June, 2010

Give Me A Quarter And I'll Tell You The Meaning Of Life

Inspiration comes from all sorts of places.

Erma Bombeck claimed that her husband bought her a burial plot as a gift because "I was eating your meatloaf when it just hit me." (Yeah, I'd've hit him and the plot would have been in instant use.) Ducky, on the other hand, brings home roses when he hears meatloaf is on the menu. He loves my meatloaf.

Isaac Newton allegedly got smacked on the melon with an apple and came up with the theory of gravity. Supposedly a customer ordered "Thinner! Thinner!" French fries and the miffed chef sent back wafer thin potatoes—and created potato chips. The microwave most of us can't live without came about when Percy Spencer was working on a radar set and discovered a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Need a replacement for rubber during wartime? You, too might discover Silly Putty.

Need help learning to tie your shoes? Solve a murder.

Almost all little kids have trouble tying shoes and Lexi was no exception. Velcro tabs? Snap. Buckled sandals? Okay, they weren't even, but they were buckled. Laces? Nightmare.

"Bunny ear, bunny ear, tie them together so they don't get lost." Works okay in the Button-Lace-Zip-and-Snap! book; for some reason, the bunny ears turned into a Gordian knot and I actually gave up and cut the stupid things off the shoes on three occasions.

And Allie-oop, rechristened Lexi when she heard the nickname on a show on PBS, was bound and determined to learn to tie her shoes. She seemed to be doing better tying shoes on other people's feet, and it didn't take long to figure out why.

"Totally different angle. Tying your own shoes, your knees are in the way—" Ducky said.

"Or your belly, when you're pregnant," I said, wincing with the memory.

"Or your boobs," Ev snickered.

"Not a problem I've had," Ducky said dryly.

"I see what you mean," I said hastily, before Lexi could ask why Auntie Ev and Auntie Lily were giggling and snorting. I put my legs into a V and patted the carpet. "Sit here, sweetie." Lexi plopped herself in front of me and I scooched her back. I reached around her—not as easy as it sounds—and tugged up her laces. "Okay. You pull up the laces so they're tight… make an X… push the right one under and through… pull down tight. Make a loop—" (We had to call them loops; bunny ear was a dead loss. These bunny ears weren't pointed enough to be bunny ears.) "—go arounnnnnnd… push the curve throuuuuuuuugh… and pull down tight."

"Wexi do it!" she demanded.

"Go for it."

With her knee in the way this way and that, she did the best she could to get an angle on her other foot. She started off with her X and the first half of what could be a square knot, if not careful. She pulled the laces down so hard I flinched, seeing visions of them giving way under pressure and tearing apart.

She stopped, death grip on the laces. "Make I loop…" I cued softly. She perked up. After several tries, she got a loop and circled around with the other lace. Trying to push through the start of the second loop, things fell apart. Back to square one.

After several tries and failures at the "push the curve through" stage, she pulled off the shoe and whapped it on the floor in frustration. "This! Is! Mean!"

"I know it's hard, sweetie, but you're doing better every time. That second loop takes a little time to get right."

She whapped the shoe on the floor again and glared at it.

Ducky patted his lap. "Give it a try with Daddy?"

Still glaring at the offending footwear, she stuck her hand in the shoe and four-footed walked to the other side of the coffee table.

"Up you get…" He hoisted her up to his lap, her feet resting on the edge of the table. (Normally this is a big no-no—but I knew his knee was killing him and if he got down on the floor to try this, he wouldn't get back up.) "Okay. Let's start from scratch." He untied the left shoe. "Make an X… under and through… pull tight… loop… around… through… pull—" He broke off, staring at the bow.

"Da?"

He collected himself. "Sorry, sweet pea. You try it."

She got the bow started and he coached her when she hesitated, but clearly his mind was elsewhere. After a couple of frustrating failures, she finally got a shaky, lopsided bow. "I did it!"

"Yes, you did! Excellent job!" He gave her a hug.

"Pete! Repeat!" She scrambled to the floor, untied both shoes, took them off, then put them on again and went through the task of retying them. There were a couple of false starts and missteps, but she was getting the hang of it.

Ducky continued to stare at her with a distracted look. "Earth to Ducky," I called out.

He didn't jump at the bait. Instead he shifted his feet and stared at his shoes. He murmured something I couldn't hear and cocked his head. Ev and Lily and I exchanged questioning looks and shrugs. "Lexi, could you come back here for a moment? I'd like to tie your shoes."

"No!" She scrambled up and loped out of bounds. "Wexi do!"

"Yes, you can do it now and you did a wonderful job. Daddy just wants to tie your shoes to see something."

