by Abigail Keam
“Detective, I am afraid I am not allowed to talk to you without Ms. Todd,” I said peevishly. I was irritated that he would bother me at work.
Responding with a sheepish grin, he said, “Thought I’d come down and see what you did.” Goetz whistled appreciatively. “Look at all this honey. I love honey, you know. Big fan.” He tapped his chest. “Good for your heart.”
I relaxed somewhat. “I have some Wildflower Honey left, or perhaps you would like a honey with lemon oil added to it. Great for putting in your tea.”
Goetz laid his bag of heirloom tomatoes on my table and perused all my different honeys. “How come the honey is different colors?”
“Well, the color, texture and taste depend of the plant nectar the bee has harvested. Plant nectar can produce honey that is different in taste and color. For example, the white Dutch clover plant will produce a mild yellow honey we know as clover while the buckwheat plant will produce a honey that is almost black and tastes like molasses.”
“I had no idea,” he said, holding up various bottles to the sun.
“Yes, customers are always surprised to learn that the United States produces over 300 different varieties of honey while Kentucky produces over thirty.”
“Which honey is the best?”
“There is no best. It’s all personal preference. Some people like mild honeys while others like very strong tasting honeys.”
“I’m afraid of bees,” he confessed.
“Most people are,” I replied. I understand since I am afraid of wasps myself.
“So . . . you actually make a living from doing this?” Goetz asked.
I acted as though I didn’t hear him.
Goetz finally got the message. “Right,” he said to himself. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask away,” I answered while applying labels to bottles of honey.
“You get stung much?”
I put down my bottle and gave Goetz my best look of annoyance. “Of course I do. I am a beekeeper. Mr. Goetz, why are you here?”
“Detective,” he insisted as he rubbed his chin. Just as Goetz started to speak again, Matt popped up from behind my booth.
“Hello,” he said looking between Detective Goetz and me. “If it isn’t the esteemed Detective Goetz.”
Goetz gathered his tomatoes. “Nice to see you both again.” He shambled off.
Matt watched him intently as the detective disappeared into the crowd. “What was that about?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Ooooh, Josiah, maybe he thinks he can win your trust and make you confess over some rum cocktails,” Matt teased.
“Confess what?” I replied in a voice that was a little too loud.
Matt laughed heartily as he leaned over and pinched my arm. His black hair shimmered in the sunlight. “The murder, old girl, the murder. I put my money on you knocking off the old buzzard out of pure spite.”
“Well, aren’t you very cheeky today.” I lowered my voice as I leaned closer to Matt. “I know that I am supposed to be sad, but the truth is I am glad Pidgeon is dead.”
Matt’s handsome face suddenly crumbled as though he remembered that he had forgotten to turn off the stove. Motioning me to be quiet, he went around the front of the table and felt under the yellow plastic tablecloth. He yanked a small black plastic microphone from the bottom of the table and held it up. We both looked at each other in astonishment.
I had just damned myself. Snatching the device from Matt’s hand, I rushed into the crowd. Frantically scanning for Goetz, I spotted him a block down tasting goat’s cheese samples. I caught up with him, grabbed his massive arm and swung him around. His craggy face registered surprise, then embarrassment as I brandished the microphone. He pulled an earphone out of his ear.
I waved the device in his face. “This is over the top, and you know it. You better have a warrant for this.”
He reached out for the microphone, but I quickly thrust it between my ample bosoms. “Oh no. My lawyer gets this first. So you want to know why I hated Pidgeon?”
Detective Goetz was quick to recover. “Yeah, I would like to know why a respectable, hardworking woman would show so much emotion about a man she supposedly wasn’t involved with.”
“Involved with?” I laughed bitterly. “You guys are barking up the wrong tree. Besides being a liar and a cheat, Pidgeon was a woman beater. Check the local hospitals’ ER records and then talk to his wife. If anyone had a motive to kill Pidgeon, it was Tellie, his wife.”
“You know this first hand? You’ve seen Mrs. Pidgeon being hit or she told you about it?”
“I know this from my own observation. Something you and your partner should try a little more of. She often showed up at the Market with bruises.”
“Miss Josiah,” he said, “it has been my life experience that observation often means little or nothing without corroboration. Things are never quite what they seem from the outside looking in. As far as you know, she could be just clumsy or be in the first stages of MS or have inner ear problems. You just have a theory without proof.” He looked away. “Are you done?” Goetz seemed offended and wanted to be shed of me.
