The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(5)

“Apparently.”

I felt a curiously strong surge of grief. I’d never known Grandmother Cordelia—hadn’t even known her name until Grandfather showed up in my life. Even then I had told myself, sensibly, that I would almost certainly never meet her. Presumably, she had been the one to leave Dad in the library. The Charlottesville papers had carried the story of the library foundling and his adoption by the childless, forty-something head librarian and her much older physician husband—the adoptive grandparents who hadn’t lived long enough for me to meet them. Cordelia could have found Dad—and the rest of us—at any time. I didn’t blame her for not doing so. I tried to imagine how she must have felt—seventy-some years ago, the stigma of being an unwed mother could ruin a young woman’s life. And I’d always known there was a possibility she was no longer alive. Grandfather was in his nineties, and Cordelia couldn’t have been that much younger.

But somehow knowing her name made it harder, not easier, to accept her absence from my life. And I’d hoped one day I’d meet her. Was it silly to grieve for someone I’d never known? Or maybe I was grieving because now I never would.

“Hold your thumb still,” Gridwell said. “Unless you want me to suture that, too.”

I started slightly. While Stanley and I had been talking—and while I’d been lost in thought—Gridwell had already stitched two of my lacerations.

I looked up to see Stanley’s face frowning slightly in concern.

“How long ago did she die?” I asked.

“That’s the strange part,” he said. “Less than a year ago. And she didn’t just die. She may have been murdered.”

“Murdered? How?”

Gridwell paused in his stitching and looked up to hear the answer.

“She was killed when her garden shed burned down,” Stanley said. “Arson, according to some people in town. Accidental, according to others. Or maybe her own fault—there was a power outage and she’d gone out there with a kerosene lantern to tend the generator.”

“Killed in a fire—are they sure it was her?”

“The police got a positive ID from her dental records,” Stanley said. “And there’s an invalid cousin who lived with her. She reported seeing Cordelia go into the shed. Of course, she also testified that she saw someone sneaking away from the shed with a gas can just before the fire blazed up, but the police don’t seem to buy that part.”

“We could talk to the cousin,” I said. “She could tell us more about Cordelia.”

“That’s my plan,” Stanley said. “That’s why I want to borrow your face. The cousin won’t talk to me. She’s gotten it into her head that I’m from the insurance company and trying to prove her cousin was at fault so they won’t have to pay her claim.”

“Couldn’t you tell her who really hired you?”

“I tried,” he said. “She’s stubborn. And the town recluse. Won’t even open the door to me.”

“You could show her my picture?”

“I tried that already. She pays no attention. And why should she? I could have found the picture anywhere. Could have Photoshopped one of her cousin, for all she knows. But I figure if you show up in person, a dead ringer for the cousin she grew up with—”

“You’re on,” I said. “When do we leave?”

“Not until I finish suturing your cuts,” Gridwell said. “And let’s check when you last had a tetanus shot.”

“How’s early tomorrow morning sound?” Stanley suggested.

“My face and I will be ready,” I said.





Chapter 3



The next morning, a Tuesday, Stanley Denton and I set off for Riverton, the town where Cordelia lived. Not as early as he had hoped. I’d arranged for Natalie to spend the day over at my parents’ house again, where she’d get plenty of help from Dad and supervision from Mother. But it still took forever to get Natalie and the boys packed up and on their way.

Stanley, to his credit, watched the whole thing with obvious amusement, but refrained from making any annoying comments about how in his day kids got along just fine without car seats and sunscreen.

On our way to Riverton, I interrogated him about what he’d found, but either he didn’t yet know much or he wanted me to approach the cousin without being biased by what he did know. So eventually I gave up, and we chatted about other things while the countryside gradually grew more and more hilly. Evidently Riverton was in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. As we approached the town limits, the horizon was filled with mountains—the green slopes of the smaller ones that surrounded the town on three sides, and beyond those the blue shadows of larger, more distant peaks.