One day while the brothers still had the family home and I was the unmarried Irish sister, having gone from the excruciating job of appointment chauffeur to watering and mail sorting, I heard the call of a mockingbird from the tree over the fence.

Tra-la-lee-----the Lennon Sisters used to sing that on the Uncle Larry show Mom had on Saturday nights and, in keeping with using the home in 2011 as an instrumental practice space, I had played it on clarinet the only time so far I have been paid to play.

But whither the bird? The hazy sun put the twists and gnarls of the Magnolia tree into a labyrinth of increasing mysticism as I just couldn't see find the entity, as it was becoming. Was it even in this tree, though the sound told me so?

Over a month ago the owner of this apartment finally restored a lock to our parking gate after a long absence. Not only was the lock a lot chunkier than the previous specimen but the chain was thick. Tra-la-lee, that old saying was covered.

But within less than a week the lock itself had overnight been stricken off. It was an individual act, if not by an individual.

Ah, our main point: who? A gleaner resentful of not having access to the dumpster immediately inside? One of our residents? Nocturnal juveniles?

My one neighbor was speculating and came up with a malaise on which you can put a number and, in keeping with the contempt for entire groups, not a challenging (equals large) one. "Those people". As long as you can't identify the culprit it's a mass of hiding places, legal loopholes, political correctness---all there to be named and simmered over. "It was better before they came"---paleface division.

Siskel and Ebert were reviewing an 80's crime pot boiler with Billy Dee Williams as a chief of police; during a scene shown he was telling one of his men with a dramatic sigh, after running down the list of clues they lacked for an apparently connected series of murders:

"... a city of suspects." Gene and Roger loved the line well more than the film.

Crime of any kind, coming from directions one can't see: magic turning to sorcery.