Beep Beep Who's There

BEEP! Pause. BEEP! Longer pause BEEP! This was going on for at least a month.

The noise was coming from the back bedroom. In the room was a smoke alarm. Smoke alarms were throughout the home but only in this one room you could hear the distinct sound that the alarms make when the battery is low. After an internet search John found out he was supposed to change batteries every 6 months. Here it was 2 years after their new house was built and he never changed the batteries. That must be the problem. Up and down the ladder and from room to room he went, every battery was replaced. There were 6 in total, some AA and some 9 volts. It took him about two hours since at least 2 alarms were in hard-to-reach areas

BEEP! Pause. BEEP! Longer pause. BEEP! The noise continued. “There must be an alarm with a low battery somewhere in the attic” John thought. Did the builders put an alarm on the rafters by accident and then forget to install it?” It would make sense that there was a low battery alert in one of the smoke alarms after this long of a time.

The wind was 30 mph with gusts up to 50. The sky was cloudy then sunny then cloudy again. It would rain a little spatter and then stop as soon as it would start. It was not a good day to be outside but that was a perfect day for Tom. His specialty was breaking in houses of people when they would least expect it. He had been watching the Day household for more than a month now as he walked the neighborhood at the same time as the children’s school was starting. He blended in with the crowd as most of the people thought he was a parent returning from walking his kid to school.  That was the thing that parents did in this neighborhood. The school was in the neighborhood, within a mile of most of the homes, other children were bussed in.

It was on this particular day, Tom convinced himself to go in through a garage service side door. He knew that the only person home at this time of day was the woman and he just passed her on the sidewalk walking away from her house. She would go for a 25 minute walk leaving her keys at home, Tom saw her many times get home and just walk through the door just by turning the door handle.

It was a surprise to Tom this time when he opened the door he heard a BEEP! Because of the surveillance he did on this house, he was surprised to discover they had a burglar alarm.

This beep was enough for Tom to change his mind but just before he left he found a set of keys on the nearby hall table and stuffed them in his pocket.

It was now the next day. Beep pause Beep pause Beep. A new day but the same beeping pattern was coming from the guest bedroom. John was more determined now to find the source of the problem. Looking up at the ceiling he decided “I guess I’ll have to check the attic.” If it wasn’t for his vertigo, he would have had an easier time convincing himself to get on the ladder and use it to get to his high garage ceiling where the attic door was.  

Risking a dizzy spell, he climbed the ladder and made his way over the bedroom area where the noise was located. The noise was fainter but still the same pattern of Beep pause Beep. There was no uninstalled loose smoke alarm here.

It was time to call for help with the problem. The beeping was driving his wife crazy, she couldn’t concentrate on her reading and praying that she did daily.

 “Hello, can someone from your office come over to our house and find out what this beeping is in our ceiling? “John was on the phone now talking with the home builders. At the other end of the line. I’ll have Daryl stop by on the way home, he lives out by you, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Although the home warranty expired a few months earlier the Newport Building company was kind enough to some to the house. Was there a problem with the installation of an alarm system? Was there something else in the house they were unaware of?   This was going to be a fact-finding mission.

Daryl arrived promptly within 5 minutes of the time he said he was coming. And after listening to the beep, he also thought it may be coming from the attic. Rising the ladder to the attic Daryl assured John he would find the source of the noise. It was a sort wait and Daryl came down shaking his head.

“Nothing up there making noise” he said.

Beep pause Beep the noise was seemingly getting louder as they entered the house again.

Daryl went straight to the guest bedroom and looked in the closet, under the bed and in the nightstand drawer. Finally, after 9 days of an unexplained noise, Daryl opened the drawer to the dresser and there it was a smoke alarm uninstalled and in an empty drawer. The battery was now low and was beeping “change batteries”, “change batteries” in a beep pause beep kind of way.

Daryl was amused but said this sort of thing happens all of the time. Problem solved.

John was happy the situation was over with but as he came into the hallway he noticed the keys were gone from the table top.

“Hey Sharon, do you know what happened to the keys on top of the front table?” John yelled to the kitchen.

“Didn’t know you had keys on that table, what were they for? Sharon shot back.

“Found some old keys since the move. John said. “Was just going to turn them into a door chime.”