I’m sitting on the couch watching Mr. Whiskers methodically lick one paw while Pandora makes dinner in the kitchen, and for perhaps three consecutive minutes everything in my life seems completely normal. Something smells incredible from the kitchen, Mr. Whiskers appears satisfied with whatever progress he’s making on his left foot, and I’m considering whether getting up to investigate dinner would constitute helping or merely interfering. Then I notice the gardening gloves on the coffee table.
They’re green, slightly muddy, and unmistakably Mrs. Jenkins’. I’ve seen them enough times to recognize them because Mrs. Jenkins wears them whenever she’s working around her plants. I don’t know why I’ve retained this information, but apparently somewhere in my brain there’s now a department responsible for identifying neighborhood gardening equipment. I stare at the gloves for several seconds before calling toward the kitchen, “Pandora?” She answers without coming into the room. I ask why Mrs. Jenkins’ gardening gloves are on our coffee table. There’s a pause, followed by, “I don’t know.” I look at the gloves again. That’s not the answer I wanted.
Pandora comes into the living room carrying a wooden spoon and looks at the coffee table. She seems considerably less impressed by the situation than I am. “Maybe she left them here,” she says. I ask when Mrs. Jenkins would have been here to leave gardening gloves on our coffee table. Pandora shrugs and says she doesn’t know, which means we’re now two questions into this situation without producing a single useful answer. She returns to the kitchen. Mr. Whiskers continues cleaning himself. Nobody seems remotely concerned that another person’s belongings have materialized inside our home.
I lean forward and inspect the gloves without touching them. There’s dried soil along the fingers and something pale stuck near one cuff that might be a leaf. They look used recently. That’s important, although I haven’t yet determined why. Mrs. Jenkins usually keeps her gardening things with the rest of her supplies, so the gloves being here means that at some point they traveled from wherever Mrs. Jenkins keeps them to our living room. Objects don’t generally relocate themselves. Somebody brought them here. That’s not paranoia. That’s physics.
Mr. Whiskers stops licking his paw and looks at the gloves. Finally, somebody else has noticed. He leans forward, sniffs one of them, and immediately loses interest. I find this disappointing because if there’s anyone in the apartment qualified to identify unusual outdoor smells, it’s him. “Nothing?” I ask. Mr. Whiskers turns around twice and settles into a different position. Pandora calls from the kitchen and asks if I’m questioning the cat again. I tell her I’m not questioning him; I’m observing his reaction. She says that’s worse. I don’t see how.
A few minutes later, I hear footsteps outside and glance through the window. John Mercer is walking toward the building while looking at his phone. He looks preoccupied, which is not particularly unusual for John, but because I’m currently sitting beside unexplained gardening gloves, his expression acquires context it probably doesn’t deserve. He comes up a few minutes later, and when Pandora lets him in, I decide not to mention the gloves immediately. Instead, I watch him enter the living room. His eyes pass over the coffee table, move toward me, then return to the gloves for just a fraction of a second.
There.
Recognition.
John sits down. I wait.
He checks his phone.
I wait longer.
Finally I ask, “Anything you want to tell me?” John looks up and asks what I’m talking about. I glance toward the coffee table. He follows my eyes and sees the gloves. “Oh,” he says. That’s not a denial. I ask whether he recognizes them. He says they’re gardening gloves. I explain that I’m aware of their general classification and ask whether he recognizes these particular gardening gloves. John looks at me for several seconds before asking why he would recognize Mrs. Jenkins’ gloves. I point at him. “You knew they were hers.” John reminds me that I just asked whether he recognized Mrs. Jenkins’ gardening gloves. That’s unfortunate. I may have contaminated the interview.
Pandora returns from the kitchen and asks John whether he’s staying for dinner. He says he doesn’t want to impose. She tells him there’s plenty. I watch this exchange carefully because normal conversation can sometimes conceal extraordinary amounts of information. John agrees to stay. Pandora goes back to the kitchen. Nothing suspicious happens. Somehow that feels suspicious too. I look at the gloves again and start considering the possibilities. Maybe Mrs. Jenkins stopped by earlier. Maybe Pandora borrowed them. Maybe John brought them over for some reason. Maybe Mr. Whiskers dragged them inside, although the logistics of a cat transporting two gardening gloves through a closed front door would require additional investigation.
I ask John whether he’s spoken to Mrs. Jenkins today. He says no. Yesterday? No. Recently? He thinks for a moment and says he waved to her a few days ago. I ask whether she was gardening. John looks increasingly concerned about where this conversation is heading. “Probably,” he says. Probably isn’t useful. I ask whether she was wearing gloves. He tells me he has absolutely no idea. That’s either genuine ignorance or extremely disciplined operational security.
Pandora tells me from the kitchen to leave John alone. I point out that I’ve asked him four questions. She says that’s four more questions than a normal person would ask about gardening gloves. John nods. I catch him doing it. “See, that,” I say. “That right there.” He asks what he did. “You and Pandora just agreed without discussing it first.” John stares at me. Pandora stops stirring whatever she’s cooking long enough to look into the living room. “Hal,” she says. I decide this might be a good moment to reduce the intensity of the investigation.
The problem is that once I start thinking about the gloves, I start noticing the neighborhood itself. Mrs. Jenkins spends a lot of time around her plants. Karen seems to know everything happening within approximately fifty yards of her front door. John appears at unpredictable times. Mr. Whiskers spends hours watching all of them through the window. None of those things means anything individually, but neighborhoods are essentially collections of people living close enough together to observe one another while pretending they aren’t observing one another. When you think about it that way, the entire concept is suspicious.
