Board 8 > Help solve a mystery.

(+) Yeah! (+)

My family owns an apartment building. My dad is too cheap to install a gate on the garage. Anyone off the street can enter at any time. There have been thieves before, breaking into cars. Entering the building itself requires a key. There is a laundry room accessible from the garage, but you also need a key. Within the laundry room is a smaller storage room filled with miscellaneous supplies, but you need a master key to enter it. Normal residents cannot enter. The only master keys in existence belong to my dad, my sister, my dads handyman Frank, and myself. There is one additional master key accessible in a safe in the garage that anyone can access, but you need a code. Because my dad is lazy, the code is the address to the building, which makes it guessable. I know this makes no sense, but this is the setup.

My dad is a compulsive hoarder, and he never throws anything away. Every spare room he owns is filled with garbage. He filled the storage room with such useless garbage, in addition to actually useful tools (to him, theyre equally valuable). The last time I entered, it was a disaster zone.

Recently, we discovered that the storage room was cleaned and organized. It must have been done in the past two or three weeks. Its now spotless and everything is located in sensible places. Doing this would take at least two hours of labor, and maybe more. Everyone with keys denies doing this. Dont ask if anything was stolen, no one could possibly know. When I went to check, I did see many items I recognize from years ago, like destroyed golf clubs, novelty light bulbs, Native American arrows, a Cold War gas mask, and rusty hacksaws. I could go on, but I wont.

I can tell you that I never cleaned this room, and I never would, because whenever I clean a room, my dad just fills it up with more garbage, so when I do anything, I intentionally arrange his crap to take up as much space as possible, so hell at least throw out old candy wrappers, moth-eaten shirts from 1970, and things not even he can defend as potentially valuable. My dad would never clean something without hoarding more things in the empty space, so it wasnt him. My sister could clean it, and has the time and inclination, but she says she didnt, and I cant think of a reason why she would lie. My dads handyman has a history of cheating him (I know, dont ask), so I could believe that he would steal something from him, and there might indeed be something valuable in there, but why clean the room, and why deny cleaning the room afterwards? This is also the case for Franks assistant, who could theoretically also have accessed the key at some point, although I find it highly unlikely that he could have had the key for 2-4 hours without Frank knowing.

This leaves the spare garage key. Anyone could get it if they guessed the easily-guessable code, but it was inside of the safe when we checked.

My other sister, who doesnt have a key, has suggested this could be the work of a homeless man who got the key and slept inside the storage room. I say this is implausible, because a homeless guy wouldnt clean it so thoroughly, hed only clean enough to sleep in, he wouldnt return the key to the safe, and hed probably leave behind some trash of his own (the room is spotless). My theory is that Frank or his assistant cleaned the room so they could store more stuff in it, found something worth stealing, stole it, then denied everything because they didnt want to be suspected, not realizing my dad would never remember something valuable disappearing. However, I freely admit that my theory also has holes, foremost of which is that Frank knows he could just steal anything less valuable than a car and my dad would never notice. I know this because Frank has cheated him in the past, although I dont know if hes actually stolen anything in the traditional sense.

Can Board 8 solve the Mystery of the Unknown Maid?

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Anagram posted...

My family owns an apartment building. My dad is too cheap to install a gate on the garage. Anyone off the street can enter at any time. There have been thieves before, breaking into cars.

Something far more important than this dumb mystery: tell your dad to stop being a fucking slumlord. If he owns an entire goddamn apartment building, he can damn well afford to install a fucking gate.

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Frank seems lazy and shady, so I bet he's given out the safe code to several people over the years for one reason or another. Or maybe the assistant did, not even knowing it was meant to be secret or that the key opened more than the one door. Then some kindly tenant finally cleaned what they might think is a communal storage room.

In the building I work in, despite signs in the fitness center saying we'll throw out anything left in there overnight, cleaners and management never did anything. Then one day a tenant took it upon themselves to clean the place and throw out all the accumulated stuff like the sign said we should (which caused a bunch of problems but that's another story). People try to be helpful sometimes.

That's my guess anyway.

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Frank went in to steal something but left the door ajar, and your sister went in, and, while Frank hid behind the open door, she decided it was finally time to clean the damn thing. As Frank slipped out the door he accidentally knocked something valuable over and broke it. Thinking it was her fault, your sister continued to clean so that it would look like whatever broke was lost or stolen during the cleaning process. That's why neither of them can confess to what happened, because they both did something wrong (or in your sister's case, believes she did nothing wrong). Now put the parrot on the witness stand to confirm this.

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Did the assistant also deny involvement? Or the handyman had a temp assistant one day or something and doesn't want to admit to having involved another person for whatever reason?

I wouldn't entirely rule out someone in the apartment figuring out the code and cleaning it on their own. I've known people who would, even though they have no incentive to do so personally, clean up a mess like that just because it bothered them. The question there though would be what possessed them to enter the room in the first place given it's not a trivial task. Could it have been left unlocked for some period of time? If someone forgot to lock it maybe a resident entered it accidentally?

