Meg Langslow 17 - The Good, the Bad, and the Emus

by Donna Andrews

  She appeared to be studying me for a few moments. Then she nodded briskly.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that. Hang on a minute.”

  She stood up and walked out of the room. I sipped my lemonade and enjoyed my view of the Biscuit Mountain pottery display. And then I noticed that her back door was open, with just a screen door between her and any possible intruders. Was she being careless or was I being paranoid?

  “Here’s the place where we got the first generator.” Annabel returned and handed me a business card. “Cordelia checked out several vendors and picked this company. And if they don’t sell the same generator anymore, we want one very similar. If she were here, I bet she’d agree that there was nothing wrong with the generator until her killer meddled with it. Our requirements haven’t changed.”

  “How about one change?” I suggested. “I bet you could have a switch installed so you could turn it off from the house. And if this company can’t do it, I know one that can.”

  “I wanted that in the first place,” she said. “But for some reason she objected. No idea why. A switch right here in the utility room. You tell them that.”

  Just then another chain saw started up, not far away. Miss Annabel started slightly.

  “You’d think I’d be used to that by now,” she said.

  She drifted over toward the back window and stared out.

  “Must be costing your grandfather a fortune to hire all these people,” she said.

  “Except for the film crew, I think they’re all volunteers,” I said. “Bird lovers, animal lovers, environmental activists.”

  “He just waves his hand and they show up to work for him for nothing?” She shook her head in disbelief.

  “I’m not sure it’s entirely due to his magnetic personality,” I said. “There’s also the fact that they’re all dying to be on television.”

  She laughed softly at that.

  “Well, I wanted to stir things up and make things happen,” she said. “They always say be careful what you wish for.”

  But she continued to watch the camp with a worried look on her face.

  “I’ll make sure Grandfather gives everyone strict orders to stay on the other side of your fence,” I said.

  “It’s not the ones who follow orders that I’m thinking about,” she said.

  Clearly she was worried. And as I walked back to my car, I realized it was contagious. Now I was worried about the horde of people we’d invited into her back yard. All those people camped so close to that flimsy screen door.

  When I got back to camp, the chain saws were still going. I hunted down Caroline. She was scribbling away on a legal pad and looked busy.

  “Mind if I interrupt you for just a minute or two?” I asked.

  “Of course not.” She looked up with a smile on her face, but I could tell her mind was still on whatever she’d been working on and that this wasn’t the most convenient moment.

  “This may sound like a stupid question,” I said. “But how do the Blake’s Brigade people find out about Grandfather’s projects?”

  “Same way you do, I suppose.” She glanced down at her legal pad and then forced her eyes up again with a bright smile.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I usually hear about them at the dinner table when he’s staying with us or with Mother and Dad. ‘By the way, I’m going to Australia tomorrow to rescue some endangered kangaroos. Want to come along?’”

  “It wasn’t kangaroos,” she said. “Wombats, wallabies, and fruit bats. And that wasn’t an official Blake’s Brigade effort. Just him and me and the film crew. Couldn’t expect the whole brigade to traipse off to Australia on short notice and at their own expense.”

  “But a whole bunch of people showed up here less than twenty-four hours after he decided to come,” I said. “How did they all find out?”

  “We have a group e-mail list,” she said. “Didn’t we add you to it? Your dad sent out word five minutes after Monty decided to come, and people started signing on and volunteering for crews within the hour.”

  “But who are these people?” I said. “Do you really know them all?”

  “Some better than others,” she said. “Some I’ve known for twenty years, even before they started working with Monty. Others I meet when they first show up for a project. Everyone’s new once. Why are you asking so many questions about the brigade members all of a sudden? You think one of them tried to poison Monty?”

  “I think it’s quite possible,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “More likely it’s someone who took advantage of all the chaos of the setup to slip into camp. It’s not as if every one of the volunteers knows every other volunteer.”

  “But does anyone know all of them?”

