Chapter 23 2025
The sheriff walks through the sweeping saw grass, thick and budding with new life.
In the past week, spring has sprung in all its glory.
It’s a magical time in Minnesota, a triumph of sorts, the harsh winter weathered another year and warmth and hope returned.
The pond is fully defrosted now, and ripples of current float across its surface.
As he walks, he thinks about his meeting with Heddy and the older Mrs. Reicher. The bracelet was a surprise, but the missing rabbit’s foot caused a far greater reaction.
His sister used to have a rabbit’s foot.
His dad gave it to her when she got her license, saying she could use all the luck she could get.
His mom scoffed and said it was everyone else in need of protection with Jan on the road.
His sister is a head-in-the-clouds genius so busy deciphering life’s mysteries she often forgets to pay attention to what’s happening right in front of her, including changing stoplights, braking cars, and nearby bicycles and people.
She left Moosewood at eighteen for Silicon Valley and never looked back.
They exchange a text now and then, a phone call on birthdays, and enjoy a holiday get-together every few years.
Grace is always nagging him to do more to stay in touch, and as he stops to take a sip of water, silently he promises that this year he’s going to follow her advice.
This case is affecting him. The reverend was only thirty when he died, and the sheriff can’t help but think about all the things he likely still wanted to do, having no idea how little time he had left.
A missing rabbit’s foot and a pond rife with rabbits. The connection is a stretch, but with so little to go on, the sheriff is grasping at every straw, no matter how thin.
Black Hollow Pond is not small, and walking its perimeter has taken him most of the morning. He wishes he had Maggie to keep him company. The old dog would have loved romping through the grass and chasing rabbits she had no chance of catching.
He wonders if Grace is right and if it’s time to consider getting another dog. Spring, a time of new beginnings, as his mother used to say.
He reaches the brick wall that surrounds the school and stops to take another sip of water.
Gaines Academy has been a part of Moosewood nearly since the town’s inception.
Richard and Anne Gaines brought their young family to Minnesota in the early 1900s, fell in love with the serenity of Moosewood’s forests and lakes, and bought nearly a thousand acres of land.
They founded the school shortly after, a place where their puritan morals would be taught to their ten children as well as the wealthy folk around them.
For the most part, the school and town don’t mix.
The school’s ten-foot wall with its black iron spearheads safeguard it from the outside world.
Every so often, a few rowdy teenagers escape and stir up trouble.
They’ll find a way to buy booze at Rod’s Liquor Store and get drunk, skinny-dip in the pond, toilet paper or egg one of their teachers’ houses.
Typical teenage stuff. Each time, the sheriff rounds them up and drives them back to face the formidable Ms. Bamford, who is a far more menacing threat than he is.
He puts his water bottle back in his pack and continues on, unsure what he’s looking for but glad to have something to distract him.
It’s likely the missing rabbit’s foot has no relevance, that the reverend either didn’t have it on him that day or that it fell out of his pocket and sank to the bottom of the pond.
Heddy didn’t think so. “He always carried it,” she said, and the older Mrs. Reicher nodded. “If his keys were there, the foot should have been there as well.”
The sheriff asked them why the rabbit’s foot meant so much to him, thinking it odd that a man of God would be so attached to a token of superstition.
“I never really understood it,” Heddy said. “He got it in fifth grade, and it was sentimental to him, like it represented a rite of passage or something.”
The older Mrs. Reicher’s lips pinched, a sign that it meant more than that but also that she wasn’t going to offer to explain.
His phone buzzes with the ringtone “We Go Together,” signaling a call from Grace.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey, yourself.”
Her voice sounds bright, bringing a wave of relief. He spent nearly the entire day yesterday pacing outside the closed bathroom door as Grace bravely dealt with the nausea of her latest round of chemo alone.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she says. “Where are you? There’s an echo.”
“The pond.”
“Well you need to come home. Belinda’s here.”
“At the house?”
“What other here is there?” she says with the same sass that made him fall in love with her.
“Why?” he asks.
“She says she felt like going for a drive, so she decided to bring what she discovered to you. I think it was her excuse to check on me.”
He hears Belinda in the background say, “And I wanted some of Grace’s cooking and got tired of waiting for an invitation.”
“On my way,” he says. “Love you.”
“Love you more.” She hangs up before he can get in the last word.
He climbs to the top of a knoll that forms the inlet of the kidney-shaped pond.
It offers a good vantage point of the shoreline.
Across the water, in the distance, he can just make out the town, and to his right are a smattering of houses that belong to some of Moosewood’s wealthiest residents.
One belongs to an ex-congressman, and another to Meryl Fairbanks, a former world-champion skater.
He walks down the other side to where a dozen rabbits nibble on a patch of clover.
“Well, hello,” he says.
The rabbits glance up, unconcerned, then return to their grazing.
He spies a flat rock near the water and notices the clover around it has been trodden.
Someone visits the spot regularly, which explains why the rabbits aren’t bothered by him.
He scans the saw grass for evidence of a path and notices a break in the blades a few feet from the wall.
He steps closer, and that’s when he sees the hole.
Perhaps three feet wide and a foot and a half tall, it’s easily large enough for a person to crawl through, even a man as large as the reverend.