Every April the Harlan Falls Historical Society throws open its doors for a Saturday, and every April about two hundred people wander through the old brick house on Union Street looking at butter churns.

At ten after three this year, the curator, Maria Hanes, went up to the second floor and found the lock on one of the glass cases pried loose. Missing from the case: the gold pocket watch that had belonged to the man who founded the town in 1838. It had sat in that case, lid closed, for twenty-two years. Inside the lid were the founder's initials and his wedding date. Mrs. Hanes had seen the engraving exactly once, the day the watch was donated. It wasn't on the card in the case, it wasn't in the Society's little guidebook, and she had never told anybody about it but the insurance appraiser.

Three visitors had been on the second floor in the twenty minutes before she found it. The second floor holds more than forty objects: quilts, a christening gown, letters from the Civil War, a cavalry sword, a case of arrowheads, a dentist's chair.

Lieutenant Aguirre talked to the three of them one at a time in the kitchen downstairs. He told each of them the same thing and no more: "Something was taken from the second floor this afternoon, and I'm talking to everybody who was up there."

Lowell Arrington, a retired schoolteacher, said he'd spent the whole time reading the Civil War letters. "Every one of them. My great-grandfather fought at Shiloh."

Carmen Geraci said she'd been looking at the quilts, but her baby got fussy and she'd started down the stairs after about five minutes. The baby, asleep on her shoulder, did not contradict her.

Amy Tucker, who sold antiques out of a shop in the next county, crossed her arms.

"Lieutenant, I've been in this business nineteen years. I know what things are worth and what they aren't, and I'll tell you something for free. Nobody in my line would touch a piece like that. A gold watch with a dead man's initials engraved right inside the lid? I couldn't sell that in three states. I'd have to be out of my mind."

Aguirre nodded slowly. Then he asked Ms. Tucker if she'd mind opening her purse.

Why did Aguirre zero in on Amy Tucker?

[ SOLUTION 99-004 ]

The call came in at 5:10 on a January morning: armed robbery at the all-night gas station out on Route 4, where it runs past the edge of town.

It had snowed most of the night, starting around nine and quitting about three, four good inches of it, light and dry. The county plow had come down Route 4 at half past four and cleared the station's front lot while it was at it.

Detective Lupe Baez got there at a quarter after five. The night clerk, Ben Mondragon, was sitting on a stool behind the counter holding a cup of coffee in both hands. The register drawer was hanging open and empty. The back door, behind the counter, stood wide open, letting in cold air.

"Guy came in at five to five," Mondragon said. "Ski mask, dark coat. He had a gun. He made me empty the drawer into a paper sack, three hundred and eighty dollars, and then he went out the back door, there, and ran off across the field toward the woods. I called you as soon as I could stop shaking."

Baez had worked two gas station holdups out on Route 4 the winter before, both at the end of a night shift, both by a man in a ski mask who was never caught. She asked Mondragon a few more questions about the mask and the gun, and wrote down his answers. Then she went to the back door and looked out.

Behind the station a field ran back about two hundred yards to a line of trees. In the light from the station's back window, the snow lay across it in one smooth, untouched sheet, all the way to the woods. The back step was covered too, four inches, perfectly level.

Baez stood there for a moment. Then she closed the door, came back to the counter and took out her notebook.

"Mr. Mondragon," she said, "let's start over, and this time let's start with where the money is."

How did Baez know there had been no robber?

[ SOLUTION 99-005 ]

Gloria Hoglund had spent Sunday afternoon and evening at her sister's in Springfield, she told Officer Shirley Dwyer, from two o'clock until nine. When she got home at a quarter after nine and went around to the back door, the way she always did, she found it standing open.

"They broke the little window," she said. "Right by the lock. Reached in and turned the deadbolt. They took my silver tea service, it was my mother's, and my good jewelry from the bedroom. Every drawer in the kitchen is dumped out. I didn't touch a thing. I didn't even go all the way in. I went straight next door to call you."

Mrs. Hoglund mentioned, while Dwyer was writing, that she'd had the tea service and the jewelry appraised and insured just last fall, for twelve thousand dollars. "Thank heaven," she said.

Dwyer took her flashlight around back. The back door had nine small panes of glass, and the one nearest the deadbolt was broken out clean, just a few jagged bits left in the frame. Under it, the porch boards glittered. There was broken glass all over the porch, a good handful of it in a pile right below the door and more scattered across the boards and down onto the top step.

Dwyer stepped carefully over it and shone her light into the kitchen. The drawers were dumped, all right, silverware and dish towels and rubber bands everywhere. On the linoleum just inside the door she counted three slivers of glass, none of them bigger than a fingernail.

She came back around front, where Mrs. Hoglund was waiting with her neighbor.

"Mrs. Hoglund," Dwyer said, "is there anything you'd like to change about what you told me?"

What did Dwyer see that Mrs. Hoglund didn't think about?

[ SOLUTION 99-006 ]