Here’s the facts – just the facts, Ma’am.

It was Saturday; 0730 hours to be exact.

I walked past my alma mater, Mixter Elementary School, which was shuttered at the close of the school year in 2010.

The grounds were empty as usual … even the playground paraphernalia was devoid of children.

And then I saw them.

Various items lined up like someone was about to take target practice:

a small paper bag laying on its side;
a few napkins;
a very large cinnamon roll sitting on a piece of waxy paper; and
a large Tim Hortons paper cup, 3/4s full of steaming black coffee.

No one was around.

This piqued my interest.

Who interrupted breakfast?

I swiveled my head around looking for the “owner” of the goodies, but there was no vehicle or bike in sight.

If it was “back in the day”, the next thing I’d look for was the Candid Camera crew watching my expressions and waiting to jump out at the appropriate time and yell “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

Er, … maybe Nature called and the person dipped behind a bush for a few moments.

My head told me to vamoose and get to my destination so I hurried along … after all, it was early morning and I had not seen a soul since I departed from my house.

Yet, uneasiness prevailed and, of course, I kept wondering about this little mystery as I wound my way along the walking paths at Council Point Park. People smiled, or waved, or uttered “good morning”, but no one stopped to chat me up so I just played the scenario over in my brain a few times, like any good sleuth would.

Well, what would Jessica do? … Jessica being Jessica Fletcher, the well-known amateur detective sleuth of Cabot Cove, in the T.V. series “Murder She Wrote”?

Hmmmmmmm.

Knowing I’d pass the schoolyard on my way home, I cast my doubts aside and decided it was all nonsense.

I finished up the path loops, left the Park and started for home. I glanced as far ahead as I could see from Pagel Street as I neared Electric Street and the schoolyard.

The set-up was still there!

Questions renewed in my mind.

Remarkably, the seagulls, with their radar for people food, did not stop and help themselves … to the cinnamon bun at least, the coffee not so much.

Query: what became of the person who left his oh-so-inviting breakfast intact in the parking lot at Mixter Elementary School?

Did his wife text or call him on his cell to advise she just went into labor and he dropped what he was doing, much like Hunter Mahan did?

Was he/she kidnapped just at the first sip of steamin’ brew or bite of savory cinnamon roll was about to be had?

Or was it just a kindly person who ate Timbits himself but left a tantalizing tidbit for the birds … (but coffee?).

Maybe it was an absent-minded maintenance person who now only occasionally services Mixter School and he came outside for a cigarette with his coffee and roll and he got called away?

Of course, my over-active mind has to sleuth this out, much like that abandoned bicycle chained to the tree on Fort Street several months ago.

I trek past here every day I go to Council Point Park so I will be curious to scope it out tomorrow.

Oh, just get over it Linda – it is another of life’s many mysteries …