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  “I’m not sure. Could you check around the outside of the honey house? Look for signs of yellow jackets.”

  “Ick,” Holly said. “I’m staying right here with you.”

  My sister wasn’t exactly Discovery Channel material.

  I took my time, unlike during my last visit. Manny’s missing journal didn’t surface, which was starting to worry me, but I found two dead yellow jackets on the floor of the honey house. Not concrete evidence of anything, but I was in a suspicious frame of mind. “Yellow jackets,” I announced.

  Holly peered at the dead insects, keeping her distance. “How can you tell? They all look the same to me.”

  “These don’t have hairy back legs to carry pollen like honeybees do. See.” I picked one up and pointed to its smooth legs, which she couldn’t see anyway since she was so far away. I placed it and the other one on a worktable in case they were important to my investigation, and we went outside.

  “Now what are you doing?” Holly seemed slightly impatient. “I thought we were going to take a few pictures then leave.”

  “In a minute. Help me look for more signs of yellow jackets. But be careful.”

  “OMG (Oh, My, Gawd), no! I’m waiting in the car.”

  Holly headed for her Jag.

  Yellow jackets sometimes make their homes in the ground rather than in more traditional nests, but I didn’t see any buzzing activity at earth level. I had to take several deep breaths before walking in a wide circle around the perimeter of what used to be the apiary. Nothing. Yellow jackets also liked trees, sheds, eaves, even holes in walls, so I widened my search, without any luck.

  If I could find an aggressive yellow jacket nest close to the empty apiary, I might be able to convince the bee-hungry jurists to reach a unanimous decision to acquit the honeybees. I had to do it, had to know for sure, and that meant facing my fear and going right into what was once a thriving apiary.

  It was a beautiful fall day, as Wisconsin Septembers usually are, when I forced myself into the beeyard. I heard birds in the trees and flying insects did wander by, including an occasional yellow jacket, but as much as I wished for it, there wasn’t enough activity to indicate a hive or nest close by. I instinctively strained to hear familiar sounds, but all I heard was emptiness.

  After that, I rounded the honey house, looking up to search the eaves. I almost tripped over the bee blower, the same one I’d looked for without success when I’d needed to remove bees from Manny’s body. What was it doing back here? Manny was fussy about his equipment, almost to the point of obsessive compulsiveness. He never would have left it outside in the elements.

  Then I spotted an object so small I almost missed it. A tiny shred, but I knew exactly what it was. A piece of a paper nest, the kind made by yellow jackets when they chewed wood into pulp to make their homes.

  I looked up, but nothing above my head indicated that a nest had been under the eave. Still . . .

  Had Manny discovered the nest and tried to destroy it? Had the wasps attacked him? But he was a professional beekeeper—he was more than smart enough to know to wait until dark, and he would never have been foolish enough to try to take a nest down with live yellow jackets inside. He would have sprayed the nest with massive doses of poison first.

  What had Manny been thinking?

  I put the bee blower back inside the honey house. Then I wrapped up the two dead yellow jackets and the piece of nest in a tissue and put them all in a plastic bag.

  “What’s that?” Holly asked when I returned to the car.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Fine, don’t tell me.”

  So I did. About how the entire community was about to wage war on honeybees, which I’d explained some of on the way over. About how Grace wouldn’t allow an autopsy that could have proved that wasps killed Manny, and about Grace giving away the bees that should have come to me. “I’m taking what I found to the police chief,” I finished.

  Holly laughed. “AYSOS?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Are you stupid or something?”

  “I resent that.”

  “I have to be there when you talk to the police chief. I can hear you now. ‘Hey, Johnny Jay. Look, yellow jackets really did kill Manny, not bees. And my evidence is this dead yellow jacket I found in Manny’s honey house and this little piece of nesting material.’ ”

  It did sound lame. But Holly wasn’t through mocking me. “ ‘Now, Johnny Jay, I want you to go out there in the community and make an announcement and warn everybody that there will be legal consequences if they don’t leave me alone.’ ”

  I didn’t know what to say because she was right.

