as well as academia in general, because the notion that plants could think, let alone have consciences, was considered absurd. Yet, in a serious of cautious experiments, Jennifer’s boss had proved just that, and Jennifer aimed to go even further, giving plants the tools they needed for free will. Freeing them, in other words, from the constraints of ordinary existence.

In addition to being a philosopher, the young Jennifer had also been a radical, dabbling along the fringes of the ecological movement, although she never really took the plunge. While she attended the campus animal rights group meetings on a regular basis, she rarely actively participated in anything, although she was involved in a lab rat heist gone horribly awry once, which resulted in a flood of extremely fat albino rats skittering around the English department for four months before the last of the animals could be rounded up.

One thing that Jennifer Thackeray firmly believed was that, given the chance, nature could correct itself, and she thought that empowering nature with the tools for social justice might speed that process up, just a tad.

Jennifer Thackeray, in short, was building a chlorophyllically enhanced army.

Henry Makepeace was pursing his lips as he painstakingly piped flowers onto his cupcakes, and thinking about the fire at Giuseppe’s. He thought that he might call the fire chief later, just to offer his services, as a friendly sort of thing, but really he was dying of curiosity, and he had a vested interest in finding the lighter-happy rapscallion who had perpetrated the deed. After all, who knew how long it would be before he had spit roasted goat again?

Brad Whittaker was staring disconsolately at George MacInroe, and wondering why he had never noticed the dapper lawyer’s sizable beer gut before.

“It’s no use looking that way,” MacInroe said. “we’re trussed up tighter than turkeys, and apparently, when you’re behind the waste treatment plant, no one can hear you scream.”

Brad Whittaker screamed anyway.

Stella Carlisle was reviewing her copy of The Sun Also Rises, making notes on her steno pad and occasionally flicking her pen against the railing in irritation. As absorbing as Hemingway could be, she suspected that most of the talk at the book club would be about the fire, rather than the book. She wondered if perhaps she should suggest that the meeting be moved to next week, but remembered that Henry would be out of town, so that wouldn’t be any good.

James Farrier was studying a typed postcard with an obscured postmark, and wondering if he would have time for a quick bite before his meeting with the mysterious “Jennifer,” who probably had nothing for him anyway.

Officer Carlisle was also reading The Sun Also Rises, concealed below his steering wheel while he pretended to be watching traffic on Main Street. Agent Parker had suggested that the assistance of the police force was no longer needed at the MacInroe house, or in the MacInroe disappearance investigation, and the fire department hadn’t cleared Giuseppe’s yet, so Officer Carlisle figured that he would look for a suitable passage to bring up at the book club, given that his mother had just invited him, so he wanted to make a good impression.

Agent Parker was in an uncomfortable call with Washington, trying to explain why it was that all of the files in MacInroe’s office were in complete disarray, and covered in twigs. Despite his best effort to point out that nothing was missing, the voice on the other end of the phone did not sound impressed. The voice on the other end of the phone was also, apparently, late for a lunch date, and it started to get downright testy by the time Agent Parker mentioned the fact that the back door appeared to have been unlocked, possibly forced, and that he really wanted to leave to take a shower, seeing as how he was covered in questionable substances after his compost pile adventure.

Right around the time that James Farrier was eating a falafel by a nondescript water fountain, the members of the book club were filing into the house of Henry Makepeace, and hurling themselves upon the lavish spread of food, which he modestly insisted was “just a few things I whipped up.”

As Stella predicted, the focus of the book club was on the fire, and to her astonishment, the conversation was dominated by Kevin and Henry, both of whom surprised the group by announcing that the fire was obviously arson. Had the two had a chance to speculate, they might have surprised each other with their theories about the motive, but unfortunately the body of George MacInroe, tightly wrapped in electric blue nylon cord, was hurled through the living room window before this could happen.

The story of Henry Makepeace continues…if you want to read the rest of the story, it’s in the fiction archive. Feel free to add speculation in the comments!

Henry Makepeace stared gloomily at the dining room of Giuseppe’s, currently engulfed in flame, and wondered if someone had managed to rescue the potted palms, or if they were slowly roasting away. He had a newfound affinity for plants, thanks to Gregory, and those palms had been particularly attractive. As had Giuseppe’s itself, in fact.

And herein lay the rub. Giuseppe’s wasn’t only one of the better restaurants in town, it was also one of the more recently renovated restaurants in town. And one of the things that Giuseppe had done while renovating was to install a variety of measures to deal with fires, an occupational hazard in a restaurant with a traditional open fireplace for pit roasting. Henry Makepeace knew this because Giuseppe had asked for his input during the renovation, and he had offered his advice, backed by years of experience in these sorts of things.

Therefore, it was highly suspicious that Giuseppe’s should be so flagrantly on fire at the moment. The fire was burning hot, and it was burning very fast, and that stank of something, in the nose of Henry Makepeace. The fire chief seemed to agree, as did Giuseppe, who was sitting on the sidewalk with his back to the restaurant and a defeated expression, while Stella patted his back and said nothing in particular.

