She opened the door before I had a chance to knock.
Chapter 12
“Noisy crew, your bird lovers,” Annabel said as I stepped inside. “Want some lemonade?”
“I’d love some. Dr. Ffollett not around?”
“He doesn’t live here,” she said. “Just comes over to be helpful.”
She ushered me into the living room and then disappeared into the kitchen. Before sitting down, I strolled around the room, looking at things. I spotted a couple of purple-and-green pots that looked to be from the Biscuit Mountain Pottery Works. And a framed picture facedown on a table. When I picked it up to set it right, I found myself looking at my own face.
Well, not actually my own face, but very close. Cordelia, clearly, and probably Annabel beside her. They were both wearing light blouses and dark, square-shouldered jackets. From the 1940s, I guessed, although I was no expert on fashion history. But they looked as if they could step into a movie beside Joan Crawford or Bette Davis and fit in just fine. They were standing in front of a white frame house with a picket fence, and looked tall and happy. Their heads were almost level—in fact, Cordelia was perhaps an inch or so taller. Clearly I’d gotten my height from her.
“That’s us up at the Biscuit Mountain Farm.” Annabel had returned with the lemonade. “Cordelia and me.”
“Your family owned the farm.”
“Not by then.” She shook her head. “After the factory went out of business, my grandfather didn’t see any use in keeping it. Some sheep farmer bought it. Name of Virgil Eaton. Cordelia and I never lived there. We just went up to see it one day and my father had his camera with him. Always liked that picture.”
“So you grew up here?” I took a seat in one of the wing-back chairs and sipped my lemonade.
“Me here, and Cordelia next door, until her father died,” she said. “Wish we’d held on to the other house, too.”
“The one where Theo Weaver lives?”
She nodded.
“We kept it for years,” she said. “Uncle Moss and Aunt Morgana lived there. But they both died and their kids had left town, and twenty years ago Weaver offered Papa a fortune for it. We should have known better.”
She shook her head as if blaming herself for not spotting her neighbor’s homicidal tendencies from the start.
“How did the sheep farm become an emu ranch?” I asked, to distract her from what appeared to be a recurring source of bitterness.
“When Mr. Eaton decided to retire, he turned the farm over to his son,” she said. “Hosmer had grown up with sheep, and wasn’t keen on them. He decided to raise emus. It was all the rage back in the nineties.”
“And he couldn’t make a go of it,” I said, nodding. “I hear it’s a lot of work.”
“He made a go of it just fine for seventeen years,” she said. “Up until two years ago. Hosmer had nothing against hard work. Just sheep. It was the recession that did him in—that and the fact that the bank wouldn’t work with him. Just about every business in downtown Riverton got a loan or had their loan terms renegotiated, but not the emu farm. It’s as if the damned bank wanted it to go under.”
“What puzzles me is why this Mr. Eaton just turned the emus loose,” I said. “What a jerk!”
“He wasn’t a bad man.” She sounded a little puzzled at my vehemence. “Just caught in an impossible situation.”
“Why didn’t he try to sell them?” I asked. “And for that matter, why didn’t the bank sell them after they repossessed the property?”
“He tried, and the bank tried,” Annabel said. “It doesn’t work the same as cattle or sheep. With them, you only have to raise the animals and sell them to a wholesaler or a meat packer. You might not get the price you want, but there’s a whole support system for selling them. With emus, according to what I heard, there are no packers buying them. You have to slaughter them yourself, pluck the feathers, render the oil, tan the hide—it’s messy and labor intensive. Not something I’d like to take on.”
“Me neither,” I said. “But weren’t there any other emu farmers out there?”
“Yes, but apparently they had all the emus they could handle. Or at least all they could afford to keep—a lot of farmers were hit hard by the recession. Eaton couldn’t even find anyone who would take them off his hands for free. And once the bank figured out they’d taken ownership of a bunch of hungry livestock with no ready market, they hired a couple of guys to kill the flock and dispose of the carcasses. When Eaton heard that, he snuck back up to the farm and turned the birds loose. Said at least that way they’d have a fighting chance. A pity he didn’t think of offering them to a wildlife sanctuary, but he had a lot going on in his life back then.”