I was making coffee this morning when I noticed something strange about Pandora’s phone. It was sitting on the kitchen counter, plugged into a charger I didn’t recognize. Now, I realize most people wouldn’t consider this an event worth investigating. Most people would probably pour their coffee, eat breakfast, and get on with their lives. Unfortunately, I’ve never been particularly good at being most people. I stood there staring at the charger, trying to remember the last time I’d seen it. It was white, relatively new, and didn’t have the little bend near the connector that our old one had developed. That bend was important. I’d been keeping an eye on it for weeks, partly because I was worried it would stop working and partly because John Mercer kept insisting there was nothing wrong with it. John has a remarkable ability to declare things perfectly functional right up until they burst into flames.
I picked up the cable and examined it. Definitely not our old charger. The old one had a gray smudge near the plug and a section of electrical tape that John had wrapped around it after I complained about the exposed wiring. I had told him we should throw it away. He told me the tape gave it character. Pandora eventually agreed with me, which should have settled the matter, except I couldn’t remember anybody actually throwing it away. We’d bought a replacement the previous week, but I hadn’t seen that one in its usual spot beside the couch either. And now here was a perfectly good charger on the kitchen counter, looking as though it had been there all along. Something had happened to the original, and nobody had thought to inform me.
Pandora came into the kitchen while I was examining the cable. She was still wearing her slippers and looked like someone who hadn’t yet decided whether the day was worth participating in. I held up the charger and asked where it had come from. She glanced at it, shrugged, and said, “Probably the drawer.” Then she reached around me for the coffee. I explained that the drawer wasn’t a satisfactory answer because drawers don’t manufacture phone chargers. She gave me the kind of look she usually reserves for conversations about whether the dishwasher should be loaded according to a specific mathematical pattern. “Hal, it’s a charger,” she said. “It charges things. That’s generally what we want.” Then she kissed me on the cheek and went to get dressed. I was left standing there with a cable in one hand and several unanswered questions in the other.
The situation became more interesting when John Mercer wandered into the kitchen about twenty minutes later. He looked as though he’d slept in his clothes, which was entirely possible, and immediately started searching for something to eat. I asked whether he’d seen the old charger. He opened the refrigerator, looked inside, and said, “Why would it be in here?” I told him I wasn’t suggesting it was in the refrigerator. I was asking whether he’d seen it anywhere. “Oh,” he said. “No.” Then he took out the milk and started drinking directly from the carton. I reminded him that we owned glasses, but he said he was saving dishes. That was John’s contribution to the investigation: no useful information and a fresh reason to question his judgment.
I might have forgotten about the whole thing if Mrs Jenkins hadn’t stopped by later that morning. She lives nearby and has a habit of appearing at our door with baked goods just when I’ve decided to accomplish something productive. This time she brought banana bread, which immediately made her welcome. Pandora invited her in, and while they were talking, Mrs Jenkins mentioned that her phone had been giving her trouble. Apparently, it hadn’t been charging properly the previous evening. She said she’d been trying different outlets before finally getting it to work. That caught my attention. I asked whether she’d borrowed a charger from anyone. She thought for a moment and said she might have borrowed one from Pandora a few days earlier, but she couldn’t remember. Then she offered me another slice of banana bread. I accepted it, obviously, but I didn’t consider the matter closed.
There it was. A possible connection. Mrs Jenkins had experienced charging problems. Pandora had a different charger. Our original charger was missing. I wasn’t saying Mrs Jenkins had stolen anything. That would have been a serious accusation, and I had absolutely no evidence to support it. But I was beginning to suspect that our charger might have gone on an unscheduled visit to her apartment and forgotten to come home. I mentioned this theory to John, who was sitting on the couch playing a game on his phone. He listened for approximately six seconds before asking whether I wanted to borrow his charger. I told him that wasn’t the point. “What’s the point, then?” he asked. I explained that the point was establishing the chain of custody. He stared at me for a moment and said, “You need a hobby.”
By lunchtime, I’d checked the usual places. The outlet beside the couch was empty. The drawer under the television contained three remote controls, two dead batteries, a collection of unidentified screws, and a charging cable that belonged to something we no longer owned. I found another cable behind the bookshelf, but it had the wrong connector. I also discovered a pen I’d been missing since August, which briefly improved my mood. Mr Whiskers followed me around the living room, apparently delighted that someone was finally paying attention to the furniture at his level. Every time I crouched to look beneath something, he crouched beside me. When I got down on my hands and knees to inspect the space under the couch, he climbed onto my back. I was beginning to suspect he considered the investigation a recreational activity.
