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

by Donna Andrews

  I leaned against the fence and gazed at Miss Annabel’s house. I wondered if she’d been watching the joust through her binoculars. There was only one light on at her house, and that in an upstairs room. She was probably almost ready for bed.

  I made a mental note to drop by tomorrow morning to check on her. I’d forgotten to ask if the generator and security companies had come as promised. And I could ask if she needed anything. Collect the emu inventory if she’d found it.

  I reluctantly turned and headed back to the main part of camp. Halfway there I almost collided with Thor.

  He looked like death warmed over.

  “How much sleep did you get last night?” I asked.

  “Enough,” he said.

  “And you were out with the crew all day today,” I said.

  “I managed to grab a nap in the afternoon,” he said.

  Strange, how motherhood had given me an almost supernatural ability to detect prevarication. Just call me Meg, the human lie detector.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “Look—the wranglers will be patrolling the area tonight. To protect the emus, and the horses, and all those expensive bikes.”

  Actually, the wranglers weren’t planning anything of the kind, at least not that I knew about, but as the words came out of my mouth I realized what a good idea it was.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Follow me.”

  I kept an eye on Thor to make sure he didn’t slip away. Although there wasn’t as much chance of his doing so as there had been earlier, when he could so easily have lost himself in the crowd.

  Clarence had finished his examination and was standing by the emu pen, gazing contentedly at the newly recaptured flock.

  “Did Grandfather talk to you about recruiting some volunteers to patrol the camp tonight?” I asked.

  “Not yet, but I think it’s a sound idea,” Clarence said. “I’ll take care of it right away.”

  “Have the guards keep an eye on those two houses in addition to the camp, will you?” I pointed to Annabel’s and Weaver’s houses.

  “Any special reason?” Clarence asked. “Are they emu haters?”

  I explained about Cordelia—not my connection to her, but the murder, and her cousin’s suspicion about Theo Weaver’s involvement.

  “And Miss Annabel is not an emu hater,” Thor put in. “She and Ms. Delia were the ones who had me feed the emus. I think Mr. Weaver is, though. You don’t want him anywhere near them. He tried to get the police to shoot them.”

  “We’ll definitely keep an eye peeled that way, then,” Clarence said, and hurried off to recruit his patrols.

  “You see?” I turned to Thor and put my hands on my hips. “And we’re also leaving our dogs there, for additional security. You can rest easy.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But maybe I should just find a place to bunk down here. I’m not sure there’s anyone left who can give me a ride back.”

  “That’s why I’m driving you,” I said. “Follow me.”

  I dropped by the tent to let Michael know where I was going and stayed long enough to help him stuff the boys into pajamas and give them their goodnight kisses. I hadn’t decided what to do if Thor keeled over fast asleep while I was with the boys, but fortunately he was still upright—just barely—when I’d finished, so I led the way through the almost-deserted camp to the Twinmobile.

  Thor craned his neck toward Miss Annabel’s house as we drove down the dirt road, and seemed to relax a little when a pair of men waved to us from the far end of the emu pen.

  “Miss Annabel and the emus will be fine,” I said.

  He nodded and leaned against the window. I stayed silent for a few miles, so he could doze if he liked. But every time I glanced over, I saw his eyes, wide open.

  “Thor,” I said. “You’ve lived here all your life, right.”

  “So far,” he said, reminding me of the sign at the edge of town with the painted-out population total.

  “And you think Miss Annabel’s right about what happened to her cousin? I asked. “That Theo Weaver killed her?”

  He didn’t say anything for a few long moments. Maybe he, too, thought Miss Annabel was a nice old lady with an unreasonable obsession, and was trying to figure out a polite way to avoid my question.

  “I hope it’s not true,” he said finally. “But you know what I think?” His voice was suddenly shaking with anger. “He did it. He’s a total creep. He did his best to make the ladies’ lives miserable, and then he killed Ms. Delia, and we shouldn’t let him get away with it.”