“What do you think you have on me? You have no physical evidence to tie me with Pidgeon’s death, yet you keep hounding me. I had nothing to do with that man’s demise.” We stood facing each other like wary catamounts. Finally, fearing that I would be blamed for tampering with police equipment, I handed Goetz his listening device. He at least had the good manners to blush. The bug was really over the top and he knew it. This wasn’t the crime of the century.
I shifted my weight. The arthritis was starting to burn in my legs. “Yes we are done, I hope for good.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you believe me and will leave me alone?”
“Okay in meaning that I got your message.” His features slackened. “I’m not the enemy.”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, you are,” I replied before I turned and melted into the street crowd. I had to walk seven blocks before I found a pay phone. My legs were on fire from all the walking. I dialed a number that my daughter had had me memorize. I reached an old-fashioned answering service. I said only one word before I hung up – “Rosebud.”
9
I needed to push this investigation away from me. Though I was sure I would never be convicted, a murder trial would ruin me financially, costing me everything I had managed to squirrel away. I needed to determine who wanted Pidgeon dead. Still fuming over Goetz’s little trick that morning, I decided to visit Otto Brown. He was Pidgeon’s booth neighbor at the Farmers’ Market. Maybe he would know something.
The foot traffic at the Market was slowing, so I decided to take a break as it was getting close to the end of the selling day. Some farmers were currently packing up and dismantling their tents. Hiding my cash box in the van, I put a fifty in my pocket and strolled down the median to Otto Brown’s booth. While waiting for his customers to finish their transactions, I picked out some Cherokee Purple tomatoes. After patiently waiting my turn, I offered my selections to Otto to weigh.
“How’s the day been?”
“Fair to middlin’,” Otto said, putting the tomatoes carefully in a bag. He scratched his unshaven cheek as he eyed the scale. I didn’t know how he could see the scales from the large eyebrows fingering across his forehead and others caught in his long eyelashes. He would have had pretty eyes except for the hair jungle above his eyeballs.
“It’s been slow my way too,” I replied trying to establish eye contact with him.
He didn’t look up from his tasks.
“I suppose you know that your next door buddy was found dead on my property.”
“Talk is he died from heart failure.”
“That’s right.” I could tell Otto wanted me to leave. He kept turning his back to me. I leaned forward. “Otto, did Richard ever tell you that he was gonna mess with my hives? Anything like that?”
“Can’t rightly say.”
Otto bristled at the accusation that his tomatoes were not grown by him and stopped arranging them on the table. “Well, now, he didn’t like you, Josiah. Nope, not a’tall. Said you had no business bein’ here as you was rich. That you was takin’ business from real beekeepers.”
I laughed bitterly. “Go on.”
“Never said nuthin’ exactly ’bout what he might do but that you best be aware.”
“Be aware of what?”
“Well, of him, I ’spect.” Otto pulled a tobacco pouch from his pocket and shoved a big wad in his mouth. He had a paper cup that he used as a spittoon. Yuck.
“When did he say that?”
“Couple weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was gunning for me?”
“’Tis none of my business. Besides I’d be tellin’ ya somethin’ you probably knew,” said Otto.
“Geez, Otto, you good old boys sure stick together,” I said.
Otto pursed his lips and spat in his cup. “Richard was no good ol’ boy. He was city. Lived in town. Used other folks’ land to farm his bees. No, Richard was a townie. Not one of us.”
When I decided I wasn’t going to get any more out of Otto, I left him my fifty and carried a large box of beautiful Cherokee Purple tomatoes to my booth. Otto may be a throwback to the nineteenth century, but he sure knew how to grow heirloom tomatoes. I had no idea what I was going to do with all those tomatoes. Guess I could make a huge batch of salsa. Matt loved salsa. But at least I had discovered that there was smoldering resentment from one older farmer against landless members in the Market. Interesting.
As I walked back to my booth, I spied Pidgeon’s daughter, Taffy, going from booth to booth, apparently wringing out the last bit of sympathy she could. I wondered if she was talking about me. Or was I just being paranoid? By the aversion of vendors’ eyes as I passed by, I guess being paranoid was correct in this instance.
I had gotten used to being the center of people’s attention for a long time, ever since my husband became a nationally known architect. I had learned to deal with the curious, the well-intended and the envious who were determined to be hurtful. I stiffened when Taffy approached my booth. Which would she be?
“Mornin’, Miss Josiah,” she said.
“Hello Taffy,” I replied, aware that the other farmers were watching from the corners of their eyes. “My condolences for the loss of your father.”
“Miss Josiah, I won’t play the grieving daughter if you won’t play the concerned friend.”
“Okay.”
