Buzz Off (18 page)

I’d never seen so many axes in my life. The firefighters all carried axes and wore helmets and boots ready to fight whatever they encountered. According to residents unfortunate enough to have had small electrical fires, those guys can do some major damage. They have been described by many as overzealous.

They have also saved plenty of lives.

“Where’s the fire?” one of them said to Aurora. In the dusk and with them wearing suits that covered their entire bodies, I couldn’t tell one from the other.

“I don’t know. I didn’t call you about any fire,” she said.

“Well, somebody did. Let’s take a look.”

Aurora ran ahead, unlocked the door to her shop and the firefighters poured in, axes at the ready. By now, most of the town watched from across the street, shooed there by Johnny Jay. I saw lights go on in the main building, then in the greenhouse and supply shed. Voices called out.

I took a moment to hustle around the back of my house and check on my bees, confirming that the veil was gone from the patio table, so Lori must have been here. Not a good sign. The flashlight I kept near the hives lighted the way. Nothing unusual stood out, but my heart was beating an irregular pattern as I lifted a frame from the box.

Bees! Thank goodness they were all still here. And they were crawling around, seemingly unharmed. I checked more frames. Everybody was safe for now.

As I returned to the front sidewalk, Grams pulled up, almost swiping the police chief’s side mirror off his squad car, and either ignoring or not seeing him as he frantically waved his arms to get her attention. This was serious stuff to get Grams out this late.

“You can’t leave that car there,” Johnny called to Grams. She didn’t pay any attention. Grams, Holly, and Mom all got out, spotted me, and came over.

“Is the greenhouse burning?” Mom asked.

“I don’t see flames or smoke,” I answered.

“False alarm,” we heard, coming from the back of the greenhouse.

“Who the hell called it in?” asked another voice that sounded like Bud’s.

“Pranksters,” Mom said to anyone who wanted to listen, shaking her head in disgust. People began wandering away.

Johnny Jay came stomping over to us.

“Quite a coincidence,” he said, looking right at me. “Tell me, how did the town meeting go?”

“It broke up almost before it got started,” Grant Spandle said from close by. “Half the board members are fire volunteers. Can’t vote without them.”

“My point exactly,” the police chief said, still staring at me. “Let’s see your cell phone.”

I rolled my eyes. Johnny Jay actually thought I would call in a false fire report just to disrupt the meeting? How pathetic was that? If anyone should be under suspicion, it should be Lori. She’d been late to the meeting and I had evidence that she’d been on my property without my permission. I couldn’t think of any reason why she would call in a false fire alarm, but the woman was nuts. Did she need a reason?

“I’m refusing to show you my cell phone,” I said to Johnny Jay. “If you’d think this through, you’d realize I couldn’t have called it in because I was making my case to the town board.”

Grams was firing on all cylinders, sharp as a filet knife in spite of the fact that it was now way past her bedtime. “Are you suggesting that one of my own did something unscrupulous?” she asked him, in her sweet little voice. “Because my granddaughter is a real peach.”

“I’m sure she is, ma’am,” Johnny Jay said. He dropped the subject for the moment; he’d never go up against Grams because she might round up the rest of the locals and go after him. In Moraine, you showed respect for the old-timers, or you paid the price.

“Let’s get a nice picture of the two of you together,” Grams said. “Story, come over here next to the police chief.”

“Oh for cripes’ sake,” Mom blurted. “No more pictures.”

Grams flashed one in Johnny Jay’s face anyway.

Even though there was no sign of a fire, the firefighters stuck around to make sure there wasn’t a spark smoldering somewhere in an overlooked corner. Brent and Trent Craig arrived, reassuring me that the market was locked down tight for the night and that sales had been good for a Monday evening. At that moment, I really missed the store—the banter, the smells, the whole atmosphere. It was the only place where things seemed normal lately.

Hunter and Carrie Ann roared up on his Harley Davidson. Too bad it was Carrie Ann with her arms wrapped around Hunter’s tight abs.

Hunter gave me a friendly wink, but kept his distance. I didn’t blame him. I’d have done the same if he’d been the one who’d called me names. Carrie Ann joined us while Hunter headed for the cops doing crowd control.

“False alarm,” I said to my cousin.

“Thank God,” she said. “I thought it might be your place.” Grams took another picture.

After that, the excitement died down.

“We need to talk,” Mom hissed at me when we had a private moment. “Alone.”

“It’s been a hard day,” I replied. “Lori Spandle tried to kill my bees, Clay was arrested for murder, the police chief invited me down for a consultation, and for a brief second I thought my house was on fire.” I wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t already know. “I’m beat.”

“I feel bad for you, but this time you’re going to sit down and listen to me, and that’s final. Holly, take your grandmother to the frozen custard shop.”

I watched in dismay as Grams and Holly did what Mom said, leaving me without a defensive line to back me up.

Mom and I sat in my Adirondack chairs on the front porch, watching the last of the spectators leave. I lit a lantern and turned on a small heater I kept on the porch so I could enjoy the outdoors well into late fall. The temperature had dropped to the low fifties, but by tomorrow it would climb to the high seventies as long as the sun came out.

