The Butler Did It!

Mr. Butler Saunder says he’s nervous about emailing me because it could cost him his job. I won’t email him back to say so, but I sincerely hope it does. That would be one less spammer gumming up my inbox.

Besides, I think Butler was made for bigger things. Really. If he lost his job at the spam factory, he’d have more time to pursue what is obviously his true passion: fiction writing. You’ll be amazed at the spellbinding email he just sent me. I’ll summarize it for you because I have a word limit and you have a patience limit, but you can find the entire story in an inbox near you.

Butler, which is clearly a pen name, says he’s the “Interim Assistance General Manager at the Hairisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania.” I’d believe him except he doesn’t know the difference between “assistance” and “assistant” and he can’t spell Harrisburg. But that only adds to the intrigue.

During a recent routine check of the airport storage vault, our dedicated Interim Assistance General Manager discovered an abandoned shipment from a London diplomat. A scan of the package revealed a metal box containing an undetermined amount of cash. The plot thickens! But it thickens more slowly and with a lot more spelling errors when Butler tells it.

He suspects that the diplomat abandoned the package to avoid interrogation. That leads Butler to assume the money was gained through illegal means, and therefore the proper thing for him to do is to steal it.

And here’s where the story gets really interesting. (I’m sure you were hoping it would.) There are official documents from the United Nations on the box and Butler says they contain MY name and email address. Wow! I’ve never dealt with the UN before, nor do I know a single London diplomat, but if I ever meet this one, I’m going to smack him for sharing my email address.

Still, I’m hooked on the story, and Butler doesn’t disappoint. He promises to share the loot with me, 70% for me, and 30% for him. This seems extremely generous, if a little foolish, since he doesn’t know how much money is in the box, or if the diplomat has a mean streak and mob ties. 

He asks me to send him my phone number and address so that he can have the package delivered, and he stresses that I should send my information to his personal email rather than an official one. This adds to the clandestine feel of the story as well as the sense that he doesn’t actually have an official email address, at least not at the Harrisburg International Airport.

Finally, he urges me to keep the whole thing confidential. I’m usually good at keeping secrets but I don’t know about the other 10,000 people he’s emailed, so I don’t see the harm in telling you. I’m just so darned excited about my windfall, as well as Butler’s potential as a fiction writer. I’d be thrilled if he could focus on his first novel; hole up somewhere and type away all day on his computer—as long as it doesn’t have internet access.

I know it won’t be easy for him; there’s a lot of competition out there. In fact, I’ve received several other fascinating emails in the last few days. One was from Mr. Robert Goode who has discovered that his boss connived with top World Bank officials to divert funds intended for inheritances, international contracts, and lottery wins. The other was from Mrs. Suzanna Gokhan whose husband died recently under suspicious circumstances. She doesn’t say what those circumstances were but I’m not going to email her back to ask. I think I’ll wait for the movie.