Buzz Off (17 page)

That got him laughing. “The only way you have a remote chance of getting out of here at all,” he said, “is if you start telling the truth.”

So I did. With only a few modifications.

I even addressed Johnny Jay by his professional name for the first time ever. Call me desperate.

“Hunter Wallace has been in here for hours trying to get you released,” the police chief finally said. “And I know he told you how Faye Tilley died, so you can stop protecting him.”

Johnny Jay tipped back in his chair and thought things over. “I’m a reasonable man,” he said. I choked back a retort. “But I wasn’t born in a barn. People outsmart lie detectors, although I doubt that you could. At some point we might have the chance to test you. In the meantime, you’re living free on borrowed time because if Clay Lane sent that e-mail, I’m going to get a confession, and if he didn’t, I’m going to find the person who did and we’re going to have an honest to goodness witness. Trust me on that.”

Yay!
I wasn’t going to jail!

Johnny Jay continued, “Who knows? Maybe your ex-husband really was trying to frame you.”

“That’s what I believe, Police Chief Jay,” I agreed, politely.

“Then again, you could be his accomplice and he turned on you.”

The clock hands kept moving. The Town Council meeting would begin in ten minutes.

I shook my head. “If I was planning a murder,” I said, “the dead person would be Clay.”

“So you’re capable of murder. Is that what you want to tell me? On the record?”

Johnny Jay dinked around, playing semantics games until I wanted to deck him. Finally, he let me go. I half expected to find Hunter waiting for me outside, but he wasn’t there. Just when I was about to give up on getting to the meeting, Grams pulled up next to me, slid the passenger’s window down, and offered me a ride.

“How’s Mom taking . . . this?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know, sweetie. I’d come into the meeting and help you out, but it’s getting late for me to be driving around. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and it’s almost my bedtime.

“That’s okay. I can handle it.”

We cruised along on the incredibly slow and jerky ride. My only hope of making it in time to state my case was if the meeting started late, which it almost always did.

This time was no exception.

After shouting a big, heartfelt thank-you to my grandmother, I bolted through the library doors as the last of the board members were taking their official positions. Now that I was present, the meeting couldn’t get under way quick enough for me. I had a stream of adrenaline built up and was in fast forward after all the waiting and worrying.

“I have something to say,” I blurted.

“You always do,” Tom Peterson, one of the town supervisors, said. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the service tray and made his way up to take a seat with the other town supervisors. “You have to follow procedure just like everybody else.”

Town hall meetings are not well-attended events. Every two years we make a big deal of elections for the volunteer, yet highly coveted, positions of town supervisor. Campaign signs line our lawns, the local newspaper covers all sides, then we vote and hang out at Stu’s Bar and Grill waiting for the results. The old-timers almost always win, but that doesn’t stop newcomers from trying. Once in a while, one of the old guard will keel over dead from extreme old age, making room for a younger member, almost always related to the deceased. We still haven’t elected any women yet, but that had to change one of these days soon.

Then, after the residents of Moraine make such a big fuss about the election, we disappear back to our own lives and expect our officials to handle things for us the right way. Sometimes that’s a big mistake.

At the moment, Grant Spandle, Lori’s henpecked husband and poor excuse for a town chairman, sat in the middle of a table at the front of the room. Two town supervisors sat on either side of him with little nameplates in front of each of them in case we forgot who they were.

The town board consisted of:

Others present were:

Note: My nemesis, Lori Spandle, was MIA. And after all that threatening!

Impatient as I was, I listened to the minutes from the last meeting and the other
blah, blah, blah
regarding old business. The summaries probably didn’t take as long as they seemed to me. New business was next, but I was last on the agenda, after some issues regarding bike paths and conditional use permits, I couldn’t wait another second, so I pushed off from my position against the back wall and stomped up, hoping I looked confident and firm. No one tried to stop me. Usually the meetings follow an orderly agenda, but this one promised to become a free-for-all.

“You’re out of turn,” Grant said to me.

“For those of you waiting for your turn, do any of you object to me going first?” I glanced around the room. Nobody objected.

“Then say your piece,” Grant said, giving up.

I plowed ahead. “As everyone in this room knows, Manny Chapman died recently—stung to death—and since then, a certain individual has been on a campaign to wipe out all our local honeybees. I’m here to explain why that’s absolutely ridiculous, not to mention against the town’s best interest.”

I began with bullet points.

“Number one,” I said to the handful of concerned citizens and board members, “Manny was stung by yellow jackets, which are wasps, not bees. Number two, since Manny’s honeybees didn’t kill him, why would anyone want to destroy them? Number three, the honey business has benefited our community, and every single one of you has enjoyed having access to local honey products. Number four, why can’t anyone seem to understand that honeybees and yellow jackets aren’t the same thing? If you want, I can explain the difference between bees and yellow jackets right now.”

