My family and I have always been fairly devout regarding church attendance, especially on Sunday mornings.  Usually, the biggest excitement on a Sunday after church is the negotiations and debate concerning where the family will have lunch often resulting in some of us forgetting what we may have just heard about putting others first.  But on one particular Sunday after church a few years ago, we were presented with one of the most befuddling mysteries our little family would ever experience.

The church we were attending at the time was in a building not initially intended to be a church.  The space had previously been some sort of office building that had gone out of business.  It had a large open area that worked well as an auditorium, and many side offices were available to act as Sunday school classes, nurseries, and the like.  Instead of long, wooden pews that you would often find in more traditional church buildings, rows and rows of folding chairs had been lined up to serve as congregational seating.  The intent, I believe, was for the church to reside here until enough money was raised to break ground on a new, more functional, more modern building.  I’m not sure whether that actually ever happened.

On this certain Sunday after the service had been dismissed, just as the debate started building between my son and daughter about dining preferences, I checked my back pocket to pull out my iPhone to see if I had received any messages over the past couple of hours.    My iPhone wasn’t there.   The kids had already told me before that I shouldn’t carry my phone in my back pocket.  That was how teenage girls carry their phone.  That was a fact of which I was unaware before the habit had already been firmly established, and it wasn’t important enough for me to change my practice. I checked my other pockets.  I didn’t have it.  I explained to the family that I had left my phone inside.  I didn’t have to look to know that their eyes were rolling back into their heads.  

We had been sitting in the right bank of chairs about halfway down.  Finding the exact folding chair where I sat would be impossible, but I had a good idea of the general area, so I began walking the rows, scanning the floors and seats.  Tammy and the kids joined in the search, but it was pointless.  The phone was gone.

Tammy asked if I was sure that I had brought it with me.  I thought I was sure.  Maybe not?  After deciding that my leaving the phone at home was indeed a possibility, we headed out to the parking lot to start home.  I batted down the kids’ requests for food.  I would need to find my phone first.

As we crossed town, it occurred to Tammy that she was able to track my iPhone with her iPhone, a fairly new functionality at the time.  We had given each other permission to be tracked with the Find My Friends feature, and she was able to see my phone’s location on a map in the application. 

“Found it”, she stated after a few seconds.

Curious, I asked, “Is it at church or at home?”

“Neither,” she said.  “It’s on Main Street”.

We were not on Main Street, nor had we been on Main Street recently.  Why was my phone on Main Street?  And apparently not just sitting there on Main Street but moving.  The phone was in someone’s car.  Had I been phonejacked?

Excitedly, I proposed that we try to catch up with it, but we were almost home, and Tammy decided that she did not want any part of chasing down potential phone thieves.  We pulled into the garage and walked inside the house.  Tammy gave me her phone to take with me so that I could continue to track my device as I plotted out my plan of action in reclaiming my property.  I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to handle the confrontation once I did find it, but first things first.  Adam saw nothing but adventure in the situation and pleaded that he be allowed to accompany me on my recovery mission.  Not believing that there was any true danger, I consented, and he instantly ran upstairs to his room.  A minute later he  came back down carrying a set of nunchucks.  I asked what that was for, and he advised that one can never be too prepared.  He had a point.  And I’m not sure why I didn’t first ask why he had a set of nunchucks and where did he get them, but I was focused on iPhone recovery.  I would parent later.  Considering Adam had never even been in a physical fight, I was surprised at how excited he was about the possibility of running up against a dark suburban drug lord or some intricate iPhone larceny ring.  I was surprised, but maybe just a little impressed as well.  “But those stay in the car,” I insisted.  I felt like I should have frisked him for brass knuckles, but time was wasting, and my stolen phone was still moving.

Adam and I jumped in the car and took off toward the location of the blue dot on Tammy’s Find My Friends App.  Adam was Robin to my Batman, Starsky to my Hutch, Jerry Lewis to my Dean Martin, driving into the face of potential (or fabricated) danger, ready for anything.  His primary job was navigation as he studied his mother’s phone.  The blue dot moved up into a neighborhood near the Tollway, then seemed to stop.

At the time, Find My Friends was not as exact as it is today regarding location.  It appeared that my phone was in the Panther Creek neighborhood, on the sidewalk between 329 Armstrong Drive and 331 Armstrong Drive.

