Head detective of the Major Crime Division, Matthew Williams, stood on the sandy beach, a puzzled expression altering the contours of his normally handsome visage. Shrugging further into his light-weight jacket, he pulled the collar up as the wind and rain continued to hammer him from the east. He turned his back to the pounding elements and pulled a notebook from his inside pocket.
"What do you make of it?" he asked his new partner, Detective Tiffany Meadows. He shook his head in an attempt to hide his smile, one that lurked whenever he thought of her unlikely name. 'She'd better change it if she plans to get anywhere as a detective in the police department,' he thought.
Tiffany's blue eyes, now clouded with concern, surveyed the small crime scene, an area contained in yellow police tape. In the centre lay a left foot encased in what appeared to be a man's good quality Nike running shoe. An early morning jogger had discovered the grisly remains and had called it in. "Why just a foot, Matthew?" she asked.
"You'd prefer the whole body, would you, Meadows? We're going to find where the rest of the body is and where this foot came from," Matthew Williams replied curtly.
"Well, right off the bat we know it's a man's foot. And we know he wasn't a down-and-outer because that's an expensive sneaker. Maybe he fell off a boat. And I doubt very much that he was a fisherman either so it would more likely be a yacht. Fishermen don't wear expensive shoes like that. Maybe we could start checking out boating accidents; especially since there's been such stormy weather lately. Have there been any missing persons reports lately?"
Williams glared at her. "What makes you think it was washed up and not dropped here?"
Tiffany stared back at the senior detective, refusing to be intimidated. "I know you don't think I'm very bright Matthew but you haven't given me a snowball's chance in hell of proving I can be a good detective. Every time I say something, you shoot me down." She placed her hands on her hips and stared defiantly into his face. His dark eyes bore into hers. "Just look at the shoe," she continued, "it looks waterlogged and, if you look closer, instead of trying to find fault with everything I say, you'd see that the part of the ankle that's exposed above the top of the shoe looks as if it's been in the water for some time, like we look if we stay too long in a bubble bath."
"I wouldn't know. Bubble baths aren't my thing. Are you trying to be a trouble maker here, Meadows?"
"You asked me what I made of it, so I'm telling you," Tiffany said suddenly flashing Williams one of her spectacular smiles. "And also, since you did ask me, you do remember, don't you that about two months ago another left foot was washed up on the banks of the Golden River. That one had a rather unusual tattoo of a dragon curling around the ankle. Wouldn't it be interesting if this one did too?"
"You don't need to act like a know-it-all, Meadows, I'm not verging on dementia. We're still working on the origins of that foot. And yes, before you get too cocky, there quite possibly is a connection between the two left feet." Matthew didn't know why she got under his skin; most times she was a major pain in the butt but, he thought to himself, she did have a killer smile. ...
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