General Science: The Case of the Stolen Handouts

There were no two ways about it. I took her call 'cause I needed the money. That case was dirtier than a first grader's back backpack and twice as heavy. The broad that hired me told me a couple a thugs stole some paper, and I ain't talking about the kind with dollar signs. Some handouts on "Why does salt taste so darn good?" Only clues I had were four sets of prints and a pile of white powder.

Called in a favor with a buddy of mine downtown and he ran the prints and came up with a list of suspects with records so clean you could eat off of them. Two teachers: Tammy Lefcourt and Devra Lehman, Asaf, the owner of the local toy store, and the damsel in distress herself, Rebecca Perlin. Each one had his own peculiar attraction to a specific white powder. Tammy and her baking powder; Devra, corn starch; Asaf, sugar; and Rebecca, salt.

I let the boys in the lab take a crack at it. They tested the powder with more chemicals than you'd find in a package of Osem soup nuts. Then they looked at it under the microscope and checked if it could conduct electricity. They compared the results to some similar cases they had a while back, and the answer was clear as day.

That science teacher must have thought I was some chump – turned out she was right. It was her and that other broad, the English teacher. One was in it for the thrill the other for the spelling mistakes. Me, I had bigger fish to fry.