Chapter 3 #2
But I was too much of a chickenshit. Right now, Ben seemed okay with staying just friends, and I was worried that if I gathered enough courage to take that step and things didn’t work out, then he’d head back down to Southern California…and someone else I cared about would be out of my life.
“Okay,” I said, knowing I sounded way too cheery. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.”
“‘Eight-thirty,’” he echoed, and headed for the door.
And, like a chickenshit, I only smiled and sat there while he left.
But he was back again the next morning, right on time. Even though I’d told him he didn’t need to bring anything, he had a container of gorgeous strawberries in one hand and gave them to me while wearing a slightly sheepish expression.
“These looked too good to pass up,” he said, and I only smiled.
“You went past the farmer’s market.”
“It was right on the way.”
Every Wednesday morning in July through September, the far western end of Main Street was shut down so we could have our farmers’ market.
People came from miles around to sell their wares, and I could see why he hadn’t wanted to walk past those strawberries.
They looked and smelled absolutely heavenly.
“I think I can make room for them on the table,” I said with a grin. “Do you want coffee, or maybe some fruit juice?”
“Coffee, please,” he replied.
Since it had just finished perking in the old-fashioned cowboy pot on the stovetop a few minutes earlier, it was hot and fresh.
I got a mug out of the cupboard and set it down on the counter, then filled it up.
Ben and I had spent enough time together by now that I knew he liked to drink it black, so I didn’t have to ask whether he wanted any milk or sugar.
He thanked me, then blew on the surface of the French roast to try to cool it down a little. An amused glint entered his hazel eyes, and he said, “So…have you peeked?”
“Peeked?” I said, my tone all innocence.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
I allowed myself a chuckle before saying, “No, I haven’t even opened my laptop this morning. I had a feeling that if I checked my email, I’d be too tempted to go to the web portal and see if our cameras recorded anything good.”
Ben laughed outright at my comment, as I’d thought he might. But I wasn’t exaggerating — I truly had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to resist temptation and would start poking around in all the footage the cameras had caught the night before.
“And with that in mind,” I said, heading over to the big six-burner stove and the bowl of pancake batter that waited on the counter next to it, “I think I should get our breakfast ready.”
Luckily, pancakes didn’t take too long to make.
While I was busy at the stove, Ben washed and hulled the strawberries and put them in a bowl I asked him to fetch from the cupboard.
Within ten minutes, we were sitting down at the table at the far end of the kitchen, the one next to the big window that overlooked the backyard.
At that time of year, all the flowers were in full bloom, cheerful splashes of red and pink and purple, white and yellow and orange.
My grandmother hadn’t wanted the garden to be formal, and that was why there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the color scheme.
It was beautiful, though, especially with all that color blazing away with the dark backdrop of the forest only a few hundred yards in the distance.
For a minute or two, Ben and I were both quiet as we spread butter on our pancakes and poured syrup, and spooned up some strawberries from the little bowls where I’d served them.
As I was getting ready this morning, I’d thought about making bacon as well but had decided that would seem as if I was trying too hard.
The meal was supposed to be a simple one, just a chance to get some food in our stomachs before we sat down to look at the footage.
Which might contain absolutely nothing of any interest, I reminded myself.
There was always the chance that our vandal might have taken the night off or had simply decided to go to work in a section of the forest not surveilled by our trail cams. It was a big place, after all, covering thousands of acres, and although so far it seemed as if the portal only appeared where there was enough open space to accommodate it, that was more a theory of ours than an established fact.
“Great pancakes,” Ben said after he paused to drink some more coffee.
“I can’t take credit,” I replied. “They’re my grandmother’s recipe.”
A few amused crinkles showed around his eyes. “Maybe you used her recipe,” he said, “but you’re the one who made them.”
All right, he had a point there. And it wasn’t as if I was a terrible cook or anything close to it. Not too inspired, but if you gave me a recipe, I usually could follow it and produce a decent result as long as it wasn’t too complicated.
Needless to say, Julia Child’s beef bourguignon recipe probably wasn’t in my future.
For just a second, the background hum of the refrigerator faded out. The clocks on the stove and microwave went dark before they started flashing the dreaded “12:00.”
“There it goes again,” I said.
Ben’s brows drew together. “Did it flicker last night?”
