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

by Donna Andrews

  “This is my only copy,” she said. “I’d need it back. Is there someplace in town where you could make a copy?”

  “Let’s find a place with better light and I can take a picture of it,” Chief Heedles said.

  “We have some good LED lanterns over at the administration tent,” Sherry said. “Would that do?”

  The chief nodded. Sherry strode off. Clarence followed Sherry. I didn’t, and the chief paused for a moment to look back at me.

  “Do you need me any more tonight?” I asked. “Or would it be okay if I went back to my tent and tried to get some sleep.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  She turned to go.

  “Just one thing,” I said. “I have no idea if this is at all relevant, but—there’s a guy here in camp who used to work for a mining company. His name is Jim Williams.”

  “Is that relevant to the murder?” She frowned as she said it, and glanced in the direction Sherry had gone.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “It’s just bugging me because he—well, he didn’t exactly lie about it, but he wasn’t forthcoming, either.”

  “I suspect not everyone in Blake’s Brigade is a big fan of mining companies,” the chief said. “Maybe he’s just afraid people will ostracize him.”

  “Could be,” I said. “But do you know what a core drilling sample is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Neither did I, until Mr. Williams showed me one and explained what it was. And he told me he had learned about core drilling on another one of Grandfather’s previous expeditions.”

  “Which could be true,” the chief said. “You don’t know what he did for this mining company. Maybe he never went out in the field.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And I don’t know what company Williams worked for, and maybe the fact that Theo Weaver was also connected with a mining company is just a wild coincidence. Maybe I’ve just wasted your time with something that has nothing to do with the murder.”

  She gazed at me for a few moments.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said. “Thank you.”

  I stumbled back to our tent and crawled carefully onto my air mattress. Michael and the boys were sound asleep. As tired as I was, I should have followed their example immediately. But I kept fretting. Had I just given the chief the clue that would solve the murder? Or distracted her from the real solution? Had I identified the killer—perhaps of my grandmother as well as Theo Weaver? Or fingered an innocent man for a police chief who might be so eager to solve the crime that she’d be all too ready to find him a suspicious character?

  I tossed and turned for what seemed like an eternity. When I finally looked at my watch, it was two a.m. The boys would be awake in four hours. Maybe less. I resigned myself to a night without sleep.

  And of course, as soon as I gave up trying to catch the sandman, he ambushed me.

  Chapter 24

  I awoke still tired and already cranky. When I found that Michael had whisked the boys away before they could wake me up, my first reaction was irrational annoyance. Didn’t he think I’d want to see them? What better remedy for a bad morning than a little unconditional toddler love?

  Clearly, I needed caffeine.

  I threw on my clothes and trudged over to the mess tent. Michael, Natalie, and the boys greeted me with enthusiasm.

  So did Chief Heedles, which was much more surprising and a lot less reassuring.

  “Just the person I needed to see.” She was sitting at a table at the far end of the mess tent, a setup that seemed designed to give her a chance to have reasonably private conversations. “May I have a moment of your time?”

  “As much as you need,” I said. I waved at Michael and the boys and sat down by the chief.

  She had a notebook open on the table. She flipped to a new page and picked up her pen.

  “You said you stopped to check on Miss Annabel on your way back from town,” she said. “Just what were you doing in town?”

  “Chauffeuring Thor Larsen home,” I said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have. He’d spent the previous night lurking in the shrubbery, keeping watch over Miss Annabel and the one emu we caught the first day. And nothing happened that night.”

  Heedles nodded.

  “But last night you organized patrols,” she said. “With Dr. Rutledge in charge. Why?”

  “I guess I was a little spooked. By Thor. And Miss Annabel. Look, there’s something I haven’t told you that probably isn’t related to the murder, but you never know, so here goes. We didn’t just come here for the emus. I didn’t anyway. Cordelia—Ms. Delia, as everyone here calls her—she was my grandmother.”

  Heedles looked up from her book with a puzzled frown.

  “I was unaware that she and Mr. Mason had children,” she said.

  “They didn’t,” I said. “This happened before she and Mr. Mason ever met.”

  I gave her the condensed version of the family history.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said, when I’d finished. “Even from beyond the grave, Ms. Delia continues to astonish me.”

  “I have no idea if it has anything to do with Mr. Weaver’s murder,” I said. “And if it turns out it doesn’t, I’d appreciate it if you could keep it quiet.”

  “I don’t think people nowadays would find it all that shocking,” she said.

  “Yes, but Ms. Delia was—and Miss Annabel is—from another generation,” I said. “And it’s not my secret to share.”

  “I understand,” she said. “And I appreciate your candor. I won’t make this public unless it’s absolutely necessary, and I can’t imagine it would be. Still—you being a cousin and all—any chance you could be there to help out when I go over to interview Miss Annabel?”

  “Happy to help,” I said. “When?”

  “Sometime later today,” she said. “I’ll be in touch. Give me your cell phone number.” She turned her notebook around and offered me a page to write on.

