Free The Treacherous Teddy by John J. Lamb Page A

said Tina.
    “But not why it was here last night in the first place. And here’s some more confusing evidence.” I pointed to the tire impressions.
    Tina squinted at the tracks. “So, whoever was on the quad-runner came here after it was raining.”
    “Yeah, but since I can’t find any shoe impressions, we can’t say for sure that he ever got off the ATV.”
    “Still, that means there was someone else on Everett’s land besides Chet and whoever was driving the Saab,” said Ash.
    “That’s how it looks,” I said.
    “I think we should see where the tracks lead,” said Tina.
    “Me, too. But you should probably also contact the state crime lab and have one of their techs come up here to make plaster castings of the tire impressions.”
    Tina frowned, and I knew she didn’t like the idea of asking for help from another agency. “Can’t we do that ourselves?”
    I shook my head. “We want an expert for this. I haven’t poured a casting in over seven years and I’m not even certain I remember the exact formula to make the stuff.”
    Tina used her phone to call the sheriff’s dispatcher and told her to notify the crime lab that we needed an evidence tech ASAP. Snapping the phone shut, she said, “She’ll call us once the lab gives her an ETA on the tech.”
    “I’ll go get the tape,” said Ash, as she turned and headed back toward the house. She returned a minute later with the roll of yellow tape and wearing a look of concern. “Tina, there’s a reporter from the Harrisonburg newspaper out there.”
    “Oh, great,” Tina muttered.
    “And if the paper has found out about this, then you can bet the TV news will be here any minute,” I said.
    “I guess I’d better go talk to them.” Tina sounded as if she were agreeing to undergo a root canal without anesthetic.
    “And we’ll tape off the road and try to follow the ATV tracks,” said Ash. “You can catch up when you’re done.”
    Tina trudged back to the house along the edge of the road while Ash and I blocked off the road with crime scene tape. We began to follow the road toward the quarry. It was a slow journey. I stopped every few feet to take another photo of the tracks in the mud.
    The road curved around the base of the hill and then seemed to head straight for the Blue Ridge Mountains. I heard what sounded like rushing water from somewhere ahead. It was still fairly breezy, so my first thought was that it was simply the wind blowing through the pine forest. Then we saw the abandoned sand quarry ahead, and I realized I was wrong.
    Ash gasped. “Lord, this is beautiful.”
    Even allowing for the rusting metal derrick and the ancient vegetation-covered bulldozer, the place was beautiful. The quarry had been located at the bottom of the Blue Ridge, right next to a rushing mountain stream that looked as if it belonged in a beer commercial. You could still faintly see where the digging equipment had hacked into the side of the mountain, but over the intervening fifty years since the plant had ceased operation, trees and other vegetation had reclaimed the slopes. The forest was slowly erasing the obscenity.
    “Why would you put a freaking quarry here?” I asked.
    “Because Everett’s daddy could make money selling sand. Folks had a different attitude about the land back then,” Ash replied.
    “Well, thank goodness times have changed.”
    I took some photographs of the quarry, and then we resumed our pursuit of the muddy tracks. The dirt road ended abruptly at a large patch of gravel near the base of the metal platform, but Ash found where the tracks resumed close to the hill. It looked as if the ATV had gone up a narrow and rugged trail that climbed the hill while paralleling the stream.
    “I think you’d better let me go on from here,” said Ash.
    “I’m afraid you’re right, honey. One false step—and that happens to me about every seven seconds—and I’d be whitewater rafting without the raft,” I said. “Here. Take the camera