Buzz Off (28 page)

What if I was wasting my time? That was a huge issue.

When I paddled back to the bar, Stu was watching from the river’s edge, taking a break from his work. “It’s peaceful out there, isn’t it?” he said.

I nodded in complete agreement. Stu took one side of the canoe and helped me bring it up on shore. “I need to get another kayak,” I said. “I really miss my daily river trips.”

“That old canoe is a hot commodity lately. I should start charging an hourly rate. It’s seen some real action over the years,” Stu said.

“I can imagine.” I laughed. “Or maybe I shouldn’t try to imagine. This old canoe has been around as long as I can remember.”

“Just about every butt in town has sat in her. Even Manny took her for a ride just before he died.” Stu paused, thinking it over. “I can’t remember which day exactly; they all blend together when you tend bar every night. But it was that same week he died, sometime around dusk.”

“Did I hear you right? Manny actually took this canoe out on the river?”

“He did.”

“That’s really strange. Manny didn’t like water. He wouldn’t even fish from the shore.”

Manny had had a bad experience with water, to match the one I had with the dog that attacked me. He’d almost drowned once when he was a kid when the fishing boat he was on capsized in Lake Michigan.

I typically stayed away from canines; Manny usually kept off bodies of water.

“He did seem nervous, now that you bring it up,” Stu said. “Jittery, not like most people who want to take it out. I offered to find him a canoe partner from the bar patrons—one of them would have gone along—but he refused, insisted he was fine, and took off, heading downstream. I don’t know when he came back. He didn’t come into the bar, just left the canoe where he’d found it.”

“Huh,” I said. Stu went back inside, and I stared at the boat.

“Canoe,” I said to it once we were alone, “if you could talk, what would you tell me?” I must be losing my mind, talking to an inanimate object. I glanced around. Nobody was near. “Manny, what the heck were you doing out on the river? You were afraid of water.”

Manny didn’t answer me. Neither did the canoe.

I walked back to The Wild Clover to say good night to the twins and check on things. I’d left the envelopes containing bill payments on my desk, planning to pick them up after the canoe trip and put them in the mailbox on my way home.

The envelopes were right where I’d left them.

But so was something else. Lying on top of the stack, perfectly centered, was a dragonfly earring. The dead-on match to the one Faye Tilley had been wearing when we found her body.

“We
are
investigating,
Missy
Fischer,” Johnny Jay said after my back room had been examined with a police microscope, the earring had been removed, and I’d accused our police chief of stagnation. “It never occurred to me to keep you informed as to our progress. I didn’t know you were a member of my team. Oh, wait, you aren’t.” He rolled his eyes. “You have a serious problem with interfering where you aren’t welcome.”

“Interfering! Come on. I’d love to be out of this whole thing. This isn’t something I have any control over.”

The very last thing I had wanted to do was call the police chief. But after finding the earring, I’d shouted to the twins who had been waiting on customers. Once I’d blustered and blurted and blundered, too many people knew about my discovery. The secret was out in the open before it could go covert. Unfortunately, Lori Spandle had been one of the customers, so she was already on the scene, ready to report and cause trouble.

“I should take you in and hold you until we clear this whole thing up,” the police chief said to me.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“That might be best, Chief,” Innocent Bystander Lori said.

The police chief shot her a shut-up look before eyeing me up again. “Exactly where were you when that earring appeared out of thin air?” he asked.

“Oh, give it up and go after the real killer for a change.”

“We have a suspect in custody, and you know it.”

“So how could he have planted the earring?”

“That’s my job to find out, not yours. Butt out.”

“This is
so
my business. The damn thing was found on my desk!”

“Settle down now,” Johnny Jay said, holding out both hands, palms to the floor to show me how to settle in case I didn’t know how.

Lori now wore a smug expression instead of a bee veil. I have to say the veil was more flattering.

Brent Craig stepped forward with his own theory on how the earring got there, which happened to be totally obvious, but at least he broke up the argument. “Someone must have snuck in the back door and put it there.” His brother, Trent, agreed. “We made a list of customers’ names for you, Chief,” Brent said, handing over a newsletter with the names written down on the back of it. “The usuals anyway, though some customers were passing through on the rustic road. We’d never seen them before.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a customer,” I said. “The back door wasn’t locked. Anybody could have come through it.”

My mother better not find out that that door was still an entryway. Old habits die hard. I’d forgotten to lock it when I left for Stu’s.

Johnny Jay wasn’t about to give up on me as his main source of stress and trouble. “Where were you when all this happened? Wait, do you hear the same echo I do?” He cupped an ear and listened. “Seems like I already asked you that question once.”

“I was on the river. I borrowed Stu’s canoe and went downstream.”

“Anybody see you?”

“What does it matter? I’m the injured party, the victim, not the perpetrator.”

“Did anybody see you?” he repeated.

“Stu did.”

“If Story was on the river,” Lori added, “we better start looking for another body.”

 

 

I had my feet up on the patio table, a glass of red wine in one hand, and a kitchen knife under a newspaper in front of me just in case my tormentor sprang from the bushes. I wasn’t taking any more chances. It took every ounce of my fading courage to even sit outside, but I refused to let anybody drive me into hiding. Besides, I probably had Patti watching me right next door in case I had problems.

After scanning Patti’s windows without seeing a telescope pointed my way, I called Hunter with my wine-free hand, punching numbers with my thumb.

