5 Beewitched (24 page)

I gave him a come-clean look.

“Okay, you got me there. She
did
have a crush on me.”

“Something about a certain potion . . .”

“Well, it didn’t work, now did it? Instead, Iris got really sick and almost died. She was a cute little number, but that was a long time ago. Claudene came up with one concoction after another, but most of us were smart enough not to sample her experiments. Those two girls sure learned their lesson the hard way.”

I wasn’t so sure Rosina had learned hers. Tomorrow I’d follow up on Greg’s tip, find out if the dead woman had really been involved in an inquest. If there was some sort of hearing, and she’d testified, I’d bet the store it had something to do with mixing and matching.

“You know, Iris is single,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “Just like you.”

“Playing matchmaker, are you?”

I laughed. Iris and Stanley were both odd ducks. I had a feeling that now, as adults, they’d hit it off famously. “She doesn’t come into town much,” I said. “But next time she does, I’ll let you know.”

“Why don’t I open for you in the morning again?” Stanley offered, changing the subject to one we’d both appreciate. “With my bees bedded down for the winter, my days are long.”

“You’re the best!”

“Just trying to keep out of trouble.”

I walked around to the front of the store and checked in with Carrie Ann, who told me that some of the locals had organized a search party to track down Al’s escapees. “What a day!” she exclaimed.

She didn’t even know the half of it.

“By the way,” I told her, “I’m going to Milwaukee tomorrow. Stanley offered to open for me again. And the twins are on the schedule, so we’ll be in fine shape. You should take the day off. Relax for a change.”

Carrie Ann agreed enthusiastically.

When I opened the back storage/office door, I found a familiar potbellied pig sprawled in my path. I almost fell over her. Not only was Ms. Piggy in my space, she’d gotten into a box of plastic honey bears, rooted around, managed to break into some of them, and was wallowing in a puddle of honey.

“Carrie Ann!” I shouted, temporarily forgetting my professional, public manners. “Get in here!”

“Oops, I forgot to mention the pig,” she said, poking her head around the corner.

Before I could turn into my mother and read her the riot act, Hunter and Ben came in the back door. Ben trotted over to Ms. Piggy, who wagged her curly tail. Ben wagged his own. Then Ben took a lick of her sticky pink skin, briefly considered her sweet flavor, and took a few more appreciative licks. Since bears and raccoons like their honey, why not canines?

“The health department will close us down if they find a pig in here,” I whispered, remembering to lower my voice so customers wouldn’t hear. “Get her out. Now!”

“But Ben comes into the store all the time,” Carrie Ann argued.

“He’s special.”

Carrie Ann’s eyes flicked to Hunter, who nodded his agreement. “Fine,” Carrie Ann said. She pried Ms. Piggy up from the floor and added, “Yuck, she’s all sticky.”

“Did you find out how the animals got loose?” I asked, watching as she stuck paper toweling all over Ms. Piggy, who seemed to enjoy the attention.

“No. I asked Greg when he called about getting the word out about his missing animals,” she answered, “but he said he has no idea who would have opened the gate, let alone set them off like that.”

“Lori Spandle, I bet,” I said.

Hunter shook his head. “Not possible. If she left The Wild Clover with you hot on her heels, she wouldn’t have had time. Besides, she had her mind on other things.”

Which was probably true. Lori didn’t have enough mental range to focus on more than one thing at a time.

“Animals escape from enclosures all the time,” Hunter informed us. “Maybe Greg didn’t latch the gate properly. Or one of the farm’s visitors left it ajar, and the animals spooked when they found out they weren’t confined.”

Leave it to my man to offer up a perfectly rational explanation.

When we were alone, Hunter said, “Think I’ll take the rest of the day off. Any ideas for the remainder of the afternoon?”

I knew that look.

“Maybe I’ll join you,” I said.

He took my hand in reply, and we snuck out the back door.

On the way home, he filled me in on Al. “We haven’t booked him yet, but we’ll have to soon,” he said.

