# 119 MYSTERIOUS HAPPENINGS - Part I

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

It was seven in the morning. Hub was still in bed. I was having coffee when a knock came to the door. I looked out the window. No strange vehicles in the yard – but then, a second knock came. I went to the door and opened it. There stood a strange woman about 30 or 35 years old that I had never seen before.

The fresh trail of tracks in the yard told me she had come on foot. She said she was on her way to town to go to work when her car slid in the ditch. She asked to use my phone to call a tow-truck. I assured her that wouldn’t be necessary. Hub could probably get her out.

I invited her in to sit with me in the kitchen while we waited for Hub to get dressed. I suggested she might want to call work to say she would be late. She agreed. She dialed and talked to someone. But it didn’t sound like she was talking to her boss. She nodded assent to the receiver while she was speaking and said, “Yes, she should have taken the old truck.” That made me thing she was speaking to her husband or someone at her home.

But I didn’t give it a thought at the time. In our brief chat about children, pets, and country living, I found I instinctively and intuitively liked her. Trusted her. She said she was a newcomer to the area. Moved in last October. She tried to explain to me where she lived but there are many homes along that stretch of road so I asked her, “Who are your closest neighbors?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met any neighbors,” she replied.

“Well, no matter,” I said. “Now you know me. I’m not much for going out but I do enjoy company so feel free to drop by for coffee if you like.”

“That is so nice to hear,” she said. “I often want to go for a drive in the evening but I don’t know anyone so I have no place to go.”

By now Hub was ready to go and in no time flat, he pulled her car out and she was on her way. But when Hub came back he look puzzled. He said it looked like she had purposely driven into the ditch. No skid marks on the road or wayward tire tracks. The ditch, a short stretch of treeless gently sloping ground. A terrain that is not easy to find along our bush-scaped roads. As if she had picked a spot that would prevent damage to her vehicle. Now I was curious and went also to examine the tracks and I had to agree with Hub.

But that’s not all. The mystery deepens. When she walked to our place for help, she passed two other homes before reaching ours. Why did she not go to the closest house? Later when Hub and I were checking her car tracks we looked at her footprints. She hadn’t even paused or approached the driveway of the two other houses. And when Hub got her car back on the road, she turned around and headed away from town. She obviously was not on her way to work as she had initially said.

Now Hub is wisely intuitive about strangers, often more so than I, so I asked him how he felt when he spoke to the stranger. He found her likable, as I did, and disarming as well. And Dough-Gee Dog heartily approved of her from the get-go. And that hound dog can smell fraud, or derision, or deviousness as far away as a fresh rabbit or deer trail. But that doesn’t alter the fact that some of the things that happened this morning don’t add up and I need to have an explanation (even if I have to dream one up). There has to be some method to this madness.

Next post – Part II – FRAUD OR FRIENDSHIP. An analogy of what in the world was going on here. And, in the meantime, what do you think?