“Someone had shoveled a path to the shed, I assume?” I opened my eyes again and turned to Dr. Ffollett.
“They hired a high school kid to do chores like that,” Dr. Ffollett said. “And to drive the ladies around to their events. Church, garden club, bird-watching society.”
“Both of them?” I asked.
“Cordelia, mostly,” he said. “Miss Annabel never went out much, even before the fire. Thor—Thor Larsen, the kid who was working for them for the last year or two—came over and shoveled the paths for them. And the whole area around the generator. He and Cordelia probably had the usual argument over starting the generator.”
“Usual argument?” Stanley, who had been squatting and examining the generator, stood up and took out his notebook.
“Thor thought he should be allowed to start it,” Dr. Ffollett said. “He’s quite mechanically minded. Works part time down at his uncle’s car repair shop. Cordelia didn’t want anyone but herself touching it. Lucky, as it turned out; if he’d been the one to start the generator, I think Chief Heedles might have tried to lay the blame on him. Claimed he’d done something wrong. It would have made his life a misery. He’s fond of both of the ladies. Well, is fond of her”—he gestured toward the house—“and was fond of her cousin.”
Stanley nodded and scribbled.
I went back to my efforts to imagine that night. Cordelia following Thor’s shoveled path out to the shed, any sound she made drowned out by the steady mechanical throbbing of the generator. She reaches the shed—and then what? Does she disappear from view?
“How high was the shed?” I asked.
“The top of the roof was level with the top of the hedge,” Dr. Ffollett said.
“And set catty-cornered to the property lines.” Stanley traced a rough rectangle in the air to mark the shed’s position. “So the front of the shed faced Cordelia and Annabel’s house, and the generator was in this back corner of the lot, completely concealed from the house and the street.”
Dr. Ffollett nodded.
“Cost a pretty penny, I imagine,” Stanley said. “Running the line that far from there to the house.”
Dr. Ffollett didn’t respond.
I walked over to where Stanley was. Yes, with an eight-foot shed where the ruins now lay, no one in the house could see the generator. I turned toward the front of the lot. My view of the road was almost completely blocked by several big camellia bushes planted between it and the shed—though fortunately far enough from the shed that they hadn’t been consumed by the fire. They were evergreen, so they’d have done the same in December. Definitely the place to ambush someone, if you were so inclined.
And close up, the sound of the generator would have concealed any noise the killer made. Or any screams from his victim—presumably he’d knocked her down, or maybe even out, to ensure that she’d stay put for the explosion he was about to set off. But I knew from experience that a generator would be ample cover. My parents had installed a generator at their farmhouse, and now Mother was campaigning to have it moved farther from the house. The ladies had been wiser when they’d installed theirs. The generator probably hadn’t really sounded all that loud to them, since it was at the far corner of their very large lot, with the shed between it and the house. I made a mental note that if we installed a generator, we should try to put it behind the barn, at the far edge of our property, and screen it with evergreen shrubs.
And we had no close neighbors to complain no matter where we put our generator. On one side of us were sheep fields belonging to our nearest neighbor, Seth Early. On the other three, more fields belonging to my parents’ farm. But both Seth’s house and my parents’ were at least a mile away.
Here, I could understand Theo Weaver’s annoyance. His yard, though not miniscule, was much smaller than Cordelia and Annabel’s, and the generator was a lot closer to his house than theirs. I’d have tried to placate him by inviting him in to share the benefits that came with the noise. If they didn’t want to offer him a spare bedroom, would it have been possible to run a line to his house as well? Possible, but no doubt expensive. And presumably the enmity between the two households predated the generator.
Still, something about the scene bothered me.
“I see now what Miss Annabel meant by hopping over the fence,” Stanley said, pointing. The eight-foot iron fence ended at either side at what I assumed was the rear boundary line of the property. That rear boundary was delineated with a low wire fence. There was a gate approximately in the middle of the fence, leading into a field beyond.