OPINION

A bite-size mystery has descended on our quiet little cul-de-sac.

Trying to solve it has left me, well, in a bit of a sticky situation to be honest.

I’ve been through all the possibilities
on the outside of our little piece of paradise and I’m left with the possibility what has occurred may, in fact, be an inside job. And by “inside” I mean in our street.

So now I’m trying to decide if I should go knock on some neighbouring doors – without actually accusing anyone – to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.

But before I go any further, I should fill you in on what’s occurred. So let me explain.

As is her usual habit of late, Mrs P left town for an overnighter with the Boomerang Child and the wee cherubs.

While away she visited a supermarket and then returned to the family digs where she parked the car in the garage. According to my beloved, the supermarket carpark was the only time the car was essentially unattended.

Next day she loaded up the 37 bags she usually takes for a single-night stay and headed home to me. Upon arriving in our driveway, I greeted her with my usual film star pash and then set to work ferrying the bags inside.

I was 10 minutes into the task when I saw it.

Blood.

Red. Thick. And still wet. On the side of the rear door.

And just an inch or two away was what looked like some sort of icky, gooey stuff one would find in some US crime scene investigation on the telly rather than the back of my 2007 Toyota Rav4.

I doubt it would be described as “icky” or “gooey” either. But I digress.

So, there I am staring at this blood and stuff on the back door and my mind starts to race.

On the drive home has Mrs P hit something? Or somebody? Is someone lying injured somewhere? Are the police on the way to take her away? Will l have to make my own tea and work out the new TV remote myself tonight?

I decide I need to go inside the house and ask her some serious questions.

Naturally, before starting such a criminal investigation, I inform her she needs to submit to a full five minutes frisk search. Unfortunately, I realised I had missed a step after four minutes 42 seconds and informed her I would have to do it all over again. I’m nothing if not thorough.

A strip search was on the cards after that but I decided enough was enough when I got The Look.

So, we went outside and had a look at the car.

Mrs P was as shocked as I was. She could not explain how it had got there.

She did come up with one earth-shattering revelation though – cue dramatic earth-shattering revelation music.

“That’s not blood,” she said. “It’s jam.”

The jam was actually inside the rear door latch and the caramel was on the side of the door frame.

Now I’m not an expert in sweet spreads but upon closer inspection it did, in fact, present in the colour and texture of strawberry jam.

From there it was a relatively straight line to the deduction the other foreign matter on the door was not, in fact, brain or body tissue but good old-fashioned caramel sauce.

Relieved I was not going to have to make my own tea, er, I mean Mrs P was not going to be arrested for some hit and run incident, we were left with the following query: How did the jam and caramel get there and who put it there?

Answers please on a postcard, etc.

As they do on the telly, I secured the scene, which basically means I put George the Dog in the backyard before he licked all the evidence away.

Then Mrs P and I stood looking at the jam patch and tried to look serious. We may have even looked up and down the street like they do on telly, just in case somebody was peering out from behind a curtain.

Then we did a grid search of our driveway.

Mrs P found a 10 cent and I got a rev-up about my car dripping oil on the concrete. But we couldn’t find any footprints or anything else that would help solve the mystery.

Back downtown at HQ, which looks remarkably like our kitchen table, we went over the possibilities.

Possibility one: Mrs P had somehow closed the rear door on a jam and caramel cake, doughnut or something similar.

We discounted this possibility because she hadn’t bought such an item, she said, and even if she had wouldn’t it have gone all over the place if she’d squashed it when closing the door?

Possibility two: Somebody had somehow squirted jam and caramel through the side of the door in a random attack when the car was unattended.

We largely discounted this possibility too because, apart from a brief time at the supermarket and Mrs P would have seen the mess when she put the groceries in the back, the car had been secure in the garage.

Possibility three: One of our neighbours is playing a joke on me. As I’ve been emptying out the car on Mrs P’s return, they’ve come over and squirted the contents of a jam and caramel doughnut into the area of concern and then disappeared into the shrubbery.

That is a possibility. I know the bloke across the road likes a joke – and a cake. Maybe I’ll go knock on his door and keep my eyes out for a six-pack of jam and caramel doughnuts with one missing.

Actually, I just thought of another possibility.

I’ve got a big birthday coming up soon and I wouldn’t put it past Mrs P to have bought a special cake from the supermarket, put it in the back of our car and not tell me anything about it.

Obviously, this mystery needs further investigation. Better go and talk to her.

Might have to frisk her a couple of times first though.