Footprints in the Ferns by Dale Mayer

Author:Dale Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Cozy, Mystery
ISBN: 9781773361642
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Published: 2019-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Tuesday Morning …

When Doreen woke the next morning, she felt like her body was weighted down with troubles. She slowly got up, sat on the edge of her bed, and rotated her shoulders to try to loosen the tension. She remembered her middle of the night trip to her backyard, got up, and walked over to the window. It was hard to imagine what was down there, but the rocks were still there in the garden, exactly where she’d placed them.

She dressed quickly, headed downstairs, put on her morning pot of coffee, and walked out to the garden while her coffee dripped. She knew her place would be chaos again once the movers arrived and wanted a few moments to herself.

She stood at the bottom of the garden path and studied the smudge in the dirt, outlined by her special rock formation. She took several more photos of it. Whoever it was had stepped in the corner of the turned-over garden and had slipped downward, leaving a mark but nothing helpful or distinguishable, except to prove that she’d had a visitor.

She stood for a long moment, her mind trying to formulate ideas, but nothing came to explain this. Because, if her intruder had come across the grass—which he had; she had witnessed it from her bedroom window—surely there’d be visible tracks of his footprints in the dirt as well. But she found none—only here at the corner of the garden, as if he’d walked the edge of her path on the rocks, deliberately avoiding leaving any tracks.

Frowning, she turned and walked back to the house, the animals shuffling along at her side. Mugs perked his ears up, and he raced to the back door. She called out to him, “Hey, Mugs. What’s the matter, buddy?”

But he barked and barked and jumped up on the kitchen door. She opened the door—although she’d had it propped open, but her chair had slipped off to the side.

Or it had had some help.

Hating the suspicion that was ever-present now, she pushed open the door, and Mugs raced across the hallway to the front door. She propped the back door open again with the kitchen chair and headed to the front door. Instead of something or someone suspicious, she found Scott and the moving truck here already. She opened the screen door in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you quite this early,” she admitted.

“It’s after eight,” he said gently. “Did you get any sleep? You look like you had a bad night.”

“I had a bad night,” she said wearily. “But that seems to be the way of it these days.”

“I’m sure protecting these antiques has been difficult,” he said sympathetically.

“You have no idea,” she said. “I’ve had so many break-ins and intruders. Even last night I had somebody in the backyard with a flashlight.”

He stared at her in horror. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” she said, “seriously. And how wrong is that?”

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Well, let’s get everything out of here, if we can today. Agatha is bringing a different vehicle with proper crating for the pictures.

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