Pandora found us like that when she returned from running errands. I was halfway under the couch, with Mr Whiskers perched on my back, trying to retrieve something that might have been a charger but turned out to be a dried-up cat treat. She stood in the doorway for a moment before asking what I was doing. I told her I was looking for our missing cable. “Have you checked the drawer?” she asked. I reminded her that I’d already checked several drawers. “Not the television drawer,” she said. “The kitchen drawer.” Apparently, she had been referring to the kitchen drawer all morning. I told her that a little more specificity would have been helpful. She said she’d assumed I knew which drawer she meant. This is one of the difficulties of living with someone who believes the phrase *the drawer* identifies a unique location in a house containing approximately twenty-seven drawers.
I went back into the kitchen and opened the drawer beside the refrigerator. There were batteries, rubber bands, a flashlight, and enough takeout menus to suggest we were preparing for a prolonged emergency. There were also four charging cables, neatly tied together. One of them had a familiar gray smudge near the plug. Another had a strip of electrical tape wrapped around it. I picked it up slowly. It was our old charger. It had been there the entire time. Pandora explained that she’d put it away after we bought the replacement because she didn’t want anybody using a damaged cable. The new charger on the counter was the one we’d purchased together. I stared at her. Then I stared at the drawer. Then I stared at the cable. My investigation had uncovered the location of an object that had been put away for perfectly sensible reasons.
I could have stopped there. In fact, that would have been the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately, I had already spent several hours developing a theory involving Mrs Jenkins, and I felt I owed it to myself to understand why she’d mentioned borrowing a charger. So I asked Pandora about it. She explained that Mrs Jenkins had borrowed a spare charging adapter during a visit earlier in the week and had returned it the next day. The adapter was sitting in the same drawer, right beside the cables. I asked why nobody had told me. Pandora said, “Because you weren’t involved.” I had to admit that was a reasonable explanation, although it wasn’t a particularly satisfying one. I’d been treating an ordinary exchange of household accessories like an international incident, and nobody had even bothered to keep me informed.
John wandered into the kitchen just as I was putting everything back. He took one look at the open drawer, the cables spread across the counter, and my expression, and immediately understood what had happened. “You found the evidence,” he said. I told him I had found the charger. “Was Mrs Jenkins running an underground charging operation?” he asked. Pandora started laughing. I tried to explain that I had never seriously accused Mrs Jenkins of anything, but John reminded me that I’d used the phrase *chain of custody* over breakfast. He then picked up the old cable and asked whether I planned to interrogate it. I told him the cable was damaged and shouldn’t be used. He agreed, which was encouraging, until he added, “Especially after everything it’s been through.”
That afternoon, Mrs Jenkins stopped by again to retrieve the container she’d brought the banana bread in. I was still feeling slightly embarrassed, so I decided to clear the air. I told her I’d found our missing charger and that there had been a small misunderstanding. She looked confused until Pandora explained that I’d briefly suspected the charger had ended up at her apartment. Mrs Jenkins stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing. “Hal, sweetheart,” she said, “if I were going to steal something from your house, it certainly wouldn’t be a phone charger.” I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. Before I could think of anything, she added, “I’d take the good coffee.” Then she winked at Pandora, collected her container, and went home. I made a mental note to keep an eye on the coffee.
By evening, the household had returned to normal. John was on the couch, Pandora was reading, and Mr Whiskers had settled into his favorite spot near the window. I was putting the spare cables back into the kitchen drawer when I noticed something odd. The new charger wasn’t where I’d left it on the counter. I checked the outlet, the drawer, and the table beside the couch. Nothing. I was about to ask Pandora whether she’d moved it when I noticed a white cable disappearing beneath the couch cushion where John was sitting. I pulled it gently, and out came the charger, still connected to John’s phone. He looked up at me and said, “What?” I held up the cable. “You’ve been using this all afternoon?” He shrugged. “Yeah. Why?”
I stood there for a moment, trying to decide whether to be annoyed or impressed. I’d spent half the day investigating a missing charger, only to discover that the old one had been put away, the new one had been sitting in plain sight, and John had now relocated it without a second thought. Pandora glanced over her book and asked whether I was starting another investigation. I told her I was considering it. John reached for his phone and said, “If you do, can you wait until I’m at a hundred percent?” Mr Whiskers chose that moment to jump onto the couch and sit directly on top of the cable. I looked at the cat, then at John, then at Pandora, who was already trying not to laugh. I’d started the day suspecting Mrs Jenkins of stealing our charger. By the end of it, I’d identified the real problem. We had one perfectly good charger, three people who wanted to use it, and a cat who apparently believed it belonged to him.
Tomorrow, I’m buying another charger. Possibly two. And I’m labeling them. John says that’s unnecessary, but I’ve learned something important from this experience: in this house, an unlabeled charger is basically public property. The only question is whether Mr Whiskers will respect the labels. Based on what I’ve seen today, I wouldn’t count on it.