A little background information is needed here before I go into the mystery. Some of you might remember that my sister is living in my basement.

Okay, that was it for the background information. On Tuesday of this week, I woke up as usual and made a cup of tea with milk. It tasted weird and I just thought maybe my tastes were changing and I wasn't enjoying my tea as much as I used to. So I dumped the cup.

Then my 5 year old poured herself a bowl of cereal with milk, started to eat and immediately started to gag. She ran over to the garbage pail and spit out the cereal with the milk. She said, Mommy, Mommy, the milk tastes awful.

I took the container out of the fridge and noticed that the expiration date was August 18th. Should have been okay there. But then I looked at the milk and it was really white, creamy white, more like whole milk and I buy skim milk.

My 13 year old walked into the kitchen. I asked her to smell it and she told me it was paint. My H has been painting our fence white and so we decided that he must have put some leftover paint in a milk jug and someone accidentally put it in the fridge, thinking it was milk.

I called H but he said he didn't do that and he told me that the milk must have curdled.

My neighbor came over and he examined the milk and he too thought it was paint. I brought it over to my mother and brother and they thought it was paint. Then my H came home from work and he said it was definitely paint but he also thought it had paint thinner in it.

The gallon jug at that point was almost empty and so we could think of only 2 possibilities. That it came from the supermarket like that and we just didn't notice it until we got to the bottom of the jug or someone put a jug of paint/paint thinner in my fridge, either accidentally or intentionally.

I asked my sister about it when she got home Tuesday night and she said it probably fermented.

This morning when I got up, the jug with the paint in it (we left it on the counter, not really sure what to do about it or who to call about it) was gone and there was a new gallon of milk in the fridge. I called my H at work and asked about the paint jug and the new gallon and he knew nothing about either and was very upset that the paint jug would go missing like that.

I called my sister at work and she said that my H was so upset about it all last night that she took the paint jug back to the supermarket, told them something was wrong with it and they gave her a new gallon of milk. My sister told me that I shouldn't buy my milk there and I should buy it somewhere else. I asked her why and she said that she used to work there and it is a dirty store. (I knew my sister had a job either there or in the store next to it for a short period of time because I had seen her car but she never mentioned it to me.)

I decided to go to the supermarket to talk to them and also ask for the paint jug back (evidence). I spoke to the woman my sister spoke to and this was the story she told: My sister went in with the gallon jug but it was empty when she brought it in. She thought it was odd that someone would bring in an empty milk container and complain that there was something wrong with the milk but their policy is not to argue with the customers so she told my sister to get a new jug of milk.

The woman also told me that my sister used to work there but didn't make it past the 30 day probationary period, that she was let go. She also told me that this morning, my sister asked her how her mother was. I asked the woman, "does she know your mother?" And the woman said no.

I asked for the paint jug back but it was gone by this point.

My T thinks my sister put the paint jug in the fridge but what would be her motive? Is she mad at me about something? Or is she mad that I shop there and was trying to muddy their reputation?

I'm so confused and my head is spinning. If you knew my sister, you would know that within the last year she has done some really whacky things, including dumping her husbands two dogs on the freeway in another city.

I got the sense that my T thinks she might be dangerous and I should ask her to move out. I told him that I'd have to think about that. I would do it if I knew 100% that she was behind this. But what if she wasn't?

Any thoughts?

And if you stayed with the story this long, thank you! I know it was long.