  “Story, maybe it’s best to just let it go. I know you cared about Manny a lot, but he’s gone. BON (Believe it Or Not).”

  “I’ve got to find out exactly what happened.”

  “No, you don’t. SS (So Sorry), but maybe Mom was right.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “She thinks you’re working too hard and getting nutty.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  We were still sitting in front of Manny’s house. “I wonder where Manny’s journal went,” I said, talking to myself more than Holly. “It must be in the house. We better get out of here before Grace comes home and catches us.”

  Holly pulled out, heading for town, and that’s when the subject of Faye Tilley and Clay came up for the first time. Holly must have sensed that I wasn’t ready to talk about it earlier, because she waited for me to bring it up.

  “Mom called and told me about it, but she didn’t go into any details. It must have been awful,” she said when I was done telling her about the events on the river—the storm, the cold and wind, and finding Faye’s dead body in my kayak.

  “It sure wasn’t what I had expected to find,” I said.

  “Why would somebody want to kill her?”

  “Who knows?” I remembered how Faye had flounced into the courtroom during the divorce hearing and how smug she’d looked later when she lip-locked with Clay for my benefit. “But she definitely wasn’t a woman’s woman.”

  “Absolutely, not.” Holly knew exactly what I meant. Some women managed to be popular with both men and women, but Faye was too catty and competitive to fall into that category.

  The only piece of information I kept from Holly was the damaging news about the e-mail tip. I wanted to save that until she wasn’t behind the steering wheel. I don’t have a death wish.

  Back at The Wild Clover, we headed for my office, which amounted to a desk jammed at the back end of all the storage shelves. We downloaded two copies of the missing beehive pictures onto my work computer and printed them out.

  “Stay right here,” I said to Holly. “I have something important to tell you.” I rushed out to tape one set of evidence to the front door. I left the other set with Carrie Ann.

  “If anybody asks about the bees,” I said to her, “point them to these photos.”

  “You got it.”

  Then I hurried back to the storage room and closed the door as quietly as I could. I didn’t want anyone, especially Carrie Ann, to try to listen in. Nobody, but nobody else, could know my secret.

  “Promise you won’t scream when I tell you this,” I began.

  “OMG,” Holly said. “You’re pregnant.”

  “Shush. Keep your voice down.”

  How I wished that were the breaking news. How much simpler it would be to bring someone new into the world rather than get involved with one going out.

  I shook my head. “You better sit down.” Holly sat down in my office chair. “A tip relating to Faye’s death was sent from a library computer to the police station.”

  “Okay.”

  “The tip wasn’t true, but Johnny Jay believes it, and he’s looking for the person who made the accusation.” Holly started frowning like she wasn’t following me. “So in my thinking,” I continued, “the person who sent the tip has to be someone with a
big grudge against me. Right?”

  Holly looked totally confused. “What are you trying to say? What tip? What accusation?”

  I crouched down and clutched her hands. “This person says they saw me arguing with Faye by the river the night before Hunter and I found her body in—”

  “—your kayak,” Holly finished for me, light bulbs going on inside her head.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, hell,” Holly said, jumping up from the chair and knocking me over on my butt. “SNAFU! (Situation normal: All F#@&%! Up). What have you gotten yourself into?”

  Thirteen

  Early Monday morning before work, still stinging from Holly’s barbs and the angry tirade I’d had to endure, I sat down at my patio table with a cup of red clover tea. My sister hadn’t been exactly sympathetic, although eventually she’d settled down. We both were pretty sure the liar who claimed to have seen me would never come forward. But even without eyewitness evidence, Johnny Jay might think I had sufficient motive. Jealousy, he’d tell the jury, Story Fischer couldn’t bear to see Clay Lane with another woman.

  I wondered how the authorities knew for sure Faye had been murdered. For that matter, how were they so positive Manny’s death was an accident?

