Mysterious

The cold hard truth was that it could have been anyone at the party, and that's what scared the mayor. It was his own town that had stolen from itself and the only way to find the guilty party was to accuse and investigate all the victims. It was an awful situation.

There were leads of course. Like the notorious shoplifting mother, the one whose clothes kept getting nicer even after her husband had been laid off. Things like that make you wonder about a person's character, and about yourself too. When everything hits the fan, would you be any better than a shoplifter?

Bruno, the chief of police surveyed the scene and the victims accordingly. He noted everything that was out of place, every eyebrow and every twitch.

But even with the notorious Sally Swift-fingers sitting on the Victorian armchair with her teacup poised, the mystery was far from solved.

"Do you have any information on the missing item, miss?" Bruno asked her coarsely.

She shook her head slowly and gave a slight but modest shrug so as to not disturb her beverage.

In the next corner there was the pack of adolescents snarling. The town's winning soccer team was invited to the party in possible error. They had all the ball handling skills and unfeeling brutality to take first, but were too young to have any of the charisma or honesty to appreciate it. Anyone of the Thompsontown Tally's could have been the cute culprit.

Bruno took a long time gazing them down. He didn't need to say anything to get them to crack. He focused on each one until each one was reduced to a parent-pleading child under his x-ray eyes. One even broke down into tears and swore he'd never do something like that, never.

I think a lot of people suspected that Frank had it honestly. Everyone knew about the poker games that went on in his basement, and the mayor of all people was real low on chips. But, me, I never suspected the mayor. He was desperate, and I may have voted for the other guy, but he was dedicated to the town. Plus, there were so many other easier and less noticeable ways to steal from the town.

Another partygoer was the librarian Mary-Ann Walker. Mary-Ann was once a sophisticated brat. She was the kind who didn’t need preschool, who read at a fifth grade level at three all while learning how to multiply and divide two before she knew what four was. She was potent among all the variables as a kid, but as an adult she was as discontented as she was brilliant. No one fawned over her ability to solve complex problems any longer. She had all the craft and none of the empathy. If I was leading the investigation, I would have marched Mary-Ann into the interrogation room long before I made any kids cry.

Bruno didn’t think the same way as me though. He hesitated on Mary-Ann for only a second before skipping her altogether, he had caught a whiff of something else. I was clearly out of my league.

He walked over to me solemnly now. He wasn’t going to make me cry or ask me politely for that matter.

"Was it you?"

I conceded that the truth was good to share, so I decided to tell him like it was:
"Yeah."

By far my weakest piece. I wrote this because I needed more pages. I started this after the deadline for the portfolio had passed. What brought on the subject, I can't tell you. This one has no previous drafts and I highly doubt that it will have a second. It's kind of cartoony, which is a success in a way since that's unusual to my style. I think I just wanted to surprise the reader with perspective, but it's weak, among all the variables.

-Dan