by JM Addison
*
Just after 7:30 that evening, Dell found the driveway to the house in Ashbury. He pulled in and found the house dark. He went to the door and knocked. The house seemed vacant. He tried the door but found it firmly locked. Funny that Mara never showed up here. Where could she be?
He got back into his car and sat and thought a minute. In the dark he could make out the shapes of other buildings on the property. It looked like a garage or a carriage house lay at the end of the driveway. To the left in the field behind the house he could make out the shape of a Barn. He flicked on his headlights which shone directly on the garage, but it seemed pretty well locked up as well.
He started the car and was about to pull the car into the turn around when he noticed the ruts throughout the back yard. He got back out of the car and leaving the headlights on, retrieved his flashlight from the trunk. He walked ahead and found a bunch of broken glass scattered in a small area of the drive. He couldn’t tell if it was from a recent break or if it has been there a while. He walked the path of the tire tracks through the yard. He noticed a lot of convoluted tracks on the dirt drive on the other side of the yard which seemed to eventually lead off into the field.
It had started to rain as he arrived in Ashbury and it had rained earlier as well, so the tracks on the dirt drive must be fresh or they would have washed away more. It obviously was not used by any farm equipment. From what he could tell the farm fields were just overgrown and wild anyway. People just don’t go tearing through the backyard in their cars, especially in November, without a good reason. If it was Mara, the reason may be that she was fleeing with her life, again.
Now that he had suspicion of foul play, he could probably enter the house. As a police officer he should have no legal trouble even if he didn’t have jurisdiction here. At first he searched for a key but finding none, he tried the front windows that faced the porch. No surprise they were locked with the approaching winter weather just around the corner. He walked around the back of the house and found a back door. In spite of what people may have heard about picking locks, it simply was not that easy to do. However, the door fit the latch rather loosely and he was able to bend his driver’s license around the door jam and slide the latch back. A credit card was too thick and rigid.
He entered the house and switched on the lights.