The case of the missing iPhone
One more thing about the new house-
After we moved in, I was doing some work in the crawl space and dropped a nail. Fumbling for it in the dark, I felt something that didn't seem like one of the normal rocks or bricks used to weigh down the black plastic sheeting. I grabbed it and brought it out into the light. It was an 8GB iPhone.
The iPhone was dead, so I took it to work the next morning and borrowed a colleague's charger. When I powered it on and opened the mail program, I could see it belonged to the previous owner of the house. I contacted him at the phone numbers and email address I found in the iPhone. He was very surprised when he responded, wondering where on earth I had found his phone.
Based on some investigation the phone company had done after the phone was lost, he knew that the phone had last been accessed on the day he moved out-after it had turned up missing. With my account, he was able to piece together a possible scenario: One of the movers, or someone else with access to the house, had picked up the phone, checked that it worked, and pocketed it, hoping to steal it. But later the thief became afraid of detection, and ditched the phone in the dark corner where I eventually found it.
I returned the iPhone to its grateful owner. I admit I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to keep it.