Inspector Halledjian entered the house and immediately saw a dead man slumped in a recliner, buried under a pile of books and shelves. A college basketball game was on television.
“What happened here?” asked the Inspector.
“I’m Eric, one of Nate’s roommates along with Michael over there. We were watching a Final Four game when suddenly the shelves collapsed. Nate was crushed under the weight of all of Michael’s stupid linguistics textbooks. Ironically, Nate always joked that he wouldn’t be caught dead with a linguistics book.”
Inspector Halledjian glanced at the sports posters and decorations around the rest of the room. “He must have been a big fan of the game.”
Eric said, “March Madness was his favorite. We all placed bets at the beginning of the tournament. Remarkably, he’d picked all of the games right so far. I’ve been doing okay, but Michael is really bad at this. When Michael picked McNeese in the first round, Nate quipped that he must have thought that Gonzaga was two words!”
Michael responded, “I said that zaga means ‘rear’ in some parts of Spain and Portugal.”
“And without missing a beat, Nate said, ‘You really pulled that pick out of your zaga!’ ”, said Eric. “The world is a lot less funny without Nate around.”
Inspector Halledjian asked, “So Nate stood to win a substantial sum of money then?”
Eric said, “He was winning big and could have become filthy rich depending on the outcome of these last few games. He’d watch every game clutching his betting receipt. That little piece of paper was worth a lot of money, and he’d wave it in our faces whenever our picks lost. Hey Michael, remember when Stetson lost to UConn and Nate asked if you were just picking teams based on your favorite hats?”
Michael said, “I still don’t understand how a team from a Canadian territory could be that good!”
Inspector Halledjian looked at the body, then at the shelves and the wall. “The betting receipt is missing”, he said. “And these aren’t the original supports for the bookshelves. This wasn’t an accident. Michael murdered Nate.”
How did he know?
Only a linguist could assassinate a sassy Nate with rebracketing.