The Good, the Bad, and the Emus

by Donna Andrews

  “No problem,” I said. “And sorry about the noise. One of those guys who came running through your yard just now to check on me will be driving into town to get the police. It looks as if your next-door neighbor has been murdered.”

  “Weaver? Murdered?”

  She didn’t look happy. I suppose that should have been a relief. But as she absorbed the news, her expression changed from surprise to dismay.

  “Damn,” she said. “Just damn. Contrary to the conclusion Chief Heedles will probably jump to, I didn’t want Weaver dead. I just wanted him punished for what he did. Properly, legally punished. And for your information I’m on record as a staunch opponent of the death penalty.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t see you as a prime suspect for this,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But I bet Chief Heedles will. And why don’t you see me as a suspect? You don’t think I’m spry enough?”

  “I think you’d have done a better job of it,” I said. “The killer rigged up a clumsy device intended to start a fire after he was gone. I’m not sure if it would have worked even if I hadn’t come along. If he’d done a better job, Chief Heedles would be dismissing this as a tragic accident. And for that matter, however clumsy the device was, it would have had a lot better chance of working if the killer had bothered to shut the door behind him.”

  “That door’s always been tricky,” Annabel said. “Unless you pull it tightly shut and wiggle the knob a bit to make sure the latch engages, it will drift open eventually. Could be five seconds later, or five hours, but eventually. And in case you’re wondering how I know, Cordelia lived there for the first decade of her life. We used to spend as much time over there as here. I know that door as well as my own.”

  “And Mr. Weaver never had it fixed?”

  “He may have tried,” she said. “A lot of people have tried, but the fix never lasts. The old folks used to say there was a ghost doing it, but I don’t hold with that. Sit down. Would you like some lemonade? Or I could heat some water for tea—I’ve got a little propane stove.”

  “Don’t go to all that trouble,” I said. “Lemonade will be fine.”

  I sat down in one of the white wicker porch chairs and stared out over the lawn. I could see a pale shape near the road that was Rob’s white shirt, and the occasional firefly. The faint sounds of a few people singing over in Camp Emu were almost drowned out by the frogs and crickets.

  “Here.” Miss Annabel handed me a glass. “It’s lukewarm, but at least it’s wet.”

  We were still sipping in silence when I caught the first sounds of a siren approaching.

  “I’d better get over there,” I said.

  A police cruiser pulled up in front of Mr. Weaver’s house, closely followed by a blue sedan. A uniformed officer got out of the cruiser and began talking to Rob. I strolled over to where Chief Heedles was getting out of the sedan.

  “Meg can tell you,” Rob was saying as I reached them.

  The chief turned to me.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “I was driving by on my way back to camp,” I said. “And I noticed that Mr. Weaver’s door was hanging open. And I was a little worried about him. He’s elderly.”

  She stood there, poker-faced, while I told my story. She looked without apparent interest at the photos I’d taken on my phone and nodded absently when I offered to send them to her. Actually, I did see the ghost of a smile when I explained about using my car’s emergency button to summon help without leaving Mr. Weaver’s door unguarded. But when I’d finished, she sighed.

  “So you think someone whacked Mr. Weaver over the head with this missing chunk of kryptonite and rigged up this complicated booby trap for some reason.”

  “Kyanite, not kryptonite,” I said. “I wasn’t really thinking of it as a possible murder weapon—I doubt if it’s big enough to do much damage. I just noticed it was gone. And as for why they rigged up the candle, obviously they were hoping to make it look like an accident. Poor Mr. Weaver, finding out the hard way just why fire departments keep telling us to use battery-powered flashlights and lanterns instead of open flames in a power outage.”

  The chief glanced over at Miss Annabel’s house. Annabel had gone back inside but there were lights on downstairs. Probably several of her little LED lanterns.

  I could hear more sirens approaching.

  “Miss Annabel’s up?” she said.