There wasn’t too much that the firemen could do, since the fire was so advanced, so they mostly just stood around, wetting down neighboring roofs and waiting for the restaurant to collapse in on itself, taking Giuseppe’s upstairs apartment with it.

Very interesting, indeed, thought Henry Makepeace.

“You have a knack for popping up in the strangest places,” said Officer Carlisle, standing with his feet regulation distance apart and gazing intently at the fire.

“Erm, yes,” said Henry. “Professional interest, you know. And I was thinking that maybe I would join the fire department. It seems like interesting work, be nice to see how things are on the hot end of the table, so to speak. Did you, er, find whatever it was you were looking for this morning?”

“Whoever it was,” Officer Carlisle said, absently.

“What?”

“Well, thanks to my mother, the cat’s rather out of the bag at this point. It’s George McInroe. He’s disappeared.”

“Ah,” said Henry Makepeace. “Your mother?”

Officer Carlisle gestured in Stella’s direction. “Stella,” he said. “She’s pathologically incapable of keeping a secret.”

Henry Makepeace wondered why he had never realized that Stella and Officer Carlisle were related, and realized that he had never heard Stella’s last name.

Brad Whittaker, meanwhile, was fighting through some weeds around the alley gate so that he could slip in through the back door of George McInroe’s house. Thanks to an earlier phone call, the FBI agents had whizzed off somewhere else, leaving a lone man on guard in a car in the front. Whittaker figured he had half an hour or so to get what he needed and slip out, assuming the lock on the door wasn’t too complicated, and it wasn’t.

“It’s strange,” Henry Makepeace said, “this fire. A bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

Officer Carlisle gave a start and looked at Henry Makepeace as though he had never seen him before, before replying, with a thoughtful expression, that it was indeed strange.

“I mean, Giuseppe just sunk a great deal of money into the place, renovating it. And fireproofing it. I find it hard to believe that the fire is of innocent origin,” Henry said, gesturing at the incendiary interior of the restaurant. “I wonder who has it out for Giuseppe?”

Brad Whittaker was pleased to find that George McInroe kept a very neat house, and an even neater office, with everything beautifully organized and quite tidy. It was clear that while the office had been examined, nothing had been taken away yet. In fact, quite conveniently, everything of interest had been boxed up and stacked by the office door, presumably because there had been no time to secure it.

“Excellent,” Brad said, picking up the boxes and slipping out the back door.

When the roof of the restaurant started to go, everyone backed away, scattering into the street, and when Giuseppe remained riveted to the sidewalk, Henry and Officer Carlisle grabbed his arms and dragged him out of the way, as the ceiling collapsed in a shower of sparks and flaming timbers.

“Oh, my,” said Officer Carlisle.

“Hijo de puta,” said Giuseppe, who was from Argentina, despite rejoicing in a decidedly Italian name.

“Aaaah,” said the crowd.

Agent Parker woke up when he heard a clattering in the alley, and decided he should probably go to investigate. All he found, however, was a fallen garbage can and a few scattered papers, and he missed the sound of the back door quietly snicking shut when he tripped over a stray cat and fell over a low fence and onto Officer Carlisle’s compost pile.

Several thousands miles away, a phone rang.

“Hello,” said the man who answered. “James Farrier.”

“James Farrier? With the Post?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Ah, I have some documents. For you. I think you might be interested in them. Is there somewhere we can meet?”

“Who is this?”

“You can call me Jennifer. Look, I have to go, ah, I’ll call back later. Think about a place we can meet. Somewhere…somewhere we won’t be noticed.”

And then the phone went dead.

Start from the beginning, if you are totally confused.

In fact, George MacInroe had not technically disappeared.

Still in corporeal form, he was firmly attached to a tree behind the waste management plant, where he had woken up after being clubbed in the alley by an unknown assailant while attempting to drive raccoons away from the garbage cans. At least, he assumed that they were raccoons, although he couldn’t actually see them. George MacInroe was also deeply confused about how he had gotten where he was, although he had a good idea as to why, and when he woke up, he emitted a few feeble cries, in the vain hope that someone would hear him, although people do not generally make a habit of wandering around behind the waste management plant, for obvious reasons.

However, this chapter is not about George MacInroe, the small town lawyer. I just thought you might like to know where he was. Hopefully he won’t realize he’s naked before someone finds him, because that would be rather awkward.

This chapter is about Brad Whittaker, who had a serious problem.

Brad Whittaker, a long-time mill employee, was trying to figure out how to get into George MacInroe’s house without being noticed by the hordes of law enforcement and news personnel which had descended upon the scene as soon as Polly Carmichael, his cleaning lady, reported that he appeared to be missing. Brad Whittaker, you see, knew MacInroe’s secret, and he also know that it would be extremely awkward and irritating if that secret happened to get out.

