The Armchair Lawyer

Quick, somebody give me the number for Mystery, Inc. I thought I had them on speed dial, what with all the unsolved mysteries that abound here at the Mansion. Sadly, I do not. I hope Scooby and the gang have lights and siren on the Mystery Machine. I grow antsy awaiting logical explanations.

Today I discovered a new pyramid. Okay, it wasn't quite that startling or important a discovery. But it was big. And quite a mystery.

On the end of the big couch is a stack of The Pony's shorts. The pocketed, cargo kind of shorts with zippers. He mainly wears them for school, preferring athletic style shorts for lounging on the basement couch and herding goats. This stack is awaiting the removal of outgrown clothing from The Pony's dresser drawers. They are clean and folded, but out of place. We're not a hoarder house. Yet.

Today I spied Farmer H sitting on the other end of the couch with his head jutting forward. The reason being a stack of The Pony's shorts behind his displaced noggin. The #1 son had moved them there a couple days ago, stating that they obstructed his view of the television from his sandwich-eating seat at the kitchen cutting block. I'm sure I moved them back to the original location. Yet here they were. Not.

I picked up the stack of shorts and returned them to their rightful end, closer to The Pony's room. Like that would light a fire under him to complete the drawer task. There was something dark under the stack. Not of the shorts persuasion. It was a set of three black T-shirts. I had never seen them before.

The black T-shirts bore a bowling logo. All three were stacked together, never washed, never separated. Like they came right out of a box of shipped T-shirts. Somebody had folded them over twice, still all together, so they were not hanging down the couch. I asked Farmer H where they came from.

He didn't know. Surprise, huh? He had no idea. He asked me where I got them. Right there from under the back of his head, of course. They were not there the last time I relocated The Pony's shorts stack. They just appeared! Out of thin air! Funny how back when the boys and Farmer H were making their State Youth Bowling Tournament trip, Farmer H was looking for black T-shirts. That they were supposed to bowl in. I tore the house apart looking for them. All through The Pony's drawers. On all the laundry room racks. In the dirty cloths basket. No black bowling T-shirts. Now here they were.

Farmer H still denied. Denied carrying them in the house. Denied putting them on the back of the couch. Even though he lays other things there. Like a hoodie. Or a shirt.

We asked the #1 son where they came from. He did not know! Farmer H quizzed him on whether they had been sent home with him from bowling during league play. For the tournament. Nope. Farmer H denied ever having them in his car. #1 denied ever having them in his truck. They looked at me. ME! Who has not set foot in the bowling alley for nigh on three years, because I don't like the new building.

I asked if they believed, perhaps, that those shirts simply slithered from the bowling alley out the county road, turned onto our gravel road, and drug themselves up the driveway and under the crack of the front door, to jump up on the back of the couch and mystify me.

Well, of course not, professed Farmer H. Maybe The Pony had something to do with it. I need to ask The Pony. Who has neither a truck in which to haul them, nor transportation to town to pick up and deliver them. Who conveniently happened to be absent from the Mansion at the time of The Grand Inquisition.

I'm not a betting woman. But my money is on #1, from his room, where he had stacked them under something and just discovered them. Because he cleaned out his room last week. And he has stacked other clothes on top of The Pony's shorts.

I'm going to invest in a polygraph machine when I win the lottery.