January 29, 2003

Today is the day to stop wearing your tie on your forehead.

33

"Hey, your last name's Foreman. So is mine," said Randy Foreman, private eye.

"Yeah, amazing. It's such a unique name," said George, rolling his eyes and not even offering to take the man's coat.

Randy Foreman was a private eye that George picked out of the phone book at random. The majority of Randy's cases involved finding out whether or not spouses were fooling around. Actually, so far that was all he did. He had only been a private eye for a year or so. He was about nineteen years old, and after three years of working in a Best Buy, decided to try his hand at investigation, 'because it would be cool.' He was suprisingly good at it, although so far he had not been presented with many challenging cases. Usually, his clients were the only ones in the entire town who didn't know that they were being cheated upon; all Randy had to do was call around: "Is Barbara cheating on Richard?" and he'd find out. He was excited to try his hand at something new, but was nervous at the possible challenge of this case.

"So what's your problem, Mr. Foreman?" asked Randy. He chuckled. "Mr. Foreman. I could be taking to myself!"

"Please don't," said George. "I've been getting threatening letters."

"Threatening? Like how?"

"Okay, they're not necessarily threatening. They're just made like threatening letters," George said, showing Randy the latest note, "and they're very mysterious. And very annoying."

"And you want to know who's been sending them to you, and why," mused Randy, rubbing the five whiskers on his chin that constituted a beard.

George brattily gaped his mouth, widened his eyes and clapped a paw to his meaty cheek. "How'd you guess?"

Randy shrugged aw shucks. "That's my job, sir. Now, let me ask you a few questions. Do you have any enemies?"

"Of course I do. I'm a wildly successful writer."

"Hmm," said Randy, writing down George's statements word for word. "May I see the letters? I might have to take them back to the lab," referring to his parents' basement.

"Sure," said George, tossing a pile of them to Randy.

"Oh good, you've kept the envelopes. That's smart."

George shrugged. Randy bent over the pile as George lit a fat smelly cigar.

"Let me ask you," said Randy, after a few moments. "Do you know anybody by the name of Lolly...Lilly...Lull...Leh..." He struggled with the word.

"Lillibet?" asked George. "Sure, why?"

"Well, I think that she's the perp," said Randy, visibly struggling from smiling at using such a fancy, detectivey word.

"What? Why?"

"Well, it's sort of hard to read here on the envelope, because you've torn it kind of goofy, but that's what the return address says."

"Where?"

Randy showed him one of the envelopes. Clearly printed on the back, but torn in half due to George's less than elegant letter-opening style, was printed "LILLIBET."

"Huh," said George.

"Don't worry. Sometimes it takes an expert to figure this stuff out."

George was embarrassed. He hustled Randy out the door and shoved $100 in his hand.

"I really have to have my assistant open my mail for me," George thought. "This never would have happened if I had somebody on hand with access to a letter opener."

Randy closed his cell phone after calling his girlfriend Wendi to tell her that he was treating her dinner at Ruth's Chris. He even indulged in dusting off his hands. Another case closed.