  “She is now,” I said. “I’m afraid I probably woke the whole camp when I sounded the alarm. I think she was upstairs getting ready for bed when I arrived. There was only one small light on in her house, upstairs.”

  Chief Heedles nodded.

  As we watched, Miss Annabel’s downstairs light went out. The chief sighed.

  “I’ll need to talk to her eventually,” she said. “But it can wait till tomorrow.”

  Two fire engines pulled up in front of Theo Weaver’s house.

  “I’d appreciate it if you stayed around for a bit,” Chief Heedles said. She didn’t wait to see me nod—just strode over to meet the firemen.

  I glanced around. Rob was standing on the sidewalk, near the border between Annabel’s house and Mr. Weaver’s, with a couple of other people. I decided that I could use the company. As I approached, I realized that one of the others was Stanley Denton.

  “Weaver’s dead?” he asked.

  “Murdered,” I said.

  I told them what had happened, thinking as I did so that this was efficient, telling them both at once. Stanley needed to know what had happened because it probably affected the case he was pursuing for us. And Rob was dying to know what had happened, and would save me the trouble of telling the rest of the camp.

  “Damn,” Stanley said when I had finished.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I should go back to camp and tell them what’s up,” Rob said.

  He loped off through Miss Annabel’s yard. I could see that there were already a few people from Camp Emu peering over the fence to see what was going on. They seemed excited to see Rob heading their way.

  Stanley and I watched as Chief Heedles and the fire chief conferred and then went into the house together.

  “You think she’s getting the fire chief’s opinion on whether the evidence matches my story?” I asked.

  “Or maybe just checking to see that there’s no danger of a fire starting up,” Stanley said.

  Another car pulled up and a bearded middle-aged man in khakis and a polo shirt strode swiftly into the house.

  “Medical examiner, most likely,” Stanley said.

  We watched for a few minutes as firemen and police officers went into the house and occasionally came out again.

  “Interesting turn of events,” Stanley said. “And yes, I know your mother always calls something interesting when there’s nothing nice she can say about it. I meant it in that sense.”

  “Damn,” I said. “And here I was hoping Weaver’s murder would be the last little bit of evidence you needed to solve Cordelia’s case.”

  “Does Chief Heedles know about your relationship to Cordelia?” Stanley said.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I’d tell her, then,” he said. “It might have nothing to do with Weaver’s murder or Cordelia’s, but you never know. It might be a fact she needs.”

  “And she’ll find us a lot more suspicious if we don’t tell her and she finds out later,” I said.

  “That too,” Stanley said. “So—let’s look at the possibilities. First, maybe Weaver was murdered out of revenge—because someone thought he killed Cordelia.”

  “In which case, Annabel is her prime suspect, and I might be second on her list. Along with the rest of my family.”

  “It’s a long list,” Stanley said. “Your family, a few other people out at Camp Emu who knew her, at least by reputation, as the instigator of the emu rescue, and at least half the town. Cordelia was well loved. She was cantankerous and bossy and drove people crazy,
but they loved her.”

  He was making her sound a lot like Grandfather.

  “Chief Heedles will be working her way down that list,” I said aloud.

  “And as I said, it’s a very long list, and she doesn’t have a lot of manpower to help her,” Stanley said. “So it could be a while before she looks beyond the revenge theory at any other possibilities.”

  “Like the possibility that whoever killed Cordelia also killed Weaver,” I said. “I hope the similar M.O. will make her consider that early on. But why would anyone kill either of them, much less both?”

  “Perhaps Cordelia’s killer had reason to suspect that Weaver could finger him,” Stanley said.

  “Then why wait six months?”

  “The killer only recently realized that Weaver knew something?” Stanley suggested. “Weaver said something indiscreet, maybe?”

  “Or maybe it’s our arrival that set the killer off,” I suggested. “The killer saw Weaver talking to a PI and a nosy bystander and started to worry.”

