Honeybee Cozy Mysteries Box Set

by Katherine Hayton

  With all the worry about Chester taken away now that even the stitches from the surgery had healed, Alice’s attention returned toward her friend and partner. That was why she was currently sitting across the road from Sally’s house with a pair of binoculars, trying to keep out of the sight of any pedestrians passing by.

  Not only had Sally continued to show up to work smelling of booze, but her behavior had become increasingly erratic. Alice followed Doug’s advice to back away as long as she could, but it wasn’t possible to ignore it forever.

  After all, she ran a business with Sally. Not only was her friendship on the line, but her main source of income as well.

  The previous day, Alice was called by a hysterical Harriet, who claimed Sally had fired her on the spot when she thought some money had gone missing from the till. With a growing sense of outrage, Alice had put that right, but she wouldn’t blame the waitress if she looked around for an easier gig.

  If they lost Harriet, who’d worked with them from the start, then it didn’t bode well for the future.

  A dark muscle car pulled into Sally’s driveway, belching a cloud of pollution from its low-swinging exhaust pipe. Alice stiffened and slumped down lower in the seat, while keeping the binoculars trained on the vehicle. A man got out of the front seat, scratching his rear end above low-hanging jeans as he walked up to Sally’s front door.

  When he turned to look out at the street, Alice snapped a quick photo on her phone and then ducked down below the level of the dashboard, scared he’d seen her. She waited with her pulse beating fast and high in her throat, then relaxed as she heard the front door open.

  Alice peeked up again just in time to see the man grab Sally’s behind and give it a pinch before following her inside. She thought her friend winced but given the distance couldn’t be sure. With no immediate repercussions headed her way, she relaxed into the seat and settled in for a long wait.

  The image search function on her phone turned up a long screen full of matching visages. The blurriness of the face she’d captured made the job of searching for its twin a long and arduous one.

  It took several minutes of fruitless scrolling before Alice thought to restrict the search to her home country. Another few minutes clicked by and then she came upon something that matched.

  The photograph had been taken outside the district courtroom, Alice could tell from the insignia above the door in the background. She clicked onto the link to see the original website and came to the same one that had revealed Sally’s troubled past.

  Jason Raleigh was the name in the caption and when she read that, Alice sat up straight. That was the same surname Sally’s original convictions had been under. She performed a search on the man’s name, bringing up the previous results.

  It must be Sally’s husband. The same man who’d been named in the order of protection she’d been granted shortly after her conviction for assault. With shaking hands, Alice put the phone into her lap and stared at her friend’s closed front door as though it would yield answers.

  Sally was drinking. She was short-tempered. She appeared to be living with a man who she’d once used the courts to force out of her life.

  Alice thought about driving home and asking Doug for his advice. She checked her watch, but it was after six and darkness was gathering in the sky above. Even if Doug had worked overtime, he’d still be packed up and on his way in the dwindling light.

  She’d never gone to Doug’s house before. Although they were friends, Alice was also aware that she employed him to do a job and he’d never asked her to come around to his place. Could she do that now? Drop in on him and toss this problem in his lap?

  The thought didn’t sit well with her. Even if she could count on Doug to have a good natter on her front porch and dispense invaluable advice, Alice wasn’t sure this was the kind of matter she should discuss with him. Or with anybody.

  This was Sally’s private business. She’d never disclosed it willingly to Alice and if it hadn’t been for the trouble with the police, she never would have gone looking in the first place.

  Should she just drive away and pretend everything was okay?

  It would be so much easier than any other option. That was, until the next incident came, triggered by Sally’s drinking or bad temper. To ignore the problem now would just allow it to grow larger. Like a snowball rolling down a ski field slope, if Alice didn’t put a stop to it now, the trouble would escalate into real danger.

  Pull her aside tomorrow and have a chat.

  Great advice. Except that same plan had failed today and was the reason why Alice was out here, skulking across the road in the first place. Sally didn’t want to talk. Not about her behavior, the café, anything.

  The time for passively waiting was over. If Alice didn’t take action now, her heart told her she’d live to regret it.

  She dialed a number on her phone with trembling hands and put it up to her ear. “Is that the Christchurch Police Station? I’d like to report a man breaching an order of protection.”

  Alice’s heart beat so loudly she could barely hear the responses of the operator. She closed her eyes and hoped she hadn’t just torn her and Sally’s friendship apart.

  Chapter One

  When Sally answered the door to his knock, Detective Sergeant Hogarth’s jaw tightened. When he looked over her shoulder at Alice, sitting on the couch, he shook his head.

  “Nope.”

  He turned, appearing ready to leave except a younger detective blocked his path of retreat. While the detective constable apologized and stepped one way, then the other, matching the sergeant’s attempts to side-step him, Alice stood up and joined her friend at the door.

  “Please don’t leave,” she said. Aware her voice had somehow wound up in robotic mode she forced a smile onto her stiff face. “We called up to report a murder. You can’t let us stay here, unsupported, when there’s a dead body.”

  The DS gave an enormous sigh and closed his eyes. “I thought the last time I saw both of you, I made it clear it should be exactly that.”

