September 2, 10:05 AM. Evidence is what my line of work is about. Holly Rennick, Private Eye. “Investigation Science and Management” by Helen Babcock, Ph.D. includes such things as wigs, dark glasses and pheromones, and suggests adding “and Associates” to your firm’s name, as you may grow. Plus she tells how to use a computer to make your business stationery. Babcock says it’s a growth industry as there’ll always be clients wanting to clarify their spouses’ relationships.

My phone rings. A case! I probably should have attached it to the wall, but the instructions seemed to suggest some sort of special screw.

“Hi, Ms. Rennick. It’s Alison.”

Alison? Oh, of course. Girl from church. Fourteen, I’d guess. Polite. Probably raising money for Habitat or something.

“Alison, honey! How are you doing?”

“That’s why I called. You’re a private investigator, right, Ms. Rennick? I need some help.”

“Certainly.” Once you snag a client, Babcock says, you’ll get known by word of mouth.

“I just had my period, so I didn’t get pregnant, but Mom overheard me and Wesley on the phone. It was accidental intercourse.”

I processed that one. “It sometimes seems like it, honey.”

“I explained it was because of how we were putting on our swimsuits.”

“Wanna’ stop by my office?” It sort of looks like a kitchen, though. “Better yet, meet me at McDonald’s for lunch. Bring this Wesley character, too.” Babcock says to compare stories when it’s a multiple-person case. Miss Marple often has all the suspects gather in the drawing room, but I don’t have one.

I’d google swimsuit accidents, as Babcock suggests familiarizing oneself with a subject to get ideas for how to solve it.

September 2, 12:15 PM. Met subjects at arranged location and found a booth in the corner. Babcock says to note distinguishing features in case one’s called to make an ID.

Alison: 5 feet, 4, (approximate, as I’d forgotten my tape); brunette; ponytail; braces; gym shorts; Tommy Hilfiger shirt; bra straps.

Wesley: an inch shorter; blond, Clearasil; jeans; turtleneck with checkmark.

“So I’m going to ask you a question,” I began. “Ready? Did you have sex?”

“Just accidentally at camp,” Alison volunteered.

It’s pretty much a given at camp, I told them, not adding that most everybody but myself got to when playing Capture the Flag. I’d snuck to the enemy prison and grabbed Larry Gleeson so we got freebies back across the line. I thought we might go behind the archery range, but then he took Bonnie Sue Krebs, instead. Maybe I didn’t do it, myself, but could hear everybody else.

“We were changing into our swimsuits in my sleeping bag and our legs got mixed up,” Alison explained. “You can tell Mom you made an investigation and it wasn’t our fault”

Babcock says to never take as fact what a suspect first tells you, and rightly so, as I knew from the internet that accidental sex is an urban legend, to wit:

“At a well-known Kentucky summer camp, they play this game. They choose a boy and a girl to share a sleeping bag while they change into swimsuits. The rest keep their eyes out for adults.

“But last year this one couple gets stuck halfway through. When their friends unzip the bag, each has one leg in one suit and one in the other, such that the two can’t move without accidental intercourse. The other kids zip them back in and nine months later, they all sign the birth certificate as witnesses. It’s on file.”

“We can show you, Ms. Rennick,” offered Alison. “Don’t worry, Wesley, Ms. Rennick’s seen things like this a thousand times in her career. She has a license.”

Actually, I plan on getting one. While I’d find a re-enactment informative, their re-enacting an accident wouldn’t count as an accident, and they saw my point. I listed their choices.

(1) Surrender to the police. Maybe it’s second degree.

(2) Sue the camp because Methodist facilities have insurance, like for pastoral abuse. The lawyers will end up with all the money, though.

(3) Rely on a private investigator like myself to smooth things out with Alison’s mom.

It’s a no-brainer.

First things first, however. Get to the real story. “Alison, pull out the top of your shorts to show me the top of your underwear. Nobody can see us back here.”

She may have been surprised, she knows I’m a detective.

Boy’s ones!

My next move: “Same thing for you, Wesley. I’m a detective.” Panties! Violet.

“Actually, Wesley, open up that zipper. All the way.” By its shape, what was inside seemed like what you’d expect from a growing boy.