George MacInroe was the quintessential small-town lawyer, well known and reasonably well liked by most people in the community. He had been practicing for over 20 years in his neat little house on Lamprey Street, and most people knew him by sight, if not by name. He handled the sort of legal difficulties which arise in small towns from time to time, like wills, simple divorces, and so forth, and every now and then he dug out a reasonably neat suit to go to court on some matter or another.

Like most small town lawyers, George MacInroe also knew his fair share of secrets, like who was sleeping with whom and when, but one was particularly large. He had been involved in several entirely legitimate dealings with the mill which might be misconstrued if they entered the public eye, really everyday sort of things, like writing a contract for some waste disposal, moving petty amounts of money around, handling a few OSHA complaints, and rearranging a property deed now and then. Nothing terribly important, of course, but Brad had been charged with dealing with it when the mill became aware that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seemed especially interested in the issue.

These were the sort of jobs Brad Whittaker did, and he was rather good at them, actually. He had an office in the mill, a comfortable salary, and a vague job title to give him authority, but he was left largely alone until he was needed.

In fact, George MacInroe’s apparent disappearance was rather convenient for Brad Whittaker, who fervently hoped that he would stay disappeared, because it would make it much easier for Brad to extract some key pieces of information which might be perceived as incriminating. However, Brad had not counted upon such a rapid reaction to the disappearance, and he was now faced with several issues, which he reviewed in his head as he pretended to look at sales figures in case his secretary was looking.

1. The FBI had arrived on the scene, and they would undoubtedly comb through the house, using the feeble excuse of looking for material related to the disappearance. Along the way, they might find a few things that could become problematic later down the line.

1a. Perhaps the FBI was actually behind the disappearance, and MacInroe had been whisked into witness protection, in which case MacInroe might have taken the material with him, which would be extremely irritating.

2. The neighbors on Lamprey Street were notoriously nosy, and he was unlikely to slip past Stella Carlisle, let alone her son Kevin.

3. Therefore he needed a distraction. Since half of Lamprey Street seemed to be in the volunteer fire department, and the other half would never miss a breaking news item, Brad Whittaker had a pretty good idea.

4. A brilliant idea, in fact.

Brad Whittaker swung his feet back onto the floor, shot out the door, and shouted that he was going to City Hall as he swept past his curious secretary. He had an urgent need to look at a city map, and he had someone to talk to.

Henry Makepeace, meanwhile, had finally received the packet of photographs from the Meyers fire, via the cheerful FedEx man, and he was leafing through them on the porch while he took notes and Gregory trimmed the hedges. In his professional opinion, the Meyers fire was an open and shut case of arson, complete with accelerant traces so obvious that he could see them in the photographs, and he didn’t even need to look at the fire inspector’s report. He didn’t blame the Meyers family, really, since the house was a loser, but Halcyon certainly wouldn’t be covering the damage.

To his irritation, he noticed that he had made his book club notes on his work notepad, although they did remind him that he might want to brush up on the ending of The Sun Also Rises before tomorrow night. Stella had informed him that 16 people would be showing up on the following night, and Henry had already stocked up on fruit, cheese, and juice for his guests. A batch of vanilla cream cupcakes cooled on the counter, alongside a batch of red velvet cupcakes; they could be frosted in the morning. The artichokes, he decided, would also wait until the morning, and his sourdough starter was reassuringly alive, so he would be able to make baguettes as well, in the afternoon, so they would be warm when the book club arrived.

As he pulled together the threads of an official report, the FedEx man showed up again, with preliminary photographs of the plane fire which he decided to look at later, perhaps on the plane to Minneapolis, assuming that he managed to get a row to himself. The weather was starting to turn, so Henry decided to go back inside, after reminding Gregory that he had been invited to dinner, along with his wife the traveling nurse, who had already agreed to give Henry a lift to the airport.

Henry Makepeace had decided to roast a chicken, and he had gathered his ingredients at the store that morning, so he took his time preparing his official report, finishing up right around the time he wanted to get the bird and potatoes in the oven. After he had initiated the roasting process, Henry popped into the shower, and then tossed a salad and trimmed some asparagus, which he thought would be best roasted as well, with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon.

Gregory and his wife arrived neatly on time, as always, and the trio enjoyed a leisurely dinner before migrating into the living room to eat ice cream. Henry had discovered that he genuinely liked Gregory and his wife, and he enjoyed talking with them during their biweekly dinners. Gregory’s wife still seemed surprised that Henry cooked, and the two had engaged in a subtle war, each trying to outdo each other in successive weeks.

As the three talked about the projected rise in sewer rates, Gregory’s pager went off.

“Excuse me,” he said, turning it up to hear the dispatcher. Henry took a professional interest in fires, so he leaned forward to listen to the dispatcher’s voice crackling through the pager. It sounded, in his opinion, like a big one, and perhaps an interesting one as well, if he had the address right. He followed hard on Gregory’s heels to the street, where members of the fire department were starting their cars and preparing to charge to the firehouse.

