Well, That Was Easy ...

Don't you love it when things fall into place by circumstance outside your control? 

(Don't get me wrong - it's good to have things work out from good old fashioned elbow grease and ingenuity of your own accord. But when the clouds dissipate and the sun comes shining through without any effort at all, you just have to smile wide and take it in for all it's worth.)

That's exactly what happened with the Turklington gang.

Out of the blue, the captain at Stiletto Flats P.D. rang us up and delivered the news: "Guys? Turns out the Turklington gang has turned themselves in. I wanted you to know first hand so you could come down yourselves and hear what they have to say ..."

We jumped in the 'Vette (I called shotgun a second before Jeff so he had to ride in the back) and skedaddled down to the station. In a holding room were the three hooligans comprising the Turklington Sisters Robbery Gang: Maude, Daphne and Fiona. 

Except they weren't in feminine attire. Not a hint of womanliness. Which was a relief because they made really unattractive looking women. 

"I'm going to give you guys 5 minutes with them, okay?" the captain told us. He left the room and we were alone, just the six of us. Maude looked sheepishly at Clark, Daphne wouldn't look at Jeff to save his life and Fiona fidgeted in his seat. 

"We're sorry, guys," Maude began confessing. "We just couldn't take it any more. Mostly because it's hard dressing up as women. I might have been a whole different story if the wigs weren't so damned hot and uncomfortable, if we could run in high heels more easily and if the friggin' underwires weren't digging into us every time we bent over ... but we're sorry."

Clark, Jeff and I exchanged looks then returned our stares back at the three of them. We walked out of the holding room without a word. 

We thanked the captain who was standing just outside (Clark murmured something under his breath about not letting the shoddy police work that started the whole mess happen again) and we left. 

"Well, that was sad" I stated. "Easy but sad. If you can't stand the heat ..."

"Little intrigue, nothing really devious or noteworthy, nothing ..." Jeff commented.

"I actually felt sorry for them. Just a little bit." I thought I heard Clark uncharacteristically sniffle, ever so slightly. But he perked up a moment later. "Hey, let's swing over to Petit's place and throw him out a window. That'll do the trick! Whattaya say, guys?"

The 'Vette peeled off happily down the road. 

Beer and Women's Clothes

Having uncovered the identities of the jewel thieves (you know, the ones that tried to pin it on us, claiming our disguises weren't all that good, etc., you know, follow the plot please) as the Turklington Gang, we decided to delve into their past crimes and misdemeanors to see if we could second-guess what their next move might be. 

We noticed a very clever and fiendish pattern in their criminal background. Clearly, the girls (if one can call them such) have noticed a trend among young men, which is the habit of dressing up as ugly unattractive women when going out on the lash. Usually, this is done for a celebratory reason (passed driving test, moving house, getting married, had a baby, leaving for college/army, just got out of the clink, etc. or sometimes even for no real reason at all, it just seemed like a good idea at the time) and, as most ideas of this kind seem to be, fueled by plenty of alcohol. In fact, here's a graph to prove my point.

It is a not uncommon sight in most cities on a Friday or a Saturday night to see groups of young men, pissed as newts, dressed like an explosion in Grandma's wardrobe, chanting football slogans or singing bawdy barrack-room ballads and intimidating passers-by.  

Wey-hey!

Awwight darlin'?

So the Turklington gang have clearly hit upon the idea of posing as a group of lathered-up men-dressed-as-women in order to deflect attention away from themselves, since nobody really wants to be associated with these fellas. The Turklingtons are therefore free to go where they please and rob whatever they see fit. 

And try to pin the blame on innocent people like us, too.

So now that we have their M.O. sussed out, all we have to do is figure out which nite spot they're going to start from. 

On Friday we'll have more to tell, that is for darn sure.