Waiting for the sun to come up, Detective Crimson couldn’t believe he was still in the states while he waited on an extravagant porch with an amazing view of a serene Asian landscape. But these thoughts of beauty vanished from his mind as his least favorite paranoid private investigator showed up at the crime scene. The infamous Clive Rowan hesitantly came up to the scene, checking all around him for Heaven knows what, in a million-dollar suit and hair gel that was covered completely with dirt and leaves. And you couldn’t forget to mention his backpack that seemingly had everything in it. He had been hired for a good deal of money by the insanely rich Asian by the name of Wi Sontu who had been robbed of his little golden statue. However, the thing about this case that drove Detective Crimson mad was that they found the criminal with the statue at the scene when they got there after the security alarm went off, but the Asian was convinced that the statue the man had was a fake. When the police checked and double checked the statue, reassuring Mr. Sontu that the statue was indeed the real one, Wi went into hysterics and hired the expert albeit paranoid investigator to find the truth of the matter.

“Hello Detective!” called out Clive Rowan, still coming from the huge, picturesque garden area surrounding the house. Immediately after doing so, he purposely dropped to the ground, ruining some flowers in the process, but came up with relief, as well as some dirt, on his face.

As Clive entered the house and came into reasonable talking distance, Detective Crimson said, “Hello Mr. Rowan. I see you’ve cared to join me here. Mr. Sontu apologizes that he will be coming here a bit later than he hoped.”

Disregarding this information, Clive responded, “Good, you’re not a clone. Now, I’ve looked over the briefs for this case, and I must say that I agree with your conclusion that Mr. Sontu is insane, but,”

“That was NOT my conclusion!” indignantly replied Detective Crimson as he spilled his cup of tea and smashed a porcelain cup picturing a woman petting a leopard that used to hold tea.

The sun came up over the horizon, which would have delighted the detective moments ago, but now filled him with irritation that all the sun managed to do was highlight the tea-stains and pieces of china over the floor of the carpeted porch. Also, at this time, Mr. Sontu happened to join them.

“Ah! Hello Mr. Rowan, so good to see you,” said Mr. Sontu, but when he looked at Detective Crimson and the spilled tea, he said, “Oh, hello Detective. I will get staff to clean up.” He turned around and shouted something in Asian, and a maid came, who began to clean up when she saw the mess.

While the maid was cleaning up, Clive began mumbling words to himself, “Long, spotted orange, silk robe; white carpet; woman petting leopard; bruise on forehead; cranky at seeing me; no assassins yet seen;”

“What are you doing?” asked the extremely irritated detective.

“My thoughts organize better if I say them
out loud. Now, I need to see the suspect, the suspect’s car, the suspect’s diary or journal if he has one, the suspect’s computer, a picture of the suspect’s house, the suspect’s pet if he has one, and I’ll look up the rest while you bring those to me.”

“Who and why, Mr. Rowan?” asked Detective Crimson.

“Anyone and because I say so,” said Clive. “Mr. Sontu, do you have any food? I am starving, and I couldn’t get a bite to eat before I came.”

The detective simply shook his head in frustration while the Asian said, “Of course, Mr. Rowan, I get you specially made pastries from chef, yes?”

“Yes, that’ll do nicely.” He looked at the detective. “Well, you’re not doing anything except spilling tea, would you mind to get everything I asked for?”

“Half the things you asked for, I’ll need a warrant for, and I am doing much more than just spilling tea.”

“Yes, you also broke china. I could always get one of Mr. Sontu’s staff to get what I want, and they won’t bother with the warrants.”

“You know what, fine. I’m not going to play this game with you,” said the detective as he left.

A bit after the detective had left, the chef came in with his pastries. Clive was delighted when he saw them. “Ah, wonderful,” he sniffed the food and put it to his tongue, then put it down next to the spilled tea and china without taking a bite. “You can take that too,” he said to the maid who was just finishing up cleaning the mess on the carpet.

Sometime later, Detective Crimson returned with the materials Clive asked for. Well, some of them. The detective didn’t get warrants despite Clive’s asking, so all he brought were the picture of the house, the suspect, and the suspect’s car. Clive wanted the car in the garden, and that was done with difficulty. Mr. Rowan held a picture of the house that belonged to the handcuffed man standing next to him, then looked at the handcuffed man’s car in the garden. Finally, he began.

He took something out of his backpack, pressed a button on it, and threw it at the car. He looked up at the roof and seemed relieved for some reason. Searching every part of the car, he turned on the radio, even drove it a little bit, and then checked the tires and the compartment where the spare tire was kept. He also seemed to have fun honking the horn and messing with the GPS.

“Interesting.” Getting out of the car, he went up to the suspect, he said, “Now, you are an interesting case. You won’t tell the police anything, which is a very logical thing to do as you should wait for your lawyer, but you shouldn’t be thinking like that. You’ve had little experience with being arrested, only once you had a DUI. When the odds are clearly against a criminal who has not had any experience with being arrested, they are usually trying to come up with lame excuses, but not you. Why? Well, according to what the briefs say about you, you’ve lived in your house for eight years, and make very little money. Now, this picture of your house comes from one of those websites to help you find directions. The site had taken these pictures five years ago, showing your house looking frankly ugly. However, now, when we look at your house at this more recent picture, we see that it is fixed up, with a happy look and a garden that is clearly made by a woman, most logically, your wife who you have been married to for ten years. However, when we look at your car, we see that your GPS was plugged in to go to somewhere called ‘Vicki’s house.’ Vicki’s house has been edited last week, so we can see that she has recently moved and you need the GPS to find where her new house is. Now, the briefs say that Vicki is your mother, but when looking at your saved addresses, you have your mother’s house under a different address marked as ‘Mom’s house,’ not Vicki’s house. So, we may assume that Vicki is someone that you didn’t want anyone knowing about, presumably a mistress. But, then, with this good alibi, why not use it? Well, here, we could logically say that by the state of your house now, with you and your wife clearly working together to make a happy environment for the two of you, you were going to Vicki’s house to break off whatever was between you two, and you didn’t tell the police anything because you didn’t want to spoil the new relationship you had with your wife. Now, the real question is, why did your GPS say that this location was Vicki’s house and how did you manage to get past all the security surrounding this house?

