A Beeline to Murder

“All right. Stop with the barking, already. You’ve made your point, big girl.” After throwing back the covers, springing from the bed, thrusting feet to the floor, Abby bounded to the dresser and rummaged through the drawers, searching for something to wear. She pulled out a pair of denim jeans, a white camisole to wear under her work shirt, and a pair of ankle socks. They were her last clean pair and not the best, because of the lace edging, but serviceable nevertheless. She hated hair hanging in her face and decided that the green bandanna in the top drawer was a practical solution to controlling her curly mass.

Sugar busied herself with the pile of unwashed laundry. She especially liked Abby’s underwear and used towels. Abby groaned with the realization that with Sugar around, she would no longer be able to leave clothing on the floor, the gate open, or a half-eaten sandwich on a chair while she watered her plants. After putting away the laundry basket, Abby sprinted to the kitchen to swallow a few swigs of hot coffee, even though she didn’t need help waking up this morning. Abby reached for her cell phone, which was lying next to her pocketknife on the kitchen counter. She disconnected the phone from the charger and slipped it and the knife into her back pocket. She hated the interruptions cell phones always brought. But then again, maybe I don’t want any calls to interrupt me today.

Abby wiggled the phone back out of her hip pocket and laid it back down on the plywood that served as the countertop until she could get the real thing. Surely she could be unavailable by phone for a few hours. Kat and the other officers eventually would get to the bottom of what had happened to Jean-Louis. They knew how to do their jobs. If anything really important turned up and the cops needed her insight, Abby knew Kat would call and leave a message. Feeling justified at disconnecting the phone, literally, from her hip, Abby marched outside with Sugar on the leash. Nothing was going to stop her from getting those beans in the ground today!

Abby closed the fence gate dividing the front of her property from the back yard before letting Sugar off the leash, then shook the pebbles from her ladybug-patterned gardening shoes and set off for the drying shed. Sugar headed straight for the wild birds balancing on the cosmos blooms, flitting among the sunflowers, and perching in the apple tree. The dog showed a special interest in the yellow finches pecking at the Nyjer seed in one of the feeders that Abby had suspended by a rope from the pole braced between the peppertree and olive tree.

“Point and bark all you want, but no hurting those birds,” Abby admonished before returning to her beans.

In the drying shed, Abby seized upon a spool of orange string, a hammer, and a five-gallon bucket of stakes. Next, she gathered packages of beans with exotic names like Turkey Craw, an heirloom from Tennessee, and Hutterite Soup, an heirloom bean grown by a Hutterite communal sect of Anabaptists in North Dakota. If the latter bean lived up to its reputation of making a magnificent white soup, she might be able to convince Zazi’s to buy some of her crop.

After hammering the first stake into the earth and tying the loose end of the string around it, Abby paced off twenty-five steps to the other side of the garden and repeated the hammering process. She wound the spool of string around the stake, pulled out her pocketknife, cut the string, and tied the loose end. When she had completed ten straight rows, she sank to her knees in the dirt and began to plant the beans in one-inch-deep holes two inches apart. She speared the empty packages onto stakes and stuck them at the end of each row to identify the bean type. I know you babies are going to grow and produce. With the money I’ll make selling you, the honey, and my jams, maybe . . . just maybe I’ll be able to fix up this old place. A granite countertop in the kitchen would be nice, for starters.

Abby hummed while she worked, and the work went swiftly. With the beans finished, she retrieved the flats of herbs she’d been growing on the patio and began planting them. She lost track of time, but her skin felt prickly from the sun beating down on her. When she stopped to dab perspiration from her forehead using the tails of her faded work shirt, she heard a voice call out from the front of her property.

“Abby? Hey, girlfriend, you here?”

Abby groaned. Wouldn’t you know? And I’m just beginning to make headway. Tree canopies blocked the view to the gravel driveway at the front of the property, but she recognized Kat’s voice.