Well, yesterday resulted in the conclusion of a little mystery that I have been working on at the library over the last couple of weeks. It seems that some of our books have been mysteriously been disappearing. All of them were fantasy novels, and they seemed to be from shared series or by certain authors, which made it quite suspicious.

I was a really concerned because most of the books seemed to be from the young adult (teen) collection, which means I was going to have to cough up a big chunk of my budget to start buying replacements. My budget really isn't all that big so it would really have hurt my abilities to buy new stuff the kids would want. That really got me thinking.

The other day I was pulling books from the shelves. We do this daily. The books have been requested by other libraries in our network. That is sorta how I started to notice the pattern, and it got me interested in trying to solve The Case of the Missing Books. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobsey Twins would be so proud of me.

I happened to mention things to one of the women that I worked in, and she provided the important clue necessary to get a suspect. She said that she had a weird experience recently with one of our older teens. He is 18 years old, and has some sort of minor form of special needs. She said that one day, he was leaving the library and set of the alarm at the front door, which indicated that he might have some items that were checked out.

Since he had a backpack full of books, she asked him to come back to the desk so she could check things out. When she went through the books, none of them had the date due cards, and they were not attached to his library card indicating that they were checked out to him.

I asked if she could tell me who it was. My intention was to ask the people on the front desk to keep an eye out on him when he came to the library to prevent a potential repeat. When she told me who it was, I realized that I knew his mom and older sister quite well and decided I would try to talk to them when one of them came in.

Well, that happened earlier in the week. His sister came in. When she asked to use one of the computers, I asked if I could talk to her for a few minutes. I asked if she could check around the house to see if some of our books were lying around. I explained the missing books and our suspicions. When she asked why we suspected her brother, I explained my coworkers experience.

I told her that if she didn't find anything, our suspicions were wrong. If she did, we would be happy to take back the books without their being any trouble.

Well, on Thursday, the mom appeared in front of my desk all full of apologies and embarassment. She lifted up one of her arms and ended up having a filled, full-sized garbage bag of books. She asked if I could helper her bring in another whole box full of them that were in her car. I did so.

She said that she was quite angry with her son and told me that he was in serious trouble at home, but that she would not have any trouble with our providing some sanctions of our own such as banning him from the library for a certain amount of time.

Now, that is something that we are never really fond of doing. We are a public building and want to be open to the public. When I talked to the Director after the encounter, he said that he would feel particularly awkward doing that because he had basically done what libraries are for. He was interested in books and wanted to take them out. He just didn't do it in quite the right way.

After the Director and I talked about it, we decided that we were going to ask the young man to come in to apologize to the Director and myself as well as do 10 hours of community service at the library.

The Director was pretty impressed with my investigative talents. I think I am ready to challenge Jessica Fletcher!