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

by Donna Andrews

  “I didn’t have to—oh, never mind.” I could relate my conversation with Chief Heedles some other time, when I was less tired. “As I said, it’s not useful for solving Cordelia’s murder. But it does give Weaver a very plausible motive for wanting to poison my grandfather—and that gives the chief a valid reason to investigate him.”

  “You think once she starts investigating she’ll figure out he killed Cordelia?” Annabel said.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Also possible that he could end up serving time for the poisoning.”

  “True,” she said. “Although not necessarily very much time. Attempted murder’s a class three felony. Carries a penalty of five to twenty years under the Virginia penal code. Daddy and Granddaddy were both judges,” she added, seeing my surprised look. “So Cordelia and I grew up knowing things like that.”

  “You sound like Dad,” I said. “Although he gets his information mainly from reading mysteries.”

  “The recreation of intelligent minds,” Annabel said, nodding with approval. “Daddy and Granddaddy were also big readers of mysteries, and Cordelia and I grew up on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

  “You really must meet Dad,” I said. “You have so much in common.”

  “In good time.” She stiffened slightly as she said it, as if the idea still unnerved her. “Meanwhile, what are we going to do with this information about Weaver?”

  “You mean, apart from giving it to Chief Heedles?” I asked.

  “Hmph!” She snorted again, sounding so much like Grandfather that I had to smile.

  “Look, I realize if he’s convicted of the attempted murder, he won’t serve as much time as you think he deserves,” I said. “But at least he’d do some time,” I went on. “And wouldn’t even five years without a man you believe to be a killer living next door be a good thing?”

  “It would,” she said. “And maybe it would make the chief understand that he’s not some harmless old friend of her daddy’s. Who knows what might come out if she felt she had grounds to do a really thorough investigation of him?”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said. “And maybe we can help her out. Can you think of any connection between Cordelia and Smedlock Mining?”

  She frowned and appeared to be concentrating. I waited in silence. Well, at least until my stomach growled, which appeared to break her concentration.

  “I’m keeping you from your dinner,” she said. “And no, I can’t think of any connection. But I’ll keep thinking. And I’ll look through her papers.”

  “Good,” I said. “Oh, Thor told Grandfather that Cordelia had a list of all the emus. Any chance you might still have it?”

  She frowned, and I realized that mentioning Grandfather might have been a tactical error.

  “Thor’s worried that Grandfather will get bored and go home before we find all the emus,” I added. “He figures if we have a list, Grandfather will have a harder time getting away with that.”

  That worked as I hoped.

  “The old rascal,” she said. “Yes, Cordelia had a list. I‘m sure I have it somewhere. I’ll look for it tonight.”

  As I headed back to camp, I realized that I’d enjoyed talking to Annabel and was looking forward to coming back to see what thoughts she’d had. Our relationship was becoming less weighed down by all the baggage I knew I carried about Cordelia. It wasn’t Annabel’s fault her cousin had kept us at a distance. I found myself imagining that perhaps Annabel had tried to talk Cordelia into contacting us. “They’re your family, for heaven’s sake!” she might have said. “At least go and talk to them.”

  Maybe I’d never know. Or maybe I was getting closer to finding out.

  When I got back to the camp, the boys greeted me with delight.

  “Mommy, the horses are going to fight the mo sickles!” Jamie exclaimed.

  “No, they’re going to race the mo sickles,” Josh corrected.

  Neither sounded very plausible, so I looked up at Michael, Caroline, and Natalie for enlightenment.

  “Apparently the rivalry’s running high between the horseback wranglers and the motorcycle wranglers,” Caroline said. “One side has challenged the other to a friendly jousting match.”

  “A friendly jousting match?” Natalie echoed. “Just how are they going to pull that off? Isn’t the whole point of jousting that the knights line up on the opposite sides of a field and then run at each other at top speed carrying long sharp pointy objects?”

  “They’re probably doing it the same way they do at Renaissance Faires,” I said. “They aim the long sharp pointy objects at targets instead of each other. It’s a test of hand/eye coordination and horsemanship.”

