The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(60)

I wondered, briefly, if Miss Annabel had forgotten to mention this or if she’d deliberately withheld the information to make things harder for Grandfather.

“Where can I find Thor?” I asked aloud.

“He’s working for the summer down at his uncle’s car repair shop,” she said. “Larsen’s Auto Shop. It’s on the north side, about two blocks out.”

I’d already figured out that was how Rivertonians gave directions. The only two roads in town that were more than a block long met up and circumscribed what locals rather inaccurately called the town square, a small circular grassy space large enough for four benches at the base of the statue of an obscure Civil War general. Locals could say “two blocks north” or “about half a mile out to the east” and everyone knew they meant from the town square along the one road that went in that direction.

I thanked Anne, left the library—itself “a block south” in local parlance—and paused at the door of my car. The shop was only three blocks away. I felt guilty not walking such a short distance. But if I could arrange for Thor to take a break from his work to show me the location of the emus, it would help to have my car ready and waiting.

And besides, at least my car had air conditioning.

Larsen’s was busy, with mechanics working in all three indoor bays and quite a few vehicles parked on the grounds, presumably awaiting either a mechanic’s attention or their owners’ return. Mostly pickups, which seemed to be the local norm. But the place was a lot quieter than most repair shops I’d ever visited. It took me a few moments to realize that none of the mechanics were using power tools.

“That’s it,” one of them snapped, tossing a wrench on the floor with a loud clatter. “Nothing more I can do without juice. Is anyone working on the damned generator?”

I walked into the small office, and found a man I assumed to be Mr. Larsen himself talking on the phone. He was burly and his face almost completely covered with a wiry red beard. He held up a finger to acknowledge my arrival and indicate that he’d be a minute. I nodded and parked myself on the available customer seating—a couch that appeared to have been constructed by chopping off the rear end of a vintage car and inserting the matching rear car seat in the space once occupied by the trunk. The car seat was black leather, the car body fire-engine red, and the effect was oddly elegant, making the utilitarian clutter of the paper- and part-filled office seem shabbier by contrast. And it was surprisingly comfortable.

I deduced from Mr. Larsen’s side of the conversation that he was negotiating to get a part for his silent generator from a junkyard some half an hour’s drive away.

“I’ll send Thor down to get it,” he said. “Thanks.”

With that he hung up and looked up at me.

“Oh, dear,” I said. “I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re sending Thor on an errand, and I was hoping to hire him.”

“Hire him?” Larsen looked puzzled. “You need something repaired?”

“I wanted to hire him to take me out to find the emus,” I said. “I understand he might know where they hang out.”

Larsen smiled, and leaned back in his chair.

“You must be with that bunch camping in back of Miss Lee’s,” he said. “With that TV zoologist. He can’t find them himself?”

“He can, and will eventually if there are any left to be found,” I said. “But it would save a lot of time if we knew where to start. And Thor used to take Ms. Delia Mason up to feed them. I figured maybe it would work better if we started where they were fed a few months ago rather than where they lived several years back. But if you’re sending him to fetch a part—”

“I can send someone else.” Larsen turned around to a window in the back of his office, where a view of the busy interior of the garage was visible. He lifted the window sash with one hand and leaned slightly toward it.

“Thor!” he shouted. “In here!”

A tall, gangling teenager with a protuberant Adam’s apple and a scruffy mop of rusty red hair hustled into the room. Larsen jerked his thumb at me.

“Lady wants your game tracking skills,” he said, with a chuckle.

Thor turned to me with a polite but puzzled frown.

“It’s a pretty long time till hunting season, you know,” he said. “Or are you a photographer or something?”

His expression clearly said that I didn’t look like a hunter.

“I’m looking for emus,” I said.

A pained look crossed his face.

“Finding them could be pretty impossible,” he said. “And I’m not sure why you’d want to. Couple of people around town have tried eating them, and they say the meat’s kind of tough and stringy.”