Stella, as always, poked her head over the gate, and as Henry climbed into Gregory’s car, he shouted:

“Giuseppe’s, Stella,” and they sped off into the night.

It’s time for another installment in our serial fiction story. If you’re lost, want to catch up, or want to refresh your memory, the archive is here.

When Henry Makepeace woke up, he decided that Gregory would probably be able to solve the mystery of the box, since he had been working the day before, and it was entirely possible that he had gone inside for something and knocked it over. This didn’t solve the more puzzling issue of why the box was empty, and he almost called Jennifer, but she had been quite firm about never wanting to hear from him again, so he suspected that it might be more trouble than it was worth. These things had a way of working themselves out.

Instead, he decided to lie in wait for the mailman, because he couldn’t work until he got that package of photographs, so he took a cup of oolong and a cookbook out to the porch and began leafing through it. He was supposed to host the book club on Thursday, and had a vague idea of making some sort of snacks. The last book club meeting had been hosted by Eduardo, a local chef, and Henry had been rather pleased by the delicate finger food which had been provided. While he might not be the equal of a chef, Henry certainly knew how to offer hospitality.

When Gregory arrived, Henry was deep into a rather complex but intriguing recipe for chocolate zabaglione trifle, and the mailman was still nowhere to be seen. Gregory brought up the box on his own, asking what was inside and explaining that it had still been sealed and on the table when he popped into the house before he left to wash his hands in the kitchen.

“By the way,” Henry said, “that new plant by the garage? What is it? It looks like some kind of vine?”

Gregory stared blankly back, and Henry felt a little frisson of uneasiness, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. He had definitely seen the plant the night before, with delicate curled tendrils waving gently in the breeze. And he had noticed that it was in a lightweight pot, as though it had just come from the nursery.

“It’s, ah, well, maybe I’m mistaken. Let me show you,” Henry said, bookmarking the recipe and walking out to the garage. Gregory still looked deeply confused, and muttered something about a flat of lobelia, but when the two arrived at the garage, the plant was gone, although a moist circular mark on the concrete suggested that something in a pot had certainly been there recently.

“This is quite peculiar,” Henry said. “It was right here, last night, coming home from the party.”

Gregory looked curious, but could offer no explanation, and Henry began to feel rather perturbed. As the two stared blankly at the garage, a police car rolled up, with Officer Carlisle at the wheel and another, older officer beside him, with the name “Baker” on his badge.

“Ah,” Henry said, somewhat surprised. “Good morning, Officer Carlisle. Come by to ask some questions, have you?”

Officer Baker narrowed his eyes at Henry, while Officer Carlisle said “yes, actually, we have. But not about the, ah, incident yesterday. We were wondering if you noticed anything unusual last night?”

Henry Makepeace wondered if a mysterious empty box and a disappearing vine counted as “unusual,” but he decided that it probably didn’t, and he explained that he had come home late and a bit inebriated, and hadn’t noticed anything before going to bed. Gregory, who happened to live down the street, added that he hadn’t seen anything peculiar either, although the neighborhood racoons had been at the garbage cans again during the night.

“Dragged the wife’s, ah, personal stuff right out of the cans into the alley,” he said. “Not the kind of thing I like to deal with early in the morning, you know?”

The policemen nodded politely, and there was a long and pregnant pause.

“Well, if you remember anything,” Officer Baker said, “be sure and let us know.”

“Sure thing,” Henry said with a smile. “What’s all the fuss about, anyhow?”

The policemen muttered something about routine investigations and drove on, and Gregory said he had better get back to trimming the hedges, while Henry realized that he should probably not attempt the zabaglione at this stage, since the book club was only a day away, and he didn’t want a complete failure on his hands. He would probably be better off sticking to something nice and sensible, like stuffed artichokes and perhaps a cheese platter. And fruit, good fresh fruit. Perhaps he could get a batch of baguettes done, too, if he finished reviewing the photos in time, and mixed cupcakes would make an adequate dessert offering. Or perhaps chocolate dipped cream cheese ice box cookies. Or maybe both. He wondered how many people would be turning up at the book club meeting, and decided that if there were going to be more than 15, he could make the cookies and the cupcakes.

When Henry Makepeace returned to the porch, he wearily noted that a yellow slip was sticking out of the mailbox, and that the mysterious mailman was nowhere in sight. There was also a letter from the water reclamation board, announcing that an unknown source of contamination appeared to be causing problems at the reservoir, and until they figured out the source, he should probably boil water before consuming it, just in case.

Unknown source of contamination, indeed, thought Henry Makepeace. There’s only one major company here, and dollars to doughnuts, I’ll bet it’s them.

