Buzz Off (27 page)

“Are you telling me you’re emotionally attached to those bees?”

“Of course! They aren’t
just
a business. You train police dogs, right? Are the dogs you work with simply weapons to you?”

“I see your point. Tell you what, I’ll see if I can find the guy for you.” Hunter’s leg rubbed against mine. He’d moved nearer, put an arm around me, pulled me closer. “So what do you say? Are you willing to try again? Pick up where we left off?”

“What about starting slow?” I had some healing to do before I dove into the relationship waters again without knowing exactly how deep they were. The last time, with Clay, I’d hit my head hard. Trusting a man again, even one I’d grown up with, would take time and effort.

“You don’t even know me anymore,” I said to Hunter.

“I know you.”

“I’ve changed.”

“For the better.”

A pause, while I absorbed that last comment, not sure it was altogether complimentary.

Then he said, “Slow is okay with me. I’m not going anyplace fast.”

And that’s how, in the middle of rumors flying everywhere and dead bodies appearing too close to home for comfort, I ended up with a hot, sexy almost-boyfriend.

Unfortunately, when Hunter dropped me back at The Wild Clover and took off, I found Carrie Ann tied up and the cash register empty. We’d been robbed in broad daylight.

Here’s how it had gone down:

Except it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever is.

 

 

“If I’d been here like I should have been, instead of out at Hunter’s house, Carrie Ann wouldn’t be in the hospital with a head injury,” I said to Holly.

“IMO (
In My Opinion
), if I hadn’t been late,” Holly said, “I’d have been here and creamed the guy with one of my special moves.”

Okay, then. Both of us were having guilt pangs, blaming ourselves for what happened to Carrie Ann.

“She’ll be all right,” I said. “All our family members have thick skulls.”

“The way she was joking around with the paramedics, she’ll live,” Holly agreed.

Holly had been leaning against the counter. She straightened up. “What were you doing out at Hunter’s?”

“Nothing much.”

Holly stared into my eyes and sucked out the truth. Or close enough. “You’ve got the hots for him!”

“I do not.”

“Liar. I can see it in your eyes. Is he your BF (
Boy Friend
) now?”

“Here comes a customer. Time to get busy. We’ll talk later.”

I hid out among the shelves, straightening, putting in order the only things in my life that I could control at the moment. I felt the weight of responsibility.

“She’s going to be just fine,” I said to one customer after another, trying to reassure myself as much as them.

“You tell that police chief you need extra protection here,” one suggested. “He should do more drive-bys.”

Hunter called, having heard the bad news. I reassured him that I was fine and Carrie Ann would be, too. We made a date for Saturday night. He said he’d pick me up at seven at home, not at the “bed of intrigue,” as he called the store.

The attack on Carrie Ann was foremost in my mind, of course, and every time I had a second, I worried over it.

Would it have taken place at all if both of us had been at the store? Probably not, was my guess. Knocking out a lone woman was much easier than incapacitating two people at once. And getting the timing right would have been harder.

So how did this person know that Carrie Ann was alone?

People had been coming and going from the store all morning. Every single customer could have noticed that Carrie Ann was working alone.

Holly raised another big question. “Why didn’t the robber just grab the money and take off? If it were me, I’d have emptied the till and cleared out fast before Carrie Ann came around. Why drag her into the back and tie her up?”

“To gain time?” I reasoned, adding jars of honey to a display. “To make a clean getaway without anyone alerting the police?”

“MOS!” Holly suddenly called out.

“MOS?”

“Mother over shoulder!”

I cracked my head against the display shelf coming up, then spotted Mom right behind me.

“Oh, hey.” I straightened up, rubbing the sore spot and looking around. “Where’s Grams?”

“Baking.”

Darn! Grams was my best ally when Mom was after me. I saw Holly slink away. No help there.

“Your cousin could have been killed today,” Mom said in an accusing voice.

“We’re all at risk every time we cross the street,” I countered. “Besides, I feel bad enough as it is.”

“Where were you?”

“Away.”

“From now on, two of you have to be in the store at all times. And keep that back door locked. What were you thinking, leaving it open?”

“Nobody in this entire town had a reason to lock up anything until recently,” I said. “I bet you left your car unlocked when you came in here, didn’t you? Grams’s back door is wide open right now, isn’t it? What’s this town coming to if we have to go around afraid?”

“Johnny Jay better get on the stick and clean up this town, or we’ll fire him and get someone in who can do the job.”

Ooh, good. Get her mad at the police chief.

