Alright, since I am not anywhere good with jokes, I thought I might as well entertain the members using my own talents; mind-boggling mysteries.
I have always been the mystery buff since youth, and throughout my life, I have came across literally hundreds of quizzes and riddles with surprising twists, leaving me with my breath taken away.
So here’s how this thread works:
A poster would post a story with a question at the end regarding the story. The question would normally be something like “Who killed [insert name here]?” or “Who stole the [insert valuable object here]?” When another poster manages to get the answer correct, he/she will be allowed to post the next story-riddle, so on and so forth.
With that said, let me kick this off with my story first. For those of you who have already came across this story before, please keep it to yourself for now.
Sager Paten was a First Grade student, whose father was the landlord of a small apartment building containing three residents, and one of them had been acting suspiciously lately. Thus, Sager approached the detective club at his school for help. The club members were naturally more than delighted to assist their schoolmate, but they were asked by Sager to visit the following day as he had plans with his father.
The following day, however, the club members, laid their eyes on the horrific sight of a burned down structure... Through the address given by Sager, they arrived there; the destroyed building. They rechecked the address and confirmed it to be Sager's aforementioned apartment building.
The inspector in charge of the crime scene, James Aaron, upon being questioned by the more prominent member of the four, E. Doyle Kano, about the availability of death in the incident, told the club members that not only were there none, Sager was also fine with merely a few mild burns, though his father was very badly burned and was being attended to in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) at that moment. Inspector Aaron further claimed that the three residents of the apartment building were happened to be out around the time of the fire - which happened around 2:30 AM - before their return in the morning.
After a moment of ponder, an officer involved in the investigation, Carmon Armstrong, informed Inspector Aaron in the discovery of the remains of a partially burned diary. In the entry written at the night before, it says:
[i]July 4th
The weather has been bad this morning. I'll have to get up early or I'll miss school, but I bet the red guy can sleep in late. When I got back from school, I fell down in the entryway. I'm glad the white guy was just coming out. Tonight the red guy and the white guy and the yellow guy are all going out. My dad and I are alone together. I want to play some more but the detective club is coming tomorrow, so I should go to bed early.
Who is it? Someone came home in the middle of the night. He's arguing with my father. It's the yellow guy. I wonder if my dad found out about the suspicious things he's doing. It's scary, so I'll cover my ears and go to bed. When I wake up I'll have to tell Kano about this.[/i]
After a brief moment of discussion, Inspector Aaron informed the club members about the identities of the three apartment residents.
The first resident, Ryan Banner, 25, was a carpenter with a dark tone and a tall, slender physique. He had a couple of plasters covering some parts of his body, including the one behind his left eye.
The second resident, Samuel Aster, 27, was an university graduate wearing a pair of glasses laying before his squelching eyes.
The third one with a more heavy build, Gant Mckane, 29, was a part-time worker with his drafty hair flowing towards his tea-green colored blouse.
When Officer Armstrong learned about the "yellow guy," he deducted that Sager must had represented the three colors to the three respective residents. Nevertheless, it was a difficult case, as none of the three had a color in their names nor were they wearing any yellow-colored garments. Their occupations were carpenter, university graduate and part-time worker, none of them were associated with the color of yellow.
Here are the conversations exchanged when the interrogations were held:
Ryan
Ryan: “Geez. How many times do I have to say the same thing? On the night of the fire, I was out drinking with my boss and my superiors from the carpentry trade.”
Inspector Aaron: “But earlier when we were confirming that, it seems you left sometime after 1 o’ clock in the morning.”
Ryan: “Yeah. I haven’t been drinking in a long time, so I got really drunk. (strokes the plaster on his face) To try to sober up, I went off by myself and laid down on a bench and fell asleep. And so, when I came to, it was already morning.”
Inspector Aaron: “Then at the time of the fire, around 2:30 AM in the morning, that means there was nobody there with you.”
Ryan: (looks away) “Ah, yeah.”
(Abruptly) Doyle: “Say, why do you have that? That plaster on your face. Did you get in a fight?”
Ryan: “What’s with this kid?”
Inspector Aaron: “It’s OK, just answer.”
Ryan: (strokes his plaster again) “I got hit by a board while I was working. I’m still a beginner, so I keep getting injured. (lifts up his right hand to show the four other plasters wrapped around his thumb, second, middle and pinkie finger) Look. These are all from work.”
