Betty Valentine--a Crossover Blog

This is a story--or the beginning of a story, depending on how you look at it--that I wrote for my fiction class. Please don't judge--it's getting hard to come up with new stuff to blog...

Betty loved mysteries so much that she often created them where they didn't exist. Her husband had dubbed her "Betty Valentine, Investigator of Indiscernible Mysteries," but qualified it by claiming that she was actually the instigator of such mysteries. She knew he would think she was wasting her time digging through the lost and found bin at the rec center. Of course her sweater wouldn't be there. It had been brand new--and cute. She had taken it off because it was hindering her yoga stretches; if only she had remembered to retrieve it when she left the center.

Betty was putting back all the dusty, smelly things she'd pulled out when she spotted something small and fuzzy poking out of the pocket of a raincoat. Feeling like a criminal, she gave it a tug. One never knew--this could be a clue to, well, something!

It was one tiny mitten with a torn string attached. It had been one of those sets that are hooked together so the child can't lose one. But this kid--a baby, judging from its size--had managed to lose one.

Betty's mind began spinning. She imagined the baby who had worn that mitten, how lovingly his mother must have put it on his hand--and then the other one...Why was there only one mitten? What had happened to the other mitten? What had happened to the baby? Did that raincoat belong to the mother, or to some bad person who had hurt her and taken her baby? Oh, no! Did the bad person...Oh, it was just too awful to think about!

Stop! she told herself. It's just a mitten, not a hand! You have no reason to think that anything bad happened to that baby!

Perhaps the mother, after dressing her baby for a chilly day, had placed him in his stroller for a walk to the park. Then maybe it got warm. She would have taken off his jacket, and the mittens-on-a-string could have slipped out and landed in the grass. Later, after the baby was safely tucked in for his nap, maybe it started raining. Those mittens would have gotten soaked. Someone wearing a raincoat had probably walked by and picked them up. The string, weakened by the rain, would have broken when he accidentally stepped on one. He wouldn't even know he only had half a pair when he put it in his pocket and continued on to his...his karate class--that was it--at the rec center! While he was there, the rain must have stopped, and he never gave his coat a thought as he left the center and headed home.

Another case solved by Betty Valentine, Instigator of Indiscernible Mysteries.