“Well, yes,” she said. “Some of them are reasonably responsible, and some are just horrible. Who would know?”
“Stanley Denton,” I said. “The PI. I’ll ask him when I see him.”
“I’ll ask him now,” she muttered.
She strode off before I could tell her that he was gone for the day. I wondered if her reaction would be typical. Clearly, she was upset by the possibility that someone with ties to the hated mining industry had managed to infiltrate the brigade.
I wandered through the camp, feeling at loose ends. Should I go out and join the emu hunt? Go over and keep Miss Annabel company? Or maybe see if the library was open so I could resume my research?
I ran into a woman sitting in front of her camper, knitting so rapidly and with such a thunderous expression on her face that I couldn’t help thinking of Madame DeFarge in A Tale of Two Cities. Was this woman recording everything that happened here in camp? If I could read the pattern of her stitches, would I learn the truth about Weaver’s murder?
Actually, I suspected this might be Millicent, creator of the emu turtleneck, which made her no less ominous a figure.
“Morning,” I said.
“What do you think?” She held up her knitting, which turned out to be a scarf, already three feet long, in a hideous shade of puce. “Isn’t this a lovely purple?”
What did I think? That she needed to know the difference between lavender and puce. That far from being lovely, it was the sort of puce that reminded you that “puce” was French for “flea.” That if I were going to spend all that time knitting, I’d at least pick a more attractive color. And should I mention that she appeared to have dropped a few stitches about a foot from the start of the scarf, creating a hole that was already unraveling? Probably better not to. At some of the snootier craft shows, where knitters would be insulted if you called them that instead of “fiber artists,” I’d occasionally met avant garde practitioners of the art, who considered dropped stitches and even giant gaping unraveled holes an important, organic part of the creative process. With my luck, she’d turn out to be one of those.
“Very distinctive,” I said aloud. “Distinctive” was my new buzzword, since far too many people these days knew my mother had taught me that if I couldn’t say anything nice I should fall back on “interesting.”
“I decided to switch to scarves because I sensed a certain resistance to the effort involved in helping the emus put on the sweaters,” she said. “But they can’t complain that this is too much trouble, can they?”
I had a sudden vision of Clarence Rutledge trying to wrap a scarf around an emu’s neck and being dragged through the woods with his feet hopelessly entangled in a woolly puce death trap.
“Ingenious thinking,” I said. “Ingenious” was another of my new substitutes for “interesting.”
As I planned, she mistook this for a compliment. She beamed.
“Do you knit?” She began rummaging in a basket at her side. “I have several pairs of needles and plenty of yarn.”
“Alas, no.” I held up my bandaged hand. “And with this injury, I’m afraid it’s not a good time to learn.”
I decided it was time to make my escape, in case she’d been experimenting with one-handed knitting and was in the mood to share. Besides, even thinking of my hand made me realize it was throbbing slightly.
And I was so tired from several days of inadequate sleep that I decided to go back to our tent and rest. Maybe even nap.
I was about to head for our tent when I saw two motorcycles approaching the camp, escorting a truck with a horse trailer attached. I stayed to watch as Dad and two of the motorcycle wranglers unloaded another pair of emus into the pen.
“Clarence here?” one of the wranglers asked.
“He’s making a run down to the sanctuary with the other emus,” I said.
“Then I’ll give these two a quick once-over,” Dad said. “To make sure they weren’t injured in transit. Is Thor here? It’d be nice to know their names. So we can put them on their tags.”
“I think he’s down at the police station,” I said. “As a witness,” I added, seeing the startled look on Dad’s face.
“Oh!” I could see that Dad was torn between his desire to hear about the case and his duty to the emus.
“I’ll tell you all about it when you’re finished with the birds,” I said. “And unless you think the emus are really attached to their human names, I’ll think of names that fit in with Cordelia’s trinomial system. Are they male or female?”
“One of each,” he said. “A mated pair, we think.”
“How about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and … Martin Van Buren?”
“Perfect!”
I watched as Dad checked the emus out. I figured he’d want to hear all about what had happened here at camp, so I decided to hang around and make him happy.
But when he let himself out of the emu pen—carefully checking the gate latch—and walked over to where I was standing, he didn’t immediately pepper me with questions.
Instead, he gazed mournfully at the back of Miss Annabel’s house.
“How’s she taking all this?” he asked.
“Miss Annabel? I think she’s frustrated,” I said. “She’s not happy with how the chief handled her cousin’s murder, and I think that makes her a little pessimistic about the chances of solving this one.”
He nodded.
“Why don’t you go over and talk to her?” I asked.
“She’s a recluse,” he said. “What if she doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“She talks to me,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she talk to you? You’re family. Even closer family than me.”
“I’m still getting used to it all,” he said.
I realized that he wasn’t quite staring at the back of Miss Annabel’s house. He was staring at the remains of the shed.
“Used to what?” I said. “The idea that your mother was living less than an hour away all this time and never once contacted you? The fact that if Grandfather had started this quest a year earlier, we might have gotten to meet her? Or maybe the feeling of guilt that you occasionally find yourself wishing that Miss Annabel had gone out to tend the generator that night instead of your mother?”