The board members glanced at each other to see if any of them cared to hear me out.

“We’d all enjoy hearing a biology lesson,” Grant decided for them, “but that won’t be necessary. We have us a teacher right up at this table if we need anybody to explain the birds and bees.”

That brought some chuckles.

“The main point is, I don’t want anyone messing around with my bees,” I said. “Is that understood?”

“Perfectly,” Stanley said. “Nobody’s going to bother you.”

“I’m not worried about me, Stanley. It’s my bees.”

I still had a bunch of bullet points, like the importance of pollination and how weak crops could create financial hardship for all the local producers.

Before I got back to my pro-bee argument, Grant piped up, “Let’s vote on this thing and get it over with. If your bees are a threat to our community, they have to be dealt with.” He glanced toward the back door. “Wonder where Lori is? She should be here to make her case. We need to wait for her.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Bruce Cook said. “She knew about the meeting and she chose to miss it. Besides, most of us know how we’re going to vote.”

Nods around the room indicated Bruce was right about minds already being made up. Other than Milly and maybe Bruce, since his class had visited without incident, I wasn’t sure who else was in my court. I could be in serious trouble if enough votes came in for annihilation.

I would have tried to sneak my sister, Holly, in, but everybody knew she wasn’t a resident of Moraine and didn’t qualify. Same with Hunter, who lived outside the town’s limits. Too bad Carrie Ann hadn’t shown up to give me her support.

Just when everybody was getting ready to cast their votes, the siren went off at the fire department south of town. That wail meant we had an emergency situation and all available volunteers better get down there pronto.

At that point, the meeting fell apart, since we lost two of our elected officials, Tom and Bud. Bud was a paid firefighter in the city of Waukesha, but he also volunteered in Moraine. I have to give them credit; Tom and Bud took their emergency response positions seriously, and they disappeared like the last clap of thunder in an electric storm, leaving the room so quiet I could hear Grant Spandle recap his pen.

The meeting over, the rest of us began filing out of the library and into that moment between dark and light right before the streetlights go on. We gathered in front of the library, wondering what emergency had happened.

“Where’s Lori?” Milly asked.

“Here she comes,” I said.

Lori Spandle came down the sidewalk, traveling fast. Under the streetlights that had popped on that very moment, I could see she was wearing her bee veil, the one she had left at my house. Unless she had more than one, that meant she’d been trespassing on my property again. Were my bees safe? Had she used the meeting as an opportunity to kill them? I fought an urge to rip the veil off her face and tear it to shreds.

“Meeting’s over,” I said to her, refusing to show panic over my bees’ safety. “Your side lost. No more talk of killing.”

“That’s not true,” her husband told her. “The vote’s been postponed, that’s all. Sorry, Sweety-poo, I know how important it was to you. Where have you been anyway?”

“I misplaced my car keys,” Sweety-poo said. “Then my sister called with another one of her dramas, and I couldn’t get off the phone.”

“Why don’t we adjourn to the custard shop,” Larry said, always one to make a sale if he saw an opportunity.

“Let me close up the library first,” Emily said. “Are you buying, Larry?”

“Now, Emily,” Larry said. “You wouldn’t begrudge a man his livelihood, would you?”

“I’m allergic to ice cream,” P. P. Patti announced. “My stomach starts rolling around and sometimes I upchuck.”

“Thank you for sharing that, Patti,” Stanley said. “I think I’ll stick to beer just in case. I’m going to Stu’s Bar and Grill once we find out what the emergency is all about.”

Before the crowd could break off into the beer guzzlers and the custard lickers, we collectively paused to listen to the sirens coming our way. I started toward home to check on my bees. If Lori had harmed a single one while I was at the meeting trying to save them, the police chief would have another murder suspect in custody before the night was over.

The rest of them stood on the sidewalk, watching a fire engine as it passed The Wild Clover. An ambulance and Johnny Jay’s official police vehicle followed close behind, turning onto Willow Street ahead of me. Onto
my
street.

I broke into a run, rounding the corner. The vehicles had stopped in front of my house; Clay’s place and mine were the only buildings there other than Moraine Gardens and Patti’s house on the corner, which they passed right by.

The garden owner, Aurora Tyler, was right on my heels, breathing hard. We both stopped in the middle of the street. In which direction would the firefighters head when they poured out of the fire truck? Emergency vehicles continued to turn onto Willow. Any situation in our area brings out every single fire and police unit in the surrounding towns. This time was no exception.

Aurora clutched my arm when the first responders headed for her flower nursery. I felt guilty about the wave of relief that swept through me, but it was immediately replaced with concern for Aurora.