It was a little over an hour before the alarm was going to go off anyway when the phone rang. The phone is on my wife’s side of the bed, and she’s pretty slow to wake up, so it was on about the third or fourth ring when she finally answered it. I heard her say “Hello? … Hello? … Hello?” several times. I asked “Who is it?” The caller ID showed that it was her daughter’s home number, but all she heard was dead silence. “Nobody’s there. Listen.” she said as she handed me the phone so I could hear.
So she hung up and tried to call her back, but got a busy signal. After trying this a couple of times, she tried to call her daughter’s cell phone, which went straight to voice mail. Not being able to get a response, she starts freaking out. I said “Are you going to drive over there?” She said “What choice do I have?” (Go back to bed, I thought, but didn’t say.) “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
So we drive to her daughter’s house, which is about ten minutes away. My wife goes up to the door and lightly knocks on the storm door. I said “They’re not going to hear that”, so she opened the screen door and knocked on the door, a little more loudly. Then, after waiting a bit, she tried turning the door knob, but the door was locked.
About that time, my step-daughter opens the door, bleary-eyed. My wife says “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You called me.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Well, the phone rang and your number was on the caller ID, but nobody was there.”
“I didn’t call you.”
“Are you guys OK?”
“Yeah, we’re all asleep”, my stepdaughter says.
“Well, OK,” my wife says, and we walk back to the car.
We’re about halfway home when my wife’s cell phone rings. It’s her daughter. “We found the phone. It was under the dog. It’s been on for about 45 minutes.”
Apparently the dog managed to knock the phone handset onto the floor, step on the redial button, then curled up on top of it.
Personally, I don’t think it was the dog. I think the cats set him up.
