The Perfect Crime

I was standing in the postal line at Shopper’s Drug.
The Shoppers Drug chain has sort of replaced the traditional post office in many Canadian cities. A small, full service postal outlet exists in most of the stores around here.

There were several people at the counter; putting stamps on cards, filling out papers etc. and two women were in front of me in the line with several more people behind. I was watching the woman in front of me impatiently wait her turn. She was examining almost all of the items on the shelves on both sides of our line. She seemed determined to touch or handle in some way at least fifteen different products while we waited. In front of her there was a woman who should have blended into the background, but she caught my attention.

The woman must have been around 60, with stringy hair and older clothing. She was unkempt, but not looking homeless or out of place, just sort of disheveled. She had a medium to large mailing envelope with her and there was another one on the shelf next to us that looked like she could have put it there. The woman in front of me asked her if the envelope was hers and she said she had taken it, and was going to put it back when she got finished in line. I knew immediately she was lying, they came in packages of two!

She had an object she was fooling with, a pink belt like contraption that may have held books, or dogs or something, but it was something she had picked up in the store. She may have had other objects that I never saw in the envelope. She was trying out various ways of folding it so it made the smallest footprint in the envelope.

When she got it fixed, she pulled the tape on the envelope and stuck it together, it was closed! Next, from her purse,. She pulled a pen. She addressed the envelope she was prepared.

Her turn arrived and she went up, and had the attendant weigh the package, and she paid the postage! She did not pay for the gift or the envelope!

This is the perfect crime! You involve the post office as an unwitting partner!

What guts, she didn’t even bring in her own envelope! You just pick your “gift”, steal your envelope and mail it to yourself!

No store detective can find the missing item on you nor tamper with the mail to find it!