The trip to the mall had been a disaster. He had not found anything that would serve as a appropriate present to apologize to Suzie. She wasn't exactly the type of woman who would appreciate an axe, a hammer, a chainsaw, or a lawnmower as a present. After seeing the power go out at the mall, he had come to the brilliant conclusion that only flowers and a poem could save his relationship with Suzie.
Sean stopped by the convenience store on the way home. On entering the store, he was presented with a vision of a woman's butt. She was bent over to straighten the magazines on the bottom shelf.
"Flower Lady! I thought you would be here. I'd recognize that ass from a mile away."
She looked at him over her shoulder. Her mouth was turned down in an irritated frown. She said, "I know that I have the most famous derriere in the county, but you don't have to talk about it."
"It is indeed a famous derriere," Sean said.
"What do you want?" the woman asked while straightening up.
"I need flowers."
The flower lady said, "What did you do?"
"I tried to talk my girlfriend into letting me have a harem," Sean answered.
"That was stupid."
"I guess it was," Sean said.
The flower lady said, "You're going to have to get roses at a minimum. You might even need two dozen roses."
"I'm going to include a poem," Sean said. "Women love poetry."
"Which poem?" the flower lady asked.
"I'm writing it as soon as I get home," Sean said.
The flower lady said, "You might need three dozen roses."
"I'm great poet," Sean said.
"Let me guess ... it is going to start with ... Roses are red."
"How did you know?" Sean asked looking at her in amazement.
"It was a lucky guess. You might need four dozen roses."
"I'll just take a bunch of those yellow flowers," Sean said pointing at a bouquet with daisies. He asked, "Do they come in blue?"
"No, they're daisies. While daisies come in many different colors, blue is not one of them. The only daisies I grow are yellow," the flower woman said shaking her head.
"So that's a daisy."
"Yes."
Sean pointed to a bucket of roses and said, "Roses are red, but you've got white and yellow ones there. Why can't yellow flowers be blue?"
"It's complicated," the flower woman said.
"I'll take a bunch of those daisies," Sean said while pointing at the bucket.
An hour later, Sean was at his computer starting on his current project — an apology poem. He grinned at the screen while he said, "Watch what happens when the apologetic power of flowers combines with the seductive powers of poetry."
Lily walked past the door just in time to hear Sean laugh manically. She looked in to see him hunched over his keyboard rubbing his hands together excitedly.
She shook her head and said, "He's going to do something stupid. I better warn Suzie."
Sean typed for a minute and then read the line aloud, "Roses are red."
He stared at the screen for five minutes and then said, "Roses aren't always red. Sometimes they are white, yellow, pink, or carmine. I'm going for honesty here so I better not start the poem with a lie."
He stared at the screen for another minute. Finally, he said, "Maybe I should use a footnote to explain that I'm taking poetic license rather than going for absolute fact."
After typing two pages of text to explain the various colors in which roses were found, he said, "That won't work. I've never seen a poem with footnotes. This is harder than I thought."
An hour later he read what he had on the screen, "Roses are rose colored, violets are white, blue, purple and even yellow, the harem idea was stupid, these flowers were bought for you by a very sorry fellow."
"That is a masterpiece worthy of Willy Shakespeare," he said with a smile. "She's going to love it despite the fact that it doesn't exactly rhyme."
Sean got out of his chair and started doing his little victory dance. It was reminiscent of drunken man attempting to perform the chicken dance.
His mother stuck her head in the room. She said, "Chief Fastman is here to see you."
"I wonder what he wants," Sean said stopping his victory dance.
"I don't know. Maybe you should ask him," his mother answered.
"Do you think he'll tell me?" Sean asked.
His mother answered, "I'm sure that he will. He came all this way just to talk to you."
"If you're so sure then maybe I should talk to him," Sean said
"That would be a good idea," his mother said.
Lily bounded into his room and asked, "Are we going to jail?"
"I hope not," Sean said.
His mother said, "You might end up in jail. I'm sure that there are laws against dancing like that."
"Can I go with you?" Lily asked.
"My victory dance is not against the law," Sean said.
"It should be," him mother said, "Watching that nearly made me sick to my stomach."
