Thirty-nine
Ben rode shotgun next to me in the truck. Business at The Wild Clover had finally slowed down enough around mid-afternoon for me to take a long break. Carrie Ann said she wanted to stay on, that she needed the money, and the twins were there, too. So everything was covered.
By now there wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that Manny had been murdered. He’d been worried enough about something that he hid his journal under one of my beehives. It was a safe bet that one or more of the pages inside it played a significant role in his concern for its safety, and probably in his death.
I made a few assumptions:
? Manny Chapman’s and Faye Tilley’s deaths were both murders.
? The same person probably killed both of them.
? Clay had the opportunity and means to kill Faye, but he didn’t have a strong motive to kill either her or Manny, at least none that popped right out at me.
? Grace had the opportunity and means to kill Manny, but no real motive. Okay, if she thought Manny was cheating on her, maybe she had a motive.
? Moving on to other possible suspects, Lori Spandle was a nasty person, but that hardly qualified her to be a multiple murderer.
? Stanley Peck had a beekeeping girlfriend, but so what?
? Kenny Langley wanted to take over my honey area and that was a fact. He had made an offer on Manny’s property, but then withdrawn it.
Why? Was Kenny killing off the competition so he could take over more territory? That seemed extreme.
Who’d ever heard of such a thing in bee circles? If anything, we usually supported each other. Although Kenny had a streak of competition that had put some distance between us, a little too much testosterone to play nice with a “girl,” as he called me.
I’ve been called worse.
I drove past Grams’s house, noting that her car was gone from the driveway. Then I turned into the cornfield and bumped along the side of it, parking close to my beehives. Bees flew through the air, coming and going, having forgotten their quarrel with me yesterday. I found their buzz comforting.
While Ben sniffed along the tree line, leaving his dog scent on pretty much everything that didn’t move, I stayed in the truck with the windows open and began to page through Manny’s journal, starting from the back and working toward the front.
I skimmed the journal quickly, paging over my own entries, trying to make sense of Manny’s notes. He had practiced selective breeding for years, hoping to extend honey production for greater yields, and he’d seen significant progress as seasons and time went by. He’d also been working on developing strong queens and healthy drones that were resistant to mites without the need for chemical controls.
The science aspect was way over my head. As a first-year beekeeper, I was more concerned about the basics, like providing food sources for my honeybees and making sure they had enough room inside the hives to keep filling honeycombs.
“If they run out of space to store their harvests,” Manny had said, “they’ll leave to find a bigger, better home. Keep an eye on them at all times.”
I had been happy to leave the question of which queens and drones to mix together for more experienced beekeepers to ponder.
I turned to several pages that laid out all the numbers for our most recent honey harvest, which was up by 20 percent over last year. Every year Manny’s percentages had climbed. He’d also included notes about the queens and royal jelly statistics. Bees needed royal jelly to survive. All I knew about royal jelly at this point in my beekeeping experience could be summed up in a few short bullet points:
? It’s secreted from glands in the heads of nurse bees.
? Combined with honey, it is fed to larvae.
? When a new queen is selected, that special larva is fed only royal jelly and lots of it. That’s what makes her grow into a queen.
? Royal jelly is supposed to do great things for humans—slow aging, lower cholesterol, strengthen the immune system, and a whole list of other benefits.
From conversations Manny had with other beekeepers, he didn’t plan to go into full-scale royal jelly production, but the scientist in him couldn’t help but include basic observations.
It would take several days to go through the journal the way I should, so after a while I closed it, called Ben back to his seat in the truck, and almost sideswiped Johnny Jay as I pulled out on the road.
He swerved, lost control, and ended up in the ditch across the road, sideways. It was a rather deep ditch with several inches of standing water.
Nothing good could possibly come out of this encounter.
Scotty, beam me up.
When I didn’t evaporate into thin air, I knew I was on my own.
“Hey, Johnny Jay,” I said through the open window when he got out and stepped down into the water before noticing it. The police chief didn’t look happy about the situation or about seeing me. “Sorry about that,” I added as he sloshed toward me.
“Missy Fischer, even though our fine country fields don’t have their own special stop signs, it’s implied that those who don’t stay on the roadways will yield to those who do. I’m writing you up for reckless driving.”
“Whatever gives you a thrill,” I replied, noting his smug, righteous air as he leaned on my truck, an authoritative attitude that always brought out the sass in me. “But I didn’t see you. Perhaps you were speeding.”
“Isn’t that Hunter’s dog?” he asked.
I nodded. “He’s trained to attack.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Just telling it like it is.”
“I’ll need your driver’s license. Then you can sit tight while I run your plates, see if you’re wanted for anything. Let’s see—reckless driving and threatening a police officer.”
“I’m really sorry about prom,” I said, stooping to an all-time low by apologizing to Johnny Jay. And twice in a row—first for the ditch, then for the dance. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Johnny Jay stared at me through the window, speechless. Then he said, “What are you talking about?”
“Prom. When you asked me to go, and I said no.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I thought that’s why you’re so mean to me, and why you aren’t even going to listen to me when I try to tell you that Manny Chapman was murdered.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do than make up situations in your head?”
“I’m not making this up.”
“Come with me.” He opened my door. “We’re going to have a little chat.”
“What kind of chat?”
“Just get out.”
Suddenly I realized that I was alone with a big bully. Holly wasn’t here to act as my bodyguard.
My reaction was probably silly. Johnny Jay had done some pretty rotten things, but he’d never been accused of physical abuse. At least not since high school, when he had been implicated in several black-eye incidents, which had been his word against theirs and never solidly proven. Although I distinctly remembered a scene with me back in third grade when he’d rubbed my face in the snow. I’d gotten even with him later when I blasted him with mud balloons.
I didn’t move. Ben was doing his thing, watching and thinking something only he knew about. Suddenly it felt good to have this big scary dog beside me, on my side. What secret words would trigger an active, go-get-him response? Later tonight when I had my hot date with Hunter, I’d have to try to get the magic words out of him just in case I ever needed them.
And why was I so afraid of Johnny Jay? He and I were supposed to be on the same side, too.
“I’m not getting out of my truck,” I said, deciding I wouldn’t go, no matter what. “But I’ll follow you to the station, where I’ll be happy to have that little chat with you. So do your business, write me up, read me my rights, whatever you need to do to make yourself feel like you’re the boss. Then we’ll go down to the station. Now close my door and MOVE back.”
There was a long pause while we stared at each other.
Then Johnny Jay closed the door. “Okay,” he said. “I’m letting you off with a warning this time.”
“What?”
“But only if you swear you’ll shut up and mind your own business. I know you’re upset about the robbery at the store, and that earring showing up, and I’m perfectly aware that someone is toying with you, trying to scare you or worse. But what happened had nothing to do with Manny Chapman and everything to do with your ex-husband and his dead girlfriend. Christ, the guy’s prints are all over the kayak. It’s a given, he’s going to be doing time. So do we have a deal? You let me do police work, and you mind your store?
“What’s the alternative?”
“A court hearing and a fine you can’t afford to pay.”
“This is blackmail.”
“I call it self-preservation. You’re driving me crazy.”
“Don’t you want to hear what I have first? We could compare notes.”
“Hand over your driver’s license.”
“I’ll take the deal,” I lied.