How the van got back
The police called my parents Saturday night to let them know it had been found. They knew it was driveable and didn't dust for fingerprints. Did they catch someone in it? We don't know. I doubt thieves would have left a perfectly good lifting belt behind by accident. Unfortunately, we didn't get to keep the belt.
Two police cars met my parents in the Murry's meat store parking lot, and they got the van from a nearby street. There was a scrape mark below the drivers-side door handle (from a crowbar, maybe?), and the ignition was gone. They popped it out, snapped the cover back on, and then just had to turn the key holder to start the van.
All the vehicle registration info was still in the glove compartment, as were all my parents' cassette tapes. ("Not even the Chimes–can you imagine that?" my mom wrote, sarcastically. The Georgetown Chimes are a running joke in the van. They are probably all nice people, but we played the tape once in the mid-90s and that was enough. To this day, It continues to be enough.) The thieves also left a rap tape stuck in the deck. Not strangely, my parents didn't recognize it. We'll ID it in the upcoming days.
Finally, about the nearby Penthouse nightclub on Georgia Avenue. (Relevant Google search: "homeless guy sleeping in the corner of the booth.") The story about that place is long and complicated and is basically too long and irrelevant to tell. But the link is pretty funny.
