a detective story

 In the early morning, while having breakfast at the Sagrado bar, Quasimodo received a call from the town hall. He brought the phone's receiver to his ear and recognized the voice of the councilwoman, asking him to investigate a robbery that had occurred at the soccer field. He turned off his phone and put it in the back pocket of his pants.

He stood up to go pay but stopped and ordered a fried calamari sandwich and another coffee, to have while waiting for the sandwich and finishing reading the newspaper. He returned to his seat. Quasimodo had a keen ear, and he jokingly boasted to his friends that he could distinguish by the meow of an animal whether it was a male cat, female cat, or something else, and he didn't like the tone of the councilwoman's voice asking him where he was.

"Are you eating it here or is it to go?" asked the young waitress from the bar.

"To go!"

"You know, they forced the door of the soccer field and broke in," she said loudly for the kitchen, where she was now coating the calamari in flour to fry them.

The soccer field was a small leveled elevation reached after walking about two hundred meters on an unpaved road from a car parking area. Around mid-morning, Quasimodo parked his police motorcycle and began walking down the dirt path to his destination. The perimeter of the soccer field was delimited by a three-meter-high concrete block wall. The wall had only one small window where people bought tickets for soccer matches and a large metal door, tall and wide enough to allow entry and exit for a fire truck.

The peculiar dimensions of the door were due to objections from the local pharmacist, who, despite his lack of knowledge about soccer, had experience in pharmacy and firefighting. This concern arose from helping his son prepare for the firefighter exam, which he had bought a couple of days before. The young, carefree, and friendly individual, who had no direction in life, finally passed and now drives the region's fire truck.

Upon arriving at the soccer field, he found the door open.

Once inside, his gaze roamed the interior, passing by the cement stands where the audience sat, the green grass of the field, growing abundantly; the goalposts, one in front of the other at each end of the field; and a small building housing the shop where drinks and refreshments were sold on game days, and behind it, the men's changing room for soccer.

He headed there. The shop's door was open, and its interior was in disarray, with beverage crates scattered on the floor.

Inside the small booth, it was evident that the thief had made a hole in the corrugated roof to enter. Quasimodo took out his notepad and mechanical pencil; the pencil emerged from his shirt pocket and descended to jot down in the squared notebook:

"Robbery at the soccer field bar," noting the day and time of his arrival: half-past nine in the morning.

He began to explore the premises.

"Hmm... It didn't seem like the sodas disappeared, neither the orange nor the cola ones, but there was an open bag of potato chips and an empty one of toasted corn..."

He looked at the shelves where snack bags were displayed for sale—potato chips, nuts, crispy cookies— they were empty.

Quasimodo put the pencil to his mouth, thoughtful.

The pencil separated from his mouth and hung in the air. After a suspenseful moment, it seemed like it was going to descend, but it stayed in place. When it finally decided to lower, he wrote: "The thief doesn't like orange sodas or colas, but took snack bags from the premises."

The thief entered through the roof, had been in the shop, and then forced the door lock from the inside to exit instead of using the hole he had made.

The not very clever thief, since he had entered through the roof and had taken his time forcing the door lock to leave through it instead of using the hole he had already made. Quasimodo circled around until he solved the mystery: a beer barrel was missing.

When he exited the premises, he walked around the soccer field to look for more clues. Finally, he returned to the parking lot to get his car and head back to the town.

Quasimodo's investigation quickly bore fruit because the thief had awakened the neighbors at night while rolling a beer barrel down the cobblestone street, and several had complained about him. It didn't take much to connect the dots.

Quasimodo soon found Sisa.

"Quasimodo!" Sisa said when they met. "I was looking for you last night to invite you. Yesterday, my daughter was born. They didn't let me in to see her at the provincial hospital, but I organized a party with friends, and we celebrated in style: with bags of potato chips, toasted corn, and some barrels of beer."

 

 

 mvf

 

 

 

 

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