Twenty-seven
By early the next morning, I couldn’t ignore a growing feeling of unease about Moraine’s two recent deaths. The little voice in my head was getting louder, tapping on the inside of my cranium like it was trying to get my attention. It didn’t help matters that I’d dreamed about Manny and Faye right before I woke up.
In my bizarre dream, Manny and Faye were walking down Main Street together. And I mean really together, like sharing the same body. They rotated in and out of the dream sequence, first Manny’s face and body, then Faye’s. They kept on walking, not uttering a single word, and somehow I knew they had come for me.
That’s all I remember after waking up with tears on my face.
The same voice insisted that Manny and Faye’s deaths were linked. Too many coincidences were stacking up. They had both died within the same few days, in the same town, both under unusual circumstances.
And that same little voice in my head told me that Clay was innocent. Not innocent of most things, as I know all too intimately. In fact they could charge him with any other crime and I’d go right along with it and hope my vote was the one that brought him down. But when it came to murdering Faye, I’d have to vote not guilty.
That left Grace. Meek and mild Grace. Her husband was dead and Clay’s girlfriend was gone, too. How convenient and sinister. There were so many connections a fuse was going to blow.
The tricky part would be getting the right people to believe me. That was the challenge. I’d have to outline the interpersonal relationships for Johnny Jay and convince him that Manny’s death hadn’t been an accident.
Then I asked myself an important question that changed my tune. Where was I when Manny died? He must’ve died pretty early Friday morning, before Ray found his body. I’d opened the store that morning, but when Carrie Ann had finally shown up, I’d cut out to spend a little time alone before the champagne celebration started. Now I remembered. I’d walked along the Ice Age Trail that bordered the Oconomowoc River. Holy crap. I didn’t have an alibi.
Which meant I better wait until I had all the facts, which I was determined to get. I owed it to Manny, my dead friend, and on some level I felt I owed it to Faye, too, since my kayak—and my ex—was involved.
After selecting a funky pair of yellow sunflower-studded flip flops and accessorizing with jean shorts and a pale yellow tee, I walked the two blocks to The Wild Clover.
I arrived at the store with a honey-coated bagel in my hand and enough concealer under my eyes to hide the evidence of another bad night’s sleep. Carrie Ann came in shortly after and took over at the register while I worked on inventory in the back. When I came out, she was gabbing with Stanley Peck as she bagged up his purchases.
This time, I was going to stick to Stanley like lint on fleece when he left The Wild Clover. If he had Manny’s bees, he’d lead me to them eventually. I had my thermos of coffee and my anything’s-possible attitude back. And I had a plan.
“If Patti Dwyre comes in, tell her I need to talk to her,” I said to Carrie Ann. P. P. Patti and I had some talking to do.
“Where are you going now?” Carrie Ann called out when I bolted for the door after giving Stanley a three-second lead. “I thought you hired me because you needed more help. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I never see you anymore.”
“Be right back,” was all I had time to say before I bumped right into my grandmother, who’d chosen that exact moment to enter the store. I almost knocked her to the floor.
“Grams!” I exclaimed, attempting to rearrange my grandmother in an upright position and still keep one eye on Stanley as he opened his car door.
“I came to visit you,” she said.
“Well, come on then. We can chat on the way.” I grabbed her elbow and off we went.
“Where are we going, dear?”
“An errand.”
“I’ll drive.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. Get in the truck. And hurry. We’ll lose . . . uh, never mind. Come on.” I gave her a boost up.
I was a little delayed by my unexpected meeting with Grams, but we blew through town and caught up to Stanley on the outskirts of Moraine.
“That’s some driving, Story dear,” Grams said. “NASCAR stuff.”
“I’m practicing stunt-car driving techniques. I’m thinking of trying out next time they make a movie around here.”
“Looks to me more like we’re following Stanley Peck.”
My grandmother was one sharp cookie. So I told her about the bees and how I couldn’t find them, and how Stanley had checked out a beekeeping book, and was acting sneaky.
“He’s not heading for his farm,” Grams observed.
“No. I followed him yesterday and lost him on the rustic road.”
“Seems to me, you’d want to check out his farm rather than chase him around the countryside.”
I glanced over at my petite, gray, sweet grandmother. We did a U-turn. “You’re right, as usual. This is the perfect opportunity to find out if the bees are at his farm. You’re a genius.”
