The End of The Road (14 page)

We had a good dinner followed by a very casual, relaxed evening full of conversation and background music.

I took Stretch upstairs and went to bed just before eleven, knowing I should be up early for the next morning’s drive to the Anchorage airport in order to catch my flight. It would get me to Homer at just after one o’clock to pick up the car I had left at the airport and make a quick stop for a few things at the grocery store on the way home.

Alex and Jessie weren’t far behind me in retiring, for I heard them come up as I was drifting off and was thinking that running away from home had been a good thing to do, and that this place and these friends were just what I had needed.

We were all up fairly early that Sunday morning.

I packed up and brought my small bag downstairs and set it by the front door, ready to take to the car. My reservation with Grant Aviation was for just after noon, so I knew I had to leave Jessie’s by nine to have plenty of time at the airport in Anchorage to return the rental car and check in for the flight. Luckily the items I had picked up on my shopping spree, along with the books I had been unable to resist, all fit easily into the bag and I would have little to carry once there.

We had a quick breakfast, said our good-byes with hugs and promises to get together again soon, and I was on my way as planned, waving out the car window to Jessie, Alex, and Tank, who were still standing on the front porch of the house to see me off.

It had evidently snowed in Eagle River and Anchorage as well, but the plows had been out on the Glenn Highway, so the drive was easier than I had expected. Without his ride-along basket from which to watch the world go by out the window, Stretch lay on the seat and took a nap for most of the trip, but periodically stood up on his hind legs to look out and check the passing scenery.

In just over an hour we had driven through Anchorage and arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. I turned in the rental car, took my baggage in a handy cart, and, with Stretch on his leash, made my way to the terminal to check in for the short flight home.

It’s interesting how your mind turns homeward at the end of a trip. While I waited for the time to board the small plane, I found myself thinking of what I would want or need to do when I arrived back in Homer. I retrieved a notepad from my purse and made a list of what I wanted to remember to pick up at the grocery on the way home and remembered that I should also stop at the post office to check for mail. Between items, I hoped my answering machine would not be as full of the voices of people with questions about John Walker as I was afraid might have been left while I was away. I made up my mind to either ignore the machine completely or simply check and erase them all without returning the calls unless it concerned something else.

One good thing that running away from home had done for me was to give me a better perspective on that situation. I hadn’t let Trooper Nelson know I was leaving, so I hoped there hadn’t been anything more he needed to talk with me about. Probably I should give him a call, I decided, but made up my mind to let it wait until the next day.

As I sat awaiting the boarding call, Stretch at my feet, I found myself looking around carefully to see if the woman who had been on the flight to Anchorage was anywhere to be seen. She was not. Very possibly, I decided, it had been my imagination and she hadn’t really been following me at all. That was certainly feasible, wasn’t it? Putting thoughts of her fir mly out of my mind, I considered instead just how nice it would be to be back in my own cozy house again and returned to the list I had been making.

In just a few minutes boarding was announced. I put Stretch in his carrier and walked across the tarmac to the plane, where I once again took a rear seat and settled in for the short flight.

The day was overcast, but we left most of the snow behind in crossing the Kenai Peninsula and I could see as we landed that there was very little in Homer, and what there was wouldn’t last long. Since our weather is almost always warmer than Anchorage’s, it didn’t surprise me, but I was glad that I wouldn’t have to scrape a lot of ice and snow from my car before driving it home. Patient as only a machine can be, it had waited for me where I had left it in the parking lot in front of the terminal in a sunny spot, so it was bare of snow.

With my luggage in the backseat and Stretch happily ensconced once again in his basket, I pulled out and headed for the grocery as planned, then aimed the car for home, back in my town and pleased to be so, ready for some quality time in my own place.

What I anticipated and what I got turned out to be completely different things!

I pulled into my driveway, parked, and lifted Stretch down so he could go off to take care of business while I pocketed the keys and retrieved my baggage from the backseat of the car. By the time I approached the door, he was waiting, having scampered up the steps. Before I could reach out with the keys I had pulled from my coat pocket, he nosed at the door and without further assistance it swung open, allowing him inside and surprising me into frowning astonishment. I knew I had locked that door securely, as always, before I left.

Setting my bag down on the step, I cautiously pushed the door open wider and looked in. It was fairly dark inside, as I had, as usual upon leaving for any length of time, pulled closed the drapes that cover the sliding doors to the deck on the opposite side of the dining area after carefully locking them. But I noticed that one side was pulled askew, as if someone had moved it to look out. So, before investigating further, I reached to the wall beside the door and switched on both the kitchen and hallway lights.

What met my inspection was not what I had left at all.

After setting the grocery bag on the kitchen counter, I quickly went around turning on every electric light and pushed back the drapes. This let me see clearly that someone had spent time in my house.

