I got a phone call from my mom a couple of weeks ago warning me not to ever, ever use my normal carpet cleaning company ever again. The tale that followed when I asked her why was pretty nuts.
My mom had never had her carpets professionally cleaned until the day of Wildman’s VBS program at B’s church. She has her own steam cleaner and usually uses that to handle any carpet stains. For some reason she decided to call in the big guns for her townhouse. I recommended the company she hired because I had had many years of great service and they were markedly cheaper than their competitors.
They came to her house on a Friday morning, cleaned the carpets and left. My mom, Cutie Pie and I then drove over to the church for the VBS program. She said her carpets looked fantastic and she seemed pleased with the experience.
Fast forward to Saturday morning…
My aunt (who lives with my mom) went into her jewelry box to retrieve something only to find it practically empty! Naturally, my aunt freaked out! She kept her jewelry box on the top shelf of her closet with the closet door closed.
The only strangers who had been in the townhouse recently were the carpet cleaners.
My aunt’s room is upstairs. My mom is not able to climb the stairs due to a knee injury that she is having repaired soon. When the carpet cleaners called down for her to come inspect their work, she told them that she was not able to.
Putting two and two together, my mom quickly deduced that the carpet cleaning guys were the culprits and called the carpet cleaning office. The owner was extremely defensive and said that her employees had been with her for over a year and were very trustworthy. No way would any of her employees steal from a client. The conversation was short and the owner got quite nasty with my mom.
After she hung up with the owner, my mom called the police.
Two officers showed up in no time for a statement. They immediately left my mom’s place to head over to the carpet cleaning headquarters where they said that my mom would not prosecute if they could produce the jewelry. When that didn’t work, the officers told the employees that everyone would be given a lie detector test to determine whether they had stolen the property or not. That did the trick!
Sure enough, the jewelry was stashed in the cleaning van. Miraculously, they had not pawned my aunt’s property between Friday morning and Saturday when the police showed up.
My aunt got her jewelry back on Saturday morning!!! Can you believe that?!
Incredible.
Adventures of Four 