“You could claim you ran in and found me hitting Meg over the head,” Cordelia said. “It would be your word against mine, and everyone in town thinks I’m crazy.”
“But that won’t solve the real problem, will it?” Sherry said. “That horrible Dr. Blake will still be running around trying to ruin my family. He wants to keep us from mining the kyanite, and if we can’t get another project going soon, we’ll go bankrupt.”
“Dr. Blake is here to rescue the emus,” Cordelia said. “He isn’t here to stop your mine.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know about it,” Sherry said. “As soon as he finds out, he’ll attack us again. So I have to get him before he finds out. And that means I have to get rid of you so you won’t warn him.”
Her matter-of-fact tone chilled me as much as the fact that she was talking about killing three people—one of them me, and the other two the grandparents who’d only recently entered my life.
“I don’t think Dr. Blake—” Cordelia began.
“It’s Blake who’s ruined everything,” Sherry snapped. “Him and people like him. First the union s come in and force us to coddle our workers. The way they carry on you’d think we kept slaves instead of paying people to work in our mines. Then it was the tree huggers trying to tell us what we can do on our own land. And then just when we find a natural gas deposit good enough to keep us from going under, along comes Blake and stops us—and for what? A stupid toad! A toad so ugly we’d be doing the world a favor if we did make it extinct. You know what I think I’ll do when I’ve gotten rid of Blake? I’ll round up my brothers and we’ll go out in the woods and have us a toad hunt. We’ll use the slimy little things for target practice, and when we run out of bullets we’ll go after them with clubs. You want to talk about extinct? I’ll show you extinct.”
She was practically shrieking now, and her face was beet red and contorted with fury. I was relieved to see that Cordelia, though obviously tempted to reply, had clenched her jaw tightly shut.
“Yes, once I’ve gotten rid of Blake, I can finally stop pretending to be a stupid tree hugger.” Sherry smiled with satisfaction and hurried out of the room.
Cordelia watched her go. The front door opened and closed again. Then she craned her head again to look down at me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“My head hurts,” I said. “And when we get out of this, I’m going to have Dad check me out for a possible concussion. But apart from that, I’m okay.”
“‘When we get out of this,’” Cordelia repeated. “Does that mean you have a plan to rescue us?”
“No, but I’ll work on it,” I said. “If you have any bright ideas, now’s the time to share them.”
She pursed her lips and sighed.
“So she’s doing this because she thinks Grandfather wants to stop her family from mining the kyanite on Biscuit Mountain?” I asked.
“Yes,” Cordelia said. “She’s a Smedlock. She joined Blake’s Brigade under her married name, but she was born a Smedlock—part of the family that owns that dreadful mining company.”
“The company whose fracking plans Grandfather foiled.”
“Precisely,” she said. “And they’re still plenty mad about it and out for revenge. They blame him for the fact that they’re nearly bankrupt. And none of them would think of doing anything responsible like getting an honest job. So the only thing they’ve come up with to keep themselves afloat is strip mining the kyanite on Biscuit Mountain. She killed Annabel—thinking she was me—because she knew I’d fight it all the way. Once I’d seen the report from my own mining engineer and knew what a disaster it would be for the town, I was pretty vocal about my opposition to any mining on Biscuit Mountain.”
“Was she also behind the attempt to poison Grandfather?”
“Yes, she’s been plotting that for a long time,” Cordelia said. “Out of revenge for his ruining their fracking plan, even before he showed an interest in Biscuit Mountain. And the lethal candy box was supposed to be punishment for me, for inviting him down here.”
“But why did she kill Weaver? Assuming she did, of course.”
“He saw her kill Annabel,” she said. “And he was blackmailing her. Demanding a bigger share of the proceeds from the mine. Pretty stupid, if you ask me. He knew she was a killer.”
“She certainly told you a lot,” I said.
“I think she’s been dying to get it all out of her system,” Cordelia said. “The strain of operating within enemy territory. And, of course, she has no intention of letting me live to report any of it. In fact—”