Edit: Ah, I see Robazoid beat me to these guesses but yeah they were the first things to come to mind.

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Yeah, this mystery isn't worth solving.

Someone cleaned it, and because your dad is a hoarder slumlord, they don't want your dad to know.

Hoarders notoriously get angry when someone touches their precious garbage

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what is this knives out shit

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Have you ever had a temp employee for Frank when he's been gone? Could be there's others that get the codes for brief stints.


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Anagram posted...

My other sister, who doesnt have a key, has suggested this could be the work of a homeless man who got the key and slept inside the storage room. I say this is implausible, because a homeless guy wouldnt clean it so thoroughly, hed only clean enough to sleep in, he wouldnt return the key to the safe, and hed probably leave behind some trash of his own (the room is spotless).

Also some weird, irrational hate for the homeless here

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redrocket posted...

Something far more important than this dumb mystery: tell your dad to stop being a fucking slumlord. If he owns an entire goddamn apartment building, he can damn well afford to install a fucking gate.

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banananor posted...

Also some weird, irrational hate for the homeless here

I have another story! Decades ago in the building my mom worked in, they found a guy who'd lost his apartment and moved all his stuff, furniture and all, into a basement storage room and lived there. They had been there for almost a year with no one realizing, no one ever did figure out how he even got in they just kicked him out. Not all homeless are the kind that trash their surroundings!

Still, if someone were sleeping there I imagine there'd be some indication, even if not necessarily garbage. A bedroll, a bit of food, something.

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Also, does this master key literally open the apartments? Because if it does thats really terrible and even far worse than not putting up a gate.

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I have lots of fun building management stories. A gate wouldn't necessarily stop anyone from getting in. Depending on how many people live there and are coming and going, that gate would be open enough for the thieves to get in anyway. All I've ever seen a gate do was stop the benign homeless just looking for a place to sleep, which is good, but they aren't the ones who smash car windows. Those guys have a plan and are really hard to stop. On-site security and cameras to see and chase them out right away is all I've seen work.

Not to say Anadad shouldn't put up a gate, I just wouldn't expect it alone to help against break-ins.

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Whoever went in the storage room last left it unlocked. Some rando cleaned the room while waiting for their laundry.

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Mobilezoid posted...

I have lots of fun building management stories. A gate wouldn't necessarily stop anyone from getting in. Depending on how many people live there and are coming and going, that gate would be open enough for the thieves to get in anyway. All I've ever seen a gate do was stop the benign homeless just looking for a place to sleep, which is good, but they aren't the ones who smash car windows. Those guys have a plan and are really hard to stop. On-site security and cameras to see and chase them out right away is all I've seen work.

Not to say Anadad shouldn't put up a gate, I just wouldn't expect it alone to help against break-ins.

I mean, this is like arguing that you shouldnt lock your door because determined thieves can break in anyway.

I think you are seriously underestimating how many low effort crimes of opportunity can be prevented just by having a gate. In any case, that is obviously the first, absolute minimum effort step that should be taken, and the unwillingness to do even that much speaks volumes about his attitude, if nothing else.

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I'm probably just jaded because for a long time it was my job to chase homeless out of the parkade every night, and we had a gate. Building management refused to do anything (cameras, hiring actual security) because they thought the gate was enough. There absolutely should be a gate, I'm not disagreeing with that, but it isn't enough if you want real security. The gate is like step one.

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Or rewrite history!

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To be clear, my dad has agreed to install a gate, but is using the cheapest guy possible, which will take months.

Franks assistant also denies involvement.

No one has asked the other tenants. The apartment building only has five other tenants right now besides my sister and me. I know most of them well enough. I can say 100% that the 87 year old woman could not have done it. The college professor is a huge piece of crap and would never clean something not his own, nor would his teenage son. I dont think the Asian college girl would, or the random middle aged man. I dont really know the last old guy well enough, but I doubt hes responsible. These are mostly just guesses, though.

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The circus orca did it.

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https://youtu.be/cNgxyL5zEAk

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It was you, you're just posting this to convince everyone that it wasn't.
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Mega Mana posted...

Or rewrite history!

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Anagram posted...

No one has asked the other tenants.

"We have a mystery here. Somebody did something. Oh, but we didn't ask like half of the people that could have done it if they did it."

Columbo, you are not.

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StealThisSheen posted...

"We have a mystery here. Somebody did something. Oh, but we didn't ask like half of the people that could have done it if they did it."

Columbo, you are not.

It didnt seem plausible, given none of them can access it!

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Anagram posted...

I dont think the Asian college girl would

Why not? She could have had 1 too many adderalls

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Anagram posted...

It didnt seem plausible, given none of them can access it!

It didn't seem plausible that rich oil tycoon Mr. Daniels murdered the actress, given he was supposedly on his yacht at the time, either!

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Cross-examine the parrot

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