  “Not sure if anyone knows all of them, but I probably come pretty close.” She pointed at a woman standing nearby. “Retired teacher. Here with her husband, a retired insurance executive. We get a lot of retirees, especially for the expeditions with short notice, like this one. Right beside her: college student, studying environmental science. We get a lot of students, too. The woman manning the information desk—now she might be a little suspicious. Made out so well in her latest divorce that she has no need to work, so she volunteers for every cause she sees. Then again, this might be her first and last expedition. I’m not sure how she likes roughing it in her half-million-dollar RV. The bright pink one that’s only slightly smaller than the Queen Mary,” she added, pointing to the vehicle in question. “I pretty much know them all. But I was tied up much of yesterday and didn’t get around camp as much as I usually do.”

  Tied up amusing Josh and Jamie, I remembered. Should I feel guilty and apologize for distracting Caroline from her commitment to the brigade?

  “Does anyone even have a list of everyone who’s here?” I asked aloud.

  “Sherry would,” she said. “You’ve seen her—tall, blond, thirtyish, with the big faux tortoiseshell glasses.”

  “Runs around with a clipboard collecting photo releases?” I asked.

  “That’s her,” Caroline said, with a nod.

  The Valkyrie.

  “She’s been doing a lot of volunteer administrative work for some of our projects in the last year or so,” Caroline went on. “And one of the things Monty dumped on—er, delegated to her was making sure we had a photo release from everyone in camp. Last thing we want to do is have some great footage of volunteers herding an emu into the pen and realize we have no idea who the gawkers in the background are and whether we have releases from them. So—you show up in camp, and Sherry doesn’t know who you are, she finds out, and if you refuse to sign a photo release, she makes sure you hit the road. You’d like her. She’s very organized and efficient.”

  “I’ve met her, remember,” I said. And the word I’d have used was officious, and I hadn’t liked her all that much. But then again, Grandfather had rounded up more than his usual number of cats and made her one of the chief cat herders. Having been in a similar position myself more than once, I resolved to give her a reasonable amount of slack.

  “I’ll ask her to give you a list,” Caroline said. “Better yet—I’ll ask her to give me a copy. I need it anyway. And you never know—she might have overheard Monty going on about how organized you are. She’s a little touchy—heaven knows, we don’t want her thinking you’re invading her turf.”

  “I have no desire to offend the Valkyrie with the clipboard,” I said. “Just give me a copy of the list when you get it. And while you’re at it, give Stanley a copy, too.”

  “You’re not going to have him investigating our volunteers are you?” Caroline sounded shocked. Investigating them actually sounded like a pretty good idea to me if we had unlimited time and money and a dozen or so Stanleys to do it.

  “Not practical even if we wanted to,” I said. “But Stanley’s investigating my grandmother’s murder. I just want him to know who’s here, in case he runs across any of the names in some other conte
xt.”

  “You think Cordelia’s killer is here in our camp?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Grandfather only decided to come down here this week, right? Before that there was no connection between him and Riverton.”

  “No publicly known connection,” Caroline corrected. “Stanley has been poking around for a few weeks.”

  “Discreetly,” I said.

  “He could have talked to the killer,” she said. “And if I’d killed someone, and a private investigator turned up looking for her, that would get my attention.”

  “Yes, but I think the odds are pretty low that the killer was a member of your e-mail list,” I said.

  “True. We only have a few thousand people. No one from Riverton. I won’t swear we don’t have a few bad eggs in the basket, but I doubt any of them killed your grandmother. So what good will it do to give you and Stanley the list?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I just need to be able to tell Annabel that we know who everyone in camp is. Someone did kill her cousin, you know, right there in her backyard. And now here she is with that same backyard filled with dozens of strangers. That has to be tough for anyone, and she’s a recluse who’s recently had a front row seat for a homicide.”

  “But she’s totally convinced her next door neighbor did it,” Caroline pointed out. “Why should she be worried about a bunch of strangers? In fact, why doesn’t having us here make her less anxious—it’s like having several dozen witnesses and potential bodyguards in her backyard.”