  “Is cell service back, then?” I asked, as I printed out my number.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But they say we’ll have power back at least downtown by five p.m. today. Cell towers might come back sooner, and if they don’t, I’ll come out and pick you up when I’m ready to talk to her. Thanks in advance for your help.”

  That sounded like a dismissal, so I nodded and joined Michael and the boys.

  “Mommy!” Jamie jumped up and hugged me. “Are you helping the police lady catch the bad man?”

  “I’ve explained to the boys that Chief Heedles is trying to find out who let the emus go during last night’s joust,” Michael said. “And Caroline has suggested that perhaps another expedition in her caravan would be a good plan for today. Steer clear of all the gossip.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “But Mommy,” Josh said. “We need to guard the emus!”

  “I have a good idea,” I said. “I have to stay here to help the police look for the bad man who tried to let the emus go. So I can guard the emus. And I’ll get Auntie Caroline to tell me where you guys are going, so if we finish catching the bad man quickly, I can join you.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said.

  “Hey, Meg.” Natalie joined us. “I just talked to Caroline. She’s going to have Clarence take the emus we’ve already caught down to the sanctuary a little later today, so we should all go over and say good-bye.”

  “Only it’s not really good-bye, is it?” Michael said quickly, before the boys could react. “Because she’s only taking the emus home to live with her at the animal sanctuary, where we can visit them any time we like. So it’s more like ‘see you later, emus,’ right?”

  “Go now,” Josh said, tugging at Natalie’s sleeve.

  “Can we give them treats now?” Jamie asked.

  “Clarence says it’s okay to give them grapes and sliced apples,” Michael explained. “And the mess crew kindly prepared a supply for us. Yes, let’s go give the emus their treats and let Mommy eat her breakfast.”

  T
he boys scurried off, with Michael and Natalie in their wake. I got up and headed for the chow line. There was no one else there, and only one anxious-looking crew member serving.

  “Everyone else out hunting the emus?” I asked, as I filled my breakfast plate.

  “Most everyone,” he said. “Clarence and the other guys who were on patrol are still here, being interrogated. And the police chief told us not to leave town. I thought they only said that in the movies.”

  “Maybe Chief Heedles watches the same movies we do,” I said.

  I saw Caroline come into the tent and sit down with her laptop, so I took my plate of bacon, eggs, and fruit and went over to sit with her.

  “I hear the boys are going out with you today,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “We don’t want them upset by whatever’s going on here,” she said.

  “Does the presence of your laptop mean the power’s back?” I asked.

  “No, I’m on battery. I just want to make copies of those photos of yours before I send them off.”

  “Photos of mine?”

  “The hundreds of cell phone photos of emus you told Thor Larsen to give me,” she said. “Did you say something to give him the idea I wanted them at 5 a.m.?” Oops. She sounded a little frazzled.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I told him last night to bring them today. I didn’t think I had to tell him to wait to a decent hour. What’s wrong with today’s teenagers? I don’t recall ever getting up voluntarily before noon when I was his age.”

  “I don’t think he got up, he stayed up,” she said.

  “Maybe he thought it was urgent,” I said. “He seemed to think there was some way you could use them to track where the emus hung out. I don’t know how, though.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “But I’m sure the kid who runs my computer system back at the sanctuary does. So I’m going to send Thor’s flash drive down there. As soon as the police are finished with him, Clarence is going to load the emus we’ve caught and transport them down to the sanctuary. He can take the flash drive with him. I just wanted to make a copy before I send it. Can you keep an eye on my laptop while I run over to the emu pen for a minute? Just make sure no error messages pop up, or if any do, remember what they are.”

  I nodded, and Caroline bustled off. I studied her laptop screen. She hadn’t been kidding about the hundreds of photos. The screen showed that she was copying 1,164 files from the flash drive to her laptop, and was 93 percent finished.

  Being careful not to do anything that would interrupt the copying process, I clicked around until I found the folder in which Caroline had stored the photos. Clearly Thor was an avid cell phone photographer. Some of the shots were fuzzy or off center, but a surprising number were reasonably sharp and well composed. I clicked with the thumb of my injured hand while eating with the other hand, and the sight of the emus helped dispel my cranky mood.

  Still, one emu looked remarkably like another. After the first few dozen shots, I began to click more rapidly—the computer equivalent of fast forwarding. This was actually kind of fun, because Thor sometimes took fifteen or twenty photos in short succession, so clicking rapidly through them looked like watching a slightly jerky movie.

  And then Miss Annabel’s face popped up on the screen. I stopped clicking and stared. She was standing face-to-face with one of the emus, And was it my imagination or was there a certain resemblance between them? A certain angular haughtiness.

  And if Thor had managed to catch a shot of Miss Annabel, might Cordelia also show up in his photos? After all, I gathered Miss Annabel was only an occasional participant in their emu-feeding expeditions while Miss Cordelia was a regular. I fast-clicked through with new enthusiasm, seeing one or two others with Miss Annabel, but no Cordelia.

