I don’t think the pair she saw was actually them. My guess is that the thief didn’t have an iPhone and the boy did, so it was the boy’s iPhone that reported the

I don’t think the pair she saw was actually them. My guess is that the thief didn’t have an iPhone and the boy did, so it was the boy’s iPhone that reported the AirPods location to Apple whenever he crossed paths with the actual thief. Note that the airpods were not picked up on the drive to the suburbs, suggesting that nobody in the car had an iPhone. But the author had a clear view of the boy’s phone in the museum and expected to see a “lost” alert on it, implying that he did have an iPhone.