“Can’t you take over the investigation into Faye’s death?” I said to him. “Johnny Jay hates me.”

“It’s that prom thing. He didn’t like you turning him down.”

“How did you know about that?”

“I took you that year, remember. How could you forget? The ridge after prom in my old car . . .”

He let the rest of the sentence drop off the ridge, but I remembered. Clearly. Like it was yesterday. Amazing how memories come back.

The silence hung. Then Hunter said, “When Johnny found out we were going to the dance together, he wanted to fight me over it.”

“I didn’t know that!” I smiled to myself, imagining the two of them scuffling over me. Lardy Johnny, who had slimmed down since then, and scrappy, toned Hunter. No match. Hunter would have taken him no problem. “He can really hold a grudge,” I added, wishing the police chief would get over it.

“You made a serious impression on him.”

“So, now what? Please, please, I’m begging you, take over.”

Hunter’s rich laugh came through. “I work for Waukesha County and the local Critical Incident Team. Johnny Jay is Moraine’s police chief and very territorial, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t have any jurisdiction in Moraine, and he has stopped sharing information with me since he found out we’ve resumed our friendship with each other.”

“Oh.” That would have been my fault, bringing up Hunter’s name every time Johnny Jay and I got into it.

Then I realized Hunter probably didn’t even know about the earring showing up in my store, so I related that little bit of fresh terror.

“Maybe you should move out here until this whole thing is resolved,” Hunter said, not suggestively. More worried than anything else.

“I’m fine,” I said, now more worried than ever because
he
was. I took a sip of wine.

“Sure you don’t want to come out here for a while?”

“I’m sure.” While the thought of Hunter’s protection appealed to the romantic side of me, I had a store to run and a bee business that was disintegrating before my eyes. I couldn’t let him sidetrack me with his sweet masculine musk.

Besides, we were supposed to be going slow, not moving in together.

After that we talked about the store robbery and Carrie Ann. He had stopped at the hospital to see how she was doing, but she’d been asleep. The hospital staff said she could probably go home tomorrow.

“I think someone might have murdered Manny,” I told Hunter.

“Story, that would be quite a trick, a murderer conspiring with bees to kill a human. A real stretch.”

“The killer recruited yellow jackets,” I correct him. “Not bees. And it’s possible. I could do it.”

“Really! This I have to hear.”

“I’d find a nest and come back at night. It would have to be a nest in a tree, not in a hole, one I could remove and trap in a container. I’d have to wear bee-protection clothing and move very fast. After that, I’d wait until Manny was in his honey house and I’d lock him in.”

“From the outside?”

“It has a padlock on the outside. And I’d make sure he didn’t have his own bee suit or any way to defend himself. Then I’d release the yellow jackets inside the honey house.”

“Your theory needs polishing. For example, how would you release them?”

“I’m still in the early stages of development, but it could be done. Remember, I’d be wearing protection.”

“Let me know when you pull it all together.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“And if Manny was murdered, why?”

“I’m working on that, too.” I wasn’t ready to tell Hunter about Clay and Grace. Not yet. Better to give him small pieces at a time.

We said good night to each other, adding more affection to our tones than usual, with a last warning from him to be careful.

It felt good to have someone care.

After talking to Hunter, I walked through the garden, inspecting everything. The tomatoes were ripening, winter squash was sprawling in the paths, the buttercup squash seemed to grow larger right before my eyes, and my fall crop of lettuce was bursting forth, some of it chewed down by the rabbit I’d seen from the river. But my philosophy was, critters need to eat, too. I just planted more than I needed and shared the abundance.

After that I drove to the Waukesha jail.

“He doesn’t want to see you,” said a cop behind a glass partition after delivering my request to see Clay Lane.

“He can’t do that. He doesn’t have a choice. He’s my husband.” I’d be thrilled never to have to say that again.

The cop shrugged, not impressed.

“Tell him I’m going to help him get out of here.”

That got me a second look and a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t mean break him out tonight,” I said. “I’m going to prove he didn’t murder his girlfriend. Tell him that.”

My message was relayed down the channels and eventually I was allowed in.

“What?” Clay said, looking like a convicted man who’d lost hope.

“I know you didn’t kill Faye,” I said. “And I’m convinced that Manny was murdered, too.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I just do.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I think whoever killed Faye probably killed Manny, since the odds of two murders by two separate killers in two days would be so low as to be almost nonexistent. And that person is after me for some reason. The store was robbed, and Carrie Ann was hurt. Then I found Faye’s missing earring on my desk in the back room.”

“What missing earring?”

“Don’t they tell you anything in here?”

“Nobody tells me anything. My lawyer hasn’t even been in since I hired him.”

So I told Clay about the one earring Faye had been wearing when Hunter and I’d found her, and how the police hadn’t been able to locate it until it showed up on my desk. And how Clay had to talk to me, tell me the truth, if I was going to be able to help him.

When I finished, Clay said, “Sounds like you want to help yourself, not me. In fact, I’m not sure why I’m in here and you’re out there.”

“You’ll benefit from anything I find. Why do you care why I’m doing it, as long as it helps you get out of jail?”

“What do you want from me?”

“The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let’s start with why you and Faye were fighting and why she left your house that night?”

“We were fighting about stupid stuff, and I got mad and said the only reason I was going with her was because she reminded me of you. She didn’t like that and stomped off. We would have made up if she hadn’t been killed.”