“I hear you were out at Hunter Wallace’s house.”

“Who told you that?”

“One of Grams’s friends saw you riding on the back of his motorcycle, heading toward his house. Please don’t tell me he’s back in the picture after all these years.”

“Nobody’s in the picture.”

I heard Holly snort from the other side of the aisle where she was listening in.

“We still need to have a talk,” Mom said.

“Not while I’m working.”

“What are you going to do until Carrie Ann can come back?” Mom wanted to know. “You and your sister will have to cover mornings and afternoons until the Craig boys can get here. Do you hear that, Holly? You both are opening the store tomorrow first thing.”

I heard a gasp and blathering.

“Or,” Mom said, “I’m going to have to pitch in and do it right. I could rearrange this store so things are laid out much better than they are.”

She had her hands on her hips and was studying the store with a sharp eye. Not good.

Not good at all.

By the time the Craig twins came into the store at three o’clock, they, along with the rest of Moraine, already knew about the robbery. With a huge sigh of relief, I turned the front of the store over to them so Holly and I could go straighten up the storage room.

“What was our thief looking for back here?” I wanted to know, after checking the store’s small safe and finding it undisturbed. Thank God!

“More money in a drawer?” Holly suggested. “Lots of store owners keep extra cash in the back that isn’t as secure as ours is.”

That made sense, but my inner voice suspected there was more to it. Too many disturbing things had happened recently to ignore anything.

I called the hospital to get information on Carrie Ann’s condition. My cousin was resting comfortably.

“You’ll have to pay her for time off,” Holly said. “Since she was hurt at work.”

“Carrie Ann’s been nothing but trouble,” I said, sounding like my mother the second the words were out of my mouth.

Holly giggled. “But she’s a ton of fun.”

“That she is.”

“I’ll run up to the hospital and see for myself how she’s doing. GTG (
Got To Go
).”

“Let me know. And see you first thing tomorrow morning.”

After Holly left, I made a minor dent in a pile of paperwork, hating every minute of it. Bookkeeping was not one of my strong suits, but a few invoices needed immediate attention or the electricity and phone service would be disconnected. The market paid for itself and more, so money wasn’t the issue. Getting myself to sit down and do the work was the biggest problem.

After groaning through that chore, I walked down to Stu’s.

“Can I borrow the canoe again?” I asked him.

“You can take the canoe anytime you want.”

Stu was a great guy. Becky needed to land him for good one of these days before some other woman made a move.

“How come you didn’t tell me Hunter was an alcoholic?” I asked him.

“Didn’t know you didn’t know. Besides, wasn’t any of your business.”

“I guess not. Is he okay?”

“Better off than most of us. His head’s in the right place. Sometimes personal struggles make a person stronger and better.”

“My problems haven’t done a thing for my self-improvement,” I said, thinking of my struggles with my mother and my marriage. “At least, not that I’ve noticed.”

“It might sneak up on you someday when you aren’t looking.”

“How did you get so smart?”

“Born that way.”

I went around to the back of the bar and grill, shoved off in the canoe, and lost myself in the river’s action where life was simple and easy and smelled so sweet and fragrant.

Soon the migration would begin, birds flying south for the winter. They’d stop over at Horicon Marsh, a national wildlife refuge, which wasn’t too far north of Moraine. Then they would fly over our Oconomowoc River, resting in the trees and on the water. I needed my own kayak for that big event.

For now, red-winged blackbirds swayed on cattails along the marshy side and called to each other. I gazed up into white, billowing clouds, the kind I almost think you could float on. Marshmallow clouds. I changed my usual path to avoid encountering the spot where we’d found Faye, instead heading downstream toward my home. I wondered how long it would take before I could paddle in the other direction without thinking of Faye lying dead in my kayak, water streaming over her face, her eyes looking nowhere.

I passed by my house, moving quickly with the current, noting that from the water, my backyard looked like its own wildlife refuge. I could see a rabbit chewing something on the edge of my garden. Darn.

The journey back upstream would be harder, especially in a larger vessel like Stu’s canoe. I didn’t go much farther before turning around, but I had enough personal private time to do a little self-evaluation.

I was more of a loner than I liked to admit. Sure, I needed people and conversation, and the market supplied those two daily requirements. But I craved as much alone time with my bees and nature and waterways as I could get.

Was it good to be that way, or bad, or both? How could I be with someone else when I wanted so much personal space? Between the store and bees and my own needs, did I have anything left to give to Hunter? Did I want to make the effort?