Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery

Chapter 2

I jolted straight up in bed, my heart pounding in my chest, the vision burned into my eyes. The dead man had been lying on his blanket of dark brown oak leaves, their crenelated forms lacing around the edges of his body. Then his glazed eyes had narrowed into focus, his head had turned, and he had stared right at me.

I could feel it, still, the power of his gaze, the pleading and desolation in his eyes. He had not wanted to die. He had so much still to share, to tell the world, and he had been cut short. I knew it with every cell in my body.

It took a few minutes before my breathing slowed, before I could blink into awareness of my surroundings. A gentle glow eased in around the double-shades that kept the room as dark as possible. I often worked late into the night, with the website maintenance tasks I handled from my home office, and the only way I could get ample sleep was to keep my bedroom as dark as a crypt. Glancing at my clock, I found it was nearly noon.

I pushed aside the heavy comforter and wearily pulled my yoga pants from the shelf, along with a robin's-egg blue top. I knew from years of experimentation that if I did not do my yoga session right when I got up that it would quickly become lost in the whirlwind which was my day. Email messages would flash urgently on my screen, software would crash, and a myriad of other problems would keep me engaged until I glanced out my window and realized the sun was, yet again, easing its way up over the horizon to signal a new day had begun.

I padded my way down the stairs, poured myself a tall glass of water, then unrolled my lavender mat before the sliding glass doors of my dining area. The view looked across my back deck and out over the tree-ringed yard. I gave thanks again to the life path which had brought me here. My neighbors' homes were barely visible on either side through the dense trees, and beyond the back yard the forest ran for a half-mile before it came up on Route 146. My quiet corner of the world was lush with wild turkeys, inquisitive chipmunks, and even the occasional deer.

I began my routine. First some gentle twists, loosening the ligaments, and then into tree-pose, the one-legged stance that Masai men used for hours when watching over their grazing animals. I stared out at the elderly oak tree, balanced, and let my mind go. The dark hole in the tree's center was where the local squirrel family raised its young. I recalled the early summer morning when I had been enjoying my routine on the back porch. I had watched their little heads peer eagerly from the dark recesses before streaming out, one after another, to explore their world.

A flash of color awakened me from my memories. A red-tailed hawk eased serenely across the center of the yard, pulling up with a careful wing adjustment to land in a nearby maple. I smiled, admiring his beauty, while also feeling the familiar twinge of worry for the many birds which came to my bird feeders. I sometimes felt as if I were putting a buffet out for the hawk as well as the smaller birds. And yet I could not bring myself to take down the suet, thistle, or sunflower seeds. Plenty for everyone, hawks included.

The sun salutations were next, and, as she always did, my striped cat Juliet came to take advantage of my helplessness while I held downward facing dog. She was nearly fourteen now, and I could still remember the snowy morning I had found her on my back stoop, plaintively eating bits of suet I had dropped while filling the feeder. She had been rail-thin and shivering. I fed her outside for the day, thinking she was a neighbor's cat, but soon my concern increased and I had taken her in. I had put up signs, called the local vets, and talked with the neighbors. They told me this happened all the time. "City folk" from Worcester, tired of their pets, abandoned them in our woods thinking the domesticated animals would instantly turn into mouse-hunters and live a gloriously free life. Instead, most ended up being eaten by coyotes and raccoons.