Sherlock Holmes? Not exactly.

Something bugged me about that last trip.  That quonset hut was a lot more secure than what happened.  So, the thought entered my mind:  what if the wind didn't do it?  What if the quonset hut was destroyed intentionally?

If you have ever read Sherlock Holmes, you may remember the story of the dog that didn't bark.  There was something about that scene out there that was like the dog.  If the wind had pulled it loose from the plywood, then where's the plywood?  There was no sign of it anywhere.  There was plywood around, all right.  But it should have had holes and screws in it.  In other words, no holes, no screws, no plywood.

Well, if I forgot to nail it down, that would explain that anomaly.  But that was not the case.  I spent several days working on this thing.  If it wasn't nailed down tightly, I would have known it before I left.  It was nailed down.  No doubt about it.  Even if there weren't enough nails, and even if the nails had come loose by the fierce wind, there should have been signs of that.  But there weren't.  Like a dog that didn't bark.

There was something else.  There was a little pan that you would use to put paint in it so that you can paint a wall.  I used it to put down some weatherizer on the plywood floor.  That, by the way, was one of the things I did wrong.  Not the weatherizer, but the order in which I did things.  But never mind.  The thing to note here is that there was a gallon of this stuff and the place to put it.  That pan was upside down, and it had been stepped on.  Yes, somebody was there, and had stepped on that pan.  No question.

That's two things:  somebody was there, and there was something missing that shouldn't have been.  Enough to make me suspicious.

Unfortunately, I can't be Sherlock here in Houston.  All the more reason to move to El Paso.

Update:

There could be alternative explanations for the missing plywood.  Somebody could have seen it, and hauled it off because of all the nails being a hazard.  There doesn't have to be an explanation that includes foul play.  Better to think it that way anyway, because the thought that somebody could wreck anything you build out there may cause a person to give up.