  Stanley nodded. I could tell he didn’t like the possibility that his investigation might have anything to do with Weaver’s murder. I wanted to suggest that if anything had triggered this new murder, it was all the fuss and bother caused by Grandfather and his brigade that were to blame, not anything he had done. But he knew that.

  “Or maybe the killer’s someone in Blake’s Brigade,” I suggested. “Someone who only realized since coming to Camp Emu that Weaver’s house isn’t vacant like the ones across the street and there might be a witness to his crime?”

  He smiled at that.

  “Anything’s possible,” he said. “So, theory one, Weaver was killed out of revenge. Two, he was killed because the killer was afraid he witnessed Cordelia’s murder. Three, they’re completely unrelated.”

  “I’m not buying that.”

  “Or four, they were both killed for the same reason. Whatever that is. Like they both saw something or knew something.”

  Chief Heedles had come out of the house, talking with the bearded man we’d pegged as the medical examiner. They shook hands briskly, and the man went back to his car. The chief looked around, spotted us, and headed our way.

  “Evening,” she said, nodding to Stanley. Then she turned to me. “Is there anyone who has a complete list of who’s been at your camp?”

  “Do you mean the people who have been camping there?” I asked. “Or everyone who was out there tonight?”

  “Half my town’s been out here tonight.” The chief sounded just a little bitter that so many of her citizens were complicating her life. “But I know who lives here. Need to find out who else is around.”

  “Right,” I said. “The best source would be a woman named Sherry Smith, who makes sure everyone who shows up signs a photo release, so the film crew doesn’t have to worry about bystanders wandering into their shots. I can’t swear that her list will be one hundred percent accurate, but she’s pretty diligent.”

  “Were they filming tonight?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “If they did, Sherry will probably be lying down with a cold compress over her head, because there’s no way even she could have gotten releases from everyone who showed up last night.”

  “She gets releases from the locals as well?”

  “If they hang around camp long enough for her to spot them, yes,” I said. “Anyone who appears on camera, even in the background of a shot, they like to have a release, just in case.”

  She looked at her watch.

  “I know it’s late,” she began. “And people in the camp have probably gone to sleep…”

  “But you have a murder to investigate,” I said. “And you want to talk to Sherry and the film crew and maybe some of the other people on Sherry’s list. I’ll meet you back at camp, by the mess tent. Or where the mess tent used to be—I’m not sure they managed to get it set up again.”

  “Can you give me a ride there?” Stanley said. “I hoofed it over the fields to get here, and it’s been a long day.”

  Stanley and I got into my car. The chief was already waiting for us in hers, so we led the way.

  We rode in silence for half a minute or so. Then, as we approached the turnoff for camp, Stanley spoke up.

  “Is there any chance that the killer went thataway?” He was pointing along the road that continued past the entrance to Camp Emu, and then, a half a mile farther on, led into the neighboring county.

  “I don’t even know that he or she left by this road,” I said. “Whoever did it could be hiding in the woods. Or out in Camp Emu. Or he could have gone back to town.”

  “Understood,” he said. “But did you pass any other cars on your way out here from town?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “No,” I said. “Not a single car. I remember thinking how peaceful it was. And the candle booby trap couldn’t have been burning all that long.”

  “Good,” Stanley said. “So if the killer fled by car, he had to have gone thataway. Into the adjacent county.”

  “Why is that good?” I asked. “Chief Heedles won’t have jurisdiction there.”

  “But the State Police would,” he said. “I might be able to use this. To get Heedles to involve the State Police. Or, if they hear about it, they might step in whether she likes it or not.”

  I nodded. I realized that I no longer distrusted Chief Heedles. She seemed well-meaning and honest, and not as biased as Miss Annabel seemed to think her. But at the same time I didn’t have much confidence in her ability to solve what was, for Riverton, a veritable crime wave. And she didn’t seem like the kind of person who found it easy to ask for help. That was one of my failings, and I’d gotten pretty good at spotting others who shared it.

