The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(4)

“Look,” I said. “I know my dad seems to think I’m Caerphilly County’s answer to Nancy Drew or Miss Marple, but he exaggerates my sleuthing skills. And I’m pretty busy—now that we have a reliable babysitter, I plan to get a lot of blacksmithing done for the fall craft-fair season.”

“Not with that hand.” Gridwell was back. “Trust me, you won’t want to be doing much blacksmithing for a few days.”

“That’s perfect,” Stanley said. “This won’t take long. And I really don’t need for you to do anything. I just need to borrow your face.”





Chapter 2



“Borrow my face?”

Gridwell didn’t say anything, but he was clearly following our conversation with interest. He stepped to the doorway of the cubicle and looked out, tapping his foot impatiently, but he didn’t roar out orders to the staff, which I knew from my earlier visits was his usual style.

“Yup.” Stanley looked as if he was enjoying himself. “I just want to show it to someone.”

A nurse bustled in and handed Gridwell a syringe.

“Hold your hand still while I numb you up,” Gridwell said. “You want him to stay?”

“Yes, if it’s okay with you.” I gritted my teeth as he began poking needles into my fingers. “He’ll distract me from whatever you’re about to do to me. Who do you want to show my face to?” I went on, turning back to Denton.

“Someone who may have known your grandmother,” Stanley said. “Your grandfather hired me to find her.”

“After all this time?”

Stanley shrugged.

“How long’s she been missing?” Gridwell asked. He had finished with the needles and a welcome numbness was spreading through my fingers.

“All my life,” I said. “And all Dad’s life, for that matter.”

Gridwell paused in the middle of rummaging through the Mayo tray and gave us a puzzled frown. Stanley had pulled out his pocket notebook and was looking over his glasses at it.

“Dr. Langslow was found as an infant in a basket in a library in Charlottesville, Virginia,” he explained to Gridwell.

“In the mystery section, according to Dad,” I added. “Although I think he made that part up.”

“And adopted by one of the librarians there,” Stanley went on. “He never knew who his blood parents were until a few years ago, when Dr. Montgomery Blake showed up.”

“The zoologist?” Gridwell asked. “The one who keeps appearing on Animal Planet and National Geographic?”

“That’s him,” Stanley said. “He was in Caerphilly for an environmental conference at the college, and happened to see Meg’s picture in the local rag. Turns out she’s a dead ringer for Dr. Blake’s college girlfriend.”

“Cordelia,” I said. Not that Gridwell would care what my grandmother’s name was, but I liked the sound of it.

“Back when Dr. Blake and Cordelia knew each other, some seventy-odd years ago, he had received a fellowship to study for a couple of years on the Galápagos Islands,” Stanley went on. “They had parted on good terms, but she never answered any of his letters.”

“Dad’s had a grudge against the Ecuadorian postal service ever since he found out,” I said. “That’s who delivers mail to the Galápagos. Or fails to deliver it.”

“And when Dr. Blake came back to the States, he couldn’t find her,” Stanley continued. “So he moved on with his life. But when he saw Meg’s picture, he got curious. And when he found out Meg’s dad had been found in the same library where Cordelia had been employed, he obtained DNA samples and confirmed that he was, in fact, Dr. Langslow’s father.”

“And my grandfather,” I said. “And presumably Cordelia was the mother, but since when has Grandfather been trying to find her?”

“Apparently he brooded about it for a year and then decided he had to know what happened to her,” Stanley said. “But his investigative methods weren’t yielding any fruit.”

“Don’t tell me—I bet he stormed into the library where Dad was found and demanded that they tell him where Cordelia had gone.”

“Something like that,” Stanley said. “And he kicked up a fuss with the Charlottesville police, too, with no success. Luckily, he had no idea where her hometown was, or he’d have poisoned the well there, too. Last week he hired me.”

“And you’ve found something already?”

“Someone who may have known Cordelia.”

“Known,” I said. “Past tense. She’s dead?”