“Here, I may question our generous host for more evidence.” Turning to Mr. Sontu, Clive said, “I see you are part of the cult of the leopard, Mr. Sontu, as you clearly stayed praying to the spirits until the sun rose from the horizon and not wanting to keep us waiting did not change out of your prayer robes. Your hired staff has all been bruised on their foreheads to prove their loyalty to you – common practice of the leopard cult. Also, all your china portrays a leopard on it.”

“Why, sir, you,” began Mr. Sontu, but was cut off by Clive.

“So, I now have to make new assumptions about why you went into hysterics over the robbery of the golden statue. These new ones conclude that you, obviously one of the most wealthy and powerful members of the leopard cult, were placed with the responsibility of hiding the idol of your leader that is said to return to life someday. Now that it’s been stolen, you should want to keep it quiet because if you don’t then a spirit – aka assassin of the leopard cult bound to do whatever the leaders want because of fierce, undying loyalty – will come and kill you for letting it be stolen, but you don’t. This tells me that you are sure that going into hysterics over it will keep you safer, thus, you must know where it is. Where is it?”

“Mr. Rowan,” began Mr. Sontu again.

“No, let me answer. These two very unlikely scenarios can be explained by me very nicely. Someone really wants me dead. Now, I have known for a while someone was trying to kill me ever since the incident in Australia, but now I think I may have a better grip on who is trying to kill me by how they’ve tried to kill me. This man has obviously rigged the GPS on the suspect’s car to change Vicki’s house to this location as when one looks at the edits done to the location ‘Vicki’s house,’ not only was it edited one week ago, but it was also edited eight days ago as a completely different location with every detail different, and why would anyone change the edit a day later unless they got it wrong? But the probability that the suspect had every detail about Vicki’s address wrong is very unlikely. The man who wants me dead also used the suspect’s perfect condition – being that he didn’t know where Vicki’s new house was and wouldn’t want to tell anyone about Vicki – to his advantage, meaning that unfortunately for me, he is very smart. Also, once the suspect came into the grounds, the man who wants me dead probably caused the security to go off, and left him with the real statue, as the police reports show, therefore making it impossible to find any difference between the real statue and the one he was holding because it was the real one. Now, according to the leopard cult, this statue will come to life sometime in the near future, and so the present leaders of the leopard cult have made a rule that anyone who defiles the statue must be put to death. Now, that puts all of you in danger as a deadly assassin with undying loyalty to this cult is out to get all who touched it, and the man who wants me dead obviously expected me to examine the statue, thus having me defile it too, and have two factors decreasing my chance of survival. However, third time’s a charm, right? So he thinks to himself, why not have three factors ensuring my death? These three factors are his hatred, the loyalty of the assassin, and money. Money is always a good motivator, but money to whom? Well, money is frequently a better motivator to those who have a lot but don’t think they have enough, and so detective I would like you to arrest Mr. Sontu for being part of a criminal conspiracy and trying to kill me three times today.”

“Three times?” asked Detective Crimson.

“Yes. Once when I had to crawl under the fence – I wasn’t for a second going to go through the front way, that’s just asking to be killed – there was a trip wire surrounding the entire place; obviously this Asian is getting paid more than enough to fix the damages as well as to provide incentive. Again when I was greatly disheartened that I tasted poison in the pastries I was given. And finally, I had an attempt on my life when he tried to shoot me with a remote-controlled gun that I saw on my way up to the porch on the roof. When I got out that thing I had and pressed the button on it before going to the car, I was pressing it to stop any electronic, wireless, or radio signals within a five hundred-yard radius. It was also a precaution so that no remote-controlled bombs on the car which I was unaware of could get me, but that turned out to be unnecessary. So go ahead, detective. Arrest Mr. Sontu, you’ll find the evidence for everything I’ve said so far; but first, I’d suggest you alert the nearest airport that they’ve got a deadly assassin coming within the next,” he looked at his watch, “seventeen minutes.” Smiling, he began to walk away.

“But what about the man you say that’s trying to kill you?” asked Detective Crimson.

“Well, with a tad bit of research, from what I know about him already, I should be able to place a name on him soon.”

He turned to go, but the Detective had one last question. “But Mr. Rowan, how did you know that I’d have to be here to make arrests? From what I understood from your monologue, you didn’t have any evidence whatsoever until you came into the grounds.”

“Actually, you’re quite right about that. I had no evidence whatsoever. I just knew that you’d be mad to see me. Whenever you’re mad, you stick your arms out and then throw them up. I also knew that all self-respecting wealthy Asian give their guests tea in their best china. To put it simply, I wanted to see you spill your tea.” With that, he turned around and left the detective there to make arrests.

The Detective watched as his least favorite paranoid investigator walked away into the serene Asian landscape.