In the sweltering heart of Tenali, where the Krishna River slithered like a serpent through paddy fields and the air hummed with the chatter of Telugu tongues, Inspector Lakshmi Devi sipped her filter coffee under the banyan tree of the local thana. It was October 2025, and the town was alive with the buzz of Diwali preparations—strings of marigolds dangling from bullock carts, the scent of fresh jaggery sweets wafting from roadside stalls. But Lakshmi's mind was elsewhere. At 42, she was Tenali's only female inspector, a wiry woman with a scar across her cheek from a childhood scrap and a reputation for unraveling knots that others deemed divine will.

Her phone buzzed. "Ma'am, it's the priest at Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Temple. The murti—the silver idol of Varuna, the river god—it's gone!"

Lakshmi cursed under her breath. The idol, a 200-year-old heirloom weighing five kilos and studded with emeralds, was the temple's soul. Stolen during the predawn aarti, right under the noses of dozing devotees. By noon, the thana was a circus: constables cordoning off the gopuram, locals whispering of curses from the Krishna's depths.

She arrived at the temple as the sun clawed its zenith, its red stone walls glowing like embers. Father Rao, the portly priest in his saffron robes, wrung his hands. "Amma, it vanished from the sanctum. The door was locked, but... a riddle was left on the altar." He thrust a crumpled scrap of paper at her.

Scrawled in hasty Devanagari: I flow without feet, whisper without voice, steal treasures in silence. What am I?Below it, a crude sketch of waves.

Lakshmi's eyes narrowed. A taunt? Or a clue? She pocketed it, her mind ticking like a temple bell. First suspects: the usual gallery of small-town sinners.

Rao himself, of course—priests and pilfering went hand in glove in folklore. But his alibi was ironclad: he'd led the midnight puja with twenty witnesses. Next, Devi Reddy, the town's silk merchant whose vaults could swallow the idol whole. Her family had donated the murti's pedestal decades ago, and rumors swirled of her coveting it for a private shrine. Lakshmi grilled her in her haveli, amid bolts of shimmering Kanjeevaram. "I was home, inspecting shipments," Devi snapped, her bangles clinking like accusations. "Ask my foreman."

Then there was Vikram, the drifter from Vijayawada—a tattooed youth with a camera slung around his neck, caught filming the temple the night before. "Just a vlogger, ma'am," he protested in the interrogation room, sweat beading on his brow. "Chasing ghosts for my channel. I left at 10 p.m." His phone showed timestamps, but Lakshmi noted the battery drain—odd for idle footage.

As dusk painted the sky vermilion, she wandered the temple ghats, where the Krishna lapped lazily at mossy steps. The riddle gnawed at her: I flow without feet... Water? The river itself? But rivers didn't steal idols. Footprints in the dew-damp sand caught her eye—small, sandal-clad, leading to a tamarind tree. She followed, finding a discarded matchbox, its label singed: "Ganga Lodge."

Ganga Lodge squatted on the riverbank, a flaking den for truckers and transients. The owner, a gap-toothed crone named Lakshmi—everyone in Tenali was Lakshmi or Ravi—squinted at her badge. "That Vikram boy? Checked in last night, room 7. Left in a hurry this morning, said something about a dawn dip."

Room 7 yielded treasures: a half-eaten dosa wrapper, a laptop humming with unsaved vlogs, and tucked under the charpoy, a velvet pouch heavy with promise. Lakshmi's heart raced. But it was empty. No idol. Just a note mirroring the riddle: The thief hides where devotion drowns.

Back at the temple, she pieced it. The footprints matched Rao's sandals—size 8, with a distinctive heel wear from years of prostrations. But why the riddle? And Vikram's battery? She'd borrowed his phone earlier; a quick scroll revealed deleted footage: grainy clips of Rao sneaking out post-puja, bundling something shiny into a cloth.

Confrontation came at moonrise, under the very banyan where the idol once stood in miniature replicas sold to pilgrims. Lakshmi gathered them—Rao, Devi, Vikram—in the sanctum's flickering lamplight. "The river god flows without feet," she announced, voice steady as the Krishna's current. "But you, Father Rao, flow with greed. The riddle? Your own poetry, cribbed from old puranas to throw us off. You staged the theft for insurance—the temple's policy lists you as beneficiary."

Rao blanched, his saffron paling to ash. "Lies! The god protects—"

"Protects your lies," Lakshmi cut in. She nodded to a constable, who dragged in a dripping sack from the riverbed, retrieved by divers that afternoon. The idol gleamed, emeralds winking like judgmental eyes. "You hid it in the shallows, where 'devotion drowns'—your words, not mine. Vikram filmed you by accident; you paid him to delete it, draining his battery with that rigged charger in his room."

Vikram crumbled first. "He offered 50,000 rupees, ma'am. I needed it for my ma's medicine." Devi Reddy merely smirked—her shipments alibi held, but Lakshmi suspected she'd known, turning a blind eye for a cut of the silk trade's underbelly.

Rao lunged for the sack, but constables pinned him. As handcuffs clicked, he wailed, "The river will curse you!"

Lakshmi leaned close, her scar twisting in the lamplight. "Curses are for fools who forget: in Tenali, even gods tell tales. And I listen."

By dawn, the idol was restored, the temple bells tolling triumph. Lakshmi Devi walked the ghats alone, tossing the riddle scrap into the Krishna. It bobbed, then sank—another mystery swallowed by the flow. But in Tenali, wit was the true current, and she its unrelenting tide.