It was pretty hard to miss. The picnic table was covered in a patchwork of squares and each square featured some kind of creature, from little spiral snails to several patches in a row that made up a winged dragon.
The benches were also covered in squares of flower after flower after flower.
The trash can had been turned into a robot; the drinking fountain, a mushroom. I paced over to the stairway and noted the metal banister was now wrapped with a swirling pattern that arced like rainbows and clouds and birds swooping through them. I thought there, at the bottom of the stairs, it ended with butterflies.
It was actually very pretty. It also was not the work of one person. There was just too much of it.
“So who called this one in?” I wondered to myself.
Than glanced around at the houses. “Perhaps that man can tell us?”
He pointed to a man about four houses down on the left side of the block. He lifted a hand and started our way.
“Hello,” he called out. “Hi there! Are you here to remove the…uh…graffiti?”
We walked toward him. “You called this in, sir?”
“Yes. I didn’t think it was…sanitary.”
I glanced back at the picnic table and garbage can. “Sanitary.”
He followed my gaze, and his eyes widened. “No, oh, no. I don’t mean the table and all this.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the yarn bombing. “I think that’s…well…my wife crochets, so I know what kind of work goes into something like that. It’s more the inner stuff that I’m worried about.”
“Inner stuff?”
“Inside the restroom? I told the officer, Hatter, I never call in stuff like this, harmless things. But the restroom is used by a lot of day visitors. I thought it a bit inappropriate.”
I raised both eyebrows, far more curious than when I’d arrived. “Than, why don’t you go take a look in the restroom.”
He turned on his heel and strolled over to it, straight-arming open the door and disappearing inside.
I waited. Hoped whatever was in there was suitably shocking. Got out my phone so I could take a picture of his expression just in case.
“Care to describe it?” I asked the guy next to me.
“I suppose it isn’t the worst thing someone could knit around a toilet.”
“It’s on the toilet you say?” I rolled my hand in a keep-going gesture, my phone still held at the ready.
“Red lips with a tongue sticking out.”
I snorted. “And where is it located, exactly?”
“On the toilet seat.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“The tongue has something stitched on it.”
“Go on.”
“C.O.C.K. I don’t know if it’s a request, or a reference to the crochet club.”
Than still hadn’t come out of the restroom, darn it, so I headed his way. “I’ll find out.”
I strode over and knocked on the door. “You okay in there? Did you find what we’re looking for?”
The door opened slowly, and there was Than, dangling a large, lurid pair of lips off of one fingertip, the tongue flapping gently in the coastal breeze. “Are we looking for toilet art?”