  “Maybe she’s not as convinced anymore,” I said. “Maybe the police chief’s skepticism and ours is rubbing off. Anyway, if Stanley does run across any of the Blake’s Brigade people in the course of his investigation, it will be a major red flag, won’t it?”

  She nodded.

  Another thought struck me.

  “You said something about the brigade going up against rogue mining companies that played rough,” I said. “Does Smedlock Mining ring a bell?” I asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “But my memory for names isn’t what it used to be. Your grandfather’s administrative assistant could put together a full list. Companies your grandfather has done battle with, or testified against, or has on his radar to tackle. I’ll get that to Stanley along with the list of people here in camp.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And when I get a chance, I’ll go online and check to see if any of our volunteers joined fairly recently. I assume you’d find them more suspicious. But I hope you’re worrying for nothing.”

  I probably was. But as I strolled through the chaotic camp, I felt better knowing that someone knew who each and every one of these volunteers were. In fact, though I couldn’t imagine myself singing songs around the campfire with Sherry, I rather liked knowing it was the blond Valkyrie with the clipboard who had everybody on her radar.

  I heard a cheer go up.

  “The road is clear!” someone called as he ran past me. “We’re taking off.”

  Chapter 15

  Of course, even after the road was clear, the camera crew had to film our departure from several angles. We didn’t get underway until nearly nine, and our progress up the mountain was slower than it could have been. Every time the director spotted a new, picturesque bit of scenery, the whole caravan would grind to a halt so the crew could scamper ahead to lie in wait and film us passing through it. Meadows, mountain streams, rustic bridges, wooded hillsides—it was all new and exciting to the camera crew. A good thing we were traveling mostly on small back roads where we hardly ever ran into other vehicles.

  To my surprise, Grandfather tolerated these interruptions with remarkable patience. Or perhaps not so surprising, since the camera crew put him front and center in most of their sequences. I could see what he was up to because Michael had snagged a choice spot as second vehicle in line, right behind Grandfather’s open Jeep. During the occasional moments when the deep woods on either side gave way to meadows, we could glance over our shoulders and see the long, sinuous line of trucks, SUVs, Jeeps, and motorcycles snaking up the steep road in our wake. And then the woods would close in around us again.

  The woods made me anxious. I kept thinking how easy it would be for someone to ambush us. Someone who knew our destination, and knew the woods well enough to take a shortcut. Someone who knew the best places to lie in wait with a rifle. One quick shot from the woods would be all it would take. I cringed every time the caravan stopped and Grandfather stood up in the back of the jeep to pose for the camera. Didn’t he realize that he was also making himself a target?

  Or was it that plausible that someone could switch so quickly from poison to firearms? Was I worrying unnecessarily?

  I didn’t seem to be the only one. Michael was eyeing the woods with a frown, and in the Jeep ahead of us, so were Dad, Caroline, and Jim Williams, who was one of the bodyguards assigned to Grandfather this morning.

  “Evidently, Biscuit Mountain really is a mountain,” Michael said, during one particularly long, dark wooded stretch. “But I think we’re finally getting close to the emu ranch.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked, peering through the windshield.

  “Sign up ahead.”

  He slowed and pointed. I didn’t spot the sign at first. This part of the woods was particularly dark because all the trees were festooned with vines. Vines with thick, hairy stems. Vines that sometimes met overhead, threatening to turn the narrow road into a tunnel. Up ahead, Grandfather was gesticulating. Pointing up at the vines. I had the sinking feeling that the vines would turn out to be an alien invasive species—kudzu or its ilk—and we’d call yet another halt to the caravan while Grandfather filmed a ringing denunciation of the sinister vegetation. But then I realized that between one particularly thick swathe of vines was a faded sign. Half the letters were obscured by leaves, but I could still decipher the words BISCUIT MOUNTAIN OSTRICH AND EMU RANCH.