  “Exactly what?” Sally stepped back from the entrance with a frown on her face, waving the two men through.

  “The last time.” DS Hogarth put one foot inside the door, then his shoulders slumped as he apparently realized he was now committed. He walked the rest of the way inside, poking the DC on the shoulder when the younger man stopped dead in his path.

  “Where’s the body?” That was from the younger officer, his face a weird mixture of excitement and dread. Alice stared at him, avoiding his eyes but taking in the set of his jaw, the flare of his nostrils, the crease in his forehead and the raised eyebrows.

  Excitement seemed to be winning, except the shade of the man’s skin was decidedly pale.

  “He’s in the trunk of a car.” Sally folded her arms across her chest and picked her way gingerly through the mess of discarded beer cans and empty food wrappers to sit next to Alice on the sofa. “And the car is halfway along the road back from Nelson.”

  “Sorry about the mess.” The need to apologize overwhelmed Alice, despite this not being her house. Even in her deepest moments of depression, she’d never let her home get into this state.

  Of course, the difference there was Sally no longer thought of this as home.

  “Who’s driving the vehicle?” The DS had a notebook out and raised eyebrows at the DC until he hurriedly pulled one out of his top pocket as well.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce yourselves?” Sally stopped hugging herself to wring her hands together. “I know DS Hogarth but who on earth are you?”

  She nodded at the younger man who blushed, put his notebook away and stepped forward with his hand out. Then he caught sight of Detective Hogarth’s clouded face, and stepped back, taking his notebook out again. He settled for clearing his throat and saying, “My name is Detective Constable Willington.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Sally’s gaze flicked away from the man’s gaze and Alice gave her friend
a concerned once over. The toll of the past couple of weeks had turned her skin ashy, deepening the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and drawing new lines along her top lip.

  For the first time, Alice registered with a shock that Sally looked old. A second later, she wondered if that was how she appeared to people as well.

  The last few months had been the most testing time of her life, except for the period when her parents died. Even though she dreaded the touch, Alice put her hand briefly on Sally’s knee.

  “As I asked before”—Hogarth’s voice was growing more annoyed with every passing second—“who’s driving the vehicle with the dead body in it?”

  “My husband.” Sally’s voice was softer than a whisper. Alice shot her another concerned glance, accompanied by the smallest shake of her head. “Sorry, I meant my ex-husband.”

  “That’s—” Detective Hogarth shuffled back through his notebook, finding the page detailing the previous time the two of them had bothered him. “Jason Raleigh. Is that right?”

  “That’s him.” Sally offered a sorry excuse for a smile.

  “And the last police had contact with him, they served him with a trespass on a restraining order? That correct, or has he dealt with another department in the interim?”

  “Not that I know of unless you count the probation service.”

  Alice butted in. “That was my fault,” she said. “Not the probation thing, but the call about him breaking the terms of the order. I phoned it in.”

  “I tried to get the order lifted.” Sally shook her head. “The court wouldn’t do it just to let him out of custody. They made me wait a week and then grilled me about all the reasons I wanted to drop the order. Once they set a court date for the rehearing, they finally allowed Jason to come home.”

  “I don’t need your life story.” Hogarth gave a small exasperated sigh. “Just answer my questions. If I want to know anything more, I’m capable of asking.”

  Alice was staring at Willington when Hogarth spoke and when shock registered on the man’s face, it gave the confirmation she needed that Hogarth was being rude. Still, given the number of times she’d come across the officer in the past few months, it was probably understandable.

  “Did your ex-husband kill the body lying in the trunk?” Detective Hogarth stared at Sally. “Is that where this is leading?”

  She shook her head, refusing to explain since he’d so recently told them not to. Another exasperated sigh suggested he hadn’t been truthful about his needs.

  “Do you know who is responsible for killing him?”

  “Who says he’s been killed?” Alice sat on her hands because they desperately wanted to make all kinds of gestures they shouldn’t. “We called up the police to report a dead body. Nobody said anything about a murder.”

  “The dispatch operator said your friend was screaming in the background at the time, saying”—the DS flipped through the pages of his notebook again, searching for the answer—“they’ve killed him. OMG. It’s murder. Somebody come quickly. I can’t believe they really did it.”

  Sally blushed and hung her head. “I got emotional. It was a startling discovery to make.”

  “But if the vehicle is halfway between here and Nelson, how did you find out about the body?” Almost as soon as DC Willington got the question out of his mouth, he found himself the target of the DS’s lethal stare. In a quieter voice, he continued, “Or, did you wait for quite a while before calling the police?”

  “We called when we worked it out,” Alice said. “We took a while to put all the pieces together and arrive at the right answer. Once we did, we phoned you directly.”

  “How long until the body gets here, then?” Detective Sergeant Hogarth straightened his back, looking for all the world like he was about ready to leave.

  “It’ll be another four or five hours, I guess.” Alice glanced at Sally, who nodded in agreement. “Depending on whether they make it through the coastal road before the curfew.”