  “Or in this case, bikemanship,” Caroline added.

  “Sounds like fun,” Michael said. “But you do realize that if we let the boys watch this, they will be jousting on their tricycles all summer, right?”

  Natalie moaned slightly.

  “We can make them padded armor,” I said. “And lances with a lot of padding on the end. And Dad says he’s very pleased with Gridwell.”

  “Gridwell?” Michael looked puzzled. “What’s that?”

  “The new ER doc,” I said.

  “Ah,” Michael said. “Haven’t met him yet.”

  “The summer is still young,” I replied. “Let’s go eat before the carnage starts.”

  Chapter 20

  The cookout was a big hit. Those parts of the field not already filled with our campground and the emu pen were now packed with the cars and trucks of the townspeople, and volunteers were circulating with platters of hot dogs, hamburgers, and mushroom burgers. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that so few people were worried about being poisoned or terrified at how many more potential poisoners Grandfather had invited into camp.

  Then I heard Caroline’s voice over the portable megaphone, ordering people to clear the roadway for the jousting. Michael and I grabbed the boys and climbed on to the roof of the Twinmobile, which was parked in a strategic location, right by the road and just outside camp—perfect for watching the joust. Caroline and Grandfather and the bodyguards were sitting in lawn chairs on the bed of a truck next door to us, and the entire length of the dirt road was lined with cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, and people, standing, sitting in lawn chairs, or reclining on blankets.

  In the middle of the road were three gallowslike contraptions, each holding a ring at the end of a long string. The rings were about two inches in diameter and looked even tinier when suspended from the tall stands. Tiny and very hard to see—there was a reason that jousting was usually a daytime sport.

  But tonight was an exception, because while the jousting crew were rigging the targets, the film crew had set up giant banks of lights to illuminate the course. Soon each of the rings swayed gently in its own pool of light, rendering them improbable rather than downright impossible targets.

  Caroline, who had been watching the efforts of both crews, pulled out the portable battery-powered megaphone.

  “Welcome, lords and ladies, to this contest. Sir Clarence of Rutledge, leader of the Knights of the Iron Horse, has challenged the Knights of the Silver Spear, led by Lady Joni of Langevoort, to a jousting competition.”

  The half-dozen horse wranglers who were representing their team in the joust had dressed up themselves and their horses in medieval garb, with pennants on their lances. The six motorcycle wranglers would have looked rather bland in their modern gear if they hadn’t stolen the show by having their more utilitarian helmets decked with emu feathers. Presumably feathers they’d picked up while tracking the birds, since I couldn’t imagine Sir Clarence of Rutledge allowing the ones in his charge to be plucked naked for a mere joust.

  I was glad no one had drafted me to keep score—it was all I could do to keep Jamie from falling off the roof of the Twinmobile, so excited was he by the joust. Nearby, Michael was holding onto Josh. In keeping with their long-standing policy of always doing everything by opposites, Jamie was cheering for horse
riders while Josh backed the motorcyclists. After several rounds, the competition was down to Sir Clarence and Lady Joni, the two team captains, and Michael and I rearranged our seating so we had poor Natalie between us, to help serve as a buffer in case the conclusion of the joust provoked hostilities between the two boys.

  Lady Joni launched her spirited gray horse into motion and scored one ring … two rings …

  “No!” Jamie wailed. Lady Joni had missed the final ring.

  Clarence pulled into position at the starting line. It was all up to him. If he made a perfect run, the bikers would win. If he missed two rings, the horse riders would win. If he missed one, the two teams would be tied. What would happen then? A runoff—or did one call it a joust off?

  No time to ask anyone. Clarence fiddled briefly with his helmet and the crowd fell silent as he prepared to make his run.

  In the sudden hush, I heard a burst of barking from the dog pen. Spike, barking at the emus again. Or perhaps still was more accurate—maybe he’d been barking all the time and we just hadn’t heard it for the crowd.

