Missing

Doesn't it drive you a little crazy when things just go missing? I wrote about the case of the missing salmon three years ago when Tippy and Tori were 13 and 14. Here is that little story, since they both just spent the weekend with us and are so much more grown up now!

I was loading the dishwasher when Brenda wandered upstairs and into our kitchen with her brow furrowed and a perplexed expression on her face.

She told me that she had just posted as her status on Facebook :

"Ok its official--I have lost my mind--and my salmon! Made my lunch for tomorrow and could have sworn I put the leftovers in the fridge but the illusive salmon is missing in action! If I ever find it I'll let I you know where I put it!"

I am used to hunting my kitchen and office for things that seem to vaporise the moment they leave my hand, but it was funny to see Brenda standing there in her pajamas telling me that she had actually looked inside her washing machine, dryer, oven and microwave for her salmon.

We had decided that weekend to split some of the items we buy in large boxes from Costco. We figured we would save money as well as space that way. One thing we bought was a salmon steak, which I had baked and then put into two large take-out containers from Swiss Chalet that used to contain chicken. These containers aren't small, so how hard could it be to find one in her apartment downstairs? I went downstairs to help, sure I that would spot it in no time.

We recruited Tippy, and laughingly proposed a prize for the one to find the salmon. We looked in all the cupboards, the garbage bins, even the appliances; again. Nothing.

Tori was in the shower, but when she emerged, Brenda asked her if she had seen the salmon. She replied with a flippant, "No, but feel free to interrogate the shampoo!"

Molson was circling us, his soft nose nuzzling my hands, but if he had anything to do with this, where was the evidence? The container would have been left behind and it was nowhere to be seen.

My mind turned to the one member of the downstairs household not present: Kevin, who was upstairs working in his office. The salmon had to be with him; "I bet he's playing a joke on you," I said.

Brenda was about to buy the Kevin theory when there was a crack in the case. Tori caved under the pressure of knowing that he was about to undergo interrogation, and confessed.

She had taken the Swiss Chalet container from the fridge into the TV room thinking that it held chicken. When she found that it contained salmon, she left it on the table. Enter Molson; “Only Too Glad to Help;” stage left.

I couldn’t believe it. “Tori, you actually watched us searching high and low, and you knew all along where the salmon had gone?" 

She said she hadn’t known what to do. She hadn't banked on her mother going into "Such a Tizzy" over the salmon; or me, "The Big Guns" as she put it; being called in!

She went and retrieved the missing container from her room and held it out to us.

"What were you going to do with it?" I said, looking at the empty container with vestiges of salmon clinging to the edges.

"I was going to wait until tomorrow and then dispose of it!" she said, as though referring to an inconvenient dead body. And I thought that she seemed a little too comfortable with this problem solving method.

As for her partner in crime, Molson; we decided that since the mystery of the missing salmon was solved, he might as well finish off the job he had started. 

And he was only too happy to oblige!