“Son of a bitch,” muttered Sheriff Roy Templeton.

Two days prior, he’d gotten a text from Nana Wentzel—who’d stopped by the Sheriff’s residence to clean as part of a new business she’d started—mentioning something about a possible leaky toilet in Sheriff Roy’s master bathroom.

Mud Lick’s top cop was in the middle of an important investigation at the time and promptly forgot about it. He would get a vague reminder from his wife Arlene when she noticed puddles around the base of the toilet the next day. Because the investigation involved a robbery and potential kidnapping, Sheriff Roy forgot Arlene said anything about said potential toilet leak.

And so, dear friends (and you ARE our friends, oh how we’ve missed you), Sheriff Roy found himself staring at the fluorescent light fixture in his kitchen oddly one morning with a trained investigative eye shaped through years of law enforcement experience. One corner of the fixture’s covering had come loose and was dangling from the ceiling.

Grabbing a chair and scaling it, Sheriff Roy learned very quickly the cause of the fixture’s loosening was a drip of water from the toilet upstairs. A drip that had now gone unattended for two days and had filled the light fixture’s cover with about an inch of standing water.

Mercifully, gentle reader, the water never touched the light bulbs or the electrical workings within. Not so mercifully, the good Sheriff’s prodding at said fixture caused the cover to come off, showering Sheriff Roy with leaky toilet water and dumping all over the kitchen floor.

“Son of a bitch,” the Sheriff muttered again.

He went back to the bedroom and woke Arlene, informing his better half of the leaky toilet and what had happened in the twenty-four hours since she’d mentioned it to her man. After changing into a spare clean uniform, the Sheriff mopped up the mess in the kitchen and went to work.

Gladys, the Sheriff’s new secretary, didn’t press for details when her boss asked for the number of the best plumber in Driftwood County. She just did as ordered and within a day a van bearing the logo of “Nice Dreams Plumbing and HVAC” arrived at Sheriff Roy’s residence to fix the toilet.

The mess was bigger than anticipated. Turns out the supply line and shutoff valve to Sheriff Roy’s porcelain home throne had been there since 1979 and snapped off the moment the plumber touched them. Thankfully, said plumber was a former track star who sprinted out of the house, fetched a meter key, and turned the water off at the main shutoff valve near the street to mitigate any further damage.

The total repair was almost a thousand dollars. Sheriff Roy swore when he saw the bill. He then realized there was a good bit of water damage in the kitchen ceiling. This too caused the Sheriff to swear.

“You’re probably going to need an asbestos test,” the water damage clean up pros said when evaluating the whole messy scene about two days later. “Fortunately, I know just the guys to do it. We do work with them all the time. Give them a call and set something up.”

The water damage clean up guy handed Sheriff Roy a card.

It read “Corsican Bros. Mold & Asbestos Testing.”

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” said Sheriff Roy.

Son of a bitch indeed, dear readers.

TO BE CONTINUED…