Felicitations

Below, I have a special surprise from the Detective Steele stories!

It was the first day that week that it had not been raining, despite being well into the month of July. Elliot and I were soaking up the brief patches of sunlight in the park. Our discussion consisted mostly of trying to explain what had happened to us since the last time we met, years ago. At first, we had tried to summarize our stories as much as possible, as was the modus operandi of our respective professions. I'm a detective, my career hangs in the balance of my efficiency. Elliot Mortimer is a journalist, he has a few hundred words with which to make the world care. Between old friends, however succinct conversation does not work. Elliot had come to my office almost two months ago and we were still catching up.

Elliot finished a rather amusing story about a fortune teller who he had interviewed. Apparently, the fortune teller claimed that he could predict the exact conversations which he would have in the future. He had failed to predict Elliot's coming, any of their conversation, or that his daughter would visit him that day for the first time in three years. What he did predict accurately was the weather for the next month, down to the hour.

We finished cackling our heads off.

"Flick, just wondering."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Do you have any plans for next Saturday?"

"None that I know of. Next Saturday is the twentieth, right?" Elliot nodded.

"Why are you asking?"

Elliot flashed his trademark grin, "Oh, no particular reason. Anyway, have I told you the story about the cafe owned by a lobster?"

It was a few days later, I had just gotten off the phone with my mother and I was making myself a cup of tea. In my experience, tea is the only thing that can bring me back to life after a long phone conversation.

Barely a taste of my drink had passed my lips when a knock was heard at the door.

"I'll be right back," I told my teacup. "Who is it?" There was no answer. I got up to check anyway.

There was no one at the door when I opened it. No one in the hallway of the apartment building either. I glanced down. A note was on the ground.

I picked up and read the note. It was some sort of poem.

"Come along the river, my dear. Let the sun

To see your shining face.

The river birds sing your graces to the

Rooftops of this city."

The poem seemed vaguely familiar, but I could not place where I had heard it before. Whether I knew the poem or not probably did not matter. I was a detective and someone had just left a cryptic message at my doorstep. It was a puzzle.

Lucky for the sender; I had been looking for a puzzle, a case, anything to occupy me today.

I re-read the poem. Was it about a river? The Willamette river was just a few blocks away. A shining face? Was it a statue? I had no idea what to make of the river birds line. The last line was about rooftops. Was I supposed to go to a roof? Which one? I looked over the poem again. It was like analyzing literature in school. I shuddered a little.

"Aha!" I found it. The first words in each line were "come", "to", "the", "rooftops". Two signs pointed to going to a rooftop, it could not be a coincidence. Yet, the questioned stayed, which roof? I pondered it for a few seconds before I put my palm on my face. How could I have been so dumb? I knew who wrote this poem.

I climbed the narrow staircase which led to the roof of my apartment building. I opened the door and was instantly bombarded by the sound of people yelling, "Happy birthday!" and what I thought was a kazoo. My suspicions were confirmed when Elliot came up to me, holding a kazoo in his mouth like a cigar.

"So, Detective Steele," I think that Elliot was trying to copy the voice of some film noir detective. "you solved the case." He might have had more to say, but he choked on his adopted accent. He dropped his "cigar" and couldn't get his breath again until Mrs. Hestya, my landlady, got him a glass of water.

I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

"Hey, don't laugh." Elliot moaned sarcastically. "I've been practicing that all week. Anyway, you solved the case. Actually, I didn't expect you to figure it out that fast. I timed you by the way. Between me leaving the note and you coming up here, it took three minutes. How did you get it so fast?"

"Elliot," I laughed again, "I remembered that you wrote that poem. You wrote it after a seagull stole a quarter that fell out of your pocket. Of course, it was you up here."

"Wait a minute, that is what the poem is about?" I turned around, my younger sister, Emma, was there.

"Emma!" We had not seen each other since winter. We embraced.

It was a small party: Elliot, Emma, and Mrs. Hestya, although she left quickly, one of her other tenants had come to complain about something. It was the most fun I had in a long time.

As the sun went down, Emma brought up the poem again. "Why did you choose that poem exactly?"

Elliot sighed, "Flick, do you want to tell her?"

"The poem is titled, 'Felicitations'."

The last of the daylight faded and we toasted to my twenty-seventh year. I made my birthday wish: I wished that the coming year would bring good times for my friends, old and new. Little did I know then, a last reunion was coming.