I have a small and uncertain update on yesterday’s appalling story. I texted the main housecleaner—the one I always deal with, and the one who was not there yesterday. I told her what we’d found, and asked if she could ask the cleaning team if they knew what had happened. She said sure, she would call them right away. She then texted me back to say that they said that the box was in the trash, and they happened to notice the license and fished it out; the phrasing was unclear, but it sounded as if she was saying the license and other papers were already in the bag (the one that was taken inexplicably from the laundry room trash) when the cleaner found it, but there is room to think the cleaner just noticed the handy bag and used it (but then it would be weird for her to know which other papers in the trash were important and save those too).
She (the main housecleaner) said she was sorry this had happened, and she volunteered to come look through the trash. We have already looked through the trash very, very thoroughly. We have looked everywhere a stack of 15-20 bills could possibly have gone if they flew out of a box that fell off of a bureau into a trash can, even though that is not part of the story the cleaner is telling. We have picked through every single garage trash bin, including recycling bins, and we have looked all around the trash bins, and we have looked in every household trash can, and we have picked thoroughly through the one trash bag the cleaners always fill and leave next to the trash cans.
So. It seems to me the main theory is the one where one of the three cleaners who came yesterday is guilty, and the other two are not only innocent, but in fact one of them saved our bacon by noticing the license in the trash, or else that could have been lost, too, before we noticed the missing box. And this explains the “Why would they draw attention to the situation by leaving the other things on the counter?”: they didn’t, they threw away everything but the money, and it was only by chance that another cleaner noticed. But none of this is provable, and I don’t know what to do next.
All morning at work, what I was mostly wondering was what ELSE has been taken without us noticing? And can I ever let ANY cleaners back into the house, now that I will be anxiously on Theft Patrol at all times? My feeling right now is no. But at this point I don’t even know what to reply to the text.
Okay, I have replied thanking her for offering to go through the trash but saying we have already done so, and that the money is gone. I added that it was lucky someone had found the license. I don’t know what else to say, but I feel like I have time to think: it is two weeks before their next scheduled visit.
One thing to think about: I don’t know if I should mention to her that this is possibly the second time this has happened, given how uncertain that first time was. (At the time, I thought it Absolutely Could Not Have Been the cleaners—not that it was logistically impossible, but that they Never Would. It’s only the second disappearance of cash and gift cards that made me see the first time differently; plus, that the housecleaner mentioned that yesterday’s sub was the same one we had this past summer.) (But we don’t know if the money/cards disappeared at the SAME TIME the sub was subbing; and it took us an unclear amount of time to notice they were missing, which makes the timeline even more uncertain.)
Another thing to think about: whether there is any way for me to, like, still have the main housecleaner and any cleaner/helper who has been coming all along, but NOT the one who is stealing. I think that the only way for that to happen is for the main housecleaner to say to herself “Oh no. It’s So-and-so who is stealing,” and then say to me that she thinks she knows what happened, and that that person will never come back into my house. And that does not seem to be the way the conversation is progressing so far. So far she seems to be going with the idea that yes, it makes sense that a box fell into the trash, and that the money somehow disappeared in this process, but that none of her workers were involved. (I did tell her how much money was involved. She must know that $300 does not accidentally fall into a trash can and vanish.)
[Edited to add:] She has now sent a text asking if we know how much money it was (so she must have missed that part in my earlier text; perhaps she has been imagining a child-sized amount of money, like $10), saying she will reimburse it because it was her responsibility. Do we think this indicates that she has been processing this information and has realized that the money must have been taken?
I find that thinking of “getting the money back” helps almost zero. I need to know that the person who took it will not come back into my house. But I can’t expect her to KNOW who took it. And so I am still uncertain what to do next.