Babcock says to act smart so suspects will quit trying to fool you. “OK, you can level with me, you two, or we can waste a lot of time. Yes or no? Are you two of less-represented gender orientations?”

Their mouths dropped at how quickly I’d unveiled their secret.

“It’s your underwear,” I explained. I didn’t get this from Babcock, just my inductive nature.

“Not exactly, Ms. Rennick,” Alison explained. “It’s a camp thing. Everybody trades, but it’s anonymous. The boys put theirs in a bag and send it to our cabin and we put ours in a bag for them. It’s really fun when you walk around because you know that you’re sort of rubbing against some boy and some boy’s sort of rubbing against you. You just don’t know who.”

“OK,” this being new information.

“Except Wesley and me, we kept doing it, me being lesbian, and him being gay”

“I see. Alison. It’s not because you want to rub against each other?”

“Well that, too, but like I said, we’re homosexuals.”

“So just for the record, you do have many girlfriends?”

“You mean lovers, right?” brightening. “I’m planning to.”

To Wesley. “Ever make it with a guy?”

He looked appalled. “No way, Ms. Rennick!”

“HIV and all,” I agreed, “Stay out of goosing contests with them,” which elicited a nod on Alison’s part.

“If we were straight,” Alison explained, “we couldn’t be in bed together, but for us, it’s more like a domestic partnership, I think. Like when we’re playing around on my bed and he accidentally gets my bra up and I accidentally feel his boner. A gay guy understands boobs and us lesbians need to study boners in case we ever need to wear one of those strap-on thingies.”

I saw her logic, but wasn’t sure her mother would. And in any case, I don’t know about those thingies and am not an attorney.

Wesley chimed in. “Coach Saxton knows says that if we join the Club Libertine, we can go to the Rainbow convention in Denver.”

“Club Libertine. French?”

“No. For students of minority orientations. When Mr. Saxton changed to Ms. Saxton, they moved her from coaching football to rally, so she’s still called Coach. We’re not supposed to shower with her at conventions, though, because of school policy.”

“Me and Wesley can be roommates at the hotel, us being sexually incompatible,” explained Alison. “The rooms have two kings, so we’ll double up. a lesbian/gay pair in each bed. They’ll take their shower and then we’ll do ours. Colorado has a global water crisis, so you’re supposed to turn it off when you soap up.”

“Accidents can happen, even at a Rainbow Convention,” I warned them, “especially if you’re soapy.”

“We’ll be careful,” agreed Alison, then having another thought “Or maybe the guys hog our pillows and we have to wrestle them back. It would be nonsexist, us having accidents.”

Babcock says that public service improves our image. “If my caseload allows. I might be available as a community volunteer to help chaperone.” On further thought, however, not that I couldn’t do a stakeout on hotel rooms, but it might be best to start with solving just one accident at camp. “So back to the case at hand, this accidental intercourse.”

“OK, Ms. Rennick,” Alison agreed. “It was another kind of camp accident, not the sleeping bag one. All of us went hiking to Big Falls. Once we got there, everybody had sex but us two. But they said we had to, too, and we tried to fake it, him on top, but when Clarice sat on his butt, it accidentally pushed him in. She’s a lesbian, too, but not in the summer.”

Somewhat like the urban legend, I decided, but different.

“How far in?” for the record.

Maybe this far,” a forefinger estimate, “but it kept changing, once Clarice got off. If I’d twisted too much I might have bent it. The camp nurse has this special kind of lotion that’s non-petroleum to be ecological, but she wasn’t on the hike. It didn’t matter because we didn’t need it.”

Maybe I could have gone into nursing, but it’s not a life where you may be called to deal with things like wiretaps where you’d learn about wires and what-have-you.

“We had to keep faking it so they wouldn’t discover we’re gay/lesbian. She thought for a moment. “And even a gay guy, you can’t let him down.”

Wesley tried to clarify. “Doing it wouldn’t be in our nature, but it was for mutual protection.”

“Next day, Hank wanted to take me to where they store the extra tents,” pointed out Alison, “but I needed to finish my seed necklace. Clarice tried to masturbate Wesley in the dining hall, but I made her stop.”