“Really briefly, as I was getting ready for bed,” I replied. “But that time, the power interruption wasn’t long enough to mess with the clocks the way it just did now.”
For a second or two, he didn’t say anything. Still frowning slightly, he said, “We should probably be trying to track the outages — you know, see if everyone’s experiencing them at the same time or whether all these little glitches are occurring in completely random locations around town.”
“What would that prove?” I asked.
He picked up his fork. “I’m not sure, but if they’re simultaneous, then that would mean the anomaly is affecting everything equally.
If it hits someone on this side of town but not the other, then it would seem as if the instability isn’t constant, and it’s more a matter of timing than anything else. Or maybe location as well.”
I wasn’t sure which was worse. However, if everyone was affected at the same time, at least it would be easier to pin the problem on something purely mechanical rather than some kind of weird shockwave bouncing around and causing havoc wherever it was closest.
All this was yet another reason why I was glad I’d bought the trail cameras with storage in the cloud. I wouldn’t have to worry about my cellular connection glitching at exactly the wrong moment, or even having a brownout fry an SD card just as I was putting it in my laptop.
Maybe that last scenario was a little improbable, but I still figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Well, I know this one hit at eight forty-four,” I said. “So when I’m at work later today, I’ll try to ask around and see if anyone else experienced the same thing.”
“Good idea.”
We returned to our food after that, both of us eating quickly because I could tell we wanted to get breakfast over with so we could take a look at the footage the cameras had recorded the night before.
If they’d even gotten anything.
Ben and I put our dirty dishes on the counter next to the sink and headed into the living room, where my laptop waited for us on the coffee table.
I sat down and reached for it, quickly entering my password so we could get down to business.
He settled himself on the sofa as well, just close enough that I was all too aware of his presence, of the dark shadow on his chin that signaled he’d gotten ready so fast this morning that he hadn’t bothered to shave, a faint clean scent that I guessed was either his soap or his shampoo…
the way he seemed so reassuring, so real, a reminder that I wasn’t in this alone, even if nothing remotely romantic had passed between us.
Yet.
Since the cameras we’d set up were from two different manufacturers, I had two different web portals to navigate.
I chose the one where the videos from the oak grove were stored, figuring I needed to start somewhere, and since the carvings in the clearing where Victor Maplehurst had met his fate were so fresh, maybe the vandal would have gone back to make some more markings in the place where it seemed he might have started out.
However, those videos didn’t reveal anything more interesting than a few deer who moved through the grove a little after midnight, as well as a couple of owls who flew low over the meadow grass, clearly looking for prey.
“So much for those cameras,” I remarked as I navigated away from the oak grove feed.
“That’s fine,” Ben replied. His hazel eyes were alight with interest, even though we hadn’t captured anything of note. “Let’s check the ones from the next clearing over from the place where the fresh carvings were made.”
Since that had been my thought as well, I only nodded and maximized the window from the other camera manufacturer.
Just like with the other feed, this one didn’t show a whole lot except the trees moving faintly in the night wind and the low swoop of another owl before it disappeared into the deeper woods.
And then….
A tall figure dressed entirely in black entered the clearing.
I thought it was probably a man based on his height, but since the person’s face was covered, I couldn’t say for sure.
At once, he — or she — moved to the tallest coast redwood, made a few quick movements that I guessed were probably him scratching an Ogham letter into its bark, and then moved on to another one.
“Interesting,” Ben murmured.
Well, I supposed that was one word for it. “Suspicious” was the one that came to my mind.
Something about the stranger’s movements, the swiftness and precision in the way he went from one tree to another, carving his markings into their bark, made me think he was a professional of sorts.
This definitely didn’t look like careless vandalism to me, even though I couldn’t conjure a single reason why someone would be on a mission to scratch Ogham letters into various trees in the forest.
“Feels military to me,” Ben remarked after we watched in silence for another moment, and I turned to look at him.
“What makes you say that?”
“The gear he’s wearing,” he replied. “If it’s a man at all, but that doesn’t look like a woman.
Also, the way he’s moving. Very efficient, no wasted movements.
I have no idea why he’s doing what he’s doing, but that doesn’t sound like someone going around carving symbols into a tree just because he felt like it. ”
Since I’d had about the same impression, I only nodded. “But why would the military have someone carving Ogham letters into those trees?”
“I have no idea,” Ben said. “But we need to find out.”