He glanced up with a surprised expression.
“All of it,” he said. “And especially the last. I feel guilty about it, but I couldn’t help thinking that.”
“So did I at first,” I said. “But not so much since I got to know Miss Annabel. You should meet her. She’s pretty cool, actually, in a sharp, suffer-no-fools-gladly way. I imagine I can see something of Cordelia in her.”
He nodded. But he still looked glum.
“Hey, maybe it’s a good thing we never met Cordelia,” I said. “Because I’m having a hard time calling her anything but Cordelia. I look at her photo and I don’t think ‘Grandmother’ or ‘Grandma’ or ‘Granny.’ Just Cordelia. I’m not sure a lady of her generation would like that very much. I’d get my knuckles rapped.”
He smiled at that.
“It took a while with your grandfather, as I recall,” he said. “We managed, eventually.”
“And got sucked into all his projects,” I said. “Before Grandfather showed up, I don’t think I ever aspired to appear on television bottle-feeding baby porcupines.”
“And until he showed up, I never managed to get myself arrested.” Dad made it sound as if this was a singular accomplishment, instead of a dangerous misadventure while Grandfather was trying to break up a dogfighting ring.
“What do you suppose Cordelia would have us doing if she’d been the one to survive instead of Annabel?”
“Rescue the emus, for sure,” he said. “And solve Annabel’s murder. I’m starved—let’s go see what’s for lunch, and you can tell me all about why Thor’s suddenly such an important witness.”
In the mess tent we spotted Dr. Ffollett filling several carryout boxes. I waved, but he scurried off.
“Strang
e man,” I said.
“Dr. Ffollett?” Dad said. “Seems nice enough.”
“You’ve had a chance to meet him, then,” I said. “Talk to him. He probably knows a lot about Cordelia. I get the feeling she was more than a patient. Talk to him, doctor to doctor.”
“I already tried,” Dad said. “He’s not very talkative. And it turns out he’s a dentist.”
That didn’t sound like Dad. He’d never shown any particular aversion to dentists. In fact, he and my childhood dentist had been kindred spirits. Mother had finally banned him from accompanying me to checkups after he and my dentist had traumatized me with a particularly graphic discussion of whether trench mouth or scurvy had done more to affect the course of world history.
“What have you got against dentists all of a sudden?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Dad said. “But—a dentist. Their dentist. And also a friend. It must have been so difficult for him. Poor man.”
I was puzzled for a moment, and then I got it. Cordelia had been identified by her dental records. I hoped that didn’t mean that Dr. Ffollett had had to go down to the morgue and—
I shoved the thought out of my mind.
“He could probably use a little sympathy, then,” I said. “I offered them meals from the mess tent as long as their power is out. He’ll probably be back at suppertime. Why don’t you lie in wait and see if you can chat him up then?”
“I will.” Dad looked cheerful. “There are some fascinating new developments in dental science that I could ask him about.”
Grandfather and the wranglers returned shortly afterward with another eight emus. I wasn’t sure which made Grandfather happier—the inventory itself, or the news that they had now rounded up over half of the emus. The whole crew was in high spirits over lunch, and I seriously considered going out with them for the afternoon’s hunt. And then decided to stay on at camp. I spent much of the afternoon sitting near the emu pen in a lawn chair, pretending to read a book and actually keeping an eye on the emus and Miss Annabel’s house.
And then shortly before dinnertime, a hugely pregnant volunteer who’d been having a cup of tea in the mess tent suddenly shrieked that her water had broken. Most of the other volunteers were men, and evidently none of the few women present had much experience with childbirth—all of them froze in panic when she made her announcement.
“Someone find Dad,” I ordered. “And does anyone know where her husband is?”
Everyone else in the mess tent fled, presumably following my orders, leaving me alone with a woman who had either failed to read the “Labor and Delivery” chapter of What to Expect When You’re Expecting or had forgotten everything it said. Fortunately Dad appeared a few minutes later, and after a brief exam, he and Clarence bustled her off in Clarence’s station wagon.
“When you find her husband, bring him along,” he said, as he was getting the woman settled in the backseat.
“Bring him along where?” I asked. “I don’t remember seeing a hospital in Riverton.”
“Richmond,” he said. “VCU Medical Center. Her obstetrician will meet us there.”
“Richmond?” I exclaimed. “That’s at least an hour away. Maybe two with traffic. And it’s rush hour, so there will be traffic. Can she last that long?”
“It’s her first.” He was climbing into the car with his patient. “We should get there in plenty of time. And if we don’t—I’ve delivered plenty of babies, and Clarence can help.”
“Clarence is a vet,” I protested.
“She’s an animal lover,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”
Just then a Riverton police car pulled up, lights flashing.
“Ready!” the officer called out.
“See you in Richmond!” Dad waved at me before turning to his patient.
The police officer started his siren and took off, faster than I’d have thought possible on a dirt road. Clarence fell in behind him, keeping pace with surprising ease.
