The Super Sleuth and The Case of The Beep Beep

On Monday night, Max was in his bed, Chad and I were in our bed, eating cookies and cream ice cream, and watching Wheel of Fortune by 7pm.  Why?  Because Max wasn't feeling good, of course!  Within the 30 minute show, we were also You-tubing Wheel of Fortune videos to see if anyone had ever won the millions dollars.  (And yes, one lady has).  I wish this was a joke, but no, we are just that cool.

Beginning at 8:15, Max started waking up every hour- screaming.  He had a low grade fever, and severe tightness in his chest, but no congestion in his nose or anything, and he didn't act like anything was hurting.  I think he kept waking up because he was having such a hard time breathing.  (This would make me scream, too!) We were all still so exhausted from vacation that I figured that had something to do with it as well.  Chad decided he would stay home with Max on Tuesday, so he tried to get up with him every hour to get him back to sleep, so that I could sleep. But Max wanted his mama-- so I got up every hour as well.  As much as I wanted to sleep, I love taking care of my boy, too.

As the sleeping pattern continued, my level of tiredness drastically increased... to the point that I would stumble into Max's room, bumping into walls with my eyes closed, scoop up my baby, calm him down, and crawl back in my bed before ever waking up completely.



But when I was crawling into bed at 3:47 a.m. I heard this noise.... beep...beep beep...........beep beep.....beep beep beep.  I sat straight up in the bed and nudged Chad, asking,  "Do you hear that?"

Chad slowly came to the surfaced and heard it himself:  beep beep....... beep.....beep beep beep...beep.

(I know what you're thinking- our smoke alarm battery was dying.... but that is not the case.  It had no pattern and it wasn't high pitched.)

We both jumped out of bed, and crept downstairs in the dark.  I was peering over Chad's shoulder, pretending to be engaged in the situation, but really, I was hiding.  I went to turn on the light, but my very own Super Sleuth slapped my head down.  Apparently, when you're a stellar detective such as Chad, you don't use lights.  I got brave and decided to open the garage door- it was my car!  Someone was locking and unlocking my car over and over.  (If you have a Toyota, then you know the "beep" I'm talking about. But there was NO pattern.)

Again, I wanted to flick on all the lights and see what was happening, but the Super Sleuth told me to leave the lights off and get my keys.  I was hoping that they were under something that was pushing the lock button over and over again, but they were on the kitchen table with nothing around them.  In between the ghost locking the doors, I had to click "unlock" on my set of keys while Chad opened the door to the car, before the ghost re-clicked "lock" again.  But there was nothing in the car.



We went back in the house and had a pow wow in the living room.  The problem is that we had lost the extra key and clicker about 3 weeks prior.  The Super Sleuth then decided that someone had found the keys- probably in our yard or in the street- and was riding up and down the road clicking the lock button to try to find which car was locking and lighting up.  Super Sleuth then went into all the rooms, in the dark, and began peeking out of the blinds to see if anyone was in the yard or driving by.  I scrambled to turn on the house alarm, and crawled back into bed, certain that someone was about to break in.  Eventually Super Sleuth came back to bed as well, and without an answer, fell back asleep in a couple minutes.

Meanwhile, I kept creeping into Max's room every 20 minutes to make sure he was still in his crib- the person who was trying to find our car probably wanted our baby too.  As I laid in bed, over tired, but completely awake, I noticed that the beeping had stopped.  And I figured out the mystery:  Whoever had our keys had discovered that they went to my car and had stopped clicking them.  In the morning, they were going to tail me to work, and take my car while I was inside.  I began thinking through everything that was in my car-- was their anything that would give away my identity or our bank accounts?  What about my stroller and car seat- should I take them out before I headed to work in the morning?  And now that these creeps knew where our house was, would they keep coming by to take more of our stuff?  I decided we would have to get our insurance settlement for the stolen stuff and move into another zip code, leaving no trace that we ever existed on Timberland Street.  That is obviously the only way we could escape.

Eventually I feel asleep for about 2 hours before my alarm when off for work.  I got dressed and was putting on my jewelry when my car started beeping again.  PTL... that means they didn't know where my car was yet and pretty soon I would drive off and they'd never find me.



I woke Chad up and made him re-think his steps last night while I re-thought mine-- what was the one thing we did differently or put in a different spot?  That is where the keys were going to be.  I went around lifting up couch cushions, checking under the empty diaper box, moving my pile of magazines.... nothing.  Then the Super Sleuth mentioned that he had put his work clothes from the past two weeks in the laundry-- UM ding ding ding!  The lost key was in his pocket.  But he shot that down by telling me he had checked all his pockets.  I asked him to go check the washer anyway as I finished getting ready.  In less than a minute he came back up stairs holding the spare key and clicker.

Exasperated, I fell on the floor in disbelief.  When Super Sleuth asked "What would you do without me?"  I answered, "Sleep!"

So mystery solved!  Chad had thrown his work clothes in the washer before we went to bed at 7pm.  The keys were in the pocket of his pants and somehow when checking the pockets, he didn't find the keys. They were washed thoroughly and it wasn't until the clicker dried out a little (Around 3:47 a.m.) that it started malfunctioning to the point that it was locking and unlocking the car, repeatedly, in no pattern.

On this side of the mystery, it's funny to think about what the neighbors were seeing- our completely dark house with a garage the glowed momentarily every few seconds. They probably thought we were aliens about to take off in our spaceship.  Chad dried the clicker with my hair dryer, and alas, the beeping stopped.

The End.