  Then another familiar face popped up. Jim Williams. He wasn’t front and center in the photo—he was off to the side and in profile, but clearly visible behind the emu who occupied the foreground. In the background I saw a faded picket fence—was it the fence around the ranch house up at Biscuit Mountain? I’d taken pictures of that with my own phone. I pulled out my phone and compared the picket fence in the background of the photos of Williams with the one in the shots I’d taken up at the ranch. If it wasn’t the same fence it was a dead ringer.

  I wondered for a moment if the picture of Williams had been taken over the last couple of days. But no, in it the trees were bare and brown, and yellow leaves had drifted up against the fence. My photo showed nothing but green. I looked at the date of the photo file. Thor’s photo had been taken on December 3rd of last year, only a week before Cordelia’s death.

  I clicked through the rest of the photos. Williams wasn’t in any of the other shots. But he was most definitely in this one. Here in Riverton, months before we learned that Cordelia lived here and planned the expedition.

  Of course, Miss Annabel and Cordelia had been trying to publicize the plight of the emus for some time. I hadn’t heard about it, but maybe someone more actively involved in animal welfare issues would have.

  Still …

  And we’d made him one of Grandfather’s bodyguards.

  I looked up from the computer screen. Chief Heedles was back at her seat at the table at the far end of the tent, talking to Clarence. I picked up the laptop and went to stand by their table.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” I said. “But may I show you something?”

  I tilted the laptop so I could show Heedles the picture. And then I let her see the file date.

  She frowned.

  “Would you excuse us for a moment?” she said to Clarence.

  “I’ll be at the emu pen.” Clarence stood up and strode off.

  “Where did you get this?” the chief asked.

  “Thor Larsen.” I explained the notion of using the GPS data to locate the emus.

  “Is there any chance Dr. Blake sent Mr. Williams down as a sort of advance scout?”

  “No idea,” I said. “You’d have to ask Grandfather.”

  “How far in advance would his volunteer network have known about his plans for the expedition?”

  “He only decided to come here the day before we showed up here, actually,” I said. “He probably won’t admit that, especially in front of the locals. He’ll probably claim he’s been intending to come down here for a while. But I’m pretty sure he just decided Tuesday over dinner.”

  “He pulled this together overnight?” Heedles sounded incredulous.

  “His staff did,” I said. “He’s impulsive, and they’re used to it. You should see what they come up with if he gives them a few days’ notice. And actually, I think his staff were already planning another expedition, so all they had to do was change destinations. And even though the expedition was last minute, he got the request to rescue the emus months ago. From Miss Annabel. I suppose it’s possible that he sent someone down here back in December and just didn’t act on the information until this week.”

  “But not very likely.” She was unsnapping the radio from her belt. “I need to talk to Dr. Blake to be sure. Can you get me a copy of that photo?”

  I nodded.

  “Marvin,” she said into the radio. “You’re still with Dr. Blake, aren’t you? Okay, precisely where are you?”

  I left her to it. I took Caroline’s laptop back to the table where she’d been sitting and watched as the files finished copying onto the hard drive. Then I sat, clicking through the photos, until Caroline returned.

  “Do you have another one of these things?” I pointed to the flash drive. “Chief Heedles would like some of these photos.”

  Caroline frowned, but didn’t ask questions. She darted out of the tent and returned a moment or so later with another flash drive. I copied not just the photo with Williams in it but all the pictures Thor had taken in December.

  Chief Heedles appeared at my elbow just as the copy finished.

  “Here.” I handed her the flash drive.

  “Keep this under your hat,” she said, and s
trode off.

  I nodded.

  “What do Thor’s emu shots have to do with the murder?” Caroline asked.

  “Nothing, I hope,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t much of an answer. If it had been just Caroline standing there, I’d have told her, but several other people had arrived to join the chow line and were within earshot. I hated the notion that the killer might be someone using Blake’s Brigade as cover for his crimes. I wasn’t about to spread rumors to that effect before we were sure.

  “I’m going over to see how Miss Annabel is doing,” I said.

  “Take her some breakfast,” Caroline suggested. “She’s probably tired of whatever she can fix without her stove.”

  That sounded like a good idea, so I filled one takeaway box with bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, ham, breakfast potatoes, and toast, and another with fruit.

  I paused long enough to wave at the boys as Caroline’s caravan drove off, and take a few cell phone shots of them driving the horse—or at least holding the reins. The horse didn’t seem to need much guidance. Then I hiked across the field to Miss Annabel’s house.

  She opened the back door before I could knock.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Dwight came over to check on me, but he hasn’t heard a thing.”

  “No one’s heard much yet,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I know over breakfast.”

  “I can’t offer you anything but cold cereal.”

  “Breakfast is on me,” I said. “Actually, it’s on Grandfather—he likes to eat well on these shindigs, so the quantity and the quality of the food is usually pretty good.”

  “Monty’s paying for all this?” she said. “Good. What’s for lunch and dinner? And when is it? You don’t need to bring it if you don’t have time. I’ll send Dwight over.”

  “You’ll hear the bell ring,” I said. “No idea what’s on the menu, though. Sorry—I should have thought of this as soon as the power went out.”