  How many death certificates are prepared every year where the cause of death is either accidental or natural? Bunches, I bet. And how many of those innocent-seeming incidents could have been murder? Who knows?

  Consider the elderly. When they die alone at home, none of the family members think an autopsy is important. Grandpa died of old age. Right? But what if Cousin Frankie had been adjusting Grandpa’s medication? Or feeding him arsenic? Or helped him along with a pillow to the face? Who would be the wiser?

  And those so-called accidental deaths? Say someone’s husband falls off his roof still clutching his beer and lands right on his head? An accident, right? But what if he was pushed? Or what if the missus, sensing her lucky day, finished him off with an additional bang to the head?

  I couldn’t stop thinking bad thoughts and concocting gruesome scenarios. I glanced over at Clay’s house, wondering how safe I was.

  Last night Holly had demanded that I rearrange my priorities. She wanted to know what I had been doing looking for nests and collecting dead yellow jackets in plastic bags when I was close to becoming the most wanted woman in Moraine. Being wanted was not a good thing under these circumstances, but I didn’t plan on letting it get that far. If only I could think of something to make this all go away.

  I could go on forever with what-ifs and if-onlys. Life and death were filled with hard questions and elusive answers. I could have explained to Holly that since I couldn’t bring back Manny or Faye, rescuing hundreds of live honeybees was the only way I could feel useful. But she would have poked holes in my dream.

  To cheer myself, I walked through my garden, picking ripe vegetables. I’d planted the garden for my own use, not for the produce aisle at The Wild Clover. Every year I experimented with different plants. The early crops like lettuce, peas, arugula, and radishes were done for this year. My fall crop consisted of:

  • Tomatoes—heritage pineapple tomatoes grown from saved seeds and Romas because I can throw them in the freezer right from the garden.

  • Ground cherries—they form inside a husk and taste like a cross between a tomato, a cherry, and a pineapple. And they make an awesome pie.

  • All my favorite things for making salsas—sweet green peppers, Anaheim and poblano peppers, onions, and tomatillos.

  • Beets—both red and golden. I make the best beet soup in the Midwest.

  • Squash—both summer and winter.

  • Potatoes—fingerlings and red golds.

  I set an armful of ripe garden veggies on the patio table, then drizzled some honey into a five-gallon bucket and set it out for my bees, the same way Manny had given his honeybees a treat, right before his death. I stared longingly at the spot where I’d kept my kayak, wondering when I’d get it back and if so, if I’d ever take it out again without seeing the image of Faye’s lifeless body inside, not to mention Clay and Faye doing you-know-what in my kayak.

  I was listening to the music of the bees buzzing when I heard human voices rising above the familiar hum. Lori Spandle’s shrewish voice stood out above the din. She rounded my house wearing her bee veil, and she had a gang right behind her.

  I had a feeling I was going to lose a few store customers this morning.

  Clay came out of his house and watched from his porch. P. P. Patti Dwyre slipped through the cedars separating her house from mine. But to give her a teensy amount of credit for a change, she didn’t join Lori’s group. Instead she lingered near the shrubs within hearing range.

  “What are you doing with her?” I said to Stanley Peck, using my head to indicate Lori. Stanley towered over the rest of Lori’s bunch, making it hard for him to conceal himself. He looked embarrassed, as well he should be. I peered to the back, counting heads. Seven in all. The group seemed so much larger.

  “I’m making sure things don’t get out of hand,” he said.

  Lori turned to him. “Who went and made you sheriff?”

  Stanley squirmed under her glare but didn’t say anything more.

  “You’re either with us or against us,” she added to her mob, mostly for Stanley’s benefit, before turning her attention back to me. “Ray Goodwin was stung yesterday while he was making a delivery run.”

  “Since when does Ray work on Sundays?” I asked. Ray averaged two deliveries each week, sometimes more, showing up whenever it suited him. But he’d never come around on a Sunday.

