The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(98)

“Very distinctive,” I said aloud. “Distinctive” was my new buzzword, since far too many people these days knew my mother had taught me that if I couldn’t say anything nice I should fall back on “interesting.”

“I decided to switch to scarves because I sensed a certain resistance to the effort involved in helping the emus put on the sweaters,” she said. “But they can’t complain that this is too much trouble, can they?”

I had a sudden vision of Clarence Rutledge trying to wrap a scarf around an emu’s neck and being dragged through the woods with his feet hopelessly entangled in a woolly puce death trap.

“Ingenious thinking,” I said. “Ingenious” was another of my new substitutes for “interesting.”

As I planned, she mistook this for a compliment. She beamed.

“Do you knit?” She began rummaging in a basket at her side. “I have several pairs of needles and plenty of yarn.”

“Alas, no.” I held up my bandaged hand. “And with this injury, I’m afraid it’s not a good time to learn.”

I decided it was time to make my escape, in case she’d been experimenting with one-handed knitting and was in the mood to share. Besides, even thinking of my hand made me realize it was throbbing slightly.

And I was so tired from several days of inadequate sleep that I decided to go back to our tent and rest. Maybe even nap.

I was about to head for our tent when I saw two motorcycles approaching the camp, escorting a truck with a horse trailer attached. I stayed to watch as Dad and two of the motorcycle wranglers unloaded another pair of emus into the pen.

“Clarence here?” one of the wranglers asked.

“He’s making a run down to the sanctuary with the other emus,” I said.

“Then I’ll give these two a quick once-over,” Dad said. “To make sure they weren’t injured in transit. Is Thor here? It’d be nice to know their names. So we can put them on their tags.”

“I think he’s down at the police station,” I said. “As a witness,” I added, seeing the startled look on Dad’s face.

“Oh!” I could see that Dad was torn between his desire to hear about the case and his duty to the emus.

“I’ll tell you all about it when you’re finished with the birds,” I said. “And unless you think the emus are really attached to their human names, I’ll think of names that fit in with Cordelia’s trinomial system. Are they male or female?”

“One of each,” he said. “A mated pair, we think.”

“How about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and … Martin Van Buren?”

“Perfect!”

I watched as Dad checked the emus out. I figured he’d want to hear all about what had happened here at camp, so I decided to hang around and make him happy.

But when he let himself out of the emu pen—carefully checking the gate latch—and walked over to where I was standing, he didn’t immediately pepper me with questions.

Instead, he gazed mournfully at the back of Miss Annabel’s house.

“How’s she taking all this?” he asked.

“Miss Annabel? I think she’s frustrated,” I said. “She’s not happy with how the chief handled her cousin’s murder, and I think that makes her a little pessimistic about the chances of solving this one.”

He nodded.

“Why don’t you go over and talk to her?” I asked.

“She’s a recluse,” he said. “What if she doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“She talks to me,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she talk to you? You’re family. Even closer family than me.”

“I’m still getting used to it all,” he said.

I realized that he wasn’t quite staring at the back of Miss Annabel’s house. He was staring at the remains of the shed.

“Used to what?” I said. “The idea that your mother was living less than an hour away all this time and never once contacted you? The fact that if Grandfather had started this quest a year earlier, we might have gotten to meet her? Or maybe the feeling of guilt that you occasionally find yourself wishing that Miss Annabel had gone out to tend the generator that night instead of your mother?”

He glanced up with a surprised expression.

“All of it,” he said. “And especially the last. I feel guilty about it, but I couldn’t help thinking that.”

“So did I at first,” I said. “But not so much since I got to know Miss Annabel. You should meet her. She’s pretty cool, actually, in a sharp, suffer-no-fools-gladly way. I imagine I can see something of Cordelia in her.”