Does Anybody have Encyclopedia Brown's Email Address?

Because I need his services bad. I'm in the process of packing up my apartment, in anticipation of moving next week. I have a fair amount of crap for a single guy in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. So it's not like there truly was a "place for everything" so that I could ensure that "everything was always in its place." Somehow, apparently, my big cd-holder-book-thingy disappeared. Now, I don't know exactly when it went missing, because I haven't used a cd in quite some time, since I uploaded everything onto my laptop to then download onto the ipod. But we're talking about one of those big black nylon cd-albums that holds 100 cds. And I think I may have had some doubled up. So over 100 cds of mine are missing. That's not OK.

It should be in one of 2 places - the bedroom, where my little boom box stereo and my computer are, or the living room, where my big stereo and entertainment center/storage unit are. And, besides the bathroom and the kitchen, those really are the ONLY TWO PLACES IN MY APARTMENT. It ain't there. I have not yet moved every single item in every single corner of my apartment to look, but I do believe I've looked anywhere it could fit. I have not found it.

Where could it have gone? As ridiculous as it sounds, if it isn't in my apartment, I really have to believe somebody stole it. Which is disturbing, because the only people who have access to my apartment are people who work for the building and my housekeeper. Now, the leasing office has been showing my apartment to people during the day for the past month or so. But I can't believe anybody would steal something from an apartment they were looking at as potential renters. Can I? And my housekeeper, well, truth be told, the thought of her stealing stuff from my apartment has crossed my mind before. I've even suspected that she was doing it, based on nothing more than a strange feeling; this is the first thing that I've noticed missing. But why would she take that, of all things?

I called my sister last night, to make sure that I didn't let her borrow all my cds, as I remembered we had a conversation some time ago about swapping music to put on our respective pods. Nope. She doesn't have them. I guess it's theoretically possible that I let someone else borrow my whole collection and forgot, but I don't think so.

What should I do? Can I actually call the woman from the leasing office and ask her if she noticed anyone stealing my stuff while checking out my apartment? Do I call my housekeeper and accuse her? First, obviously, I need to be entirely positive the cds are not in my apartment. But then what? Now, I've downloaded some of my favorite songs from each cd to the pod, and I can, I know, burn my own cds from that, but I certainly haven't downloaded all of every one. And damnit, those are mine!

I'm going to do a little detective work of my own, and check out the flea markets in my neighborhood on Saturday or Sunday, where there's always a few guys who have cds, sans jewel cases, being sold out of big nylon 100-cd holders JUST LIKE MINE. Man, if one of them contains the Prince "Hits 1" cd with my sophomore year suitemate's initials written on it in Sharpie (which I stole from him, inadvertently, I swear!), somebody's going down.