I go to the window. Mrs. Jenkins is outside near her plants. She’s carrying a watering can, but she’s not wearing gloves. Obviously she isn’t wearing gloves because her gloves are approximately six feet behind me on the coffee table. The significance of this is enormous until I remember that I’ve already established where the gloves are. I watch her move between the pots, occasionally stopping to examine something. Perfectly normal gardening behavior. Then Karen appears and says something to her. Mrs. Jenkins laughs. Karen looks toward our building. I instinctively move slightly away from the window.
John notices. “Did you just hide?”
“No.”
“You moved away from the window.”
“I repositioned.”
“Why?”
I don’t answer because I’m not entirely sure.
Pandora comes out of the kitchen, follows my line of sight, and sees Karen talking to Mrs. Jenkins. “What now?” she asks. I tell her nothing is happening. She says that’s reassuring. I explain that I’m merely beginning to appreciate how much information passes through a neighborhood every day. People see things. People talk. Mrs. Jenkins knows Karen. Karen knows us. John knows everybody. Mr. Whiskers watches the street. Pandora listens to this explanation with increasing concern before asking whether I’ve somehow turned gardening gloves into a surveillance network.
When she says it like that, it sounds ridiculous.
I return to the couch.
“Fine. Simple explanation. Mrs. Jenkins left her gloves here.”
Pandora nods.
“Except neither of us remembers her being here.”
Pandora stops nodding.
John looks at the gloves.
For the first time all evening, I feel like I have everyone’s attention.
“Exactly.”
Pandora thinks for a moment, then suddenly says, “Wait.” She walks toward the front door, opens it, and looks outside. A second later she calls Mrs. Jenkins’ name. I hear Mrs. Jenkins answer from somewhere below. Pandora asks whether she’s missing a pair of gardening gloves. There’s a pause.
Then Mrs. Jenkins starts laughing.
I don’t appreciate that.
A minute later she comes up and explains everything. Earlier that afternoon she’d been carrying groceries along with some gardening supplies when Pandora encountered her near the entrance. Pandora helped carry a couple of bags upstairs while Mrs. Jenkins dealt with the rest. The gloves had apparently been tucked into the top of one of the bags and fallen onto our entryway floor. Pandora found them later, put them on the coffee table intending to return them, then became distracted making dinner and forgot.
That’s it.
No secret meetings. No coded gardening operation. No neighborhood surveillance network. A pair of gloves fell out of a grocery bag.
Pandora looks at me.
John looks at me.
Mrs. Jenkins looks at me.
Even Mr. Whiskers looks at me, although he’s probably responding to the additional person in the room.
I pick up the gloves and hand them to Mrs. Jenkins. “Mystery solved.”
She takes them and asks what mystery.
“No mystery.”
Pandora makes a noise from the kitchen that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.
Mrs. Jenkins thanks us and heads back outside. John returns to his phone. Pandora returns to dinner. Mr. Whiskers resumes washing himself. Within thirty seconds the entire apartment has returned to normal, and I feel slightly foolish for having constructed an intelligence network around a pair of muddy gloves.
Still, my fundamental observation was correct. The gloves were somewhere they didn’t belong. There was an explanation. I found the explanation. That’s essentially what investigation is.
I decide not to mention that to Pandora.
Dinner is almost ready when I look through the window again. Mrs. Jenkins is back near her plants wearing the gloves. Karen is gone. Everything looks ordinary. I feel an unexpected sense of relief. Maybe I’ve been looking for patterns where there aren’t any. Maybe a neighborhood is just a neighborhood. People borrow things, lose things, talk to each other, carry groceries, tend gardens, and occasionally leave gardening equipment in somebody else’s home. Not everything has to connect.
Then Mrs. Jenkins stops beside one of the large planters.
She looks left.
She looks right.
Then she reaches behind it and pulls out a small metal box.
I stop chewing.
John notices my expression. “No.”
I point toward the window.
“No,” he says again.
“You haven’t even looked.”
“I don’t need to.”
Pandora turns around. “What?”
I don’t answer. I’m watching Mrs. Jenkins.
She opens the box, puts something inside, closes it, and slides it behind the planter again.
The room goes quiet.
At least I think it does. It might just be me.
Pandora walks over and looks through the window. “Probably gardening stuff.”
“Then why is it in a metal box?”
“Because she wants it in a metal box.”
“Behind a planter?”
Pandora gives me the look.
I know the look.
I’ve seen the look.
The look means I’m supposed to accept the reasonable explanation and continue eating dinner like a functioning adult.
So I do.
I sit back down. I take another bite. I don’t mention the box. I don’t ask John what he thinks. I don’t interrogate Mr. Whiskers. I don’t go downstairs. I don’t even look through the window again.
For almost two full minutes.
That’s when Karen comes back.
She walks directly toward Mrs. Jenkins’ garden.
I slowly put down my fork.
Pandora sees me.
“Hal.”
“I’m eating.”
“You stopped eating.”
“I’m chewing.”
“You’re not chewing.”
I start chewing.
John refuses to turn around.
Mr. Whiskers jumps onto the windowsill.
I point at him.
“That’s not me.”
Pandora closes her eyes.
Outside, Karen bends toward the planter.
I’m not saying there’s a neighborhood conspiracy.
That would be irresponsible.
I’m saying the gardening gloves have been fully explained, and therefore they’re no longer relevant to the investigation.
The metal box, however, is new evidence.