“Any chance you can hold off another twenty-four hours?” I asked, thinking about Greg’s plea to me to assist his dad. “If you can wait until Sunday evening, at least the farm will get some cash from the weekend’s corn maze. You
did
clear that, right?”

Hunter nodded. “We found what we were looking for.”

“The guy needs to pay for an attorney, you know. Please wait just a little longer.”

“What makes you assume I have that kind of power?”

“I know you do.” Hunter was the lead detective on the case.

“We aren’t formally charging him until Monday morning,” he admitted.

Even better. “Do you really think Al murdered his sister?” Hunter has known Al Mason as long as I have. Al hasn’t so much as had a speeding ticket. I doubt the guy even jaywalks.

“Everything points to it,” Hunter told me. “And at this stage in the game, it doesn’t matter what I think. Do I wish we hadn’t found his fingerprints all over the dead woman’s piece of jewelry? Of course I do.”

I stopped and searched his eyes. “You really deal in absolutes, don’t you?”

“That’s my job. I don’t have the luxury of doubt.”

“But you can’t always be right.”

“That’s where a judge and jury step in and take over. I believe in the system.”

I could have mentioned how many times the legal system has failed, but that was one area we’d never agree on.

“Our partnership sure didn’t last very long,” I went on to observe instead. We started moving again, holding hands as we turned onto Willow. Ben strolled along at our side. “We’ll have to try teaming up again some time.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Listen, why don’t you continue to look into Claudene’s past? The D.A. will have to have details of Al and his sister’s estrangement. Unfortunately, Al’s opinion of her wasn’t a secret. He shared it with anyone who would listen.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Al had bent my ear, so I could only imagine what he’d told others about her. Not good for his case. Not good at all. “I really want to do something, but not to help the D.A.’s office gather evidence against Al,” I told him. “It would be with the intention of helping Al and his family.”

“Okay, that’s fair enough. What do you have so far?” Hunter asked as I unlocked the back door.

That made me pause. No way could he find out Patti was working with me again. He’d totally flip out. Besides, then I’d have to share the little story about our altercation and what she’d attempted to do to me. Then he’d really lose it. So I was once again keeping things from him. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that, and every time I tell myself it’s the last time.

But it never is.

Excuses came to mind. “Circumstances beyond my control” was the most believable. Except Hunter wouldn’t buy it. It was all I could manage just convincing myself as to the truth of that. As my pragmatic mother would say, “Why is it, Story, that you always pick the wrong path?”

In my personal opinion, whether it’s the right path or the wrong one is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Hadn’t I solved a few cases in the past? The hard way, usually, but not necessarily because I took the wrong fork. Just because I chose one over the other didn’t mean my decision was the worst of all possibilities.

Back to Hunter. “I’ve got some leads,” I hedged. “I’d rather wait until all the pieces are in place.”

He paused inside the entryway. “What happened to the wall?” he asked, studying the supplies Grams had used to pry my hands free and the powdery drywall.

“I was repairing a few chips,” I told him.

“Nothing was wrong with it in the first place.”

“Men! You never notice anything!” I countered. That comment, he
did
buy.

“Maybe you should call a handyman with more experience,” he suggested. “You might have made it worse.”

Now Hunter took the lead, holding my hand, climbing slowly up the stairs, his eyes hooded and dreamy. My cell phone went off. It was Patti, so I didn’t answer. I turned it off and left it on the steps, confident she wouldn’t show up at the house with Hunter here. Patti planned her surprise visits around his absence. If he was home, she stayed away.

I heard Ben plop down behind us at the foot of the stairs, which made me feel extra safe from unwelcome interruptions. Between Hunter and Ben, nobody from the outside world would ever penetrate our personal space.

Speaking of personal, what came next was . . . well . . . personal.

Twenty-seven

Sunday morning at the crack of dawn, bundled up in
a parka since the temperature hovered in the high thirties, I put my bees to bed for the winter. Indian summer had run its course. In the past, as a new beekeeper this had been a sad time for me. After the lively and busy spring, summer, and fall, the approach of cold weather had signaled an abrupt end to our activity as a team, and I missed them.