  “Is he getting away with it?” I asked.

  “He was an old buddy of Chief Heedles’s dad,” Thor said. “So the chief thinks he’s an okay guy. But he’s not. She’s a nice lady, the chief, but way too trusting for a cop, if you ask me. Mr. Weaver’s a mean, nasty old man and I think Miss Annabel’s totally right, but they’re not going to arrest him on her say-so. Everyone thinks she’s kind of … well, you know.”

  “Eccentric?” I suggested. “Or maybe even crazy?”

  Thor nodded.

  “She seems pretty sensible to me,” I said.

  “Except for the whole never-going-outside thing, she’s totally sensible,” he said. “And one of the nicest ladies I know. And if it wasn’t for her and Ms. Delia, I wouldn’t be going to college. Miss Annabel tutored me in English and Social Studies, and Ms. Delia bossed me around to do my homework, and then they found this association that was offering scholarships for deserving engineering students, and thanks to them I’m going to be the first one in my family to go to college.”

  “That’s really cool,” I said. And I meant it. Later on, I would probably feel pangs of jealousy that he’d gotten to know my grandmother so well when I’d never get to meet her. But right now, I only felt happy and proud of her.

  “Our house is three blocks west,” Thor said, pointing. We’d reached the town square, and I turned onto the western road. At Thor’s direction, I pulled up in front of a small bungalow, tidier and in better repair than most. There were a couple of lights on inside, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a generator chugging away in the back yard.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  “Sleep well,” I replied.

  As he was turning to close the van door, he paused.

  “You know,” he said. “I just thought of something. Every picture you take with a cell phone has GPS coordinates in it, you know.”

  I nodded. I hoped he wasn’t about to explain some abstruse engineering concept at this late hour.

  “I took a lot of pictures of the emus over the last couple of years,” he said. “Not just when we were feeding them, but any time I saw them. You think maybe those pictures would help Dr. Blake find them all? You know, seeing where they liked to hang out.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” I said. “Why don’t you send them to Caroline? When the power’s back.”

  “My Internet’s working fine,” he said. “We have a generator, and a satellite connection.”

  “But I doubt if hers is.” I pulled out my notebook, tore out a sheet of paper, and wrote down Caroline’s e-mail address. “Wait until the power comes back.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Or I could drop by tomorrow with a flash drive.”

  “An even better idea,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, and ran toward his house.

  I waited until I saw the door open and Thor disappear inside before I drove off, just in case he had any notions of sneaking back to camp.

  And I would have bet anything he’d stay up for an hour or two, going through his photos to get them ready for Caroline. Nothing I could do about that.

  I should probably drop by the caravan and leave her a note to explain why she was about to be inundated with emu photos. And would she know how to access the GPS data in each photo? Should I start looking for someone to help with that?

  I suspected Stanley would, although I hadn’t seen him all day, and had no idea if
he was back in camp or still down in Richmond, snooping around in Theo Weaver’s and Cordelia’s pasts.

  It was getting late. The moon was out, and three quarters full, so it wasn’t too dark while I was in town. Then I hit the wooded stretch of road that separated Miss Annabel’s neighborhood from the rest of town and the trees closed in on either side and made the way surprisingly dark. But when I emerged from the trees into the more open area, all four white Victorian houses almost glowed in the moonlight.

  No lights showed in the two houses across the street. I could still see the same dim but steady light in one of the upstairs rooms in Miss Annabel’s house. Presumably her LED lantern, since the power was still out. Why hadn’t she gone to bed? Or had she fallen asleep with her light on? No harm, with an LED lantern. Still, maybe I should stop and check.

  There was also one light on in Theo Weaver’s house. A flickering light, which seemed to suggest that he was relying on candles or oil lamps. And, oddly, his door was open a crack, so the light inside spilled across his porch.

