Buzz Off (12 page)

I could use her company and support to go take pictures of the missing hives over at Manny’s. And I needed somebody to talk to about Faye.

“Want to work right now?” I asked Carrie Ann.

My cousin looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t thought I’d agree to giving her hours at all. “I suppose.”

“I have to go take some photographs. And tomorrow, can you work the morning for me?”

Carrie Ann smiled as I dashed for the door. “Sure. Cool.”

“There you are.” Holly stalked toward me, wearing the same kind of casual clothes I wore—jeans, V-necked cotton pullover, casual summer footwear. The only difference was everything she wore looked like it cost ten times more than mine. Which it had. “Mom sent me to spy on you,” she said.

“I’m on my way out to Manny Chapman’s. Want to come?”

“’K. I’ll drive.” Holly had a lot of Grams in her, except thankfully her driving was much better. “What’s going on out there? I heard Manny Chapman died. I’m so sorry, I know he was a good friend of yours.”

“Thanks.” I started to well up but fought it back and focused on my mission. “I have to go take pictures of his apiary. I’ll explain on the way. But you can’t tell Mom anything about what I do or say. Okay? Say ‘okay.’ ”

Holly gazed at me with the same hazel eyes I had. “’K.”

I didn’t tell her this was also a hastily hatched surveillance run, and that I planned to clear the honeybees’ good name if it was the last thing I ever did.

We pulled up in Grace’s driveway in Holly’s Jag about the time I finished telling her about the bee scare. After one quick glance told me the hives were gone, I couldn’t bring myself to look that way again. “I can’t do it,” I said. “I just can’t.”

“SC (translation:
stay cool
). I’ll take the pictures,” Holly said. “You just want empty-space pictures, right? Where the hives used to be?”

I nodded. “With some of the house in the background, so everybody can see that the photos were taken right here in Manny’s yard. Knowing Lori, she’ll accuse me of manipulating the photos anyway.” Holly headed over to the remains of the beeyard with her cell phone while I went to the house and knocked on the door. No one was home. Perfect. The honey house beckoned to me.

I used my key to unlock the padlock and drew in a sweet breath of the honey aroma. I flipped on all the lights and began a thorough search. Holly joined me a few minutes later.

“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

“I’m not sure. Could you check around the outside of the honey house? Look for signs of yellow jackets.”

“Ick,” Holly said. “I’m staying right here with you.”

My sister wasn’t exactly Discovery Channel material.

I took my time, unlike during my last visit. Manny’s missing journal didn’t surface, which was starting to worry me, but I found two dead yellow jackets on the floor of the honey house. Not concrete evidence of anything, but I was in a suspicious frame of mind. “Yellow jackets,” I announced.

Holly peered at the dead insects, keeping her distance. “How can you tell? They all look the same to me.”

“These don’t have hairy back legs to carry pollen like honeybees do. See.” I picked one up and pointed to its smooth legs, which she couldn’t see anyway since she was so far away. I placed it and the other one on a worktable in case they were important to my investigation, and we went outside.

“Now what are you doing?” Holly seemed slightly impatient. “I thought we were going to take a few pictures then leave.”

“In a minute. Help me look for more signs of yellow jackets. But be careful.”

“OMG (
Oh, My, Gawd
), no! I’m waiting in the car.”

Holly headed for her Jag.

Yellow jackets sometimes make their homes in the ground rather than in more traditional nests, but I didn’t see any buzzing activity at earth level. I had to take several deep breaths before walking in a wide circle around the perimeter of what used to be the apiary. Nothing. Yellow jackets also liked trees, sheds, eaves, even holes in walls, so I widened my search, without any luck.

If I could find an aggressive yellow jacket nest close to the empty apiary, I might be able to convince the bee-hungry jurists to reach a unanimous decision to acquit the honeybees. I had to do it, had to know for sure, and that meant facing my fear and going right into what was once a thriving apiary.

It was a beautiful fall day, as Wisconsin Septembers usually are, when I forced myself into the beeyard. I heard birds in the trees and flying insects
did
wander by, including an occasional yellow jacket, but as much as I wished for it, there wasn’t enough activity to indicate a hive or nest close by. I instinctively strained to hear familiar sounds, but all I heard was emptiness.

After that, I rounded the honey house, looking up to search the eaves. I almost tripped over the bee blower, the same one I’d looked for without success when I’d needed to remove bees from Manny’s body. What was it doing back here? Manny was fussy about his equipment, almost to the point of obsessive compulsiveness. He never would have left it outside in the elements.

Then I spotted an object so small I almost missed it. A tiny shred, but I knew exactly what it was. A piece of a paper nest, the kind made by yellow jackets when they chewed wood into pulp to make their homes.

I looked up, but nothing above my head indicated that a nest had been under the eave. Still . . .

Had Manny discovered the nest and tried to destroy it? Had the wasps attacked him? But he was a professional beekeeper—he was more than smart enough to know to wait until dark, and he would never have been foolish enough to try to take a nest down with live yellow jackets inside. He would have sprayed the nest with massive doses of poison first.

What had Manny been thinking?

I put the bee blower back inside the honey house. Then I wrapped up the two dead yellow jackets and the piece of nest in a tissue and put them all in a plastic bag.

