Midnight phone calls are rarely good.

We got a call at about 12:30am last night--or this morning. It was the police.
"Is this James Turner?"
"Yes."(heart pounding violently)
"This is the police. We found your truck."
"You did? Thank you!" (relief)
"Did it have any dents in it prior to being stolen?"
"NO." (silent groaning.)
"Well it does now. But it looks drivable. You need to come and get it right away or you'll have to pay to get it out of impound. We also need your key so we can dust the interior for prints."

So we woke Eliza up to tell her to listen for Sophie. (Of course, she has no memory of this.) And we left to drive up to South Tucson--should have known that's where it would be dumped. We call it "little Mexico" for all the crime and garbage.

Sure enough, there was the truck. Beer bottles in the truck bed. Tools gone. Huge dent in the back end. Been smoked in and beer spilled all over the inside. 220 miles put on it. They stole all the CD's, tools, tool bags, Jim's asthma inhaler--with all the smoking they probably needed it, box of his business cards (go figure), 2 sets of house plans and structural engineering calcs, his KB bag with paperwork, etc.

I'm sure they will put all that stuff to good use.

On the bright side, the cops said they'd never seen so many fingerprints on a stolen car. Jim had recently washed it, inside and out, so there should be some good ones from the "perp". A little "Law & Order" lingo for ya there. He even left us another beer bottle and a handy lighter inside. That was very considerate of him.

So, we'll be getting it fixed, instead of replaced. That was our big excitement for today. Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of "Adventures with Criminals".