  I parked my car in front of Miss Annabel’s house, but the oddity of Mr. Weaver’s cracked door still bothered me. Maybe I should check on him as well, even though he’d probably resent rather than appreciate it. I walked back and stood in front of the house.

  “Mr. Weaver?” I called.

  No answer. I walked slowly up his front walk, calling a couple of times. When I came to the open front door, I knocked, called again, and waited for long moments, listening for any sound inside.

  All was quiet. But was it just my imagination, or was I smelling kerosene?

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket, turned it on, and used its screen to light my way.

  “Mr. Weaver,” I called again.

  Then I pushed the door open all the way.

  Mr. Weaver was lying sprawled in the middle of the hallway and at the foot of the stairs, partly on the hall rug, which had been knocked askew, and partly on the weathered oak floorboards. His eyes were wide open and staring toward the living room, but he obviously wasn’t seeing anything. His head was lying in a pool of blood. I couldn’t quite see from where I was standing, but while his face was free of blood and wounds there was something odd about the back of his head. I suspected someone had whacked him there. I couldn’t see any telltale fireplace pokers or baseball bats lying nearby, but then the light wasn’t that strong.

  Near his outstretched right hand was a large kerosene lamp. The bottom part, the part that held the kerosene, was broken, and kerosene had spilled all over the bunched up rug around it.

  A lot of kerosene to come from one lamp. And if the kerosene was supposed to have spilled when the lamp fell and broke, why were there glistening splotches of kerosene on Mr. Weaver? All the way down to his feet.

  I glanced up at the hall table and saw that the flickering light was coming from a candle that had fallen over. No, it hadn’t fallen over—it looked as if someone had pulled out the table’s drawer and balanced the candle on the edge of the table and the edge of the drawer. The bottom of the candle, still inserted in a heavy, old-fashioned pewter candle holder, hung over the edge, which meant that the longer the candle burned, the smaller and lighter the wick end grew. Eventually the candle would get short enough that the weight of the candle holder would drag the whole thing down on top of the kerosene-soaked rug.

  Someone had killed Mr. Weaver and then rigged the candle to start a fire once he or she was gone.

  I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a few quick pictures of the rigged candle. Then I pocketed my phone, stepped over to the table, carefully took hold of the candle with one hand, and smothered the flame with my fingers, to keep from blowing sparks around.

  Then I stepped back to the door, pulled out my phone again, and called 9-1-1.

  Nothing happened.

  Chapter 22

  I muttered a few words I tried not to use when the boys were around. And kicked myself for not snagging a spare radio when I’d left mine with Michael. Should I drive back to town for help? Go next door to Miss Annabel’s to see if her phone was working? Run over to Camp Emu for help?

  I decided to start by checking Mr. Weaver’s own phone. If his landline wasn’t working, odds were Miss Annabel’s wouldn’t either, so I wouldn’t have to disturb her. Of course, to try his phone I’d have to walk through the crime scene. Chief Heedles probably wouldn’t like that. Then again, there might not have been much crime scene left for her to see if I hadn’t already disturbed it by putting out the candle, so if she wasn’t happy, tough.

  The foyer was large, with the same generous twelve-foot ceilings as Miss Annabel’s house. Starting about twelve feet back, the stairway ran up the right side, and to its left was a hallway that probably led to the kitchen. An open archway on the right led to the living room. I leaned over as far as I could and studied what I could see of the room. No phone in sight. On the left side of the hallway were French doors, and what I saw through the glass panes looked like an office. Definitely a place I’d want a phone extension, so I resolved to start my search there.

  I tiptoed around the edge of the hallway, not only to give Mr. Weaver’s body a wide berth but also to avoid getting any more kerosene on my feet. Yes, the room behind the French doors was an office. Built-in bookshelves lined two walls, although they held more trophies and decorations than books. He also had a few file cabinets and a large mahogany desk. Either Weaver had been a disciple of the clean desk policy or he hadn’t done all that much work in his office. His desk held an old-fashioned green glass banker’s lamp, a few manila file folders, a wooden pencil holder with a few pens and pencils in it, and a telephone.