  “The economy is tough,” someone said. “We all do what we have to.”

  “What’s his route schedule got to do with anything?” Lori said impatiently. “The important thing is he was stung. Twice.”

  “Yellow jackets,” I announced.

  “Tell her, Stanley,” Lori said, hands on her hips.

  “He came to me afterward,” Stanley said, unable to meet my eyes. “I know a little something about barbed stingers. I took the stingers out for him.”

  Jeez. I couldn’t blame this one on yellow jackets if the stingers were left behind.

  “Where did this happen?” I wanted to know.

  “At Country Delight Farm,” Lori said. “He was picking up apples for today’s deliveries.”

  Country Delight Farm was less than two miles out of town and specialized in fall produce—apples, pumpkins, cider—along with autumn activities like corn mazes and hayrides. “I don’t see Ray here with you.” It figures that busybody Lori would interfere in Ray’s business instead of worrying about her own! “If he had a problem, he should come to me,” I said.

  “We’re representing him,” she said. “Your bees are a danger to our community and to our lives.”

  “My bees don’t roam as far as Country Delight Farm,” I lied.

  “Stanley says different,” she said.

  “Well, she asked,” Stanley said with a faint whine when he saw the look I gave him. “So I looked it up. Bees can go farther than two miles if they want to.”

  “We are going to take care of this right now,” Lori said, producing a spray can from out of nowhere.

  People can be dumb as dirt, especially dopey, overly aggressive real estate agents named Lori. “You can’t spray bees during the day,” I said. “Not that I would let you do it at any time, day or night.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Lori moved forward, taking my statement as the challenge I meant it to be. If she sprayed my honeybees, some of them would die, but the rest would go on attack and we’d have to run for our lives. And if they didn’t kill Lori, I would.

  To end an already bad situation, I gave Lori a push backward, putting some muscle into it because she was moving forward fast, and I wanted to do more than stop her in her tracks. We were surrounded by spectators, everybody focused on Lori and me. I felt like a chicken in a ring.

  Lori stumbled and flew back, looking like she would fa
ll down if I so much as nudged her with my index finger, then she regained her footing and came up with her veil askew. She flung it off, and I noticed that her round face had turned the color of my ripe Roma tomatoes lying on the patio table. Her eyes shot daggers at me.

  “Back off,” I warned, when I saw that she was readjusting herself for another attack. “Somebody restrain her. Please.”

  Everybody looked stricken. Nobody moved.

  Lori came directly at me, with the poisonous spray can pointed at my face. Was she insane? Would she really spray bee poison in my face? Finally her mob of “do-gooders” decided to react. Several hands clutched at her when they realized what she was up to.

  “Clay!” I shouted. “Call the police!”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Stanley yelled, as a shot exploded. Everyone froze. My ears rang like my head had been banged on both sides with cymbals. A few people dove for the ground. Some had their hands over their ears and stunned looks on their faces and round O’s for mouths.

  I blinked a few times and shook my head to clear it.

  Stanley kept his loaded pistol raised in the air for effect. “Clear out!” he said. “Now! Especially you, Lori.”

  “We never would have come along,” someone else grumbled, “if we’d known that Lori was going to get physical. We were just supposed to talk it out.”

  “You can’t fire a weapon in town,” Lori shouted at Stanley. “Are you crazy?” But she backed off and put the spray can away. Then she pointed at me. “Story Fischer attacked me, and you all saw it. I’m calling you as witnesses when I sue her butt for assault.”

  “Story was only protecting her property,” Stanley said. By now the pistol had vanished to wherever he’d kept it hidden before. “You’ll be lucky if Story doesn’t file charges against you. Now, go! Get out of here.”

  My uninvited backyard guests cleared out, except for Stanley. P. P. Patti ducked back through the hedge; I was sure she was racing for her phone and the gossip freeway. I saw Clay go back inside without lifting a finger to help. Another mark against him.