Within ten minutes, we found the neighborhood, pulled onto Armstrong Drive, and parked across the street from the tentative location of my phone.  I could see the sidewalk, and there was no trace of any phone, so it only made sense that it was in one of the two houses in front of us.  Both homes were very nice brick homes, new construction.  They were not at all the type of location that you would expect to find the underbelly of an iPhone contraband organization.  I could tell Adam was more than a little disappointed that we hadn’t pulled up to an abandoned warehouse or gated compound.

Adam and I chose to begin our investigation with the first house, 329 Armstrong Drive.  As we walked across the street and headed toward the front walk of the house, we met a woman who was also turning up the front walk to 329 .  The woman was probably in her 40’s wearing a modest “church dress” and carrying a light blue gift bag.  I motioned for her to please go ahead of us.  She smiled and nodded, and Adam and I walked behind her up to the front door.

The woman rang the doorbell while we stood just behind her on the front step.  I could feel an undeniable uneasiness coming over me.  What was I going to say?

The door was answered by a tall woman in a smart yellow dress and heels.  Her dark hair was coifed in the standard suburban do.  She offered up a smile and a generic welcome as she opened the door wide so that we could enter the residence.  It was obvious that she did not know the woman (or us), but it seemed as though she hadn’t really expected to. 

From further into the house, we could hear several women’s voices chatting and laughing.  The woman in the yellow dress began walking toward the voices and, I assume, expected us to follow.   Things were going way too fast.  I hesitantly caught her attention before we moved out of the foyer with an uncomfortable, “Excuse me.”  She stopped and turned toward me as the woman with the blue gift bag continued on toward the voices in the next room.

“Yes?” she responded.

Okay, here it was.  I still wasn’t sure how I was going to start this, but it was time to open my mouth to see what would come out.

“My name is Kevin Cain… and I think someone here has my phone”.  There it was – short and to the point. My embarrassment was matched with her utter confusion.  The three of us stood together in the foyer as I explained my situation and why I thought the person who took my phone was at this address.  Adam was taking this all in and enjoying the tense atmosphere developing between this complete stranger and me.  If we were in the correct house, then it didn’t appear that the nunchucks were going to be necessary, but if he could watch me squirm a little, the trip over would still have been worth it.

I found out that the woman’s name was Regina, and she did not live there.  She was merely a guest who heard the doorbell and came to answer the door. 

I almost told Regina that I could come back another time, which probably would have been the more proper and considerate action, but I couldn’t.  I knew that somewhere among those lilting, carefree voices in the next room was my iPhone.  And I was determined to find out the who and the why behind this apparent theft.  Curiosity was killing me.    

Regina wasn’t quite sure what to do with us and was sorely regretting that she was the one who answered the door.  She tentatively offered, “Do you want to come in and see if someone has your phone?”  I’m sure that Regina was hoping that I would say anything but yes.   But I said “Yes”.

Adam and I followed Regina into the home’s living room.  It became clear to me why so many women had gathered together on this Sunday afternoon.  There was a banner across the fireplace declaring “It’s a Boy” accompanied by blue and white streamers.  A table to one side was covered with flowers, tiny sandwiches, an assortment of sweets, and an obligatory punchbowl of some pink, presumedly unspiked punch.  There were maybe 20 women of varied ages chatting and laughing, all in dresses or spiffy pantsuits.  Seated in a chair in front of the fireplace was a very lovely and very pregnant young woman in a white dress wearing a sash identifying her as the “Mommy To Be”. 

That’s right.  I had crashed a Baby Shower.

“Hey, Y’all,” Regina said to the group assembled, trying to get everyone’s attention with the classic phrase of attention-getting in Texas.  It took her a few seconds to get everyone refocused, but soon, Regina had everyone’s attention, although all eyes were on Adam and me.

“This is Kevin King (close enough) and he thinks somebody here took his iPhone”.

Well, not exactly how I would have opened up the discussion, but there it was.  Now some of the eyes of the group were moving away from Adam and me to look at each other, as if to nonverbally say, “What the heck…”

The awkward pause was as pregnant as the “Mommy To Be”.  I could feel my face getting hot and could feel Adam’s excitement growing.  Was he smiling?  He was smiling.  Stop smiling!

One older lady standing by the table with the food and flowers spouted off, “Well, it wasn’t me!” and belly laughed as a few others joined in with uncommitted chuckles. 

