The Clue

59 Replies
remains-of-ted-strutz

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

We all cringed when Maley opened the crumbled paper found with the body and tasted some of the crumbs.

He walked away, phone against face.  I could see him nodding.  In a few minutes he came back.

“Our Fast Food Killer made a mistake this time,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“The perp was at Deckards at 7:30 PM last night.  We have him on security camera and a license number.  Quick look up, and bingo.”

“You got that from a crumb?”

“He used a McDonald’s mustard.  I was there at 7:30 and saw it.  Taste confirmed.  It’s our man.”

***

Word count = 100

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This week’s prompt is here and uses a photo © Ted Strutz. Read more or join in by following the InLinkz “linky“.

59 thoughts on “The Clue”

    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I have been waiting for someone to say “Colonel Mustard” – you are the first! I agree about McDonald’s. I wasn’t think Columbo, but when someone else brought it up, yeah, I know the show left a huge impact on my brain.

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        1. trentpmcd Post author

          Maybe. It was very violent, more than most movies I watch. Dafoe’s character was great, but at one time they had him in drag as if to say “of course all gay men dress in drag…”. OK, it was the 90s and they wouldn’t do that today, and most likely there were less cliches than a lot of movies back then, but still…. The movie was fun as long as your brain never stopped and said, “Whoa! That’s a lot of graphic violence!”

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  9. granonine

    Trent, I was taken back to Poirot and Holmes, detectives who could figure out anything from a tiny thread or the type of mud on a shoe.

    I haven’t been to McDonald’s in years. Unhealthy, unappetizing. Fast food, once a downfall of mine, has finally been set aside. Too little too late, I’m afraid, but better late than never!

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Thanks. For years I would, at some point in the year, think, “I haven’t been to McDoanlds in ages. I think I’ll stop in.” And then, an hour or two after eating there, I would remember why it had been a year or two… Not sick, it just felt like I had eaten 40 lbs of cement. Better to have figured it out late than never.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Yeah, I might not have hit it quite right. Deckards is a made up restaurant that is not McDonalds. Any condiment from McDonalds is awful, and no person in their right mind would use it unless they had too… So Maley has a golden palate for discerning mustard, and knew the taste from his sample. he had seen someone put that awful bile on a sandwich, so figured it out. I was makign fun of some detective shows where the detective made an impossible leap, or, like in one James Bond, could tell the vintage of a non-vintage drink, or, like Flint, know exactly what restaurant in Marseilles made the bouillabaisse that he smelled on a tiny poison dart… So making fun of the impossible clue (though I’m sure anyone would be able to tell McDonalds mustard from any other in Universe….)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Yes there are, and different people have different palates… Of course, if you buy a sandwich at a fancy shop and use McDonalds mustard, you need to be arrested for bad taste anyway ;)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Yes he is! He has a very discriminating tongue/palate and knows over 10,000 different wines vintages with just a sniff… (“Yes, the grapes in this bottle obviously came from the southeast corner of the vineyard with it’s lower sunlight and more chalky soil… I think Maria picked the grapes. She had such a delicate touch and never bruised the fruit.”)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I think it started in a James Bond book were he got a clue by being able to tell the vintage of an alcohol that in reality has no vintages, and so in Our Man Flint they had him not only know that the spices on the poison dart was Bouillabaisse, but he was able to find the exact restaurant that it came from. In my opinion, knowing the difference between Deckards famous (in my fictional universe) homemade mustard and a packet of McDonalds mustard, isn’t as much of a stretch ;)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I’m sure McDonald’s mustard has a very distinctive taste… ;) Have you ever seen the old movie Our Man Flint? His first big clue is a trace of of spices for Bouillabaisse found on a poison dart that he identified by sniffing the dart… Hopefully now that they have him tied to one murder, they can track him back to the others as well.

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