Uncommon Criminal

Last night around 10:00 pm I received a phone call from a neighbor/friend who was inquiring about the type of car Scott drove. She said that there was an Audi with Ute plates parked across the street from their house. There was a man sitting in the car talking on a cell phone. Apparantly, the mysterious man had parked next to a home where the family was on vacation and my friend was a little concerned about the unknown visitor. I told her Scott was not home and that he had gone over to the church to play basketball. I assured her that it was probably him, however, as Scott has a history of taking really long work phone calls in his car. I thanked her for calling me first and not the police.

When Scott got in, I asked him if he had stopped on his way home to take a call. He said that after the game he had several voicemail messages from work, and so he had made a phone call on his way home. Scott rarely comes into the house until he has finished his work calls, so this time he pulled over on a dead end street (unaware of the out of town neighbors) to handle the work issues. He didn't want to pull into our driveway to make the call out of fear of waking the kids with his lights and engine running. I told him about the call from our friend and asked if he would please stop freaking out the neighbors.

At 10:30 pm the doorbell rang, and I opened the door to see a police officer standing on our front porch, asking for Scott Johnson. Apparently, my friend was not the only one who spotted the stranger in his car scoping out the home of the vacationing neighbors. Fortunately, the police officer was very understanding and we worked everything out pretty quickly. I thought the officer was particularly wonderful because he asked if I needed Scott to do anything around the house for me while he was still there. Then he told Scott he should probably listen to his wife and not park on the street to take his calls. Who wouldn't love that? :)

Leave it to Scott however to ask for a picture before the officer left. The officer was amused about the prospect of being on the Johnson family blog. So, here is the picture of my suspicious and frightening husband with the police officer who was fortunately in a very good mood.