Case File Entry #2 — Exhibit A: The Numbers Don’t Lie

The pumpkin sat there under the lamp, quiet as stone. Didn’t say a word. Pumpkins never do. But the numbers? The numbers sang like a canary.

I’d seen it before: sales receipts piling up in October like leaves in the gutter. Flannel multiplying on the streets until the city looked like a lumberjack convention. Coincidence? Gibbs doesn’t think so. Neither do I.

That’s when I slid the chart across the table. Red ink circled the spike, neat as a bullet hole. Exhibit A. The kind of evidence that doesn’t blink, doesn’t sweat, doesn’t lie.

Plaid Sightings and Pumpkin Spice Sales: Correlation or Causation?

Two lines, one story. Both flat through August and September, then shooting up in October like rockets lit with cinnamon.

I scrawled the question in the margin anyway, out of habit: Who profits most when the whole city smells like a candle aisle?

The pumpkin didn’t answer. It just sat there, glowing faint amber under the lamp. That was enough. Case wasn’t closed, but the walls were closing in.

By Ivy Harrow