Grams grinned as if I’d made her day. But then she lived with my mother. You learned to appreciate any kindness that came your way when you spent too much time defending yourself against Mom’s constant criticism.
Stanley Peck’s farm was called, unoriginally, Peck Farms. Once upon a time, the Peck family worked the land themselves, growing acres and acres of corn and soy beans and raising dairy cattle. Stanley had opted for the same course as Grams, preferring not to sell out to big developers when they’d come calling. Instead, he rented most of his land for others to do the work and kept whatever part he felt he could manage for himself, such as the house, a few outbuildings, and enough space for a vegetable garden. When his wife, Carol, was still alive, the place was spruced up, but now a certain scruffiness had settled in. The grass was a little long, the garden a little weedy, and the house could use a paint job.
After parking, we walked around, hunting for beehives.
There weren’t any. Not a single one anyplace. Believe me, I’d know if there were hives close by. I have built-in bee radar, aka bee-dar, and it doesn’t miss.
Nada. Disappointing to say the least.
“I’m going to do some breaking-and-entering, if you don’t mind waiting in the truck,” I said to Grams, who was right on my heels the whole time. I wanted to do a quick peek in case Manny’s bee journal was sitting out in the open on Stanley’s kitchen table.
“You know, it’s not breaking-and-entering if the door’s open,” Grams commented. “It’s not illegal to check up on a good friend if we’re worried that something might have happened to him.”
“Oh, look,” I said, testing Grams’s open-door theory. “It’s unlocked.”
“There you go.” Grams passed me up. “Now, if you’ll give me a hint so I know what we’re looking for? I assume we’ve exhausted our search for beehives and are now onto the subject of . . . what again?”
“Manny’s missing bee journal.” We walked in and I lowered my voice, not sure why. “He kept all his bee notes in it. It’s black, spiral-bound, about the size of a hardcover book, and as thick. Scraps of paper are stuck in the back of it with odds and ends. Newspaper clippings and so forth.”
While I described the notebook, I opened kitchen drawers searching for the junk drawer. Every house has one, right? I quickly found it, which was in fact totally filled with junk. It had everything imaginable inside it except the kitchen sink. Or Manny’s journal.
Damn.
“Stanley needs someone to help him out with his home,” Grams noted. “He isn’t much of a housekeeper.”
“Why don’t you check his bedroom dressers while I search the rest of the kitchen,” I suggested.
“Let’s trade. I’ll take the kitchen. You can do bedroom drawers. I’m too old for surprises.”
We rooted around like two snoops, which was exactly what we were. If Stanley had secrets, we hadn’t found them yet. The man seemed to be an open book, which made me even more suspicious.
“Ah-ha!” Grams said, picking up a kitchen utensil and brandishing it. “He borrowed my apple corer last month and refused to admit he still had it. ‘I gave it back,’ he said, letting me think I was losing it. Here’s the proof.”
At least something came of our efforts. Grams got her apple corer back.
“This is why you wanted to come here, rather than following him?” I said. “For your apple corer?”
“I needed it,” Grams said after we left the house and I had boosted her back up into the passenger’s seat of my truck. “I’m making apple crisp today with a ginger-snap crust.”
Grams was the official baker in our family, and this dish sounded like a real winner, but that wasn’t the point.
“You couldn’t have mentioned the apple corer earlier?” I said with a tiny whine. “We couldn’t have stopped to get it after we found out where Stanley was going?”
“We wouldn’t have had the opportunity to shake down his house. Where’s the fun in that?”
Driving back, I made a mental list of suspicious characters, or as Johnny Jay liked to phrase it in cop talk, “persons of interest.” Suddenly, everyone in town seemed to be acting strangely, like they had hidden agendas. Except my family, who always acted a little strange and really did have hidden agendas.
I distrusted Clay Lane on principal, Stanley Peck because he was sneaking around reading bee books, and Lori Spandle for being anti-bee, and trying to get Grace to sell Manny’s house.
Then there was gossipy reputation-ruining Patti Dwyre. If I tried, I could work all of these people into a powerful theory of murderous intent.
But it was Grace Chapman who had my full attention. “I’m taking you home,” I said to Grams.
“My car’s at the store,” she reminded me. We drove in silence for a few minutes, then she said, “Want me to check up on your bees when I get back?”
“You know about them?”
Grams nodded. “But my lips are sealed.”