I had the donuts dusted for fingerprints. They revealed the name of the mysterious blonde. She was Augustine Flatone and she lived at apartment 888 - 800 Eighth Street. I knew I had her behind the eight-ball when I discovered she was Octavia Flatone's daughter. I knocked on her Augustine's door at precisely 8:00 p.m.
"Hello Augustine," I said. "May I come in?"
She undid the chain and opened the door.
I got right to the point. "What was the meaning of that cryptic 888 donut clue you left me this morning?"
Augustine, who had been in the kitchen preparing dinner, spilled the beans. After we cleaned up the mess, she told me everything.
"It's all my fault," she said. "I was going to have Mother's piano tuned for her birthday.
"I found "Pals Piano Tuning" in the phone book so I called their toll-free number. I arranged for Mother's landlord to let them in when she was out. When she got home, the piano was gone!
"So I called Pals Piano Tuning and they told me they'd never heard of a Mrs. Flatone and had never tuned a piano at her address! They must be mistaken, or worse! Here's their toll-free number."
She thrust a crumpled paper in front of me.
"This isn't a toll-free number," I said. "It's a 1-888 number. That could land you in inner Mongolia for all I know."
"But 888 is toll-free," she replied. "It's new. Apparently we've all but run out of 1-800 numbers because they're so popular, so the telephone companies launched a new toll-free code called 1-888. But it's just the same as a 1-800 number. At least I think it is..."
I collapsed onto the sofa. Suddenly a thought hit me like a piano.
"That's it!" I exclaimed.
"What?" asked Augustine.
"The clue to it all, I said. I spread the crumbled paper with the 1-888 number on the table and explained.
"A piano, that just happens to have 88 keys, goes missing when you call this 1-888 number, right? So, what if we remove the last two 8s from the 1-888 prefix in the phone number to symbolize the piano's mysterious disappearance. What do we have left?"
"A 1-800 number!" gasped Augustine.
"Exactly!" I exclaimed.
"So what?" Augustine asked.
"I don't know. Maybe you dialed 1-800 instead of 1-888 and didn't call Pals Piano Tuning after all," I said.
"But aren't 1-888 and 1-800 numbers the same?" Augustine asked.
"Maybe not. There's one way to find out. If I dial this as a 1-800 number and we don't get Pals Piano Tuning, we're onto something."
I dialed the number, but substituted the 1-888 prefix for 1-800. After two rings, a voice answered.
"Al's Piano Moving. How can I help ya?"
