Julie was a student who lived with her grandmother. One morning, she went jogging as usual, but when she returned, she was shocked by what she saw: a man and a woman in masks were carrying Granny out of the house with Granny blindfolded and tied to her favorite rocking chair !The kidnappers worked fast and kept saying “Be careful be careful!”. Julie tried to stop them, but they drove away before she could do anything.

Scared, she phoned the police.

The policemen arrived and set up the equipments for tracing the kidnappers’ calls. They told Julie that they would do everything they could to get her Granny back.

The next day, the kidnappers phoned and ordered Julie to provide turkey dinners to the homeless in exchange for the return of her grandmother. But the call didn’t last long enough for the police to trace it, so she had no choice but to do what she was told.

Julie complied and her Granny was returned, unharmed. The ransom was so ridiculous that the police could not come up with an explanation but to close the case. However, Julie still wanted to locate the kidnappers, thus she turned to a private detective for help.

When the detective arrived at Julie’s house, he started to sneeze immediately and soon found the source which caused the allergic reaction: A cat! Julie apologized and said they found this cat some time ago. They put up a flyer with the cat’s picture, trying to find its owner.

The detective greeted the grandmother, then asked her if she could remember anything from her ride. He spread a map of the city on a table and the old lady started to tell them about the ride: “I was tied to my chair and put at the back of their truck. I couldn’t see anything because I was blindfolded. But I recognized their voices, actually, I think I’ve heard them somewhere before… anyway, We drove on, after a few minutes I smelled fresh bread…”

 “Oh! There’s a bakery a few blocks away from here! You can smell it when you drive past!”, Julie said, with a little surprise in her voice.

“After that, we stopped for about 4 for 5 minutes, but no one got out. A few minutes later, we got to their house, and it was raining at exactly 8 o’clock when the kidnappers carried me from the van into the house. I knew it because my watch was beeping, I set it so I won’t forget about my medicine.”

“Raining? But it hasn’t rained for a week!”

Yet Granny was sure that it rained.

“Oh, and I also smelled cough syrup, definitely cough syrup.”

“Eucalyptus trees”, said the detective, “they smell like cough syrup”. But why would they stop for so long? Were they getting gas?”

“No,” said the old lady.

Detective looked at the map again, and realized that there’s a drop bridge not far from the bakery.

“They treated me quite nicely, actually. They gave me pizza.”

The detective nodded and decided to relive the ride himself the next day.

After driving past the bakery, the drop bridge, he came to a block with eucalyptus trees on both sides of the road. It was 7:59.

At exactly 8 o’clock. The detective confirmed his thought about the “rain”. It wasn’t rain that Granny felt, it was an automatic sprinkler system! And there was a box of pizza outside one of the houses. That has to be it!

The detective waited until a couple came out of the building, and took pictures of them.

Later that day, he showed the pictures to Julie and Granny, and they said they’ve seen them before!

The couple had an antique store five blocks away. They came to look at the missing cat the other day, because it ran away a few days ago. But in the end they didn’t take the cat home because it wasn’t theirs.

The detective and Julie decided to pay the antique dealers a visit.

They introduced themselves, went inside the house and looked around.Yet there seemed to be nothing unusual. Suddenly, Julie cried:” Oh my god, that’s my grandmother’s chair!

“ Of course not! You’re mistaken!” the antique dealer protested. “Can you prove the chair is yours? Huh?”

“No…”, mumbled Julie, frustrated.

    The dealer started to brag about the history of the chair.

“How much is the chair worth?” asked the detective.

“2, maybe 2.5 million.”

Just then, the detective realized he hadn’t sneeze at all since he came into the house. If they’ve had a cat, he would be sneezing his head off right now! So the couple must have lied about the cat. But how could they have known about the chair? Where could they have seen it before?

“Julie, do you still have the flyer for the missing cat?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She took out the flyer, and the detective smiled: the little cat was sitting right on the antique chair!”