This is a long story, and it's not over yet, but I gotta write it down now (since I can't sleep ANYway).



Geez. I don't even know where to begin, but I guess I'll just stick with everything from my point of view.



Rebecca called me at work at about 3:30 or so, asking if I was playing another joke on her. [This was because I set her up for a hidden camera show last year, as you may recall. The situation she was in seemed bizarre enough that this was a reasonable guess.]



"No," I said. "What's up?"



She then tried to explain that there was an angry man at the door, saying a watch had been signed for at our apartment -- a watch he had sold on Ebay -- and he wanted the watch back. [She got as far as "angry man at the door" before adrenaline confused all further thought.]



Then I heard as our next-door neighbor came out, and started to face-off with the guy, saying he was harrassing us, etc. Probably not the best move on his part, but I was grateful to hear another voice, because for all I knew some psychopath was getting ready to kill my wife and daughter.



I went home.



That is, I clocked out, saw some friends leaving work for the day, and asked for a ride to our complex a few blocks away.



When I got close to our apartment, the man (Lawrence) was outside with two lady associates, and Rebecca was sitting with Madison on some steps. Matt, the neighbor, headed back inside his apartment, his job done.



SO, the story: Lawrence and his associates had a watch they were selling to raise some money for their business. They found a buyer on Ebay who said he'd purchase it for $20,000, but recommended they use this escrow service for the transaction.



Lawrence set up an account at the website for this service, and when he was notified that the $20k was waiting there, he overnighted the watch. That's mistake number one for Lawrence.



Now, Lawrence lives in Riverside, not too far away, and yet the buyer wanted it overnighted, rather than just have Lawrence DRIVE the $20k piece of jewelry to the apartment. Mistake number two. (As a corrollary to mistake number two, he agreed to sell a $20k watch to someone living in an APARTMENT. The address had an APARTMENT NUMBER, Larry. Think for a second.)



A little too late to do any good, Lawrence had a computer-savvy friend check the domain name registration for the escrow service. It was created all of 12 days ago.



That's what got him suspicious -- but he had already overnighted the watch. So he came down himself today, FedEx tracking info in hand, claiming D. Mayor had signed for the package at our apartment at 10:19 AM.



Well, both our neighbor AND Lawrence had called the police before I arrived, so an officer showed up to take a report. By this time, Lawrence was fairly convinced we had nothing to do with it. He handed over his paperwork to the officer, saying he could print it all out again if he needed to. He was waiting on a return call from FedEx, to see if the delivery guy had delivered it TO THE DOOR, or just to someone waiting outside.



I gave him my card and asked him to call me when he got word, because if somehow, somebody HAD been inside, we needed to change our locks ASAP.



He saw my title on my card -- "Web Manager".



"What do you do?" he asked.



I explained I was a web programmer. That, and the fact that Rebecca had mentioned earlier that her uncle Brad sold watches on Ebay, and now we were back on their hit list.



BUT IT'S NOT OVER! No no!



I get a call from Lawrence later in the evening, and he says the FedEx guy not only said someone answered the door, but that the description pretty much matched ME.



Isn't this a funny story?



So now he wants to get the cops and the FedEx guy to come over to my work tomorrow and "rule me out" -- THIS is where I start getting nervous. What if the crook DID look like me? What if the FedEx guy is the crook, using an address on his route to run his scam? What if he has motivation to lie lest he lose his job? (Thanks to Howard for pointing out that lovely thought as I explained everything to him over the phone.)



Some other problems:


1) Where was Rebecca at the time of delivery? Why, she was bringing me my lunch, because I had forgotten it. CONVENIENTLY making us each others alibis. GREAT.



2) I was away from my computer for a bit while she came in, and so I don't have any chat logs or emails to show me at my desk at that time.



3) Anybody who DOES say I was at the office isn't much help, because I live 3 minutes away, and nobody will be able to say I was with them for a solid block of time.



4) I have the skillset to pull the crime off.



5) I have an uncle who could fence it for me.



I called the officer who had come by, and left a message saying the FedEx guy claimed the signer answered the door, and should he come dust for prints before we change our locks in the morning. At 9:30 tonight, when neither Rebecca, Madison nor I could sleep, and we were part way into a new DVD ("Secondhand Lions" -- pretty good so far, but it was getting too violent for Madison when we stopped), the officer knocked on the door and came in, dusted for prints, and put us at ease. HE at least knows we didn't do it.



I don't think there's any chance the FedEx guy will actually be at my work tomorrow, because it seems you'd need a police line up to do that sort of thing fairly.



Oh, and another thing -- when Lawrence called, he pointed out that our neighbor's last name is MAYER -- coincidence, he asked?



Yes, Larry. It's a coincidence. Nobody smart enough to build a fake escrow site would be DUMB enough to use their own last name, not to mention have the package delivered right next door.



We still have some unanswered questions, though. Is the FedEx guy just being stupid? That's our #1 guess -- that he is remembering incorrectly, and that nobody was in our house. If he's NOT being stupid, how did the guy know we wouldn't be home? WE didn't even know we wouldn't be home.



As I was rumenating over the possibility of being falsely identified by a nervous FedEx guy, and serving time in prison for fraud as a result, I thought of multiple things. Among them: SO MANY VARIABLES had to come out just right that, if I ended up in prison, I'd have no doubt the Lord had his hand in it, like Joseph of Egypt, and that there would be some divine reasoning behind it. I also thought it would be quite insulting to go to prison for what would look like a botched fraud attempt, when I clearly have the intelligence to commit fraud successfully, and for a far greater amount than a mere $20k.



Some story, eh?