“Weaver’s dead?” he asked.
“Murdered,” I said.
I told them what had happened, thinking as I did so that this was efficient, telling them both at once. Stanley needed to know what had happened because it probably affected the case he was pursuing for us. And Rob was dying to know what had happened, and would save me the trouble of telling the rest of the camp.
“Damn,” Stanley said when I had finished.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I should go back to camp and tell them what’s up,” Rob said.
He loped off through Miss Annabel’s yard. I could see that there were already a few people from Camp Emu peering over the fence to see what was going on. They seemed excited to see Rob heading their way.
Stanley and I watched as Chief Heedles and the fire chief conferred and then went into the house together.
“You think she’s getting the fire chief’s opinion on whether the evidence matches my story?” I asked.
“Or maybe just checking to see that there’s no danger of a fire starting up,” Stanley said.
Another car pulled up and a bearded middle-aged man in khakis and a polo shirt strode swiftly into the house.
“Medical examiner, most likely,” Stanley said.
We watched for a few minutes as firemen and police officers went into the house and occasionally came out again.
“Interesting turn of events,” Stanley said. “And yes, I know your mother always calls something interesting when there’s nothing nice she can say about it. I meant it in that sense.”
“Damn,” I said. “And here I was hoping Weaver’s murder would be the last little bit of evidence you needed to solve Cordelia’s case.”
“Does Chief Heedles know about your relationship to Cordelia?” Stanley said.
“Not that I know of.”
“I’d tell her, then,” he said. “It might have nothing to do with Weaver’s murder or Cordelia’s, but you never know. It might be a fact she needs.”
“And she’ll find us a lot more suspicious if we don’t tell her and she finds out later,” I said.
“That too,” Stanley said. “So—let’s look at the possibilities. First, maybe Weaver was murdered out of revenge—because someone thought he killed Cordelia.”
“In which case, Annabel is her prime suspect, and I might be second on her list. Along with the rest of my family.”
“It’s a long list,” Stanley said. “Your family, a few other people out at Camp Emu who knew her, at least by reputation, as the instigator of the emu rescue, and at least half the town. Cordelia was well loved. She was cantankerous and bossy and drove people crazy, but they loved her.”
He was making her sound a lot like Grandfather.
“Chief Heedles will be working her way down that list,” I said aloud.
“And as I said, it’s a very long list, and she doesn’t have a lot of manpower to help her,” Stanley said. “So it could be a while before she looks beyond the revenge theory at any other possibilities.”
“Like the possibility that whoever killed Cordelia also killed Weaver,” I said. “I hope the similar M.O. will make her consider that early on. But why would anyone kill either of them, much less both?”
“Perhaps Cordelia’s killer had reason to suspect that Weaver could finger him,” Stanley said.
“Then why wait six months?”
“The killer only recently realized that Weaver knew something?” Stanley suggested. “Weaver said something indiscreet, maybe?”
“Or maybe it’s our arrival that set the killer off,” I suggested. “The killer saw Weaver talking to a PI and a nosy bystander and started to worry.”
Stanley nodded. I could tell he didn’t like the possibility that his investigation might have anything to do with Weaver’s murder. I wanted to suggest that if anything had triggered this new murder, it was all the fuss and bother caused by Grandfather and his brigade that were to blame, not anything he had done. But he knew that.
“Or maybe the killer’s someone in Blake’s Brigade,” I suggested. “Someone who only realized since coming to Camp Emu that Weaver’s house isn’t vacant like the ones across the street and there might be a witness to his crime?”
He smiled at that.
“Anything’s possible,” he said. “So, theory one, Weaver was killed out of revenge. Two, he was killed because the killer was afraid he witnessed Cordelia’s murder. Three, they’re completely unrelated.”
“I’m not buying that.”
“Or four, they were both killed for the same reason. Whatever that is. Like they both saw something or knew something.”