I allowed myself a little smug smile. For once, I was ahead of him.
Overnight dew and persistent drizzle let droplets fall onto my head whenever I brushed against a twig.
Cosmo stepped gingerly, clearly not liking the dampness, until I offered to pick him up and carry him.
"That is not necessary," he said.
"Good. Because I'd much rather you keep an eye on the ground, and I take the higher levels."
"What exactly are we looking for?"
"Well..." I stopped, adjusting the hood of my parka so it offered me protection from branches and thorns. "The person who stole the foxglove probably did not approach openly from the street, right?"
"Possibly."
"Which leaves two options. Either they cut across from Jake's place, or they came from the woods and the lake. Considering that my aunt hasn't cut back any of this wilderness for ages, it stands to reason that there might be a few broken branches, trampled plants, or whatever, because there is no proper clear path."
"Smart thinking," he said.
"Thank you. But if we don't find anything, it's more likely that the person used the path from Jake's. Which brings us to your mysterious stranger." I paused. "Nope," I said. "Not a single twinge as I mentioned them."
"That's not to be expected unless you really hit on something new," he told me. "Otherwise, you’d be stumbling all over the place whenever you repeat something, which, considering that you're a human, is most of the time."
"You're such a bundle of joy," I said. "Somehow, you were a lot nicer when you didn't talk to me."
"I'm trying to help you. I'm your mentor. I need to point out these things to you."
His paw touched my leg. His huge eyes begged me to forgive him. I relented. “I understand your point.” I marched on for a few steps. Then I spotted something.
"Yes!" I punched the air, careful not to hit a tree branch. "I just found the very first broken twig!" It hung at an odd angle, and a few inches away, there was another one. I couldn't tell for sure how old these breakages were. But I snapped pictures from all different angles.
Then I used a pair of pruning shears to cut off the second branch and slipped it into a Ziploc bag.
"Here's more," Cosmo said.
His tail twitched furiously.
I bent to inspect his find—a thorny twig belonging to berries, I assumed. I took more photos.
We moved on, further and further into the wilderness that my aunt's backyard had evolved into. We found traces that somebody had pushed their way through, right up to the fence.
"What now?" I asked the cat. "Shall we go over and look on the other side, or shall we move on towards Jake's place?"
We decided on the second option. At least now we knew that somebody had been here uninvited.
"Darn," I muttered the moment we set foot on the part of Aunt Violet's garden that led towards Jake's.
More broken twigs and a trampled plant or two meant that either we were dealing with one intruder—one who came from Jake's place and escaped towards the forest and the lake, or the other way around—or we were dealing with two different people.
"At least we have collected some evidence," I said.
I stowed away the Ziploc bags in the kitchen downstairs. I decided against the potting shed because it only had a very flimsy lock.
I had just finished washing my hands and brushing my muddy nails when the doorbell rang. Who could it be?
The answer was not what I wanted to hear.
Chapter twenty
