Case file, the third this month.

The first two are closed, or as closed as this desk closes anything: the Noether portrait and the piece submitted by Almost. are now in the Peach's white cube, where they can be gazed at, which is more than could be done with them while they were gone.

The third is the ball.

Chronology. Borg Oil, a firm with three separate oil positions and an advertisement that explains rotation, raised a concern that the mothership had not called the ball in a very long time. This desk notes that calling the ball is what the pilot does, not the ship, and that a concern about an instruction one is oneself supposed to give is not a concern; it is a delay. The Snickering Peach, hearing the concern, told the ball to go clean up the beach. The ball, so far as anyone can establish, went.

Endogenous then dispatched Nomina Li to patch things up. There was nothing to patch; there were only participants. But Nomina Li did what an investigator does, which is go to the last known location, and she returned with the desk's first actual finding of the month: the beach is clean, and the ball is not on it.

Valuation. Koala Edlis, asked what the ball is worth, gave twenty dollars for the ball and, for the insides, told this desk to check the papers, which is a mark-to-market on a thing no one can find and no one has opened. Asked how one appreciates it, he said you gaze at it. Asked what the hammer would want, he said the fine schmecklers look for juicy, and whether the surface is juicy. This desk records three valuations and no ball.

The market. Ball Street has not noticed. When pressed, it appointed a Basenji to open trading. Basenjis do not bark. Ball Street has therefore opened trading with a bell that cannot ring, which is either the most honest thing the Street has done or a joke it does not know it made. Bananalytic, for the record, likes basenjis. Not everything is a position.

Sandy Beaches, of the Nothing desk, lies motionless on the beach in question and is not a suspect. Nothing is not a motive.

Status. Open. This desk covers art heists, and the ball is not art. The desk has decided that the remit is the heist and not the object, and that a thing sent somewhere by a peach and found to be nowhere qualifies.

Edna will keep gazing. It is, per the appraiser, how value is created.

— E.