Le Saline Eolie

“Polly, come on. What do you think of my new fragrance that I created for Eolie?” Polly Sanders' ex-husband, a forensic scientist, had recently ventured into perfumery. And he was quite successful at it. Le Saline, a classic aquatic with a good punch, was already his second fragrance for the Italian fragrance house. This one came quite close to his signature scent Phtaloblue by Tauer as well as Profumum Roma's Acqua di Sale. Not at all to Polly's taste, but for the sake of peace, she praised his creation and tossed the white plastic rose that smelled like Calone into the trunk of her SUV. He was still into her. There was no doubt about it. Polly sighed.

“Polly, the reason I’m actually calling you,” her ex added. “A perfumer has gone missing, a very well-known one at that. Kristin Hagel, you know, Hermès and so on. Can you please take care of it? I don’t know who else to turn to?”

Polly promptly contacted her colleagues, but first, one of her hens had to go for a routine check-up at the vet. Since the hen was well-behaved, she buckled it in the passenger seat and drove off. As soon as the examination of the feathered creature was done, her phone rang. Polly's colleagues. They had discovered a body in the nearby forest area. The perfumer? Polly set off immediately. Meanwhile, the plastic flower scented with Calone continued to smell cheerfully in the car. Alongside the synthetic scent, a somewhat algae-like odor was also spreading. It had nothing to do with real ocean feeling for her nose. What did the chicken think?

Upon arrival, there was a significant fuss with a colleague in uniform. “What’s that hen doing in the passenger seat? It belongs in a transport box,” she scolded. Unfortunately, Polly couldn’t avoid the fine. Soon, the body was found and identified as Ms. Hagel. Polly's boss, Chizza von Lederstein, was also immediately on the scene. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and wasn’t wearing any perfume either. Strange, Polly thought. In all the years of working together, she had never experienced that.

On the way back to the precinct, the matter quickly clarified. His ex-wife's daughter had reacted to his move by not only cutting up all his clothes and scratching his car but also had to take a toll on his perfume collection. Ironically, he quite liked the mixture from Polly's ex-husband. Even though it didn’t really compare to one of his favorite aquatic fragrances, Megamare by Orto Parisi.

“Polly, I absolutely need a fragrance,” he whined. “Do you think I can find something with your husband? I can lend you his bottle Broken Theories until you’ve restocked your collection. You like wearing that one too,” Polly said with a grin. Immediately, the boss made a satisfied face.

While a patchouli note slowly developed on Polly's back seat, making the scent somewhat bearable for her, the two pondered over who the murderer could be. “I have an idea,” von Lederstein suddenly exclaimed as if scales had fallen from his eyes. “That Jeremy Fragrance, whom we’ve locked up before, wanted Ms. Hagel to create a fragrance for him. She simply laughed at him in front of a huge YouTube audience, and he turned red with rage. It must have been him. He couldn’t handle it.”

And once again, Jeremy Fragrance turned out to be the culprit, whom the detectives quickly brought back to jail. Meanwhile, in Polly's car, Le Saline was still cheerfully wafting on a plastic rose.

Many thanks to Ergoproxy for the testing opportunity. This time, I was inspired by Nele Neuhaus's latest Sander-Bodenstein crime novel “In Eternal Friendship,” which I haven’t even finished reading yet. Some parts of the book might seem familiar to you. Thank you for reading!

Oh yes, Le Saline is of course nothing