An alibi for everyone
A tenant investigating the theft of a document needs it back before her apartment building is sold. Every neighbor claims to have spent the same ten minutes with someone else, but the stories depend on favors they have not admitted.
Your protagonist
The tenant needs the missing document because it records a resident's right to remain after the sale. She interviews neighbors before the buyer arrives.
The obstacle
One neighbor admits leaving the laundry room to hide an unauthorized pet. His admission seems to confirm another resident's claim that she was covering his laundry shift, though no one actually saw her there.
The choice
The investigator must separate witnessed facts from borrowed alibis. Exposing the favors also reveals that a neighbor has been hiding her own lease breach; she can disclose it or seek a negotiated return of the document without calling the unsupported accounts proof.
Two ways to take it further
- Use a broken lift to make a seemingly tiny timing error decisive.
- Let the stolen document prove that a resident had a right to stay.
CueShelf original writing starter. Work examples are identified separately; this premise is not a plot summary.