The Falcon · Dougall & Bennett

The Falcon - The Case Of The Unwelcome Christmas Present

April 11, 2026·25 min·2 clips

Larry Sterling buys a fur coat from a stranger for $75, but is it stolen or something more dangerous?

The trouble wears fur. A customer comes to Waring with a jacket that may be worthless, but this is not a charity case. He paid $75. His girlfriend says the coat is not worth $20, which should settle it. It does not. The superintendent has heard that several parties are asking about the customer and the bulky box he carried home. That changes the whole smell of it. Waring studies the coat and still sees something like rabbit skin, but the attention around it feels wrong. So he goes to the shop. DuPont Brothers is packed near Christmas, and the clerk works delay harder than help. The exchange department is closed. The clerk says only Mr. DuPont can inspect the jacket, then gives him the usual busy-man routine. Waring does not bite. He leaves the jacket behind and says he will return in an hour, putting the coat exactly where it can draw a reaction. The case keeps its grin. Nobody in the excerpt explains why the coat matters, but everyone behaves as if a cheap fur has become valuable overnight. That is the hook. A bad purchase turns into a wanted object, and Waring follows the one thing that does not fit. The ads barge in, but the detective rhythm still cuts through: question, dodge, pressure, then another step toward the answer. Even Santa gets pulled into it. By the end, somebody is left holding the bag, and Waring sounds like he knows the feeling.

As heard by us

A Christmas Eve coat turns into a brisk storefront mystery.

On the surface, this is a small, tidy mystery, but it keeps slipping just enough to hold attention. A Christmas Eve coat becomes the thing everybody wants to talk about, and the question of whether one man really took a loss on it gives the episode its pull.

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Why you'd press play

A Christmas coat with too many people asking about it.

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