Dad was loving it, I knew, but I hoped the police escort was overkill.
I didn’t manage to locate the husband until over an hour later, near the top of Pudding Mountain. I drove him down to Richmond—fighting our way through heavy traffic—kept him from getting lost in the maze of the medical center, and steered him into the delivery room only half an hour before we all welcomed little Blake Langslow Rutledge Parker into the world.
I grabbed a quick dinner in the hospital cafeteria, enjoying the air conditioning but wondering resentfully what gourmet fare they were serving back at Camp Emu.
Then I set out for the long drive back to Riverton. Dad and Clarence were staying on for an hour or two to check on Fred, the poisoning victim, but I was in no mood to tarry. As it was, Michael and the boys would be asleep by the time I got back to camp. And while I had cell phone service in Richmond, where the power was back in most neighborhoods, evidently the towers near Riverton were still out, so I didn’t even get to wish the boys goodnight over the phone.
“What a wasted day,” I muttered to myself, more than once, on my long drive back.
Riverton was dark when I finally reached it, at nearly ten o’clock. Was there anything darker than a small town in a power outage? I counted the buildings that had any lights on as I drove through town—seven of them, including the police station.
The narrow, tree-lined road to camp was even darker.
But as I approached the little enclave containing Miss Annabel’s house, I realized that some lights were on there.
One in Miss Annabel’s house.
And one in Mr. Weaver’s.
Chapter 26
In fact, not only was there a light on in Weaver’s house, it was moving around. It started out upstairs, then grew dim briefly before reappearing downstairs on the left-hand side of the house, where Weaver’s home office was.
I drove past Miss Annabel’s house and parked along the road, just out of sight. I made sure my headlight was in my pocket. And my cell phone, although odds were it would still be useless if I needed it for anything other than snapping a picture of whatever was going on.
I walked quickly and quietly until I was in front of Weaver’s house. The light was more stable now, staying in the same place, although it still twitched and wavered slightly.
If I were an intruder intent on rummaging Mr. Weaver’s office, and had brought along a flashlight to do so, I’d put it down in some convenient place—like on one of the shelves—so I’d have both hands free for my work. But if I were wearing one of the LED headlights that were so popular here in Riverton …
I crept up to Weaver’s door, trying to be quiet without looking furtive. The moon gave enough light to keep me from stumbling. The crime-scene tape still barred the door. I ducked under it and found the front door unlocked.
Inside, I paused for a few moments to let my eyes adjust, though there was enough light coming through the doorway of the office to let me see after a second.
Miss Annabel was sitting at Mr. Weaver’s desk, reading a sheet of paper.
I tiptoed forward with my hand on the switch of my own headlight. When I was in the doorway, I pressed the button.
“Good evening,” I said.
Miss Annabel was a cool one, I’ll give her that. She barely started when the light hit her—just looked up and raised one hand to shield her eyes from my headlight.
“Either call the cops on me or stop shining that thing in my face and help me.”
“Since the cell towers still seem to be down, calling the cops isn’t an option,” I said. “I could drive back into town and get them, but by the time they arrived, you’d be back in your own house and it would be your word against mine that this ever happened. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing?”
“Searching Weaver’s papers for clues,” she said, looking back to the paper she’d been reading. “Investigating. Since I’m still not sure the police will bother.”
“When the police do this, it’s investigating,” I said. “When you or I do it
, it’s called burglary. Have you found anything interesting?”
“Not really,” she said. “The police took his computer, or I could see what’s on that.”
“Without power?” I said. “And for that matter, are you sure he even had a computer? I don’t recall seeing one when I was here last night.”
“You could be right,” she said. “Anyway, his papers are pretty boring. He’s got every mutual fund statement he ever received and every nasty letter to the editor he ever sent, but not much else. No hobbies, for example.”
“Maybe mutual funds and writing letters to the editor were his hobbies,” I suggested.
“Evidently.”
“What were you hoping for?” I asked. “A tell-all diary? ‘June second. Six whole months since I murdered my annoying neighbor, and the police still suspect nothing. Mwahaha!’”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Someone disliked him enough to kill him. I can certainly understand that. But who? Don’t killers ever write threatening letters to their intended victims these days?”
“Not if they have half a brain and ever watch TV cop shows,” I said. “I thought you were feeling better about Chief Heedles, now that you know she agrees with you that Cordelia was murdered.”
“She hardly spent any time here,” she said. “I’ve been watching. Only an hour or two.”
“Maybe she was planning to come back.”
“I hope she does.”
“And finds traces that you and I have ransacked the house? That should go down well. And what if you do find something incriminating?”
“If I find anything incriminating, I’ll tell you, and you can figure out a way to see that she finds it herself,” she said. “Are you going to help me or stand there arguing?”
“I give up,” I said.
We spent the next hour searching Weaver’s papers, and then the rest of his house. About the only even slightly interesting thing we found was the twin to the candlestick that the killer had used to make his unsuccessful arson device.
Meg Langslow 17 - The Good, the Bad, and the Emus Page 26