The Stolen Truck

For those who wondered why we just knew that those neighbors (of “Giant Hot Dog” fame) had stolen a rental truck, I thought I’d fill you in.

One day, driving by the neighbor’s house, I saw a rental truck. OK, I thought, so

meone’s moved in. Great! The next night, the truck was still there. “Wow,” I thought, “must be taking them awhile to get everything out of the truck.” I could have been neighborly and offered to help them, or at least stop by and say hello, but back then, my free time was limited to roughly the hours between 1:00 am and 6:00 am, so I controlled myself.

Day 3: Still there.
Day 4: Still there.
Day 5: Still there.
Day 6: …you get the idea.

Day 7

Now, this house is on a main-ish road that people often use to avoid traffic on the actual main road. Just to be sure I wasn’t having some sort of hallucination, I confirmed with other neighbors that, indeed, this rental truck (from a very well known truck rental company) had, in fact, been parked there for nearly a week. Also, no one had seen anyone come in or out of the house, or the truck, the entire time.

OK, that’s kind of true. While I hadn’t observed anyone entering or existing the house myself, it had actually been an eventful six days. By Day 6, there had been at least two visits to the home from law enforcement (I witnessed these firsthand; I have no idea if there were more). Actually, I have no idea if law enforcement visited the home itself, because on both occasions, the law was summoned (not by me!) because street brawls had broken out between what were presumably some or all of the residents. I began to worry that there might be horrible things in the truck, like bodies.

That morning, I surreptitiously snapped a photo of the truck, with the ID and license plate, and called the corporate headquarters of the truck rental company. Here’s the response:

“OMG! Thank you! We had NO IDEA where that truck was! We’ll come get it today!”

Day 8
The truck’s gone. No idea if it contained bodies or anything else, for that matter. ⧉