Page 17 of Fatal Witness

“Try to get some sleep,” Morgan said just before they hung up.

Sleep was all but impossible, and after fighting the bed most of the night, Mae gave it up at six and got up. Being awake and dressed wasn’t much better. After checking on her kiln, she thought about mixing the glazes, but Mae was too excited to concentrate on measuring out the ingredients. All she wanted to do was pace the floor.

At eight, she grabbed her mesh bag and staff and set out forthe old poplar trees on the side of the ridge. A walk would calm her down. Even better if she found a few morel mushrooms for dinner Sunday.

She passed by a thicket with a path tunneled into it. Too small to be used by deer but big enough for the coyotes she sometimes heard at night. She took a deep breath, inhaling the different scents—pines, a hint of sassafras from the heartleaf plant buried under the brown leaves of winter, the decaying leaves themselves ... this was just what she needed to keep her mind off Danielle’s arrival.

Mae had been so afraid her granddaughter might not want her life upended. She’d prayed hard that wouldn’t be the case ever since Mark brought it up. She checked her phone, thinking Mark might’ve heard from Danielle. Mae had checked MapQuest on the distance, and it was only a six-hour drive, even with stops. Maybe Danielle had changed her mind about waiting until Sunday and was arriving today.No service.

She might as well enjoy her time in the woods. Sunlight filtered through the spring leaves as Mae used her staff to steady herself on the climb, glad the poplars where the mushrooms grew were just ahead. Lately, she had tired easier and sometimes got a headache. Probably her blood pressure like her cardiologist Dr. Wexler had said last week, even though she’d disagreed with him.

She should rest a bit before she looked for the morels. Mae settled against the trunk of a huge poplar and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face. Spring had broken out all around her with wild rhododendron in full bloom. Overhead, blooms filled the poplar trees. This was her safe place, and she would never sell her land.

Her great-nephew, Ben, would have to wait until she was dead and gone before he got his hands on her property. And if Dani Collins was Danielle, he wouldn’t get it then.

To chase away those thoughts, she stood and used her staffto rake away dead leaves from around the poplar. She quickly spied the coned shape of a morel growing in the rich soil and stooped over and twisted it off. Fifteen minutes later she had over a dozen of the prized mushrooms that brought over twenty dollars a pound in town. Not that these were going anywhere—she had plans to batter and fry these if Danielle agreed to join her for dinner tomorrow.

Her cell phone rang once, startling her, and she fished it out of her pocket. Her heart skipped when she saw Mark’s name. But the call had failed. It was a wonder it rang at all. Maybe he’d heard from Dani Collins.

There were more mushrooms, but they would wait for another day. Going down the hillside was harder on her knees than climbing up, and that headache was back. When the house came in sight, she stopped to check her phone. Yes! Mark had left a message. She punched the play button.

“Where are you, Mae? Callme as soon as you get this.”

She tried to decipher his tone ... He didn’t sound excited. More like worried. Mae winced. She’d forgotten to text him that she was going up on the ridge. He’d probably called to check on her and got worried when she didn’t answer. Mae hated getting old and having to let people know where she was and what she was doing. Oh, she knew it was because Mark cared, but still...

Mae approached the steps to her back porch and froze. The door was a quarter of the way open. She hadn’t left it that way.

She jumped when something crashed to the floor. Someone was in her house. Mae backed away from the steps.Call 911.

The floor creaked inside the house. She knew every sound in her house, and that creak came from the hallway to her office. Another creak indicated the person was walking to the front of her house. Anyone bold enough to break into her house in the middle of the day would have no problem taking care of her.

She needed to hide, but where? The thicket she’d seen earlier.It was only a short walk up the hill. Mae dialed 911, but when the operator answered, she hesitated. If she said anything, the person in her house would hear her. Instead, she turned and used her staff to hurry along, veering off the path when she came to the thicket. Maybe she could make the call once she was hidden.

What if there were varmints in the brush? They wouldn’t be as dangerous as the varmint in her house. With her head pounding like someone had taken a hammer to it, Mae pushed away thoughts of what might be in the maze of weeds and bushes, got down on all fours, and crawled inside. Why did her head feel like the top was going to blow off? Maybe if she rested.

9

It was Mark’s weekend to work, and he’d intended to go by Mae’s before he started his patrol, but a 7:00 a.m. call from dispatch about a missing five-year-old sent him and Gem on the other side of the county. It was now almost ten.

Kids. Mark couldn’t keep from chuckling as he pointed his SUV toward Eagle Ridge. The boy claimed that he didn’t know how he ended up in a closet sometime in the night, and since his parents said he was a sleepwalker, Mark believed that part. He wasn’t so sure about the boy’s claim that he’d slept so soundly, he’d missed his parents’ frantic voices. Mark figured he’d heard them and assumed he was in trouble and stayed hidden.

He was halfway to Eagle Ridge when his cell rang. Alex.

“Where are you?”

Alex never wasted words, but the urgency in her voice sent a cold chill through him. He gave his location. “What’s going on?”

“Mae placed a 911 call at 9:28 and then didn’t respond to the dispatcher’s questions. When Hayes got there at 9:40, the back door was open, but she was nowhere to be found.”

Mae had made the call almost thirty minutes ago. “How did Hayes get there so fast?”

“He said he was in the area.”

The young deputy was a go-getter, usually patrolling one end of the county to the other on his shift. “Did he check her pottery studio?”

“He did. She wasn’t there either.”

“Something’s bound to be wrong, then. She wouldn’t go off and leave her door open, not even if she was just going up on the ridge.” He floored the gas pedal. “We’ll be at her house in fifteen minutes or less.”

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