But with more experience under my belt, I realized just how much there still was to do, most importantly preparing the hive so that the bees would survive until next spring. Plenty of honey to feed on, protection from harsh northern winds, and a strong queen are the keys to success. Nothing causes a beekeeper more anguish than opening a hive in the spring and finding that the entire hive has perished.

So I do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen. This year I decided to build a northern windbreak, having already placed cedar posts in the ground earlier in the month before frost made that impossible. This morning, I nailed burlap between the posts, finishing it off.

Stanley’s first thought as a newbie had been to wrap his hives in plastic, until I explained that honeybees need a certain amount of ventilation. Wrapping them, yet making sure they have the air they need, can get very tricky. The key is to have a sturdy hive box to begin with and to narrow the entryway so mice can’t get in. If that happens, the mice build nests and eat up all the honey.

“See you in a few months,” I told them. “I’ll miss you.” During the time we were apart I planned to experiment with a few new flavors, create one or two cosmetics I hadn’t tried yet, and of course, make a big batch of mead.

Ben trotted here and there, sniffing whatever aromas we humans can’t smell but sure do entice the canine population.

After letting Ben back inside, I swept up the incriminating drywall, put away the nail polish, and filled a travel mug with coffee. Then I drove out of town toward Grams’s house. Breakfast with Grams was always special, and this time she’d promised a real treat.

I paused on her porch to take a deep breath. Was that really her homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven? My grandmother is the queen of bakers, winning every local competition hands down.

I hadn’t expected Mom to be in the kitchen. She and Grams had lived together after Dad died, but that was before Mom moved in with Tom. But there she was, in her old spot. Head of the table.

“Hi, sweetie,” Grams greeted me, bending down with pot holders to remove the rolls from the oven. “You’re just in time. Help yourself to coffee.”

“I brought my own,” I said, holding up the travel mug. Grams makes decaf, and I needed high-test this morning. “Hi, Mom. What brings you by so early?”

“Your mother is staying here,” Grams said.

“I can speak for myself, you know?” Mom said to her. Then to me, “Tom and I thought it would make our wedding more special if we spent the days leading up to it apart.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I pointed out, thinking of how grating those cutesy sayings are to my mother—thanks to Iris.

“Stuff it, Story,” Mom said.

Sometimes I suspect I’m just as responsible as Mom for our relationship issues, but I avoid going there.

Grams set a bowl of hard-boiled eggs on the table and handed around plates of gooey cinnamon buns. While we ate, Mom carried the conversation. “Holly this” and “Holly that,” and “guess what Holly found for my something blue?” Holly, Holly, Holly . . .

I could be the perfect daughter, too, if I had paid help with my house and yard, had all the money in the world, and didn’t have to lift a finger to do any actual work. Personally, I’d rather shoot myself than stoop to being under Mom’s thumb.

“Grams,” I said when I couldn’t take it any longer, “do you still have the pictures you took of the witches on your camera?”

My grandmother beamed. There is nothing she likes better than to be the center of attention, a position she rarely gets to enjoy when Mom’s around. “You bet,” she said.

“Mind if I look through them?”

“Not one little bit. Help yourself. My camera is right over there on the counter.”

I stretched out to get it, teetering on the kitchen chair’s back legs, thus earning a scowl from my mother. She hates when I do that. Mom effectively turned the topic of conversation back to herself while I tuned out. Grams had really gone to town on the pictures. There was Tabitha with her pointy glasses, and Lucinda and Rosina poking through the garlic basket, Rosina posing with a handful of garlic so Grams would have proof for Mabel that it didn’t ward off witches. Her blue crystal pentacle was prominent in that photo. Another of Rosina in the corner talking on her cell phone. Then Stanley and other local busybodies arriving. Lori and Lucinda shaking hands (if only the witch had zapped Lori with a wart curse).