  Wait—it wasn’t just Spike barking. I heard Tinkerbell’s deep bass woofs as well.

  I saw Clarence take off out of the corner of my eye. I was peering toward the emu pen.

  Whose gate was hanging open. Spike and Tinkerbell were barking furiously and throwing themselves against the fence in their pen while the emus jostled each other in their haste to leave the main enclosure.

  As Clarence snagged the first ring I jumped up and leaped down from the roof of our van into the truck bed next door.

  “That’s two!” Caroline shouted through the megaphone, as Clarence speared the second ring. “And—”

  I grabbed the megaphone.

  “The emus are escaping!” I shouted. “The emus are loose!”

  Chapter 21

  Maybe I should have waited a second or two, instead of startling Clarence and making him miss the third ring. But he didn’t falter—he just threw his lance aside, braked his bike, pulled it around until he was heading in the opposite direction, and gunned it toward the emu pen.

  By now all the emus were out of the pen and heading off in several directions.

  Two of them headed left, toward the main part of the camp. Another two turned right, as if aiming for the road that led out of the field and back toward town. The remaining three emus were running straight ahead, toward Miss Annabel’s backyard.

  Wait—that only made seven emus. We’d caught eight.

  The horse and bike wranglers had all scrambled onto their mounts and were racing in various directions after whichever emus they thought they could catch. Some of the townspeople were sheltering in place, in or under their vehicles, but more than a few were starting up their engines and giving chase in their trucks and SUVs.

  Caroline had grabbed back her megaphone and was trying to issue orders, but between the people shouting and shrieking in terror and those who were shouting and shrieking with the excitement of the chase, she wasn’t making much progress in organizing things.

  “Go emus!” Josh was shouting from the roof of our van. Jamie had buried his head in Michael’s chest and was sobbing uncontrollably. Michael looked calm, so Jamie wasn’t hurt. Probably only upset that the emus were leaving.

  “It’s okay,” I heard Michael say in a break in the noise. “Great-grandpa will bring them back.”

  I glanced over to see that Grandfather was actually still in the bed of the truck, cursing his bodyguards, who were blocking the tailgate to keep him from getting down. At least he had enough sense not to jump unaided over the side of the truck bed, although I hoped they were keeping an eye out in case the excitement overcame him.

  I finally figured out what had happened to the eighth emu. He—I was pretty sure it was Edward Everett Horton—was crouching in the corner of the pen near the dogs, as if for protection. I reached up and pointed that out to Michael, so he could show Jamie that one emu, at least, wasn’t deserting us.

  As I watched, one of the emus who had run toward camp became tangled up in a loose rope and brought the whole mess tent down on itself. The other one flailed around on top of its fallen comrade for a while, then turned around and headed back toward the pen, pursued by the entire KP crew, waving dish towels and dirty platters.

  The horses and motorcycles were concentrating on the two emus who had headed in the other direction. They had left the main road now and were running around, between and sometimes over the vehicles parked at the far end of the field.

  The emus who had fled into Miss Annabel’s yard had apparently been stymied by her tall iron fence. One of them was hurling himself against it repeatedly, with no success, while the other two were running up and down on either side of him, looking for an opening and trampling all the orange day lilies underfoot.

  “Look!” I tugged on Caroline’s sleeve. “Miss Annabel’s fence is holding. They can corner them there.”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me but she followed my pointing finger, nodded, and began bellowing instructions to the troops. Eventually they all caught on. The KP crew were the first to chase their emu in the right direction, so now there were four emus trampling Miss Annabel’s flower beds. Another crew of at least a dozen volunteers was trying to pick up the mess tent with the emu still wrapped inside it so they could carry it to the holding pen.

  The remaining two emus had been thwarted in their attempt to reach the woods beyond the parking lot and were milling about on or near the roadway, surrounded by a large circle of horses, motorcycles, trucks, and eager volunteers on foot. I hoped the volunteers didn’t get complacent. Just because the emus were surrounded at the moment didn’t mean they were caught. Getting them back into the pen was going to be a tricky job. And—

  Just then a small black-and-white form trotted out into the open area around the emus. It was Lad, Seth Early’s border collie.

