The Case of the Shadow Knows
Hear this story read aloud.
A Call for Help
It was one of those mornings where the coffee was strong enough to stand up and walk out of the cup on its own, and I needed every drop. The phone rang just as I was about to take my first sip. The voice on the other end was the kind that told me trouble was brewing, and not the good kind you drink.
She called herself Mrs. Baxter. Said she had a “terrible, ugly stain” on her granite countertop that just wouldn’t come out. She’d tried every cleaner in the house, even some she admitted she probably shouldn’t have. Nothing worked. Her voice had the edge of someone who’d been losing sleep over it.
Heading to the Scene
I grabbed my fedora, hopped into the old woody, and headed out. The Baxter place was in one of those neighborhoods where the lawns were trimmed tighter than a marine’s haircut and the houses all looked like they were waiting for a magazine photographer to drop by.
She met me at the door, apron on, the kind of apron you could tell had seen a lot of pie crusts. Without much chit-chat, she hustled me into the kitchen and pointed like she was identifying a body. There it was, right in the middle of her gleaming granite countertop—a dark blotch about the size of a fist.
First Impressions
I leaned in, gave it the old squint. From a distance, it did look like trouble. Up close, it looked… different.
I asked her when she first noticed it. She said “just last week,” but swore she’d cleaned that area every day and it never budged. I ran my hand over the stain – nothing. I cocked my head to the side and squinted again, much closer. It looked the same. Then I reached into my bag for my flashlight, not because I needed it, but because sometimes a little showmanship helps. I shined the beam across the stone at a low angle.
The “stain” didn’t absorb light like a stain should—it shifted. I moved my head, and the blotch seemed to move with me. That was my first clue.
The Big Reveal
I asked her if she had changed anything in the kitchen lately. New light bulbs? Curtains? She thought for a second, then told me her husband had installed a new pendant light over the counter just before the “stain” appeared.
Bingo.
I moved around to the far side of the kitchen and looked up. Sure enough, the angle of the new light was throwing a shadow from the edge of a decorative plant sitting near the counter.
- I moved the plant two inches to the left.
- Just like that, the “stain” vanished.
Mrs. Baxter’s eyes went wide. She’d been scrubbing granite with everything short of a sandblaster, and all along the culprit was nothing more than a shadow.
A Slice of Pie
I told her there was no charge—couldn’t bring myself to take money for solving a case in under five minutes. She insisted I stay for a slice of pie instead. I’m no fool.
As I left, I thought about how many times I’d been called in for “mystery stains” that turned out to be anything but. In this business, you learn quick: not every dark spot is a stain. Sometimes, the shadow knows.
