ppp cove 06 - criminals on vacation by molly dox Page A

get it over with.”
    “Mike, we’re buddies. We go back, it’s not like that. It’s just still new.” His fast, squirrel like voice made him sound like a weasel. “Anyway, I’ve got to call the boss. I’ll handle it.”
    Mike nodded. He always liked it better when Jimmy did the talking. That guy could talk a tornado around somebody, and they’d never know what hit them.
    Jimmy dialed and waited for their boss to answer. “Hey boss, the job is done. We got the white Mitsubishi. Where do you want it delivered?” They’d only gotten a few details with a number to call to get paid.
    “You idiots, not a Mitsubishi,” he screamed. Mike could hear it and he wasn’t even using the phone. If the guy could have climbed through the phone he would have. He groaned and then explained. “It’s a dog, you fools; get the dog. I said Shih-Tzu, not Mitsubishi!”
    Jimmy looked at Mike, shrugged, and then finished his conversation. There wasn’t much left to say. They’d stolen the wrong thing. Easy misunderstanding or so Jimmy thought. “Right, we’re on it.”
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    Carmella was flustered. As soon as she hung up from Poppy, she’d dialed 9-1-1. “I want to report a crime. My car was stolen!”
    The woman that answered the phone at the dispatch center took her information and promised to send a patrol car over to her house. She’d put a message out over police radio to the officers on the street to be on the look-out for the stolen vehicle, she told her, as soon as they finished their conversation. 
    Carmella paced and then went back outside to look at her driveway as she spoke to the police dispatcher. Perplexed, she stood staring at her white car. She was stunned. “Umm, hold off on sending that police officer. It’s back, my car is back.”
    “What? Your car is in your driveway? You’re telling me it was gone, but now it’s there?” The police dispatcher wasn’t sure what was going on, but didn’t have time for shenanigans.
    She stared at the white Mitsubishi. She spoke meekly. “Yes, it’s back.” Was she going crazy? It wasn’t there just a bit ago, but there she stood, looking at her car, the one that was parked right where she’d left it.
    The dispatcher sighed. This was getting confusing. “So, basically, there is no crime. You have your car.”
    Carmella shook her head, realizing she must have sounded odd. “No, it was stolen. It wasn’t here. My driveway was empty. It was gone. Only, now it’s back. Somebody took my car and then returned it.”
    The dispatcher checked with her one more time. “So your car is there, and you don’t need the police.”
    “But it was gone. Somebody had to steal it.” She was growing frustrated.
    “But it’s not gone now. It’s been returned.” This was the weirdest call the 9-1-1 dispatcher had gotten all day.
    “Yes. Umm, never mind,” she said and hung up the phone. Was she losing her marbles? Should she have the police come out anyway? Or was it there all along? No, it wasn’t. She saw! She saw it with her own eyes. Her car was missing. And as fast as it went missing, it was back. She had no idea what to make of it all.
    Carmella stood next to her car. Nothing seemed amiss, broken, or different. She dialed her friend’s number again. Uncertainty laced her voice. “Poppy, you’re never going to believe this.”
    Weirder things had happened, but Poppy found it odd that the car was gone one moment and then back the next. Did the thief grab the wrong car? Were they supposed to pick off a neighbor’s car? Did they not like how it drove? Or was the car never actually gone? Was Carmella slowly losing it? She did have a way of blowing up tiny things into monstrosities. Maybe the car had never left the driveway in the first place. Poppy winced. She didn’t mean to question her friend’s credibility, but she was known to have quite the dramatic flair. She cautiously answered her, “Interesting.”
    “You do believe me, right? You