Investigative Bloggerism

Val is no McGruff. But she is as tenacious as a terrier after a rat. In fact, Val likes nothing better than to pursue vermin of the two-legged, four-tired, mailbox variety.

This morning I braved the icy gravel to head to town and deliver my mom's valentine, which work and the weather prevented me from doing yesterday. Lookie here:
 

That's not water. That's ice. And you'll have to imagine me coming the other way, because I took these on the way home. It was just too dangerous to try snapping phone pics while careening out-of-control down an icy hill.

So...I got down to the county road, which was in considerably better shape, being blacktop, and I saw a curious sight. It was a car at our mailbox row, on the wrong side of the road, the driver rummaging around in a furtive manner. Being Val, I immediately limbered up right there in the driver's seat of T-Hoe, and began jumping to conclusions. My razor-sharp intellect dashed willy-nilly through my brain library, pulling out long narrow card catalog drawers, refining my suppositions as to why this car seemed out of place.

The car did not come out of our gravel road. It could not have gotten into that position at the mailbox row without considerable adjustment. There were no tracks in the road to suggest such a maneuver.

I have never seen this car up in our enclave.

The car was not dirty. No mud spatter. No road-salt spray.

The driver reached out the driver's window, then toward the passenger seat. I could not see well. The windows were slightly tinted. It looked like the driver was putting the mail inside something. Perhaps wrapping it in a jacket. Driver did this at least three times. And twice Driver appeared to lean over and look at me out the passenger window. I was just sitting there with my T-Hoe running, waiting for that car to pull away, to either go on up the blacktop road, or back up and turn and come up in my frozen gravel wonderland. I could have squeezed out onto the county road, but it was easier without that car in that position. I had my 4WD-high on, and it's hard to make a sharp turn.

I tried to pacify my vivid imagination. This was not the mailman. The mailman, even the substitute drivers, come from the other direction. That's how the route runs. Perhaps it was the free paper delivery person. Driver might have been folding a free paper and stuffing it in a plastic sleeve before jamming it into the wooden compartments of our mailbox row. Yeah. Surely that was the explanation. Darn it. Now I was going to get behind that frequent-stopper for two miles.

Just then, the car took off. I pulled out in a wide right turn and headed the same direction, towards town. Well, didn't that just beat all! The car did not pull over at the next mailbox. Nor the next. In fact, the car took off at a speedy clip. I could not even see the license plate, which was white with dark numbers, because it was in one of those tinted cover things.

The situation was getting curiouser and curiouser. It was like that car was trying to outrun me. I don't think so. I drive this road every day. I am aware of the nuances of the hills and gullies, curves and drop-offs. Detective Val tailed that car out to the lettered county road. Wow! That vehicle was moving. I put pedal to the metal. Perhaps I could discern that little white decal on the back window. Driver did not make it easy. I swear I was pushing 70 as we flew past the prison.

Aha! Driver chose my regular route past the bowling alley. At ten mph over the speed limit. I followed through the first roundabout. On the second, Driver made a break for the highway, heading south. And I got a glimpse. Driver was a woman with frosted, shoulder-length hair, wearing a neon green jacket. Good to know.

Something is fishy in Backroads. If I read in the paper that more mailbox thefts have occurred, I will have a description of the vehicle. It's not my mail I'm worried about this morning. It was way too early for today's mail, and I already picked up yesterday's.

I'll be darned if I allow a crime to go unreported on my watch.