Mortaine's Blog

Edit: Whoops. Turns out it was the previous Saturday, the 9th. While I was at the East of Eden conference, dozens of miles away, and John was home alone. I hope he locked the door!

On Saturday, one of my favorite grocery store clerks was murdered. She was pregnant and a really, really sweet person to everyone she met. She was either Russian or French– John and I can’t agree on her accent– and has always been very nice to us.

She was killed about 2 blocks away from my house, probably up past the graves (there are several grave markers to identify the site of the Love Creek Slide, many years ago).

I’m really glad I locked the front door Saturday night before I went to bed.

And now I think: did I see anything odd? Did I hear anything odd? I don’t think so, but I definitely felt a warning go off in my head Saturday night before I turned in. I was already 3 floors away from the front door and crawling into bed when I thought “I think I left the door unlocked– I should lock it.” Went downstairs and found it unlocked, as I remembered. Locked it and went to bed, thinking nothing further.

Trust your instincts. Any other night, I might not have gone downstairs and back up again just for the front door lock. After all, anyone seeking to cause mischief in my house is pretty much in for an uphill climb.

Trust your instincts.

I had fallen asleep on the sofa between about 6 and 7 PM, then did the scrapbooking, half with the TV off and half with it on. I had cheese and crackers for dinner, but wasn’t terribly hungry and didn’t eat anything else. I’ve definitely seen a few “characters” on Love Creek this weekend, though– a few who I know are locals, and at least one duo who were definitely not, though it’s hard to tell. But they looked, honestly, like gang-bangers from Watsonville. It’ll probably turn out that they’re totally harmless, and it’s some drug-addled meth addict who done her in. We have a few such in the mountains here, as well as more than our share of registered sex offenders.