With that cheerful thought, Henry returned to his cookbook, sighing happily as he encountered not one but four recipes for stuffed artichokes, and he wondered if perhaps he should make two different versions, but then of course there was the issue of which ones. Gregory hummed away at the hedge, and presently the phone rang, drawing Henry inside to speak with someone at Halycon Insurance, who wanted to know if the photos had arrived yet. Henry didn’t want to explain his problems with the mailman, so he simply said that they hadn’t arrived, and asked if perhaps another carrier could be used for important packages. He also agreed he would travel to the firm’s hangar in Minneapolis next week to inspect a fire-damaged plane, which the owner claimed had spontaneously caught fire during a routine flight. Given that the plane belonged to a company which was experiencing financial difficulties, Henry Makepeace had his doubts about the “spontaneous” part, although he certainly didn’t doubt the “caught fire” part, since the plane had been on the national news two nights ago. Henry Makepeace wondered if he could get a ride to the airport with the traveling nurse from the book club, who always seemed to be going back and forth between the city and their small town, and made a note to ask her, bringing the notepad with him to the porch with the intent of writing a grocery list.

When Henry Makepeace arrived outside, he was surprised to see a large assortment of cars, including several news vans. Gregory was standing at the gate, glowering at a reporter who threatened the ornamental borders the community had collectively planted along the outer edges of the sidewalk, and Henry walked over to see what was going on.

The reporter was a high-strung man in his early 30s, who looked deeply displeased to be where he was, and even more displeased by the glaring Gregory. A flurry of reporters had descended upon the street, actually, trailed by sound technicians, camera men, and journalists with tape recorders and note pads. Any neighbors who were home peered out from their windows, or walked into their yards to get a better idea of what was happening, and Henry Makepeace noticed Stella, his neighbor, in her yard.

Henry and Gregory walked over to Stella and surveyed the pandemonium which was reigning in their sleepy street.

“What in the heck,” said Gregory, “is going on here?”

“Didn’t you hear? It’s George MacInroe,” Stella replied. “He’s gone missing.”

The story of the man with the box continues…and here’s the fiction archive, if you feel lost (or want to catch up on the story).

Henry Makepeace sensed, rather than actually saw, the postman on the porch, and since he was expecting a package, he dashed out to catch him, but he had already gone, striding off down the street in his blue shorts, and there was a yellow slip sticking out of the mailbox, informing him that he could pick up his “oversized mail” after three. He dashed down the street after the rapidly vanishing postman, gesticulating wildly and waving the yellow slip, but the postman didn’t seem to hear, and Henry made his way wearily back to the house. He was almost certain the postman hadn’t knocked, and he felt like the postman should have knocked, with a package, although the issue appeared to be a losing battle.

He had recently moved here, to the house on Lamprey Street, after breaking up with his girlfriend. Henry decided he couldn’t keep living in Atlanta, on the off chance that he might run into her somewhere, perhaps at the park, and so he indulged a wish which had been lurking in his dreams since childhood: he opened up an atlas at random, stabbed a finger on the map, and moved to the place he pointed to.

Being a practical sort of man, Henry Makepiece used an atlas of the United States, and he took out Georgia, because he didn’t want to live in the same state with his ex-girlfriend, along with Florida on principle, New Jersey, and Arizona, because he didn’t want to live in the same state as his mother. He didn’t recognize the name of the town his finger eventually landed on, but it sounded good, and the insurance company didn’t seem to care, as long as he was willing to travel to incident sites as needed. Since he already had to travel to most of the scenes he investigated, the arson rate in Atlanta being fairly low, Henry Makepeace didn’t think this was too much of a sacrifice, until he learned that the closest airport to his new home was four hours away. Unfortunately, at that point he had already made a down payment for the house on Lamprey Street and arranged for a moving company to pack his things, so he figured he would make the best of it.

The town was not what Henry had expected. He’d spent his whole life living in cities, not sleepy small towns with lazy postmen. When he arrived at his new house, he saw that it had a lawn which he was expected to mow, along with a neat row of bright flowers, which his neighbor informed him were begonias. (”And feel free to use my mower, until you settle in,” the neighbor said.) After his first battle with the lawnmower, Henry Makepeace hired a gardener, who was recommended to him by the clerk at the grocery store, who mentioned it because her cousin had seen Henry attempting to mow the lawn backwards. The gardener was the clerk’s cousin also. Or maybe her husband’s cousin? Henry was unclear on this point.

The town unsettled Henry. People waved at him in the street, and his neighbors came over, one by one, with platters of desserts. “Just to welcome you to the neighborhood,” they said, peering around his doorframe to inspect his furniture. While he had thought that living in a quiet small town would allow him to become a hermit, the opposite seemed to have happened, and he found himself attending City Council meetings, volunteering on Coastal Cleanup Day, and offering to assist the fire department with a scheduled burn.

Oddly enough, Henry Makepeace liked it. He liked his neighbors, and he liked the City Council meetings. He even spoke at a Planning Commission meeting, when a proposal to change the name of Lamprey Street was put forward by George MacInroe, a lawyer down the street, who felt that people were put off by the thought of visiting a law office on a street named for a bottom feeding eel. Makepeace argued persuasively and eloquently, drawing on years of experience in the witness stand, and the measure was voted down, six to one.