  A dead telephone. Evidently the landlines were still down, too.

  I hung up the useless phone and stood for a moment trying to decide what to do. Should I run over to the camp or wait until I could flag down a passerby?

  I was staring ahead of me as I pondered, and suddenly realized I was looking at something rather interesting. The three middle shelves of the bookcase at my elbow held a collection of mineral specimens. I found myself wishing I’d seen them at some time when I actually had the leisure to examine them. In fact, I did pause for a few moments to appreciate the display.

  The specimens were neatly labeled and arranged in alphabetical order, from amazonite through vivianite. A line of smaller type beneath each mineral’s name gave the location where it was found—the amethyst in Amherst County, Virginia, the turquoise in Campbell County, Virginia, apophyllite in Fairfax, spessartite garnets in Amelia. All towns and counties in Virginia. I was disappointed to find that kyanite, Rose Noire’s new fascination, was not represented.

  Or had it been? There wasn’t a blank space between hematite (Alleghany County, Virginia) and pectolite (Mitchells, Virginia), but the specimens on that shelf were spaced a little farther apart.

  And there were marks in the dust that seemed to indicate that something had been removed, and the hematite, pectolite, and the other specimens on that shelf spaced out a little more to conceal the absence. Not a lot of dust—clearly whoever cleaned Mr. Weaver’s house did a good job on the shelves. But enough to see that something had been moved. Recently. Very recently.

  It might have nothing to do with Weaver’s murder, but you never knew. I took a few pictures of the mineral collection, from a distance and close up, showing the dust marks. And then some pictures of the office itself. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe in case the device in the hallway wasn’t the only booby trap the killer had left. Then I left the office without disturbing anything else and walked carefully around Mr. Weaver and the kerosene. I took a few pictures of him, just in case. Then I escaped onto the fresh air of the front porch.

  I walked down the front steps, taking deep breaths to clear the smell of kerosene from my lungs. I felt slightly dizzy, and perhaps a little nauseated. Should I ask Dad about the possible side effects of inhaling kerosene fumes? Or would that only make me feel worse?

  Focus. I wasn’t urgently in need o
f Dad’s services. First, I needed to call for help. Preferably without leaving the crime scene unguarded.

  I had a sudden inspiration. I fished in my pocket for my car keys, aimed the remote at the Twinmobile, and pressed the button that set off the alarm.

  My car began honking furiously. Surely they’d hear it over in Camp Emu. I strolled to the edge of Miss Annabel’s fence, where I could keep an eye on Mr. Weaver’s front door while watching for anyone who came to check on my car.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later several people came loping through Miss Annabel’s yard. Rob and two other men from Blake’s Brigade.

  “See, I told you that was Meg’s car,” Rob was shouting. “Meg! Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I called out. “But Mr. Weaver isn’t. Someone attacked him.”

  “Want me to fetch Dad?” Rob asked.

  “He’s past that,” I said. “Can someone go to town to get the police?”

  “Police?” Rob echoed. “He’s dead?”

  “We should call 9-1-1!” one of the other men exclaimed.

  All three of them pulled out their cell phones. I waited patiently until they’d all three figured out that no, the cell phone towers hadn’t miraculously started working again. Then I assigned one of the brigade guys to run back to camp to get his car and drive to town for the police. I assigned the other to watch the back of Mr. Weaver’s house from outside the fence. Rob and I stayed in front to keep an eye on his door.

  As soon as the two men had raced back through Annabel’s yard, I saw her door open a crack.

  “You keep an eye on the front door,” I told Rob. “I’m going to let Miss Annabel know what’s going on.”

  Chapter 23

  “Meg, what’s wrong?”

  Annabel opened the door as soon as I stepped onto the porch. I had to shade my eyes with my hand against the glare of the little LED headlight she was wearing on her head.