Prologue:
I was debating whether to make my point totally serious or somewhat silly. I decided on both. This will be a Nancy Drool story, the next will be an explanation of the math.
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Nancy pulled into the lot of the Mastiff Motel mulling over the information the Inspector had already provided her over the phone. Sammy Setter was brutally butchered hours before. Normally Sammy was cautious to a fault, even paranoid, that Rex Reverso was out to get him. He would certainly not take any unnecessary risks that might expose him to Rex's death threats over the past year. His car was having trouble and the cell phone call to his wife showed he was looking for a place to hole up for the night. Why stop at a full motel?
She found a space near the office. A dimly lit lot accentuated by the red neon glow of the "No Vacancy" sign in the office window. Out of habit she counted 37 cars in the lot and decided that was a reasonable number to support a fully occupied 32 room motel and extra for the manager, police, reporters and rubberneckers that had stopped by. "Probably looking for rubber chew toys" she muttered.
"Nancy, we only have circumstantial evidence implicating Rex Reverso. In addition to the numerous death threats we have an eyewitness that spotted the same make of car Reverso drives. A common model. And this monogramed handkerchief."
"A white cotton handkerchief with traces of blood was found on the floor, as you see it has the letters R.R. on it. But there are no less than 14 guests with those initials. The Rover family reunion has booked half the motel for their gathering tomorrow."
Nancy glanced through the office papers. She went over the manager's sworn statement. She smelled a rat!
"So tell me about this neon "Rooms" sign you found in the trash can."
Sighing the manager explained, more like complained because he had to go over the story again.
"That sign is years old. We thought little of it here even though it was in storage. Our thinking was that calling them rooms wasn't classy enough, so we upgraded our sign a ways back. Does it mean something?"
"You bet your biscuits it does!", said Nancy. "The timing of the Rover reunion and the murder is no coincidence. Reverso lured Sammy inside. Like many killers he wanted us to find the hanky, so he could gloat about how he fooled the police. Here's how he did it."
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THE SOLUTION
True to his name Rex had played a trick on Sammy. After disabling his car in a manner that would put him near the hotel he replaced the "vacancy" portion of the sign with "rooms" during the manager's dinner break. After Sammy was inside he turned the No part back on. This gave him plenty of time to commit the murder and get away without attracting other lodgers in the time the 'No' was turned off. Any passerby would dismiss the change in the sign to the fact that Rooms = 80 in ordinal Gematria and No Rooms = 80 in reverse ordinal.
Another case of the gematria warning label not being heeded. Caution, do not use. It may kill you.
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