While I am not the world’s most meticulous housekeeper, I do like to have things in their places as much as possible, keep the floors clean on an as-needed basis, wipe the dust off surfaces that collect it, and wash all the windows spring and fall.

As I toured the kitchen, dining, and conversation areas I could find nothing broken or removed, but a number of things had been noticeably moved from where I had left or kept them. The plant that lives on the dining table, for instance, was not in the middle as usual, but off center and closer to the far end. My canisters were no longer pushed back against the west wall on the kitchen counter under the cupboards, but were arranged neatly along the far end with their backs to the dining area. A large frying pan that I use so seldom I had almost forgotten I owned it and haven’t taken out in months was propped in the dish drainer beside the sink. A book I had been reading and left on the sofa now occupied a corner of the fireplace hearth, not turned over with pages spread to keep my place, but closed neatly. The television set was not in its place, angled toward where I usually sat to watch it from the sofa, but had been rolled back a bit and turned toward a chair several feet away.

There were other things that caught my attention as I made a more careful inventory of the place. Nothing seemed to be missing or broken, just out of order—moved to fit another person’s preferences.

Stretch, satisfie d to be home, had gone across the room and was lying on the rug next to that hearth, as always, and was watching me move about the room with interest, having no idea that anything was wrong. I left him there and made a determined examination of the rest of the house, upstairs and down.

Someone had been in my house and evidently for some period of time. Whoever it was had stayed awhile—long enough to examine or use and move all the things I had noticed, but had left them undamaged and neat enough that they had expected no notice.

Maybe!

Or could this have been done with intent to concern the only person who would detect such insignificant details?
Me!
If that were the case—then the remaining question was
why?
And, of course,
who?

Across from the fireplace seating area is the door that leads to a small room in the northeast corner of the downstairs that my Daniel and I had used as an office and that I still keep for that purpose. There I found less care and more intent in a search by whoever it had been. Papers that I had neatly sorted and placed in piles of things I needed to keep or attend to were now scattered across the desk, as if someone had been searching for something in particular. What? One deep drawer that held filing folders was open maybe half an inch, but nothing in it seemed out of place.

There are three phones in my house. One sits on the counter between the kitchen and dining areas, with the answering machine attached. Another is upstairs next to my bed, and the third is on the desk in the office. The red light on the answering machine had been blinking furiously when I passed it, but I had expected that and meant to ignore it for the time being.

I left the office, collected my traveling bag, and went upstairs. There I found more personal evidence of an intruder.

Two pillows on my bed were not in the positions in which I had left them, one on top of the other, but had been plumped up and placed separately at the head of the bed. The bedcovers that I had thrown back when I got up on the day I departed had been pulled up neatly with the top edge of the sheet smoothed down over the top edge of the blanket. I pulled the covers back to look at the sheets, and it was not my eyes but my nose that told me someone had slept in my bed, for a faint whiff of an unfamiliar perfume floated up in my face.

Though it was not a particularly unpleasant scent, it was one I did not recognize or could identify as worn by anyone I knew.

I sneezed.

With that sneeze I was suddenly not anxious but furious!

With angry hands I yanked the bed clean of sheets, blanket, pillowcases, and mattress pad. I gathered them all up, took them out of the room, and tossed them down to the foot of the stairs.

Before following them, I went into the bathroom across the hall. There I found more evidence of intrusion. My toothpaste was not in the small cabinet above the sink where I kept it, but lay on the edge of the sink beside a faucet.

Angrily I tossed it immediately into the wastebasket.

The shower curtain that I only pull across on its rod to keep water from splashing out had been left pulled across, not pushed back into folds at the head of the tub as I would automatically have done. A clean bath towel and washcloth that had not been in the bathroom when I left, but had evidently been rummaged from the linen closet in the hall, had been neatly hung from the shower curtain rod as well. They were now dry, as were the tub and the sink, so whoever had used them had been gone for at least a day—long enough for its dampness to evaporate.

They followed the bedcovers to the bottom of the stairs, along with all the other towels and washcloths that had been in the bathroom.

I followed them down.

After gathering up and separating the items, I stuffed half, the sheets, pillowcases, and all the bathroom towels and washcloths, into the washing machine in the hallway closet, poured in not just detergent but bleach as well, and started the machine, leaving the second load, blanket and mattress cover, to follow as soon as possible.

Stretch is no dummy. He picks up on my moods, but I am seldom angry. So, as I took care of tossing in the laundry with annoyance and just a hint of fear beginning to surface, he had detected that something was wrong and come trotting across the room. Without a sound he stood next to me, looking up with a quizzical cock of his head.

It broke my anger.

“Ah, lovie. What would I do without you?” I told him as I reached down to pick him up and carry him to one of the dining chairs, where I sat down, placed him on my lap, and gave him several reassuring pats.