The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(101)

“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.

I did a last pass through the house to make sure we hadn’t disturbed anything and came back to the office to find Annabel sitting in Weaver’s desk chair, reading a paper.

“Found anything interesting?” I asked.

“Not interesting,” she said. “Just annoying. Some kind of memo from a vice president at First Undermountain Bank. That’s the greedy bastards who foreclosed on the emu farm and wouldn’t sell it to me.”

“He probably gets a lot of memos from them,” I said. “He’s on their board, remember?”

“Was on their board,” she corrected. “Our killer just created a vacancy. This is a memo someone wrote complaining about how the repossessed emu farm is costing them too much and asking how soon their plan for unloading it can go forward.”

“Maybe that spells good news for your hope of establishing an emu sanctuary.”

“We won’t need that now that we’ve finally got your Grandfather to pay attention to the birds,” she said. “I still might like to buy it, but I think the emus will be fine with this Caroline person. And anyway, this letter is from eight months ago. They’ve turned us down again since then. Whatever plan they’ve got doesn’t involve us or the emus, that’s all I know. Not sure it’s significant. I just wonder why this was sitting out in his inbox.”

“No idea.” I scanned the memo over her shoulder. Then I took a picture of it, just in case.

“Then again, maybe it’s good news,” she said. “What if Weaver was somehow working to block the sale of the property to us. Well, to me now. Maybe if I asked again, they’d sing a different tune. Even though we don’t need the farm quite as much now, it would be interesting to see.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But why don’t you wait until they catch Weaver’s killer before you approach them. Because jumping in with another offer right now might make the chief think you have a serious motive for getting rid of Weaver.”

“I thought the chief was set on this Williams person as the culprit,” she said.

“She’s leaning that way,” I said. “Don’t distract her. And let’s get out of here. I think we’ve established that if Chief Heedles spent more than an hour searching Weaver’s papers she was wasting her time.”

She nodded.

We crept to the front door, turned our headlights off, and waited until our eyes adjusted to the dark and we could be sure the coast was clear. Then we stepped out onto the porch.