The Case of the Problematic Pipes

It was a typical June day in Washington, D.C.—it was too hot to melt, so your only option was to spontaneously combust. To make matters worse, I just got my electric bill which had swollen like my cousin Audrey’s lips after a bee sting due to constantly running my air conditioning. I needed to get out of my house and find someplace where the AC was jacked up to 11. Luckily, there was an ice-sculpture exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Thirty minutes later I was staring at a frozen rendition of Rodin’s The Thinker. As I gazed at his sculpted, shimmering ice muscles, I wondered why he, like me, was alone in this world.

I have always gravitated toward the wrong women. Back in high school, I stayed clear of the sweet, caring types and was attracted instead to the ones who winked with wicked precision and paid me—along with every other man—too much attention, like Flirty Fran.

I hadn’t thought about Fran in years. She was a heartbreaker who collected more phone numbers than the Yellow Pages. But strangely, before she left my thoughts, I heard a woman’s voice exclaim, “I better back away from these ice sculptures…I’m so hot they just might melt!”

As fate would have it, there was Fran in a tight white dress. She still had it after all these years, while I was still searching for it and then some.

“Why I declare, if it ain’t Ace Insura,” she said, walking over and placing her hand on my arm, pretending to be impressed by the muscle that wasn’t there.

“Hi Fran, you look great.”

“And you look, um, professional. What happened to your mullet, Ace? No more business up front, party in the back?”

“Now it’s business on both sides—the insurance business that is.”

“Then maybe you can help me. You see, I have an HO3. I ran the washer last week, which caused water to fill up the sink and toilet in the upstairs bathroom until it overflowed, damaging my tiles, interior doors and first floor ceiling. Now, the drain lines in the house are either worn out or clogged. Plus the tree roots have closed the drain line that runs to the sewer connection in the street. There are no service issues with the sewer line in the street or with sewer and water services supplied by the city. Does the HO policy cover this?”

“Fran,” I said, realizing how little her dress left to the imagination, “your house’s pipes are covered better than your own.”

Why was Ace so prudishly certain?

For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contribution editor.