I Refuse to Believe It's Just My Imagination

It is time to convene a meeting of Mystery Inc., Encyclopedia Brown, Hercule Poirot, Jessica Fletcher, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Frank and Joe Hardy, and Detective Droopy.

Not only do I have pizza makers trying to scam my address, but I stumbled upon a crime in the making this afternoon. In my mind, anyway.

The Pony and I rounded our last curve on Daffodil Lane, our blacktop county road. We crested the hill just before our turnoff, and almost plowed into a stopped SUV. It was right where my sweet dog Juno had disappeared last week. There is no reason to stop in the middle of the road. The car crept forward. Stopped. Proceeded down the hill. Kind of indecisive-like, with the driver looking at me in his side mirror. I presumed he was thinking of stealing some mail from the house with a little half-circle drive that keeps its mailbox several feet off the blacktop. "You watch," I told The Pony. "That car is going to stop at our mailboxes."

It did! At the bottom of the hill, that SUV pulled in front of our mailbox row and stopped. We stopped behind it. Because we were actually going to pick up the mail from our very own mailbox, which gets delivered within an hour of when we arrived. "Do you want to get out now and walk up? Or wait until that car moves?" The Pony preferred to wait. That SUV sat there. The driver stared at me in the mirror. He whipped his ride sharp left, into our gravel road, and maneuvered it so he was going back up the blacktop hill. Yet still sideways on our gravel entrance. The Pony got out and pranced up to our mailbox.

SUV Driver called to him. "Does this gravel road go to 8906 Daffodil Lane?"

The Pony looked at him like he was crazy. "Um. I don't think so. The blacktop road is Daffodil Lane."

SUV Driver waved a white envelope through the window. "Do you know where 8906 Daffodil Lane is? I'm looking for it."

The Pony shook his head. "That's not Daffodil Lane. This is." He hoofed it back to T-Hoe and jumped in. SUV Driver started back from whence he had come. At least until we were out of sight. For all I know, he parked a few feet up the road and came back to raid fifteen mailboxes. I'm suspicious that way. Especially since our dear metal mailbox, EmBee, was raided for those two mail-order tubes of Clearasil a few months ago. And since we've had mail stolen two other times, though all we lost were bills and my back-to-school letter. There was even an article in the paper about a roving band of mailbox thieves in our area who had been grabbing outgoing mail, marking utility company names off the checks, writing in their own names, and getting them cashed! Which is just a whole lotta wrong going on right there.

Val trusts no one. The world conspires against her.

But seriously. What kind of person drives around with an envelope, looking for a mailbox to put it in? A person up to no good, I say. If you're going all the way to the mailbox, then go right to the door and tell the people what your letter says. If you got their mail by mistake, drop it in the mailbox at the dead-mouse-smelling post office. No need to waste gas driving the rural roads you are not familiar with. I would have given him the benefit of the doubt and suspected a process server, but a process server is not going to hang around a row of mailboxes with no house in sight.

The rottenness in Backroads is expanding exponentially.