Page 65 of I'm Yours

“No problem.”

“I’ll show you the video from last night then Sadie can show you the property damage.”

“Property damage?” Lee asks.

“It’s hardly property damage,” Sadie corrects. “It was a potted plant. No big deal.”

“We’ll make sure to go over everything, if that’s all right with you,” he tells Sadie.

After the sheriff watches the video on Dad’s phone, he scrubs a hand down his face and scrunches his eyebrows. “Hard to tell much from this. We don’t get a good look at his face and looks like he was wearing a face mask.”

“Right.”

“Doesn’t give us much to go on.”

“Maybe we can find something else when we go outside,” I suggest, frustrated that Sheriff Lee doesn’t seem to give a damn.

He shrugs, taking a drink of coffee. “That’s fine. Not sure how much it will help, though.”

I narrow my eyes and glance at Dad who’s doing the same. Sheriff Lee drains the last of his coffee and groans when he stands up, his knees popping under the extra weight he carries.

The chances of him making an effort are slim to none but I’m not about to let him leave without at least looking around first.

Sadie and I get our shoes on and the four of us go outside, starting with Mom and Dad’s place first. Nothing appears out of place and when I ask if he should dust for fingerprints Sheriff Lee looks at me like I have two heads. We walk around until I’m afraid Sheriff Lee is going to have a heart attack from the leisure walk and we go to Sadie’s backyard. The pot is still overturned, dirt spilled around it along with crushed flowers in bright oranges and pinks.

Small animal tracks, like that of a chipmunk, can be seen but there’s no denying the footprint in the center of the dirt where it looks like whoever knocked it over had tried to fix his mistake but thought better of it.

Sheriff Lee’s knees pop again and he groans when he bends down to get a better look.

“Looks like a footprint,” he says and I look to Dad who rolls his eyes. I want to make a sarcastic comment but refrain. Barely.

“It does. Like I told Sadie, looks like whoever tried breaking into Dad’s place probably ran through her yard and knocked it over.”

“Actually, you said ‘fled the scene’,” Sadie teases. She’s joking around but I don’t find it funny. If Dad’s motion detectors hadn’t scared him off, who knows if he would have tried breaking into her place next, only to find her there alone. The thought makes my blood boil. I want to demand that she stay with my parents until we find the guy. I know that’s a bit extreme, though.

“I was actually going to say it looked like he used her yard to flee the scene,” Lee cries out, excited that someone else used his term. He’s like a heavy set Barney Fife. Sadie buckles over in laughter and Lee’s chest puffs out as if he just conquered the world and solved the case. He dusts his hands off and says, “Well, my work here is done. Looks like a closed case. Whoever came around likely won’t be here again. Your motion detectors scared him off.”

“What?” Dad says, clearly irritated. I know this isn’t really about his own house. Sure, he doesn’t want someone breaking in but his concern is over Sadie and the risk that comes with her living alone. She might be strong and have the courage it would take for her to take someone on, but that doesn’t mean either of us want her to be put in that situation.

“Like Reed said, looks like the only reason the pot was broken was because he ran through here.”

Dad steps forward and I can hear him try his best to calmly say, “Not to argue with you, Sheriff Lee, but we didn’t call you over here worried about a broken pot. We were worried because someone was sniffing around both our houses. Lurking in the middle of the night.”

“Right but there’s no evidence of tampering or him trying to break in. There’s no crime in walking around.”

“On private property?”

“You know how it is around here.”

No. Actually I don’t. Lakeside is a safe place but it’s not like we’re completely crime free. Still, we typically don’t have to worry about strangers walking around our houses in the middle of the night.

“This a new thing in Lakeside since I moved away?” I ask, legs spread wide and my arms crossed over my chest. It’s a challenge for him to explain away his lackadaisical attitude about it.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t make me feel any better. “There’s been a few others, yeah.”

“Sheriff Lee, I mean no disrespect when I say this isn’t okay.”

“There’s no damage being done. No one has actually gotten broken into. Trust me, if it turns to that, we’ll step in but for right now, we don’t have anything else to go on. A footprint of what looks like a work boot is hardly helpful in Montana.”

---