  The section of the state highway that ran through Kaikoura had been badly damaged in an earthquake. Even now, years later, the section affected only allowed traffic during daylight hours, in case something went horribly wrong.

  “They’ll get through in plenty of time,” the DC reassured them. “Unless he stops off for an extended detour of some type on the way. Such as backing the vehicle into a field and digging a hole to store a dead body in.”

  “I’m sure Jason doesn’t know it’s in there.” Sally gave a quick nod as if to reassure herself as much as anybody else. “Otherwise, he never would’ve taken that vehicle. He had others to choose from.”

  The DC cleared his throat. “Do you think he—”

  “Why don’t you take a spin around the grounds, Detective Willington, while I get a more complete history from these two?” the DS butted in. “Remember to take notes as you go.”

  Willington blushed and backed out of the room, inclining his head toward his superior officer. Alice watched him go with a vague sensation of puzzlement. “Shouldn’t there be two of you investigating the property? I didn’t think the police liked its members to go off on their own.”

  “Well, as you’ve publicly stated there’s nothing on or around the section that could harm him…” Hogarth let his sentence trail off into a shrug.

  Alice wrinkled her nose. “And you trust us?” She didn’t know whether to feel upset or pleased. Couldn’t he see they might be just as dangerous as the next man?

  “Why not? You’ve never done anything to deceive me in the past.” The sergeant frowned down at his notebook. “That I’m aware of, anyway.”

  “No,” Sally hastily said, “we haven’t, and we’d like to keep it that way. Now, what history did you want to get from us?”

  “Anything relating to the crime.” The DS pulled up a chair and sat down. “Start at the beginning.”

  Sally looked at Alice, who nodded. “Well, it began back when my father and I planted the pastures at the eastern boundary of our property with Manuka. We wanted to see if we could grow a few different strains to produce medicinal honey.”

  Chapter Two

  “If we set them up near the forest, they’ll get a good balance of sun and shade,” Alice said as she and her father walked the edge of the property. “We could set it a few dozen yards out and the local birds will be happy too.”

  “They’ll be happy until the forest gets overrun with Manuka.” Her father wiped his graying hair back off his forehead and stared into the tangle of unruly plants bordering the native wood. “I’ve heard it can be as virulent as a weed when it gets going.”

  “We can set a large trench up to protect it moving.” Alice took out a notepad and wrote the idea down. If she didn’t capture her thoughts at the time, they would whirl around in her head, growing larger until they became unmanageable. If she wrote a few words, it kept her brain real estate firmly under her control.

  For the most part.

  As she put the notepad into her jeans pocket, Alice stared at the forest. Their property ran along the edge, forming the eastern boundary line. She could stand on the imaginary benchmark, one foot in crown-controlled land and the other in her family’s grazing pastures.

  “The beech might add a nice note to the honey,” Alice said, looking at the blackened trees. To her, black beech always appeared as though it had just escaped a forest fire. The black clumps of its bark were as dark and rough as charcoal. “It’s getting a large crop of honeydew.”

  She pointed but her father would have to be blind to miss it. A tiny native aphid species enjoyed the sap from the tree. The little creatures would eat the sap and excrete a nectar, which twinkled in the sun like dew. Hence the name.

  Both native birds and the wild bees around the area loved to stuff themselves full of honeydew. A few years back, it had caused a problem by attracting wasps but with the help of the council, they’d eradicated the main nests.

  “Well, the bees are yours to look after, you know that.” He
r father stopped, standing with his hands on his hips and staring at the empty pasture.

  Although they’d let it out in past years for grazing stock, mostly belonging to their neighbors, when Alice set out the idea of a new scheme, her dad immediately dropped the rental and returned the animals to their owners.

  Alice understood that she troubled him. Living at home with her parents in her thirties wasn’t particularly unusual. Thanks to the application of student fees on university courses, and increased house and rent prices, a lot of her peers were doing exactly the same.

  Except, Alice didn’t go to university, didn’t have student debt, didn’t have a job. She cared for the bees but had never even worked out how to sell the honey they created. When she peered into the spare bedroom filling up with pottles of the beautiful nectar, a pang of guilt always struck her below the ribcage.

  Really, the honey should be available for everyone to enjoy. The one time she’d tried to sell it in person, Alice ended up with an anxiety attack so pronounced she didn’t leave the house for another three weeks. Not even to go to church, and her parents usually insisted.

  “Even if we don’t bottle the Manuka honey, we should be able to get a deal direct.” Alice pursed her lips and blinked hard as she thought through the option. Really, that was the dream. Sell all the honey to just one person each year and let them worry about the rest. “Even at wholesale rates, it’s commanding a higher price every year.”

  “I believe you.” Her father rubbed the back of his neck and then pressed the palm of his hand flat against his chest. “We can source the seedlings at the market when we go to show this year.”

  The Canterbury A & P show was the highlight of his year. Her dad loved to show off as much as Alice liked to hide away, unnoticed. With all the farmers coming together in one spot for a three-day period, he could wheel and deal and work out mutually beneficial financial arrangements for the rest of the year.