“I’ve got it!” the famous Detective Recluse yelled, jumping out of his chair and startling his friend Larry across the table. “I know how the murderer got into the building. The clues line up. It’s so obvious.”
Detective Recluse said this loudly enough that everyone in the restaurant heard him. The restaurant patrons applauded and talked excitedly about how they were in the place where the great detective solved the canary case. The restaurant owner hurried off to call a tv station with the news.
Larry waited for Recluse to sit down and didn’t say anything.
“So, don’t you want to know how I solved it?” Recluse asked Larry.
“No, I don’t,” Larry angrily replied. “Every time we have dinner while you’re on a case, I’ll tell you some deeply personal tragedy, and in the middle of it, you’ll have a breakthrough. It’s like you don’t even care about my life. You want a distraction.”
“It’s not a distraction,” Recluse said. “It’s something about you. You bring clarity.”
“I bore you,” Larry said.
Recluse took a long drink from the glass of water, forgetting all about Larry’s concern. He began, “When I interviewed the cook, she mentioned a missing jar of pickles…”