As long as he was trapped at home without whatever would have been in the package, probably photographs from the Meyers fire, to work on, Henry Makepeace puttered around the house, mopping the floors in the bathrooms and waving at the gardener when three finally came around and he walked to the post office to collect his package.

This was becoming a weekly ritual, and he wondered if he should ask the insurance company to send evidence and documents via UPS, to avoid the post office problem. They were certainly good for the money, being a national leader in the industry, and Henry knew that he was probably their best arson investigator, especially after his rather brilliant work in a fraud case about five years ago, when he was able to categorically prove that the fire had been set when a lesser investigator was willing to call it quits and say it was the wiring. Surely he was worthy of UPS delivery, rather than the vagaries of the post office. Despite trying to convince the post office to ask the mailman, whom he had never actually seen, to just leave packages on his porch, Henry Makepeace found himself there several days a week, collecting packages which he could have gotten at home, if the clerk had simply knocked, since he was almost always at home during the day, working in his office.

The clerks at the post office all knew him, and by the time he reached the counter with his bright yellow slip, the clerk had brought his package out from the back. It was much larger than he expected, a big brown box. Perhaps, Henry Makepeace thought, they are sending evidence to examine, along with the pictures. His address was written in a neatly rounded and suspiciously familiar hand, though, and when he looked at the return address, his heart sank. “Jennifer Thackeray,” it said, listing the address the two had formerly shared. Possibly Jennifer was sending something he had left behind in Atlanta, uncovered on one of her periodic closet cleanings. Whatever it was, Henry Makepeace was surprised, and rather unsettled, as he walked back home via Main Street, so that he could stop by City Hall and pick up the minutes of the last City Council meeting.

Along the way, he watched with some astonishment as a young woman walked directly into a utility post, and he set the box down while he waited to make sure that she didn’t need assistance. A crowd started to gather, and she tried to get up, but Henry could see a trickle of blood running down her face, and he thought that perhaps he should call the ambulance, just to make sure, and when he finished his call, he walked over to her.

“You hit that pole pretty hard,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down for a minute?”

The paramedics arrived a moment later, pushing him aside, and he fluttered at the edge of the growing crowd, feeling some sort of responsibility for the young woman, but not wanting to get in the way. Eventually a policeman arrived and talked to the paramedics, and Henry Makepeace stepped forward.

“Henry Makepeace,” he said. “I called the ambulance, just to be sure. She looked like she might be, you know, badly injured. She just walked right into that utility pole, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Of course,” said the policeman. “Good,” and his eyes drifted toward the box.

“It’s from my ex-girlfriend. She’s a biologist,” Henry Makepeace said, wondering why he had added that particular piece of information. “I don’t know what it is, but I had to go to the post office to get it, because the postman didn’t even knock, just left a package slip on the door. Lazy.”

“Ah,” said the policeman, studying the crowd. The two stood in silence for a moment, and then the policeman, who had a smear of what looked like chocolate cake on his badge, strode forward to disperse the crowd, while Henry examined the flowers in the flowerbox on the corner, installed by the city as part of the beautification campaign. Cyclamen, he noted. He was learning flowers, thanks to his gardener, who turned up every week with something new to plant, turning his garden from a dull expanse of lawn and orderly flowers into a riot of colour. Although Henry was a bit concerned that eventually the garden would overflow, either into the street or into the yards of the neighbors.

The policeman drifted back, and, not knowing what else to say, Henry Makepeace mentioned that he had just moved, on a whim, and then explained that he was an arson investigator, expecting at least a flicker of interest, but the policeman with cake on his badge seemed content to gaze watchfully at the scene. The young woman seemed agitated as she talked with the paramedics, muttering about Henry’s box and not having insurance, and as she was strapped to a backboard and loaded into the ambulance, the policeman turned to him.

“It was good of you to call,” he said. “It might be nothing, but better safe than sorry, right? Some people wouldn’t take the time of day, even here. They would have just walked right by, you know?”

The victim waved at them.

“It’s fine, really,” Henry Makepeace said. “I just thought I should call, you know, to be sure.”

Henry waved back at the victim, wondering what her name was and figuring he would read it in the paper next week, and then, to his astonishment, the policeman seemed to slip on nothing, teetering like a marionette on the sidewalk for an instant before falling down. Henry leaned over the policeman to offer a hand, squinting to read the badge.

“Are you all right? Officer? Uh…Car-lizzle?”

“Carlisle. Yes,” and he gripped Henry’s hand surprisingly strongly and pulling himself up. “I must have just lost my balance for some reason. Well then. I suppose that settles things. I guess I have your address if I need anything, yes?”

“Of course. Have a nice day,” Henry said, picking up the box and walking home.

When he got home, Henry Makepeace realized that he had forgotten to stop by City Hall, so he set the box on the table, intending to open it later, biked downtown, grabbed the minutes, and then hurried to the regional offices of Halcyon Insurance, where he was supposed to be attending a birthday party for one of the local staffers, Lindsey, turning 22.