In that moment, I unexpectedly felt like Agatha Christie’s  Hercule Poirot, twisting my mustache and taking stock of the suspects assembled in the salon.  The killer is in this room.  I explained to the captive and confused audience that, according to my wife’s iPhone, my missing device was somewhere in this house (or potentially next door, a bit of information that I intentionally left out of the explanation).  More confusion.  The guest of honor in the “Mommy To Be” sash leaned over and whispered into the ear of the older woman sitting next to her who I presumed to be her mother.  The mother whispered back and then patted her daughter’s knee in a consoling fashion.  The exchange grabbed my attention and made me feel even more like an intruding interloper.   The reason for my holding up their party had been announced, and no one had admitted their guilt.  Alright. Yes, I did it.  And I’d do it again.  So now what?  Maybe the phone truly was next door or possibly in one of the cars parked on the street.

After another moment of uncomfortable silence, the party-goers began softly chatting to one another again as the confusion began morphing into annoyance.  Some women were resuming their task of filling their plates with sandwiches and desserts as the interrogation continued.  I went further back into my story where it all began.  Where were you at 12:15 on the date in question? I asked the room if anyone attended Preston Hills Church that morning.  Two women who were seated next to one another on a loveseat both raised their hands.  Now we were getting somewhere.  The other suspects in the room turned their attention to these two with newfound suspicion.  Adam took a step forward to be closer to the action.  In all likelihood, one of these two women was my culprit.  I nervously asked them if there was any chance one of them may have possibly accidentally picked up my iPhone by mistake, trying hard to backpedal from Regina’s initial accusatory tone.  Their expressions gave me my “No” response well before their words did.  Delicately, I asked them if they wouldn’t mind looking in their handbags just to appease me.  The entire room once again became silent as the key suspects both pulled their bags up into their laps.  The room was thick with anticipation.  Many of those who were previously just annoyed by the whole interruption were now intrigued by the possibility that one in their midst was a phone thief.  Adam took another step forward.

One of the key suspects on the loveseat reminded me of Sally Field.  She was the one who looked up from her open oversized handbag with widened eyes seconds after scanning the contents of her bag.   Her jaw went slack as she slowly pulled out a navy rectangle which I immediately recognized as my missing iPhone.  Vindication!  Aha.  That makes you the killer.

“I believe that’s it,” I calmly stated, not wanting to show my true level of excitement.  There were a few gasps and giggles coming from the other newly exonerated suspects.  Sally Field stumbled over some meaningless words before clumsily conveying to me and the roomful of judging eyes that she truly had no idea how that phone ended up in her bag.  The Hercule Poirot in me wanted to challenge her on that.  Likely story. But it seemed that she was legitimately shocked to be holding my phone in her hand.  My tiny grey cells went to work trying to piece together what had happened.

“Where were you sitting in church this morning?”, I asked.

“On the right side about half way down.”  This was the same area where we had been sitting as well.

“And where was your handbag?”

“On the floor in front of me”, she responded.

I took a few steps back and forth wishing that I had a mustache to twirl.  Then I stopped and looked at Sally Field, ready to give my hypothesis of the chain of events that brought us to this place.

The chairs that were lined up in rows at the church had partially open backs as most folding chairs do.  I believed that at some point in the course of standing and sitting during the service, my iPhone had worked its way out of my back pocket, which my kids had already advised was a bad place to carry it, and had fallen directly into Sally Field’s open oversized handbag without any one at all noticing.  She had left the building without any notion that she was taking someone else’s property out with her. This explanation seemed plausible to everyone.

Sally Field closed her mouth and sheepishly handed my iPhone to me with a “I’m very sorry”.  As I look back on it, I suppose that it is plausible that she might have intentionally lifted the iPhone from my back pocket and just casually dropped it into her bag, but at this point, I had successfully recovered my phone so the case was closed as far as I was concerned.   I would leave the responsibility of administering her comeuppance to her next unsuspecting phonejacking victim. 

I apologized again to the crowd for the interruption, congratulated the weary “Mommy To Be”, and headed for the door as the celebration resumed.  Regina walked us out and thanked us for the excitement and wished us a good day.

Even though the climax of the story had less danger and excitement than Adam would have liked, I have to admit that I was pretty proud of myself for playing out what felt at the  time to be an exhilarating, whodunnit adventure and for successfully solving the case.  Thankfully, the nunchunks were not necessary, but if they are ever needed, I know where to find them.