Thirty-two
“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.”
“Tell me the rest. What’s going on with you and Grace Chapman? I want confirmation one way or the other.”
What I heard left me without any forward steam. My stack of theory cards had fallen. The scoop I got was that:
? Grace had called Clay last Thursday night, sounding desperate and upset, and had said she needed to meet with him, but didn’t want anyone to know.
? He invited her over to his house, thinking maybe in her weakened state they’d get it on (his own words).
? Instead, Grace had wanted information on Manny and me, all the sordid details, as she called them, and she thought Clay would be honest and direct with her.
? She obviously didn’t know Clay at all.
“I was surprised that you’d want to be with another man,” Clay said. “But I let her think I knew something about it, in case she needed a shoulder to cry on.”
Ugh. I was so glad I’d dumped this slime ball! “You weren’t having an affair with Grace Chapman?”
“Not that I wouldn’t have given it a go, once or twice.”
“That’s the rumor going around. That you two were an item, sneaking around behind Manny’s back.”
Clay smiled like he was proud of himself.
“What about you and Manny?” he asked. “She seemed to think something was up with you and him.”
“Never happened,” I said. “Who told Grace that tall tale?”
“Probably Patti,” Clay said.
“No one should ever believe Patti,” I said. “Ever. She’s the one who started the rumor about you and Grace, after she saw Grace go into your house. That’s all the so-called proof she needed to start circulating lies. Did you know she has a telescope and spies on us inside our homes?”
“Sure, I know. That’s why I strut in front of the window naked.”
“I thought you were trying to impress me.”
“It is impressive, isn’t it?”
“Very funny, but get serious for a change. I need a promise from you if I’m going to traipse around the countryside, risking my life.”
“Anything, honey.”
“Don’t call me that ever again.”
“That’s it? That’s all I have to do for you?”
“No. When you get out, you have to move away, out of Moraine, even out of Waukesha County.”
“You’re breaking my heart with your coldness.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Deal,” Clay said. “I don’t especially like it here anyway, and if you’re not coming back to me—”
With that, I made a hasty exit.