The party went late, as these things often do, and a tipsy Henry Makepeace gratefully dropped his bicycle into someone’s truck and accepted a ride home at the end of the evening. When he arrived, he stashed his bike in the garage, noticed a new plant which Gregory must have dropped by, and found upon going inside that the box had fallen to the floor.

“That’s odd,” Henry Makepeace said, looking around for some rational explanation. Perhaps someone had dropped something off and knocked the box over accidentally, or maybe the neighbor’s cat had come in through the window to sun herself and pushed the box off the table. The window was closed, though, and in an even more puzzling state of affairs, the box had come open. And it was empty.

Officer Kevin Carlisle had been working for the police department for three years and eight days when he sat down to do the crossword during his break. He knew it must be three years and eight days, since exactly one week and one day ago, the department had pitched in to buy him a cake (celebrating three years!) and a watch for Officer Baker (thanks for 25 years of service!) As he struggled over a five letter word for “tenacious” and ate a stale piece of chocolate cake, he heard the dispatcher talking to someone, and he folded his newspaper in preparation, knowing that the other two cars on patrol were already responding to calls.

“I’m sorry, Kevin,” the dispatcher said. “Some sort of accident? Someone was hit by a pole on Main Street, at any rate. Traffic control might be needed. And a victim statement, of course.”

Officer Carlisle nodded, and went to collect his patrol car, which he shared with Officer Monroe. Officer Monroe had the obnoxious habit of setting the seat too far forward and eating sunflower seeds on his shifts, and Officer Carlisle noted that it was time to vacuum again.

Some joker at the architecture firm designed the entry gate for the lot to look like a portcullis, no doubt thinking that it would look smart as it rolled briskly up to disgorge the face of the law, but in fact it usually stuck on the way up, as Officer Carlisle wearily noted when he stopped in front of the gate. He briefly considered driving through anyway, but he suspected that the bottom of the gate was just low enough to scratch his roof, so he got out to waggle the third bar from the right while pushing up, to get the gate to open the rest of the way.

Far better than the reverse; the Sergeant almost lost a prisoner once, when the gate came abruptly clattering down, nearly poleaxing the spraypaint-stained ruffian in the back seat. Fortunately, the young man was agile enough to roll aside, but the car had to be taken out of service, perforated like a stamp.

When Officer Carlisle arrived on the scene, he saw the victim lying on the ground near a utility pole, with two concerned paramedics nearby, along with an assortment of gawkers and a nervous, plump man who fluttered at the edges of the group. Officer Carlisle also saw a box, addressed to “Henry Makepeace” of “539 Lamprey Street.” He idly wondered if he would need to call a bomb disposal unit, since according to his Department of Homeland Security Anti-Terror Training, any unattended package could represent a danger, and then he wondered where the closest bomb disposal unit might be.

First, though, he needed to gain control of the situation, as he learned in the Academy.

The policeman started with the paramedics, who informed him that the victim had walked into the pole, rather than being hit by one, and that the victim’s neck might be broken, so transport to the hospital would be necessary. The plump man turned out to be Henry Makepeace, and the one who had called the police, so Officer Carlisle sensed that the scene would quickly be wrapped up, something to laugh over in the staff room, perhaps, depending on the victim’s outcome.

“It’s from my ex-girlfriend,” Makepeace said, gesturing at the box. “She’s a biologist.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, but I had to go to the post office to get it, because the postman didn’t even knock, just left a package slip on the door. Lazy.”

“Ah,” Officer Carlisle said. It was a useful catchall word for those situations in which he wasn’t quite sure what to say. Yes, Officer Carlisle thought, Pete generally is lazy when it comes to the end of his route. He himself had told Pete to leave any packages for him on the porch, rather than bothering with a slip. “Or you could bring them by the police station,” he had added during that conversation, somewhat pointlessly, knowing that Pete would never go out of his way to deliver a package, even if it was for a policeman.

Meanwhile, the growing crowd needed to be dealt with, so Officer Carlisle stretched to his full height, put a hand on his nightstick, and gestured imperiously while the paramedics talked to the victim and Henry Makepeace wrung his hands by a city flowerbox. After the crowd had scattered, Officer Carlisle drifted over to Makepeace to make polite conversation while the victim was packaged for the ambulance.

“I just moved here,” Makepeace said. “It was on a whim, and the timing seemed right.”

“Ah,” Officer Carlisle said, while the victim muttered something about the box and gesticulated, until the younger paramedic told the victim to calm down. It was an unremarkable box, standard brown, with no markings other than the address, written in neat penmanship.

“What does your ex-girlfriend do,” Officer Carlisle said, out of lack of anything else to say.

“Something in biology,” he said. “I don’t really know. I never knew. I’m an insurance investigator. Arson. I don’t know anything about, you know. Lab science. Ha ha.”

