I was making breakfast when I noticed John Mercer looking at the clock. Normally that wouldn’t even register as unusual—people check clocks all the time—but there was something about the way he did it that immediately caught my attention. He glanced up for barely a second before looking away again, almost as though he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t suspicious. It was just…odd enough for my brain to latch onto it before I’d even finished cracking the eggs into the frying pan.
Pandora was already sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open, quietly working through whatever project had consumed her attention this week. She barely looked up as I continued watching John from the corner of my eye. He wandered into the living room, picked up his coffee, looked at the clock again, and then casually strolled back toward his room. “Did you see that?” I asked. Pandora didn’t even stop typing. “See what?” “John checked the clock.” “Yes,” she replied. “That’s generally what clocks are for.”
That should have been the end of it, but my brain had already decided this deserved further investigation. We had someone coming by later to look at a few apartment repairs, so maybe John was worried about that. Then again, we’d dealt with repair people before and he’d never cared enough to monitor the time every five minutes. Maybe he was waiting for a package. Maybe he had plans he hadn’t mentioned. Maybe he simply had somewhere to be. Every explanation seemed perfectly reasonable, which somehow made me even more convinced there had to be another one hiding underneath.
Mr. Whiskers wandered into the kitchen, looked hopefully at the eggs, and then jumped onto the back of the couch when I reminded him those weren’t for cats. John appeared again, coffee mug in hand, glanced at the clock for a third time, nodded to himself, and disappeared down the hallway. I slowly turned toward Pandora. “Three times.” She looked over the top of her screen. “You’ve been counting?” “Of course I’ve been counting.” She smiled. “Hal, if someone was secretly plotting something, I don’t think repeatedly staring at the clock would be the way to hide it.”
John came back a few minutes later wearing his jacket. Before he reached the front door, he looked at the clock one last time and smiled. That smile completely derailed my working theory. Nervous people don’t usually smile at clocks. Unless, of course, they know something everyone else doesn’t. I followed him into the hallway. “Everything okay?” He looked genuinely confused. “Sure.” “You seem…time-conscious today.” He laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”
As soon as the front door closed, I looked back at Pandora. “See? He dodged the question.” She finally shut her laptop and folded her arms. “Hal, he answered your question.” “No, he answered a different question that happened to use the same words.” She gave me the same patient smile she always gives me when I’m wandering several miles ahead of the available evidence. “Have you considered asking him what he’s waiting for instead of inventing theories?” “That would ruin the investigation.”
About twenty minutes later, the front door opened again and John walked in carrying a small bakery box. He set it on the counter, looked at the clock one final time, and grinned. “Perfect,” he said.
“Perfect what?” I asked.
He opened the box to reveal a dozen fresh cinnamon rolls.
“The bakery takes the first batch out of the oven at exactly nine o’clock every Thursday,” he explained. “If I leave too early, they’re not ready. If I leave too late, everyone else buys them. I’ve been checking the time all morning so I could get there before they sold out.”
Pandora looked at me with the unmistakable expression of someone who had predicted the ending an hour ago.
I stared at the cinnamon rolls.
“So…” John said with a grin. “What exactly did you think I was doing?”
I looked at the clock, then at the bakery box, then at the still-warm cinnamon rolls filling the kitchen with the smell of butter and cinnamon.
“I’ll admit,” I said, reaching for one, “your explanation makes considerably more sense than mine.”
Pandora laughed as she accepted a cinnamon roll. “That’s becoming a recurring theme around here.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d spent an entire morning trying to unravel a mystery that turned out to be nothing more than John’s determination to buy warm pastries before the rest of the neighborhood beat him to them. The only thing he’d been sneaking wasn’t a secret.
It was breakfast.