“MMMRRR!” he said, three inches from my nose.
I winced at the cat breath and tried to give him a good snuggle. Nothing doing. He struggled away, jumped to the floor, and ran down the short hall and up the steps.
Fine. After I made a note on the whiteboard, I put on my rain gear and slung the backpack over a shoulder. “Hey, pal. I’m headed out and—”
And there was Edward, sitting on the boat’s dashboard, poised to jump out the door as soon as I pushed it open half an inch.
“Not a chance,” I told him. I stood in front of the door and turned my back to the dashboard. Slowly and carefully, I pushed the door open and slid one foot outside, then eased my body out, too, using the other foot and the backpack as a cat barrier.
Eddie thudded to the floor. Tried to jump over the backpack. “MRR!” His claws slid off the nylon.
I shut the door before he could gather himself for another effort.
“MMRRR!!” He stood on his hind legs and scratched at the glass door. “MRR!!!”
I was a horrible kitty mother. Clearly, he needed to get outside more. Maybe I’d get a cat harness and take him for walks. We could walk to get the mail, or down to the ice-cream shop for double dips of black cherry.
“See you, Eddie.” I waved at him. “I’ll be back before you know it. We’ll go harness shopping tomorrow.”
“Mrr!” He was sounding less like he was complaining and more like he was crying out a question. He kept crying as I walked off the dock and across the parking lot, and I almost thought I could still hear him as I drove out of town, the windshield wipers keeping time with his cries.
• • •
The farmhouse didn’t look any different than it had the last time I’d seen it. I tromped up the driveway, following the path the emergency vehicles had created, and kept my gaze high. The last thing I wanted was to catch even a small glimpse of what was still on the ground. Even if rain had fallen for forty days and forty nights, I’d be able to see the red stains.
I stood near the back porch and looked out at the tall grass. Looked hard. Squinted and looked some more and saw nothing but grass waving in the light breeze. If there had been a path, I couldn’t see it.
“A tracker I’m not,” I murmured, and cautiously climbed up onto the far corner of the porch. Maybe an elevated view would help.
And, oddly, it did. Or something did. I closed my eyes, not seeing anything, trying to think of blank slates and flat lakes and smooth expanses of snow. When I opened my eyes and saw the hills rising up behind the house, I immediately saw the grassy trail. Not a very distinct trail, and maybe not even a trail at all, but maybe, just maybe, it was something to follow.
“Hey, Eddie, check it out!” I looked around my feet, all excited to share, then remembered that I’d left him home.
That’s what happens when you start talking to cats. You think they actually understand what you’re saying. And sometimes you even think they might be contributing to the conversation when, in reality, what they’re saying is “Mrrr.”
I adjusted my backpack’s straps and started trudging across the open field. It was dotted with the scrub trees that grow up after a farm field lies fallow for even a few years. I tried to picture the young Stan of the high school photo driving a tractor up and down, up and down. Couldn’t quite do it.
Through the wet field I went, heading for the trail I might—or might not—have seen. At the edge of the field, which was the bottom of the hill, there were rocks. Lots of rocks. Whoever had cleared the field had tossed all the fieldstones into a large heap exactly where the hill had started turning a serious slope. Not so dumb.
I took a look up at the steepness, wished I hadn’t, and started climbing through the drippy rain.
Halfway up, I stopped to rest. While Josh’s weather forecast might have been right about the rain, the temperature part was way off. The cool he’d promised was instead a hot heavy humidity that made it hard to breathe.
On up I climbed. And climbed. Slipping on the wet grass, clutching to it to keep from skidding back downhill, wishing Eddie had suggested I bring cleats instead of a book, climbing, climbing, head down and feet moving, thighs aching, lungs working hard.
At long last, the burning in my legs fell from a hot fire to a slow ache. I looked around and found I’d reached the edge of the hill’s top. Not the tippy-top, but close.
I squinted into the deep, dark forest. The thick cloud cover was making night fall before its time, and up ahead, thick canopies of maple leaves blocked out even that dusky light.
Well.
I looked back and saw the wet trail I’d just laid. Looked ahead to the murky forest. Shivered, then extracted the flashlight from my backpack. My dad had given me this LED light when I’d bought the houseboat, gravely telling me that no homeowner should be without one.
With a push of the thumb it went on, and I flinched as the bright light turned the night practically to day. Since I’d never used the flashlight before, its range amazed me. I danced the beam up the trees, down on the ground, and all around in a giant circle. “Wow,” I murmured, “this thing is awesome. Thanks, Dad.”
I aimed the light forward. Maple tree trunks a foot and a half in diameter. A few scattered bushes. The occasional tuft of grass. A thin carpet of leaves from last autumn. Moss. Not much else. Following a weeks-old quad trail through the woods wasn’t going to be easy. Or . . . was it?
Bouncing the light off the ground, I saw some rips in the pea green moss. Long rips that were in a direct line with the trail behind me. The rips curved, then faded to dents.
Well, there you go. Tracking wasn’t so hard; all you had to do was pay attention.
I took out my cell. Using one hand to shield it from the rain, I clicked off a few pictures, then followed the mossy trail to the very top of the hill. From here, I could see nothing at all except more trees. When the leaves were down, the view must be stupendous, but now there was nothing but green.
The trail wound around the trees, zigging for an occasional monstrous maple, zagging every so often for a large rock, zigging again for a fallen tree, but always trending in the same direction. South, I was pretty sure. Another thing Eddie should have suggested was to bring a compass. Not that I owned one, but I could have downloaded a compass app to my cell.
On through the greenish murk I went. Every so often I lost the trail and had to circle around to find it. Every so often I’d be fooled into following a deer path that would peter out to nothing, and back I’d go until I again found the moss dents.
At one point I stopped to drink some water and glugged down half of it before sense came into my brain. I didn’t know how much farther there was to go; drinking all the water now would be worse than dumb.
I capped the bottle and started walking again. Intent as I was on following the moss trail, I didn’t notice the bush with the very sharp thorns until I was in the middle of it.
“Ow!” The stinging pain flared up hot. Muttering to myself about the stupidity of city folk who like to pretend they know what they’re doing out in the woods, I used the flashlight to push the branch this way and that, trying to loosen its thorny grip. I stepped back, oh so carefully, gritting my teeth at the scratches, then came to a sudden stop.
There, right in front of my eyeballs, was a cluster of long threads. “Huh,” I said. Someone else had been caught by the clutching bush. And there, down at my feet, was another denting impression of quad tires.
A clue!
I wiggled my way out of the bush, then tucked the flashlight into my armpit, unzipped the backpack, and took out my cell phone.
Tempting though it was to pull off the threads and take them with me to dangle in front of the detectives, I didn’t want to mess with the chain-of-evidence thing. So I clicked off a few pictures, the phone’s flash lighting up the trees and sucking up battery power. E-mailing pictures to the detectives wasn’t as good as dangling, but it would have to do.