"No! No, no, no! Nay, nay, nay!" We knew she was teasing by the laughs around the negative answers (Charlie's input showing through) but she danced around the room until she came to light under the baby grand—well out of reach.

"Wanna tie my shoes?" Ev plopped back on the floor and waggled a foot in the air.

"Yes, please." She looked surprised—he looked serious. He stood up. "Lie on the couch, please."

"Honey, what—" He held up a hand and I shushed.

Ev lay down on the couch, looking at him curiously from her propped up on elbows position. He turned her feet from one side to the other, nodding and going, "Mm-hmm." Then he untied both sneakers, loosened the laces, tightened them up, tied quick bows and stopped to look at his handiwork. "It is," he said softly.

"What is?" I asked.

Still no answer. He turned from the couch, made a quick inspection of my shoes; "Inside!" He wheeled around, looked at Lily's shoes. "Inside!" he cried again. "Yes!" He all but ran for his desk and grabbed the phone. "Jethro? I need you to go down to the evidence locker. You were? Oh, good. Yes, Petty Officer Linderman. It's been bothering me all week, I couldn't put my finger on it. But you know how sometimes you have to leave a problem alone, come back to it from another direction. I remember once in Calais—"

Ducky's digression carried them from wherever Gibbs had started to the evidence locker, where he cut off Ducky's tale in mid-word.

"—blood spat— Oh. Yes. Please, look at the shoes. What do you see?" Ducky listened for a moment. "Describe how they are tied." He listened some more. "Put the shoes as though Petty Officer Linderman were standing in front of you, left and right together properly." After a moment: "Where does the bow on the shoelace fall: outside, center or inside?" He burst into a grin. "Jethro—Petty Officer Linderman was murdered." He nodded defiantly. "No, no, I'm certain—and my daughter can prove it!"

When he had hung up, Lily and Ev and I almost fell over each other demanding an explanation. He crooked his finger at me; I reluctantly hauled my butt off the floor and stood where he indicated.

"Evelyn? Lily?" They joined me in our impromptu police line up. "Lexi? Could you come stand with Mommy for a moment?" Giving him a suspicious look—he might still try to tie her shoes—she semi-leapfrogged her way across the room and stood at the end of the line. "Lexi…" He gave her a conspiratorial look. "Who tied your shoes?"

"Wexi!" She looked affronted, like he was trying to steal her thunder.

"That's right. Lexi tied her shoes. Mommy? Who tied your shoes?"

"Ah—I did," I said hesitantly.

"Lily?" She pointed to herself and shrugged. He turned to Evelyn. "Evelyn, my dear?"

"Ah—you did," she said, in the tone of 'is he slipping his cogs?'

"Yes. I did. Compare your shoes, ladies."

Lexi ignored what was going on; she was busy pleating the hem of my blouse, releasing it then re-pleating it. "Okay, my shoes are ratty, Lexi's have flashing lights, Lily's are pink and purple plaid and Ev's look like she could kick down a brick wall. And?"

"And… you, Lily and Lexi tied your own shoes. I tied Evelyn's. Compare the placement of the bows."

We gave them a closer look. "Well… the bows are kind of on the inside. Evvie's are more centered." I flopped my hand over in a 'well?' gesture. "You're a neat freak; so?"

"So is Lily."

"Well, yeah," she said. "But when you're tying your shoes, it's easier to tackle it from that angle. Knees and—things—get in the way."

"Precisely! But when you are tying shoes on someone else—" He stabbed a finger at Evelyn's feet. "You have a centered approach. The bows are even."

We looked at each other's feet more intently. Lexi, bored, went chasing after Contessa. "You're right. But what does this mean?" Lily asked.

He grinned. "It means that Petty Officer Linderman was murdered. His wife said he came home, changed into his yard work clothing—including his sneakers—and was climbing up the ladder to work on the rain gutter when the ladder gave way. The injuries could have been sustained in a high fall, a short beating—or both. There are other minor inconsistencies—but Petty Officer Linderman did not tie those shoes. The bows were dead center and even. I suspect his wife might have had a paramour who assisted in the death and the covering up of same."

The next day, Ducky discovered that—no, he was wrong.

Petty Officer Linderman was killed by Mrs. Petty Officer Linderman. Linderman was the one with a paramour; missus caught him across the side of the head with her tennis racket (which looks a lot like hitting the frame of a ladder in a post mortem) and sent him crashing onto the corner of the brick hearth (and those injuries look a lot like falling onto a brick barbecue pit).

But he was mostly right. Close enough for government work, anyway.