Inspector Aaron: “By the way, what’s your favorite color?”
Ryan: “Color? The blue of the ocean. It’s cause I like to go surfing occasionally.”
[u]Samuel[/u]
Samuel: "No. I was driving by myself that night. I do that frequently whenever I start going crazy trying to prepare my thesis for my professor."
Inspector Aaron: "Whereabouts did you go driving?"
Samuel: "I drove down that tree-lined street by the Tannerson River. When I'm looking at the greenery, my heart feels at ease, so I end up alone there. I water the plants in the garden at this apartment building everyday, too. That's because the landlord doesn't seem very interested in maintaining the garden."
Inspector Aaron: "Oh, then your favorite color is green or something then?"
Samuel: (turns away) "No. (grabs chin with right hand) If you force me to pick one... it'd be black. It covers up the things inside of me that I don't want to know about. Well, for the same reason, black is the color I hate, too."
Gant
Gant: “Last night, I went to see a movie in New York City. It was an all-night showing from 10 PM at night until 5 AM in the morning. It was a triple-feature from the “Godzilla” series.”
Inspector Aaron: “Were you alone?”
Gant: “Yeah. My net friend was supposed to go with me, but he suddenly couldn’t come.”
Inspector Aaron: “What’s a “net friend?””
Gant: “Ah, as a side-line, I work as a day-trader. I have some friends who exchange information with me about that on the Internet.”
Inspector Aaron: “A day trader? So, you deal with stocks and such?”
Gant: “Well, it’s just sort of a hobby, so I only make a ridiculously small amount of profit from it.”
Inspector Aaron: “You’re only a part-time worker, but you earn enough to cover your living expenses from that?”
Gant: “Yeah, because I’m registered with a temp agency for daily work.”
(abruptly) Doyle: “Say, about that, (Gant looked down and found Doyle holding his (Gant) second and middle finger in his (Doyle) palm while examining them) do you do public construction work? See, there’s a lot of mud under your fingernails.”
Gant: “No, that’s…That’s mud from the time I played a survival game a while ago. It’s because I was running around in the mountains, but since they got covered in that bright color from paint gun shells, I ruined my clothes.”
Doyle: “Then, your favorite color is the color that camouflage clothing is usually made from, navy…” (pauses and look sharply at Gant)
Gant: (ponders for a while) “Yeah… It’s navy green.”
…
After the interrogations were finished, the club members were still unable to figure out who the "yellow guy" was. Heck, one of them, Mitch Tyson, tripped and fell while thinking about it... Fortunately, Ryan was available of many plasters due to his hazardous profession, and offered the young lad one. Nevertheless, that did not help in solving the case...
After a while even, Officer Armstrong felt that it was obstructive to the case if the Inspector was to continue in concentrating on the diary entry due to the probability that it might had been an imaginative concoction. The club members were naturally unhappy about the matter and went on in defending Sager's views about the matter, even the prominent one...
Doyle: "Exactly. Moreover, whenever you police, have a child who's done something bad, don't you start by asking the adults around him, if they know what kind of child he is? In that case, isn't the converse also? Even if he's a child, Paten has observed the residents closer, even so far as to give them nicknames..."
Samuel: ""The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," isn't it? (Doyle looks up to see Samuel behind) During the case of the Adventure of the Copper Beeches, it was one of the lines that Holmes said to Dr. Watson. [i]"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid?"[/i] Was that it?"
Doyle: "Yeah. You like Holmes, too?"
Samuel: "Yeah. I used to have all of it, but they've all been burned up now, eh?"
Inspector Aaron: "Well, speaking of Holmes, he wouldn't have ignored this diary."
After the long interactions exchanged between the Holmes fans, another officer, Johnathan Henson, ran out of the crime scene and reported another evidence near Paten's room; a large pile of mini-cars, easily more than 100 of them. Even with the new evidence, the detective club was still unable to figure out the identity of the arsonist, save one member...
Mitch: "Guess we'll have to confront Sager at another time to ask him more about this, huh?"
Doyle: "No, that won't be necessary. (confidently walks with a grin) Shall I play out the role of Holmes today... and make plain what's black and white right here? I'll tell you which one among them is... the yellow arsonist."
Could you figure out the identity of the 'yellow arsonist?' Hint: Mini-cars