Sean headed out to the living room followed by his mother and Lily. Lily bounced along repeatedly saying, "We're going to jail!"
On reaching the living room, he said, "What can I do for you Chief Fastman?"
"My brother said that you mentioned something about a theft of scientific lobsters," Chief Fastman said.
"That's right," Sean said.
"Tell me about it," Chief Fastman said.
"Someone has been stealing my lobsters and replacing them with others," Sean said. He had stopped by the school after returning from the mall and two new lobsters had been in the habitat.
"Is there anything special about your lobsters?"
Sean said, "They are my science project."
"I guess that makes them scientific lobsters," Chief Fastman said making a note in his notepad. "Where is this crime taking place?"
"At the school," Sean answered.
"Which one?" Chief Fastman asked.
"The high school," Sean answered.
Chief Fastman wrote down the information in his notepad. He looked up and said, "I'll get to investigating it right away."
"Good," Sean said.
Chief Fastman said, "You're lucky that I'm the one doing the investigation. None of my brothers are any good at that."
"Your brother said that he solved a major case involving your mother's reading glasses," Sean said.
"He's still boasting about that?" Chief Fastman asked shaking his head. "We'll never live that down. He had just finished reading the Perfect Letter by Doc Watson."
"You mean the Purloined Letter by Sir Author Conon Doyle, don't you?" Sean asked.
"I'm pretty sure it was the Perfect Letter by Doc Watson," Chief Fastman said with a frown. He wasn't quite sure that he remembered it correctly, but he wasn't going to let them know that.
Lily rolled her eyes and said, "It was the Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe."
"Are you sure?" Chief Fastman asked feeling pretty stupid to have gotten that wrong.
Picking up the book she had been reading, Lily said, "It is right here."
"It doesn't matter who wrote it," Chief Fastman said. He scratched his cheek for a second and then added, "I've read all of the classic mysteries that matter: the Hardly Boys, Tom Stiff, and Nancy Crew."
"You mean, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and Nancy Drew?" Sean asked.
"You must go to a different library than me," Chief Fastman said.
"I guess," Sean said.
Looking at the policeman hopefully, Lily asked, "Are you going to take us to jail?"
"No," Chief Fastman answered.
"Drat," Lily said. She went over to a chair and sat down with a pout. "What am I going to have to do to go to jail?"
Sean whispered to his mother, "You are going to have to have a long talk with Lily. I fear that she is going to become a cheerleader with criminal tendencies."
"There are worse things," his mother replied.
"Like what?" Sean asked.
"She could start dating Liam," his mother said. She thought about it for a second and then said, "I have an idea!"
"Oh no," Sean said rubbing his forehead.
After writing furiously in his notepad for a minute, Chief Fastman had an almost accurate record of the entire conversation. Chief Fastman said, "I better head home and start researching how to pursue this investigation."
"Research?" Sean asked wondering what kind of research was required. He figured that Chief Fastman would install a video camera to record activities around his lobster habitat. "What kind of research do you need to catch a lobster thief?"
"I think I'll need to reread the whole Hardly Boys adventures," Chief Fastman said.
Frowning, Sean asked, "How long will that take?"
"I should be done reading in a couple of months," Chief Fastman answered. He walked to the front door mumbling, "If I don't find a way to catch the villain in one of those stories, I'll just have to read the Tom Shift stories. I just wish I was better at inventing stuff. Of course, I never did figure out the link between inventing and investigating crime..."
"I'm going to graduate college before he finds who is switching lobsters on me," Sean said shaking his head.
"I wouldn't say that. These things take time," Chief Fastman said. He opened the door and said, "Don't worry about a thing. You've got the best detective in the state working on the case now."
"I'm glad to hear that," Sean said.
Sean went over to the book that Lily had held up. He picked it up and said, "You know, I've never read the Purloined Letter. I wonder if it is available online."
"Why read it online?" Lily asked.
"Where else would I get a copy?" Sean asked.
"How about in the book you're holding?" Lily asked.
"I must be hanging around with the Dwarves too much," Sean said.
Giving up, Lily turned to her mother and asked, "What's for supper?"
"Lobster bisque," Sean's mother answered.
"Huh?"