“Ah,” Officer Carlisle said again, wondering what work an arson investigator would have here. The two stared off into space for a moment, before the victim became agitated and started gesturing again, arguing with the paramedics about whether or not a hospital trip was necessary. Officer Carlisle wondered if he would be forced to step in, but the paramedics seemed to succeed, after the victim weakly protested about not having insurance. While the paramedics strapped the victim to a backboard, Officer Carlisle turned to Henry Makepeace.

“It was good of you to call,” he said. “It might be nothing, but better safe than sorry, right? Some people wouldn’t take the time of day, even here. They would have just walked right by, you know?”

The victim waved at them.

“It’s fine, really,” Henry Makepeace said. “I just thought I should call, you know, to be sure.”

They watched as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, Henry Makepeace giving a tentative wave, and then, suddenly, Officer Carlisle was lying on the sidewalk, with the concerned moon-face of Henry Makepeace hovering over him.

“Are you all right? Officer? Uh…Car-lizzle,” he said, reading Officer Carlisle’s badge.

Officer Carlisle felt a bit dazed, and reflected gloomily that his freshly dry-cleaned uniform pants were now damp from the moist sidewalk.

“Carlisle. Yes,” he said, accepting the hand of Henry Makepeace. “I must have just lost my balance for some reason,” and he stood all the way up, dusting himself off. “Well then. I suppose that settles things. I guess I have your address if I need anything, yes?”

“Of course,” Henry Makepeace said, picking up the box. “Have a nice day,” and he walked north along Main Street, towards the Garden District and Lamprey Street, a sleepy cul-de-sac almost on the edge of town.

Officer Carlisle got back in his patrol car and drove back to the station to make a situation report and finish the crossword. For some reason, his ankle hurt.

It feels like a fiction sort of morning, so here’s some fiction for you. If you like it, maybe I’ll continue the story… 

It was lightly misting on the day I saw the man with the box. I was on my way to the post office, thinking about nothing in particular and hoping that there would be a package, when I passed him. He was an ordinary man, so very undistinguished that he was almost distinctive, but it was the box that interested me. I can’t quite finger the reason why. It was just a box, nothing special.

“What’s in the box,” I wanted to say, except that it would have been a stupid question, and I don’t talk to strange men in the street, even when they do have intriguing boxes.

I want to blame the man with the box for running into the utility pole, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. After all, the electric company is just as much to blame, for putting the pole there, instead of somewhere else, and if I had been looking forward instead of looking at the box, I would have seen the pole.  In any case, I collided hard enough to fall to the ground, inevitably attracting a crowd of curious onlookers, and the man with the box carefully put the box down and came over to see if I needed help.

I tried to sit up, to brush myself off, to disappear back into the anonymous people walking down the street, but the man with the box stopped me.

“You hit that pole pretty hard,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down for a minute.”

The man with the box looked at me thoughtfully as I sprawled on the sidewalk, and I wished that I could shrink into the ground and disappear. The event attracted a great deal of attention, as these things always do, and eventually an ambulance pulled up, called by an overzealous passerby, no doubt. The paramedics moved briskly through the crowd, pushing people back, and ignoring the man with the box.

“I’m fine, really,” I said.

The older paramedic looked doubtful, and then a policeman arrived. The paramedics talked to the policeman, and then each other, and then finally the man with the box, and the younger paramedic talked to me while she examined me, against my insistence that everything was fine. The policeman shooed the crowd away, scattering them like a fox in a flock of chickens.

It was then that I noticed that the box had started to move, by inches, the top flaps quivering like something was inside.

“The box,” I said, and the younger paramedic shushed me while she listened to my heart. The policeman and the man with the box glanced at the box, which was still, and then went back to talking to each other. The box moved again, and a small green tendril emerged from the opening to wave cheerily at me. I tried to say something again, and the tendril disappeared.

The paramedics decided that I should go to the hospital, because as it turned out there was a rather large bump on my head, and it was bleeding, and they clearly thought I was in an altered state of consciousness, muttering about the box. I tried to insist that it wasn’t necessary, that I really just wanted to go to the post office.

“I don’t have insurance,” I said.

The paramedics ignored me as they prepared to take me to the hospital, talking to each other about CT scans and other things I suspected would be very expensive. If I was going to be taken to the hospital, I wanted to stand, to walk to the ambulance, but I was told to lie still while they strapped me to a back board, in case my neck was broken. I thought that if my neck was broken, I would probably notice, but apparently this is not always the case. As the paramedics lifted me up, I saw the tendril again, and I tried to signal to the man with the box, as the backboard had somehow made it impossible to speak.

“It’s fine, really,” he said to the policeman. “I just thought I should call, you know, to be sure,” and then I realized that he was the overzealous member of the crowd. The tendril waved at me when the man with the box did, as I was loaded into the ambulance. I saw the tendril grab the policeman’s leg and yank, hard, sending him toppling onto the sidewalk, but the paramedics didn’t notice, and we drove away.