  The townspeople and some of the volunteers laughed, but a few of them had met Lad and seen him work his magic on sheep, goats, cows, pigs, llamas, and even small children. They shouted to the others to keep the circle going and see what Lad could do.

  Lad trotted until he was a few yards from the emus, then he flopped down on his belly and began creeping toward them, giving them what border collie trainers called the Eye. It was supposed to hypnotize sheep. I’m not sure the emus were hypnotized, but clearly they had never seen anything like it and they seemed to be watching him curiously.

  “Go, Lad!” Jamie shouted. He was wiping away tears with his fists and snuffling into the handkerchief Michael was holding to his nose.

  “Go, emus,” Josh countered, looking as if he might take his turn at crying any second.

  A silence fell over the crowd as Lad alternately crept and ran, barked and stared. He eventually worked his way behind the emus and set them in motion toward the pen, running back and forth and nipping at the heels of any would-be escapee. Occasionally one of the emus would attempt to slash at him with its talons, but Lad seemed to sense when this was about to happen and leaped away so deftly that they never came close to touching him.

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the two emus trotted back into the pen. Everyone except Lad, of course, who waited with visible impatience until one of the volunteers had shut the gate securely, and then bounded toward Miss Annabel’s yard to work his magic on the four emus there.

  “Lad saves the day,” Michael said.

  “And Spike and Tinkie,” Jamie added.

  “Yes, if they hadn’t barked, we would never have noticed that the emus were escaping,” I said. “Extra treats for all the dogs tonight.”

  We watched until Lad and the volunteers had successfully herded the remaining four emus into the pen, then went down to praise and reward the dogs.

  We couldn’t possibly have gotten near Lad, who was the center of an immense crowd of admirers. He sat at Seth Early’s feet, graciously accepting pats and seemingly indifferent to the fact that Seth prevented people from offering hi
m treats. You had to know Lad to read the signs that he wasn’t just gazing at the crowd with friendly interest, but studying us, all the better to figure out how and where he’d herd us if his master suddenly noticed how disorganized we humans were and gave him the go-ahead to deal with us.

  Spike and Tinkerbell were more than happy to absorb any treats that happened to fall their way. I could tell from Spike’s self-important strutting that he considered the return of the emus a personal triumph.

  The festivities were slowly breaking up. A lot of people were gathered around the emu pen, watching as Clarence examined the emus, particularly the one who had been trapped in the mess tent, to make sure none had suffered any injuries during their escape attempt. The kitchen crew had hauled the mess tent back to its site and were attempting to untangle it and set it up so it would be ready for breakfast. Here and there small clumps of people, a mixture of volunteers and townspeople, were discussing the joust or the emu chase. But everyone was slowly drifting away, the volunteers to their tents and trailers, the townspeople to their cars.

  Michael and Natalie took the boys over to the mess tent area, in the hope of begging a bedtime snack. I fetched food and water for Spike and Tinkerbell, since we’d decided to let them roam the emu pen overnight. They seemed happy there, and the emus seem to like them, particularly Edward Everett Horton. Maybe the dogs would sound an alarm if an intruder approached the emus—or Miss Annabel’s backyard. As a team, they actually were pretty good security. A year or so ago, when the human occupants of our house were all over at Mother and Dad’s farm for a party, a hapless burglar had tried to break in. He’d heard Spike barking and decided not to worry about a dog that small and yappy, but it was another story when Tinkerbell suddenly loomed out of the darkness, knocked him down, and sat on him for the next six hours.

  Maybe instead of the emu pen I should put them in Grandfather’s trailer for the night. We’d been so busy catching the emus that no one had had much time to question how they’d escaped. Had someone turned them loose to create a diversion? And if so, had his plans failed, or was he still planning something against Grandfather?