We live in very technologically advanced times, so what if, one day, you found someone else's phone in your house and you didn't have any visitors for a while...what would you do...would it be a simple case of figuring it out or what? So here's my story...
Ah-achoo! Always the dust up my nose on the monthly Monday housecleaning. If you cared to look in the lounge window as you passed our city-slick dwelling, parked in a close-knit community of upmarket overpriced semi-detached houses, you would see me bent over in a paroxysm of dust mite explosions.
This particular Monday, my sneezing began as I put hand to our velvet-clad couch and thrashed the dust into life. Tears acted like magnifiers as my eyes caught a square of silver peeping through the large soft black cushions. Surprised, I extracted the shiny object. A cell phone! I turned it over and tried a few buttons to access the contacts. I almost dropped it as a loud fanfare of orchestral music from Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ signalled a call.
‘Unknown’ showed on the screen. Not daring to answer, I placed the phone on the coffee table, where it vibrated in a dance of unanswered rage. I felt guilty for some unknown reason. Whose phone was it?
I lived alone, now that my youngest daughter had moved nearer her college several months before. I had no visitors I could recall for the last few months. People I knew seemed busy and distracted and declined invitations to visit our house. Was it one of my daughter’s many ‘lost’ phones? I searched through ‘contacts’ again. None seemed familiar. I dialled a number at random.
“Hello,” I said hesitatingly. What could I say to persuade the person I wasn’t some idiot fooling about? A female voice answered and declined to know anything about how her number was included in the phone list. She cut me off abruptly. I tried several more to no avail. Puzzled, I saw that the battery was running low and searched in my box of collected phone items for a suitable battery recharger. This collection was due to the continuous stream of missing phones on my daughter’s part. I was in luck and thanked the standardization of modern technology and the need to keep the items in a closed box.
I sent my daughter and son a text, asking if they knew the phone’s owner. My son’s text came back, immediately curious about the phone, but with no information about its owner. There was no text from my daughter, who was usually the world’s promptest text writer. I sent her another text, to no avail. She was obviously busy. I wondered if I would keep the phone as part of my collected phone items. It was password protected, so I could never turn it off and on again. A bit of a waste and so much for finders keepers!
Monday dusting now forgotten, I decided to make some coffee, this being my day-off from the busy downtown private detective agency I ran with a long-time partner. I was half tempted to disturb his busy day with a request for a code to unlock the password, but I decided to leave it. He might drag me into some work.
Searching once again through the phone contacts for some clue, I gasped when I saw my own number on the screen. What was it doing there? A sudden soft noise behind me drew my attention back into the room. I turned around and faced down the cold muzzle of my own black double action revolver. At the other end of the gun, I looked into a pair of dark eyes staring out from a black hooded face.
“Don’t move lady or you’ll get it here and here,” a man’s low voice growled at me.
“What do you want?” I managed to say without stuttering.
“Gimme that phone,” he growled. Snatching it from my outstretched hand, he dropped it into an open sports bag at his feet. My eyes widened, as I saw the open bag’s contents. “That’s my jewellery,” I muttered at him.
“That’s right lady and now it’s mine. Turn around,” he commanded.
Strong hands gripped my wrists and with a push I fell off balance, face down on the floor, where he bound my hands and feet together. No counter- attack here!
“Stay quiet lady or you’ll get it.” His soft footsteps moved to the lounge door.
“Why is my name on your phone? And how did your phone get in my couch?”
My questions fell on deaf ears. The front door slammed shut. With plenty of time to think things through, one question persisted. Who was the unknown caller?
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