  “Maybe it’s just as well I hadn’t yet spent a lot of time investigating all the brigade members,” Stanley said, as I parked my car in a space as close as I could find to Michael’s and my tent. “Since Heedles will be doing it.”

  “Did you find out anything interesting so far?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “You’ve got one volunteer who has a criminal record, but I checked him out pretty thoroughly.”

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  “Chained himself to a tree as part of an environmental protest,” Stanley said. “A very peaceful protest, as far as I could tell, but he and his fellow protestors happened to come up before a very unsympathetic judge.”

  “Still, we should keep an eye on him,” I said. “Which one was it?”

  Stanley pulled out his notebook and read me the name. It didn’t ring a bell, but I pulled out my notebook to jot it down anyway.

  Chief Heedles was parking near us.

  “Nothing else suspicious?” I was forcing back a yawn, and since Stanley seemed to be doing the same, I wasn’t expecting anything exciting.

  “Nothing else even remotely interesting,” he said. “Unless you count it interesting that one of your volunteers is a retired mine company executive.”

  Suddenly I was very wide awake.

  “Mine company executive?” I asked. “Which one.”

  “Guy named Williams,” Stanley said.

  “Jim Williams?”

  Stanley nodded.

  “Weird,” I said. “Jim Williams was the one who’d brought me the core drill sample.”

  “Not so weird,” Stanley said. “It would probably take someone in the industry to recognize that. Look, it’s been a long day. If Chief Heedles wants me, I’ll be in my trailer.”

  He looked so beat that I merely nodded. And made a note to open the subject again in the morning. Yes, it made sense that anyone in the mining industry would know a core drill sample when he saw one.

  Then why had Williams told me he’d learned about core drilling samples on one of Grandfather’s previous expeditions? If I’d known his background, I’d have given all the more weight to his identification of the core drill sample. He hadn’t just failed to tell the whole truth—he’d lied.
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  I should have asked Stanley what mining company Williams had worked for. Of course, if it had been Smedlock Mining, he’d have said something.

  But what if Williams had worked for Amazonite Unlimited? I was so tired I couldn’t remember if I’d told Stanley about Anne Murphy’s discovery. If I hadn’t, and if he hadn’t yet uncovered the relationship between Amazonite Unlimited and Smedlock …

  I’d talk to him tomorrow.

  “Isn’t that the police chief?” Clarence Rutledge appeared at my elbow. “Is something wrong? What’s with all the commotion over there at the houses?”

  “There’s been a murder,” I said. “He wants a list of everyone here in camp. Do you know where Sherry’s camped?”

  “Clipboard Sherry? Yeah.”

  The chief joined us, and Clarence led the way. We passed the film crew’s trailers, and I pointed them out to the chief as we passed.

  “They’re usually still up at this hour,” I said. “I guess they decided on an early night for once.”

  “I’ll try to wait till they’re up,” she said.

  “Sherry’s in that small RV.” Clarence was pointing to the RV in question.

  “That’s small?”

  “For an RV.” Clarence shrugged.

  I still thought “small RV” was an oxymoron. You could make two Twinmobiles out of the thing.

  Chief Heedles had to knock on the RV’s door several times before Sherry appeared, uncharacteristically disheveled and blinking sleepily. I’d have expected her to be one of those people who snap awake instantly able to do long division in their heads, and the fact that she wasn’t seemed strangely reassuring.

  “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” the chief said. “But I’m told you’re the best person to ask for a complete and accurate list of who’s here in camp.”

  That jolted her awake.

  “Has one of our volunteers been causing a problem?” she said.

  “There’s been a problem,” the chief said. “I don’t yet know if it’s one of my townspeople causing it or one of your volunteers. I could use that list.”

  “Of course.” She fidgeted briefly with the thick blond rope of hair that hung down her back, as if hoping it would curl up on its own into its usual French braid. Then she disappeared back into the RV and appeared almost immediately carrying the familiar clipboard.