The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(9)

“Theo Weaver,” she repeated. “I know it, you know it, half the town knows it, and if our numbskull of a police chief had any gumption—”

She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.

“What did the police do?” Stanley asked. I noticed he’d taken out his notebook.

“Nothing,” Annabel said. “Oh, they poked around the remains of the shed a little. And then they apparently decided her death was merely an unfortunate accident.”

“They haven’t even—” Dr. Ffollett began.

“As I said,” Annabel said, frowning at the interruption. “They did nothing.”

“What do you think happened?” Stanley asked.

“Here’s what I know happened.” Annabel sat back with a rather satisfied look on her face. And why not? It looked as if she was getting her way.

“It was December,” she said. “The day we had that early snow. And of course the power went out. Three drops of rain or more than a single snowflake and the power goes out around here, regular as clockwork, as far back as I can remember. And I don’t care what the power company says, it’s not getting any better. So we installed a generator about twenty years back. Smartest thing we ever did.”

I nodded in agreement. Living as far out of town as Michael and I did, we also lost power much too often. A generator was on my home improvement list. As soon as we dealt with the need for a new furnace and possibly new air conditioning.

“But we don’t like to run the thing all night,” Annabel went on. “No need, really. In the summer it usually cools off enough after dark to get by, and in the winter we can bundle up.”

“There’s also the fact that Mr. Weaver keeps complaining about the noise,” Dr. Ffollett said.

“Theo Weaver?” Stanley asked. “The one you think…”

“Theo Weaver, yes,” Annabel said. “He lives next door.”

“Beyond the hedge,” Dr. Ffollett added.

“He’s the reason for the hedge, actually,” Annabel said. “To cut down on his snooping. And we didn’t turn the generator off to please him. He could have bought himself some earplugs. Or installed his own generator. But having it on while we slept fretted us. Cordelia, mainly. She kept worrying it would catch on fire or poison us both with carbon monoxide. That’s why we installed it way at the far corner of the yard, behind the garden shed. For safety. Cost an arm and a leg, running the line so far, but it kept her happy. And even way out there the noise bothered me at night. So one of us would go out and turn it off at bedtime. Usually her.”

“So she went out that night to turn off the generator?” Stanley asked.

“And I kept an eye on her, because I was afraid the path might be icy. She disappeared around the back of the shed and a few moments later, the generator stopped. But she didn’t reappear, and just when I was getting worried and starting to get my coat to go out and check on her, I heard a loud whomp! and the shed went up in a ball of flames. And there was enough light from that fire that I could get a glimpse of the killer sneaking away. It was Theo Weaver.”

“What do the police say?” Stanley asked.

“That it must have been an accident. That she was carrying a kerosene lantern and the open flame must have ignited the gasoline vapors.”

“Sounds plausible,” Stanley said.

It didn’t sound plausible to me, and I was trying to find a polite way to say so. Annabel beat me to it, possibly because she wasn’t worrying about being polite.

“Plausible, my eye,” she said. “Don’t you know the first thing about how a generator works? It was behind the shed, not in it—for safety. You want a well-ventilated site for a generator. And it was a cold, windy night. No way for vapor to build up even if there had been gasoline there in the first place—which there wasn’t. And besides, she wasn’t carrying a kerosene lantern. Those things are a fire hazard. She had a perfectly nice LED headlight that she kept on her bedside table in case she needed to get up in the night. One of these.”

Annabel reached over to her left and opened a small drawer in the end table that flanked her love seat. She took out something and pulled it onto her head. A small headlight, similar to what a miner would wear, but attached to a light elastic strap instead of a helmet.

“We try to keep one handy in every room, for the outages. Better than a flashlight, because you have both hands free.” She reached up and pressed a button on the side of the headlight. A light shone out, bright enough to make me blink even though the room, while shaded, was far from dark. “And with something like this, why in the world would she haul out a stinky old kerosene lantern?”