Nancy, George, and Bess

It was late in the evening, as Bible study was coming to an end, when Janae and I noticed a vehicle driving very slowly by her home. Matt & Janae just recently completed the building of their home and don't have many neighbors as of yet, so this lone piece of traffic stood out all the more. "Did that seem a little strange to you guys?" Janae asked.

"Well," I said, "they were driving pretty slowly, but maybe they were just looking for something." As I was saying this, the vehicle drove by again, even more slowly this time. And then it stopped. Right behind Janae's well-lit house with three women and a toddler staring out the picture window. We kept watching as a man got out of the vehicle with his cell phone in hand. A few seconds later, the vehicle drove off leaving the man behind. "Don't leave me, guys," Janae said. And with good reason.

We began turning off all the lights in the house so that he wouldn't be able to see us staring at him and so we could better watch him from our places in the living room. Janae decided to call Matt and tell him to come home. "Should you call the cops?" Matt asked Janae. "No," Janae said. After all, there were three of us and one of him and I'm pretty sure Janae could beat the tar out of anyone trying to hurt her baby.

The man walked over to the house across the street and moved some of the sawhorses in the driveway before walking off down the street. "Maybe he was going to vandalize that house!" we speculated. "But he's not going to because he knows we're watching."

Feeling pretty good about our crime-fighting skills, I said, "I bet the vehicle is going to pick him up on the other side of this development. We're probably safe now."

Becky, Janae and I continued our good-byes when Janae spotted the same man a street over talking to a little girl and her dog. "Go inside, little girl!" Becky shouted.

"Please don't kidnap her," I said. Ever the practical one, Becky reminded me he couldn't kidnap her - he didn't have a car. We continued to watch him until he was no longer in sight. Feeling sure that he had left the neighborhood at this point, Becky and I ventured home.

Being the detectives we are, I drove very slowly through the neighborhood just in case we would run into him. "Too bad we don't have any heat sensors," Becky says to me.

"Where are those night vision goggles when you need them?" I add. Just then, we saw him...without the aid of heat sensors or night vision goggles!! I slowed the car to a near crawl. Picture here the scene from Meet the Parents: Becky and I with two fingers pointing to our own eyes, then turning them to point at this man. Just so he would know that we knew he was up to something. (To be factual, the eye-pointing didn't actually happen. But we almost turned around once we thought of it because it would have been the perfect opportunity for us to use such a gesture.)

We decided to call Janae. "You should probably call the cops," I told her. "He's walking back toward your house and it's probably better to be safe than sorry."

"We got a really good visual if the cops want a description," Becky adds. "Short, balding, a little overweight, walks with a slight limp, no glasses that we could see..."

So Janae called the cops. They arrived with searchlights on the tops of their squad cars. And they found the guy, alright. As it turns out, he was a neighbor helping someone search for their lost weiner dog. Oops. I guess you couldn't really put us in the same category as Nancy and her friends. The good news is: everyone is safe. Plus, Janae got to make a great first impression on her new neighbors.