A short story.
One morning, a man, let's call him Ronald, wakes up, goes to the kitchen, opens the cookie jar but feels like there are less cookies than the night before. He shrugs, takes a cookie and goes on with his day.
The day after, Ronald again wakes up to the observation cookies have disappeared overnight. When he sees his son walk into the kitchen, let's call him Joey, he asks: "Joey, you been taking cookies when no one was looking?" Joey says "No, why?" Ronald says "You know the rules. Yet every morning cookies seem to have disappeared" Joey says: "Dad, I think you're just seeing things."
Ronald decides to install a camera during the night to unravel the cookie mystery and catches Joey on film nicking two cookies, probably one for himself, another for his sister, let's call her Kamelia, before everyone else wakes up. Now that Ronald has caught the suspect with his hands in the cookie jar, literally and figuratively, he decides to play this one out to see how far the culprits will keep up the facade. Again, he opens the cookie jar while the whole family is seated around the kitchen table. He remarks that cookies have again disappeared and throws Joey an accusing glare. "Joey" he says, "you really have no idea why every day there's less cookies in the cookie jar than the night before?" Joey shrugs "I don't know, dad." Ronald looks at Kamelia who shrugs and shakes her head innocently. "Are you sure?" Ronald says, "There's crumbs leading to your bedroom."
Joey: "That's probably just from last night. I ate cookies last night, remember?"
Ronald: "I vacuumed the hallway after you went to your room."
Kamelia: "Maybe you missed a spot?"
Ronald's wife, let's call her Jessica, intercedes on behalf of the children. "Ronald" she says, "Don't accuse the kids without evidence. I'm sure they wouldn't break the rules, right guys?" Joey and Kamelia nod their heads decisively.
Jessica: "See, Ronald. They said they didn't do it."
Ronald: "So no one took any cookies. They just ate themselves."
Joey: "Maybe it's a raccoon. You always leave the window open."
Ronald: "It's not a raccoon. There wouldn't be a cookie left if it was a raccoon."
Kamelia: "Maybe it was a squirl!" She snickers.
Ronald: "It wasn't a squirl either. The lid is too heavy."
Joey: "So it must've been an animal stronger than a squirl, but less devouring than a raccoon."
Joey and Kamelia both go into a deep pondering posture.
Jessica: "Let it go already, Ron. Certify their innocence or you'll be sleeping in the couch tonight."
Ronald smirks: "You've always been a partisan hack, you know?"
Jessica: "I'm just going whichever way the evidence goes."
During all this time, Ronald kept the hard evidence to himself, exposing the lengths to which the cheaters and their shills would go to deny any form of cheating, probably because they all benefited from the cheating in some form. Little did they know that Ronald had the video footage, not just of the cookie theft itself, but recorded the entire conversation they had around the kitchen table, ready to be disclosed for all to see.