Mom had never been an overly affectionate mother. I couldn’t recall more than a handful of times that she’d told me she loved me, and none of those times were recent. And she was never any good with timing. A thought would hit her brain and come out her mouth seconds later. This time she surprised me.

“Have you heard any more about Clay?” she asked and for once she didn’t sound angry or disgusted.

“Only that he’s in jail and not talking.”

She nodded. “And the town meeting? It was postponed?”

“Yes. I could almost feel the hostility in the room. No one wants to listen to the facts.”

“Mob mentality. They can be like a pack of wild dogs.” Her voice was gentle when she said, “You know you’re killing me, right? I’ve spent my life living up to the standards of this community. Appearances are important with my generation. Yours doesn’t seem to care what people say or think.”

In the soft light from the lantern, I could see her eyes tearing up. This was tons worse than being yelled at. Now I felt bad for coming back to Moraine two years ago and dropping my personal problems and Clay’s bad behavior into Mom’s perfect world.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ve really tried to measure up.”

Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I loved Moraine and wanted to be accepted, but circumstances kept dragging me into the limelight and not in a good way.

“Lie low for a while,” Mom said. “Tend your store, get into a routine. Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“I promise.”

Well, what else could I say? She wanted to hear it. And I promised with total sincerity.

“Whether your honeybees are dangerous or not is beside the point,” she went on. “They’ve caused too much division among our residents. Promise me you’ll get rid of them.”

I was silent for a minute.

“Promise me?”

“Okay, I promise.”

And I said it with the exact same sincerity.

I’d found five G. Smiths in the phone directory, and I decided to call every one of them. Four were women. The last one turned out to be male, but his name was Gary, not Gerald, and he knew nothing about bees.

If Gerald Smith didn’t exist, and I had a bad feeling that he didn’t, where were Manny’s honeybees and the hives? Had Grace lied to me about the name because she didn’t want me to know where Manny’s bees went? Or had someone lied to Grace? I’d have to try to find the right moment to broach the subject of the missing bees after the funeral tomorrow.

Putting that problem aside for the light of day, I went to work making good on my promise to Mom as soon as I was sure it was dark enough to cover my tracks.

September nights are cool in Wisconsin, perfect weather to move bees, although rain would have been even better for keeping the colonies snug inside their hives. I’d helped Manny move these two hives from his place to mine. I could do this alone.

I’d thought long and hard about where to stash the hives. Most homeowners don’t mind a few bees wandering into their yards as long as the busy workers didn’t disrupt their lives. But two entire hives, with thousands of workers in each, tended to make people nervous.

Stanley Peck’s place was an option. He had plenty of farmland and he seemed to have some bee knowledge based on the information he imparted to the mob about my bees and the distances they could fly. And he’d defended me against Lori. But I didn’t entirely trust him. He’d been part of her original group, and I hadn’t forgotten that.

Holly’s lake home was another possibility. But she had one of those totally pristine yards with everything in place, manicured, pruned, etc. My two box hives would stand out like warts on a baby’s bottom.

That left only one place. Grams’s house. The location was perfect—only a mile and a half from my house, so the bees would still be within their home flying area. I certainly couldn’t let her or Mom know what I was up to because then Mom would launch into one of her long-winded lectures intended to force me to toe her line, which happened to be covered with barbed wire. She’d made me promise to get rid of my bees because of politics, but she hadn’t approved of them from the very beginning. Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure she had ever approved of anything I’d ever done, past or present. Or future. That first-daughter syndrome again. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get her approval without any success.

How a sweet woman like Grams could have a cranky daughter like Mom amazed me.

Yes, Grams’s house was the answer. It would be easy to slip in undercover with the hives, without Grams or Mom even knowing. Here’s why:

I backed my truck into my driveway, and then dressed in coveralls, boots, a veil, and gloves, taking care to tuck in all my loose ends where a bee might wander in. Tight pant cuffs and sleeves work best when dealing with bees, so I rubber-banded myself. I even pulled my hair up into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. Then I closed off the entrances to both hives with wire mesh, gave them a few puffs of smoke from the smoker, which worked wonders in keeping them calm, started the truck engine because vibrations also help quiet bees for some unknown reason, and began trying to load the boxes into the back of my truck. That turned out to be harder than I thought. The hives were incredibly heavy.

Impossible to lift, in fact.

I gave up and called Holly. “I need you to help me lift something,” I said into the phone.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“So? You sleep all morning. I assume you stay up all night.”

“K, K (
okay, okay
). Where and when?”

“My house. Now.”

Good thing my sister didn’t ask
what
she was going to lift or she never would have shown up.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said when I handed her the proper attire. “I’m afraid of bees. I might be allergic.”

“Bee allergies are hereditary,” I said, pulling that scientific fact out of thin air. “We don’t have it in our family.”

Holly sighed, one of those big, noisy, disgusted, why-me air releases that might cause a lesser woman to excuse her from the task at hand. After she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she got herself dressed in the protective clothing.

Getting her to take a position at the side of a hive was another thing. “They can’t get out of the hives,” I reassured her. “See the wire mesh? It’s literally impossible for them to get at you.”