question: Who did…? or What did…? or It seems the thief made a mistake. How could…? Like that.
There’s great variety. The settings range from city to country, from soccer field to jungle, and from a booksellers’ convention to a theater stage to a Crimean battlefield. There are pickpockets, murderers, con men, and various other crooked characters. You’ll encounter veteran detectives, medical examiners, special agents, a game warden and crime-scene investigators.
There’s also variety in the level of challenge. As you turn the pages of Five-minute Mysteries 3, you’ll notice one, two or three symbols – a dagger – at the beginning of each story. The number of daggers suggests how easy or difficult the mystery is, one being easy, two being a little harder, and three, difficult. (Or, perhaps more accurately, how easy or difficult each one seems to me.) But don’t let the ratings stop you from enjoying all the mysteries! One that I rate “difficult” might be an open-and-shut case for you, while you might be utterly stumped by one I’ve rated “easy.” Try them all.
Finally, all the solutions are at the back of the book, so you can prove you’re a winner or, once in a while, get a kick out of losing. Either way, enjoy.
Blowing Up the Mackenzie Building
For eighty years the Mackenzie Building had loomed over Pier 12 like a disapproving spinster aunt. Tomorrow that dominance was to come to an end. At strategic points along the eroding, gray foundation and along the bottom edge of support walls on every one of the six floors, bright red numbers had been spray-painted with great clarity. They were marker points for the dynamite that would be placed there right after the morning rush hour. By mid-morning, the connections would be completed and double-checked. By noon – in fact, before noon, to minimize the lunch hour gawking crowd – Luther Plantz would do a final walk-through, inspect every single placement, and then press a small red disk that, to him at least, both looked like and really was an official seal.
What it would do tomorrow, that red disk, was seal the fate of the Mackenzie Building and everything in it, for it would send electrical instructions in a precise sequence to each placement of dynamite. The building, if things turned out as they always had, would then come tumbling down on itself.
But that was then and this was now, and Luther Plantz was going through his customary period of pre-blow anxiety. It was more than just nervousness, more than just caution, for he always had a high level of discomfort before a demolition. His employees attributed it to the care he put into every job. Luther, according to those in the business who would know, had never had a failure. For a profession that hung right out there on the edge with every undertaking, that was a pretty significant claim, for there was so much that might go wrong. Effectively demolishing a structure isn’t simply a case of combining architecture, engineering and explosives, Luther always said. You must also cope with politics, sentiment and sociology. He had never yet taken down an old, established building without encountering opposition from heritage groups, from street people whose shelter was threatened, and, quite understandably, from next-door neighbors at risk.
Curiously, with all those pressures leaping about in his mind as he walked the ground floor of the Mackenzie Building, what bothered him far more was what he perceived to be the attitude of his oldest son beside him. Although in physique and body language, Bruno Plantz was practically a clone of his father, inside he was ... well, as Luther had said to his wife for the hundredth time just hours before: “He’s good. He knows how to blow ’em up. But he doesn’t understand. It’s like ... It’s like he’s almost got no feelings. I tell him time and again. This isn’t just a business; these are buildings that mean something. Something to the community, or to people. These buildings have a soul. But he doesn’t want to know about that!”
And for the hundredth time, his wife had given her stock answer. “He’s young. Wait a while.”
That dialogue was re-running in Luther’s head as he turned on an old iron faucet that stuck out of an interior wall. There was an instant response and clear water gushed out with enough pressure to make both men step back.
“Now see,” Luther said, as Bruno rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming. “There’s workmanship. That’s why every building has something special about it. This place hasn’t been used for, what, seven years? Power was cut off years ago. All the machinery emptied out. Nothing in here but pigeons and derelicts all that time and here you have something somebody did so well eighty years ago that, even though there’s an idiot down at city hall didn’t do his job and cut the water off, the plumbing still works. That’s what you gotta respect when we take something down.”
Two years of partnership with his father had taught Bruno Plantz to say nothing when the older man was expounding in this way.
“And that tells you something very important. If the plumbers were good, you gotta assume the masons were good, too. That’s why we’re the doing the single stick test one more time.”
Bruno maintained his silence. Deep down he respected his father for a practice that few in the industry bothered with any more: small test explosions to assess the strength of the construction. But at the same time, it stirred up another issue the two had argued over: the best choice of explosives. As though to mirror his son’s thoughts, Luther subconsciously rolled the back of his hand along the stick of dynamite he was carrying. The day was becoming progressively hotter and more humid, and sweating dynamite, even a single stick, was dangerous.
“If we’d use C4 or Semtex, the humidity wouldn’t be a problem,” Bruno couldn’t hold back.
“Huh? What ...? Yes, yes, I know; you and your plastics.” Luther was trying hard not to turn this into a spat. “And you’re probably right. But there’s no art with that stuff. When you take down a building like this, you gotta show some respect. Dynamite ... we’ve been through this before, son, I know, but with dynamite there’s more ... How do I say this? ... There’s more of you and me against those old guys like that plumber and the masons. There’s more game!”
The younger man shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious he was not going to change his father’s view. “Speaking of ‘game,’ by the way, I think we should bring the cops along for the walk-through tomorrow morning.”
“The cops?”
“Yes, the cops. To clear out a ‘spectator.’”
“Here? Inside? The Mackenzie Building’s been clear for months! You can see for yourself. No litter, no fires. No filthy bedrolls. No cardboard!”
“Dad.” Bruno Plantz could not resist a patronizing tone. “Someone is still using this building.”
?
How does Bruno Plantz know that someone has still been using the Mackenzie Building?
The Worst Kind of Phone Call
“‘Mom, there’s been an accident.’ That’s what she said.” Laura Pascal was speaking to Karen Tarata but kept her eyes fixed on the road as they sped along Milldown Parkway. It was 1:00 a.m.
“So when she said she was all right, it didn’t register at all.” Laura continued.