“What’s that?” Holly asked when I returned to the car.

“Nothing much.”

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

So I did. About how the entire community was about to wage war on honeybees, which I’d explained some of on the way over. About how Grace wouldn’t allow an autopsy that could have proved that wasps killed Manny, and about Grace giving away the bees that should have come to me. “I’m taking what I found to the police chief,” I finished.

Holly laughed. “AYSOS?”

“What does that mean?”

“Are you stupid or something?”

“I resent that.”

“I have to be there when you talk to the police chief. I can hear you now. ‘Hey, Johnny Jay. Look, yellow jackets really did kill Manny, not bees. And my evidence is this dead yellow jacket I found in Manny’s honey house and this little piece of nesting material.’ ”

It did sound lame. But Holly wasn’t through mocking me. “ ‘Now, Johnny Jay, I want you to go out there in the community and make an announcement and warn everybody that there will be legal consequences if they don’t leave me alone.’ ”

I didn’t know what to say because she was right.

“Story, maybe it’s best to just let it go. I know you cared about Manny a lot, but he’s gone. BON (
Believe it Or Not
).”

“I’ve got to find out exactly what happened.”

“No, you don’t. SS (
So Sorry
), but maybe Mom was right.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“She thinks you’re working too hard and getting nutty.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

We were still sitting in front of Manny’s house. “I wonder where Manny’s journal went,” I said, talking to myself more than Holly. “It must be in the house. We better get out of here before Grace comes home and catches us.”

Holly pulled out, heading for town, and that’s when the subject of Faye Tilley and Clay came up for the first time. Holly must have sensed that I wasn’t ready to talk about it earlier, because she waited for me to bring it up.

“Mom called and told me about it, but she didn’t go into any details. It must have been awful,” she said when I was done telling her about the events on the river—the storm, the cold and wind, and finding Faye’s dead body in my kayak.

“It sure wasn’t what I had expected to find,” I said.

“Why would somebody want to kill her?”

“Who knows?” I remembered how Faye had flounced into the courtroom during the divorce hearing and how smug she’d looked later when she lip-locked with Clay for my benefit. “But she definitely wasn’t a woman’s woman.”

“Absolutely, not.” Holly knew exactly what I meant. Some women managed to be popular with both men and women, but Faye was too catty and competitive to fall into that category.

The only piece of information I kept from Holly was the damaging news about the e-mail tip. I wanted to save that until she wasn’t behind the steering wheel. I don’t have a death wish.

Back at The Wild Clover, we headed for my office, which amounted to a desk jammed at the back end of all the storage shelves. We downloaded two copies of the missing beehive pictures onto my work computer and printed them out.

“Stay right here,” I said to Holly. “I have something important to tell you.” I rushed out to tape one set of evidence to the front door. I left the other set with Carrie Ann.

“If anybody asks about the bees,” I said to her, “point them to these photos.”

“You got it.”

Then I hurried back to the storage room and closed the door as quietly as I could. I didn’t want anyone, especially Carrie Ann, to try to listen in. Nobody, but nobody else, could know my secret.

“Promise you won’t scream when I tell you this,” I began.

“OMG,” Holly said. “You’re pregnant.”

“Shush. Keep your voice down.”

How I wished that were the breaking news. How much simpler it would be to bring someone new into the world rather than get involved with one going out.

I shook my head. “You better sit down.” Holly sat down in my office chair. “A tip relating to Faye’s death was sent from a library computer to the police station.”

“Okay.”

“The tip wasn’t true, but Johnny Jay believes it, and he’s looking for the person who made the accusation.” Holly started frowning like she wasn’t following me. “So in my thinking,” I continued, “the person who sent the tip has to be someone with a big grudge against me. Right?”

Holly looked totally confused. “What are you trying to say? What tip? What accusation?”

I crouched down and clutched her hands. “This person says they saw me arguing with Faye by the river the night before Hunter and I found her body in—”

“—your kayak,” Holly finished for me, light bulbs going on inside her head.

I nodded.

“Oh, hell,” Holly said, jumping up from the chair and knocking me over on my butt. “SNAFU! (
Situation normal: All F#@&%! Up
). What have you gotten yourself into?”

Early Monday morning before work, still stinging from Holly’s barbs and the angry tirade I’d had to endure, I sat down at my patio table with a cup of red clover tea. My sister hadn’t been exactly sympathetic, although eventually she’d settled down. We both were pretty sure the liar who claimed to have seen me would never come forward. But even without eyewitness evidence, Johnny Jay might think I had sufficient motive. Jealousy, he’d tell the jury, Story Fischer couldn’t bear to see Clay Lane with another woman.

I wondered how the authorities knew for sure Faye had been murdered. For that matter, how were they so positive Manny’s death was an accident?

How many death certificates are prepared every year where the cause of death is either accidental or natural? Bunches, I bet. And how many of those innocent-seeming incidents could have been murder? Who knows?

Consider the elderly. When they die alone at home, none of the family members think an autopsy is important. Grandpa died of old age. Right? But what if Cousin Frankie had been adjusting Grandpa’s medication? Or feeding him arsenic? Or helped him along with a pillow to the face? Who would be the wiser?