Houdini Soup

Yesterday afternoon at work I started feeling like I might be catching a cold.  J and I decided to pick up some soup for dinner since that's all that sounded good to me.  We swooped into the neighborhood Harris Teeter and hit the prepared soup section; I opted for she-crab soup, and he the chicken chipotle chowder.  We got home and nuked our bowls, after two very shell-filled bites into my soup, I gave up.  I love crab soup, but this was crabshell soup.  J consumed his and we left our bowls (mine full, his mostly empty) on our counter, and scrambled out the door to go meet our new landlord for our lease-signing.

When we returned home maybe 45 minutes later, ready to take my cold medicine and hit the sack with dreams of curtain I'll be sewing in the next month, we walked into the apartment...greeted by the strangest of situations.  Both dogs were a little stand-offish, perhaps even aloof.  Not their normal WE HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN YEEEEARS spastic way of welcoming us.  Then I noticed one of the empty soup containers on the floor, near Mary's trademarked spot in front of the couch.  Then we saw the other overturned soup container at the foot of the bed...Leo's notorious hangout.  But--where was the soup?  There was nary a trickle of sherry-laden broth to be found!  I saw one stray corn kernel on a stool, and a small splatter on the counter, but there were no stains.  No hot spots of chowder on the carpet, couch, nada.  Zilch.  We fell into our household roles, and J disciplined the dogs, and I started wiping up the lone soup splat.  After picking up two completely licked-clean soup containers and tossing them in the trash, my mind started racing CSI style.

The way I see it, we have three crime scenes here: the counter, the coffee table, and the bedroom.  The small spot of high velocity soup splatter on the counter tells me the perpetrators attacked the soup from the living room side of the counter, not from inside the kitchen.  The soup-flow was carefully manipulated into someone's mouth, not hitting the carpet or the walls.  An accomplice at this point must've stepped in and removed one container from the scene, relocating it to the area behind the coffee table where it was finished off.  Then the original perp, the mastermind if you will, having distracted his accomplice with a half cup of lukewarm chicken chowder, scooped up the heaping bowl of crab soup and devoured it alone in the bedroom, where the only witnesses were the fish.  I'm willing to bet that the two furry criminals met back up at the original scene of the crime to join ranks in a professional  clean-up job; thus erasing every shred of evidence that might've helped us close this case.  They might've shared a high-five for a flawlessly executed plan.  There might've been future plans made to take down future soup bowls, or perhaps if they're lucky, an accompanying grilled cheese sandwich.  We'll never know what happened to that soup; the perps covered their tracks too carefully.  

It was definitely an inside job.