So, yeah, I had the police out here last night.  It’s really not a very exciting story, but I was pretty rattled (and, if I stop to think about it, still am, because it just doesn’t add up).  Anyway, it’s the first time I’ve ever had to call the police to my home, and the whole time he was in here, all I could think was “that’s the first time there’s ever been a loaded gun in my house!”

It started with a phone call on our land line.  When I answered, there was a recorded voice telling me I had a collect call, press one to accept charges, blah, blah.  But behind the recording (if you’ve ever made a collect call, you know that you can talk while the message is playing, and the person on the other end will hear you), was some very colorful language, which I won’t repeat here, in a rather angry male voice.  I didn’t respond at all, just hung up, even though I was rather startled and upset.

Almost immediately after I hung up, I could hear my cell phone upstairs ringing.  At first I didn’t think anything of it, but it seemed rather coincidental that it would begin ringing so soon after me hanging up on what I was really hoping was a prank call, so I went to check on it.  No message or anything, but the number listed was a local number.  Now, I know that doesn’t *sound* strange, but here’s the thing:  my cell is a non-local number.  Sure, I occasionally get wrong numbers/solicitations from it’s originating area code, but I’ve never received a call from a number local to my home.  I don’t give my cell number out.  Ever.  To be honest, I don’t even know the number.  So I couldn’t think of anyone that would be trying to reach me, and as I let my imagination wander, I started getting a little nervous.  Not too bad, but Ryan had been out of town on business, and wasn’t scheduled to get home for a few more hours, so I was a little uncomfortable.

After pondering all the worst-case-scenarios I could come up with, I finally called him on his cell about an hour later.  And that’s when I got really nervous.  Because at around the same time I had received the two mystery calls (remember, I don’t have caller I.D. at home, so I had no proof that the calls were related), he also received a collect call from the same number on his cell phone.  So someone has managed to get our home phone number, and our two out-of-town cell phone numbers, that aren’t even listed under our names, and one of which is never, ever given out.  So, Ryan told me to call the non-emergency number at our police station, and see what they thought of it.

They must have thought it was strange enough, because they sent someone out right away (the children loved that–that’s two visits with the police in two consecutive weeks!).  He was very nice, and also very puzzled.  He called the number that came up on our cells, and the kid (?) that he spoke with said no one called from that number, which was obviously untrue.  The officer was pretty satisfied, though, that the person he spoke to was being honest (he thought maybe someone else at the home could have used the phone, and this kid, who was supposed to be in charge until mom got home didn’t know about it), and after letting him know that our phone was being tapped should anyone try to call again, and that if anyone did call complaints would be filed and jail time handed out, hung up and said that’s all he could do for now.  

They do have extra patrols coming around, just to monitor things, but the officer really wasn’t concerned–he was very confused, though, as am I.  The likelihood of anyone putting all three numbers together seems pretty remote, unless they were looking for us for a reason.  I do have one theory, which still has some holes, but if anyone else would like to theorize as to how that happened, I’d love to hear it.

Why does stuff like this only happen when Ryan is out of town?  I sure was glad when he pulled in last night!