  Then I noticed something else.

  “Those vines,” I said. “The ones with the hairy stems. They’re poison ivy.” Just the thought of being that close to such a huge stand of poison ivy made my skin itch all over. “I don’t want the boys within ten feet of those vines.”

  “Roger,” Natalie said from her post in the third seat. I noticed this morning that she was wearing a pith helmet, like her great-grandfather, only hers had been dyed black, and around it she’d tied a filmy black scarf accented with silver glitter.

  Michael drove on, following my grandfather beneath the sign. We came into an open and relatively flat area, rather like an oversized ledge on the side of the mountain. The road ended up ahead at a ramshackle picket fence around a faded old farmhouse. There were pastures on either side of the road and a barn to our left. I also spotted the remains of a tall chain-link fence that had presumably once enclosed the pastures. In some places it had merely fallen down, but in others it appeared to have been bulldozed.

  Grandfather parked just outside the picket fence, and Michael pulled in beside him. All the other vehicles followed suit, and the volunteers poured out. Grandfather’s bodyguards hurried to his side. I noticed that they were equipped with binoculars, communications radios, and stout walking sticks that could double as weapons in a pinch. Caroline began organizing the rest of the volunteers into parties. Grandfather headed toward the barn, trailed by his bodyguards and the film crew, who were capturing his philosophical pronouncements about the rapidity with which nature claimed its own after humans had abandoned formerly cultivated land. The twins scurried in Grandfather’s wake, which suited me, since the barn looked free of poison ivy and Michael and Natalie were following them.

  I headed for the house. Original site of the Biscuit Mountain Art Pottery workshop. Ancestral home of Cordelia’s family. An important bit of the history of the one branch of my family I’d never known anything about until this week. It was a weather-beaten gray farmhouse with a rusty tin roof. The front door was closed, but when I tried the doorknob I found it was unlocked.r />
  I stepped inside, looked around, and immediately realized that Miss Annabel’s father had made a wise decision, building the enormous gingerbread-trimmed Victorian mansion where she still lived.

  The Biscuit Mountain house wasn’t a hovel, but it looked exactly like what it was: a very old farmhouse that had been added onto or modernized haphazardly over the years, with an eye more attuned to function than beauty. The ceilings were low—maybe seven and a half feet. The rooms were small and pokey, and full of awkward angles where they had been retrofitted with small closets. The one bathroom was large and antiquated—although rusty water still ran from the vintage taps in the sink and the toilet flushed when I tried it.

  The rooms were empty except for a few broken pieces of furniture and enough trash to suggest that the house had occasionally given shelter to passing hikers or teenagers in search of a hangout.

  Everything seemed structurally sound, but still—Mother would have called it a fixer-upper, and then sniffed and added, “though why anyone would bother is beyond me.”

  I wandered back into the living room, feeling vaguely disappointed. I was hoping for something magical. I felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Rob, who had taken it badly when one of Mother’s cousins had disproved the old family legend that one of our ancestors had been a noted Yorkshire highwayman.

  Sometimes getting to the bottom of something wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Couldn’t the cousin have kept his mouth shut and let Rob go on reveling in his notorious ancestor? And should I keep my mouth shut about this being an ancestral home? Annabel’s Victorian mansion was also a family home, and would make a much nicer memory.

  I felt a sudden random twinge of resentment at Grandfather for starting all this in the first place. Which was unfair. Because if I’d heard he was planning to look for Cordelia, I’d have been all for it.

  Of course, I’d been hoping we’d find a Cordelia who had always wanted to track down her son and grandchildren but for some reason had been unable. It might even have been somewhat comforting to learn that she’d died shortly after Dad’s birth, longing to be reunited with him but prevented by cruel fate. I wasn’t at all happy with what we’d found so far—a grandmother who seemed to have led a full and perfectly contented life less than an hour from us, well aware of our existence and yet happy to keep her own a secret. And if the current state of affairs bothered me, how much harder was it for poor Dad?