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By Root 292 0

simply too incalculable. When a person lives alone, he or she can monitor household inventory rather closely, and often does. Take Martin, for example. He knew that there were two tubes of Crest whitening toothpaste in the small drawer underneath his medicine cabinet. He knew this with certainty because he was the only one doing the shopping for his household, and he alone used the products that he purchased. If a tube suddenly went missing, there was no one in the household to blame for the disappearance but himself, and therefore, someone outside the home must have taken it. If these disappearances happened often enough, the possibility and probability of a thief would eventually enter Martin’s mind. And because he lived alone, the identity of the thief would prove to be quite a mystery. Mysteries promote investigation. Investigations inevitably lead to evidence. Singletons were simply too much of a risk to take on as clients.

The couple must always be married as well. Roommates made the worst potential clients, simply because household expenses are often split between roommates using odd and indiscernible formulas that inevitably lead to strife. Roommates, in Martin’s estimation, seem to always be fighting over whose bologna is sitting in the meat drawer, who used whose shampoo, and who made the thirty-nine-minute call to Denver on Wednesday afternoon during peak hours. Roommates, no matter how friendly they may be, always live with a certain level of mistrust for one another, and therefore when something goes missing, it is usually assumed that the roommate took it. The possibility of theft easily and immediately comes to mind with the presence of a roommate, and thus it becomes an option to consider.

No maid or children either, because these two types are frequently blamed for theft, no matter how insignificant the loss. Sticky-fingered maids and dishonest children are so common that they have almost become cliché.

And no dogs, because dogs bark at strangers and bite.

Martin did not like being bit.

One might think that the presence of children and maids and even roommates would be good for a man in Martin’s line of work, by deflecting blame from himself and placing it upon more likely suspects, but this is where Martin separated himself from the amateurs. Though it might seem initially beneficial to have a theft blamed on a maid or a roommate, their mere presence establishes the likelihood of a theft. Their existence allows for the possibility of theft to enter the client’s mind, and once these maids and roommates are cleared of all charges, the suspicion of theft lingers. An investigation begins. Investigations lead to evidence, and evidence leads to discovery. No, the key to Martin’s success lay in the fact that his clients never really noticed that anything was missing, and when they did notice that an item was gone, they simply assumed that they had misplaced the item, lost it, or that the item had been moved or used by their spouse.

Of course, there was the occasional married couple who lived more like roommates than husband and wife, maintaining their own checking accounts, splitting expenses, and living separate financial lives, but Martin’s careful screening process also eliminated these couples as potential clients. Besides, Martin found this arrangement to be ridiculous and destabilizing to the marriage, and he preferred to work with clients whose marriages were on a sound footing.

Exiting the pantry, making sure that the door was relatched, Martin passed through the kitchen and into the adjacent living room, stopping for a moment to inventory the items in the room in the event that the Pearls had added or deleted something since his last visit. A sectional sofa, brown leather and well worn, occupied the center of the room, facing a large, flat-screen television and an enormous fieldstone fireplace topped with a teak-wood mantel, none of which showed any evidence of recent use. In fact, Martin noted that the same four logs were stacked upon the hearth exactly as they had been when Martin first entered