“We both know Daddy was a big turd,” she continued, inhaling deeply. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time. You did us a favor.”
“I didn’t do anything, either for you or to your father.”
Taffy pouted. Like Detective O’nan, she didn’t like being corrected. But then – who did? “Whatever. I just came by to say no hard feelings.”
I decided to change the subject. “What are you and your mother going to do now?”
“Well, Mommy is still stunned. She doesn’t know what to do without Daddy barking orders at her at all hours. She’ll snap out of it as soon as she gets the insurance check.”
“It is lucky that your father had such a large policy,” I said trying to find out how much.
“How do you know how much it’s for?” Taffy quizzed while readjusting her purse strap on her shoulder. Her heavily made-up brown eyes narrowed.
I shrugged. “People talk. Say it’s for a million.”
Taffy guffawed. “I wish.” She pulled her badly dyed blond hair into a scrunchy.
“I know money can never replace a loved one, but it can soften the blows that come after.”
Taffy smiled. I hoped that she would spend some of that money on dental repair. “I’ll tell Mommy about your concerns.” She checked the time on her cell phone. “Gotta go. You take care now, Miss Josiah.”
“Will do,” I said. I watched her leave in a new Prius. So Taffy was already spending the money before her mother got the check. I would have to find out more about Richard Pidgeon’s life insurance policy.
10
It was a day for relentless surprises. Arriving home from the Market, I came upon three cop cars waiting at my newly installed gate. I called Shaneika immediately on my cell phone. She was incommunicado so I left a message. Ignoring O’nan as he tapped on my van window, I called Matt as well. O’nan, red-faced, was yelling at me to lower my window and waving a piece of paper in his hand.
I cranked the van window open. “What’s this all about?” I asked.
Detective O’nan shoved the paper into my lap. “Warrant to search your house and property.”
“The bug didn’t work, so you are on another fishing trip, Detective? Don’t you guys ever take a break from harassing people? We are going to sit right here until I hear from my lawyer.”
O’nan sneered, showing very uniform teeth, the kind that only result from braces. “In that case, I am placing you under arrest for resisting an officer.”
I was seething now. “You wouldn’t dare!” I glared at O’nan. His blue eyes were lit up kind of crazy. It was my first inkling that his behavior was more than a good cop/bad cop game with Goetz. Maybe he personally disliked me, and would try to take it to the next level to see me take a hit.
Goetz was leaning against a police cruiser looking uncomfortable. From his body language, I assumed the warrant was O’nan’s idea all the way down the line. But I knew he would not interfere with whatever O’nan did.
It is not unheard of around here for a suspect’s head to get busted open for “resisting.” For some reason, I didn’t think O’nan would have any qualms arresting . . . or even tasing me. I realized I hated him . . . because I feared him.
“Okay,” I said. “I always want to cooperate with the law, but I will be present and taping the entire search.”
O’nan started to object, but closed his mouth. There was really nothing he could fuss about. I was within my legal rights to tape them searching my house. Climbing into the back of my rusty van, I retrieved a video camera I kept in the case of a car accident. I began by giving the date and time plus all the officers’ names. Turning off my camera, I punched in the code for the gate. I went in first and drove slowly, not wanting the police to accidentally hit any of my animals, which for the most part ran free on the property. I was also stalling for time. A cruiser behind me blew its siren to move some peacocks out of its way. There were deer munching on fruit from a plum tree. They gave a disdainful look at the intruders before jumping over the pasture fence and escaping into the woods.
The warrant gave O’nan the right to search my house and property for Pidgeon’s missing vehicle and epinephrine pens. The pens gave me a clue. Every beekeeper keeps one handy in case he gets one bee sting too many and goes into anaphylactic shock. Epinephrine, which is nothing more than adrenaline, will save a life. It usually comes in a tube with a springboard needle that thrusts through clothes into the thigh. They are called adrenaline or adi pens for short. Yet, a dose of epinephrine can cause a heart attack if the heart is weak. A glimmer of an idea took root in my mind.
Once we got to the house, the entourage of cops waited for me to punch in the code for the home security system. I took this opportunity to warn them. “Guys, you break it, you pay for it. Understand.”
O’nan just grimaced. I looked about for Goetz but didn’t see him. I watched a cadre of young policemen with military haircuts spread out through my property. Their faces revealed a childlike excitement as though they were about to hunt for Easter eggs. Deep in my heart, I worried they would plant evidence.
I keyed in the code to the house, and opened the ste
el front door letting the police pass into the main hallway. Almost every one had the same expression – one of awe. The waterfall cascading off the roof into a rock-hewn basin, the moats filled with water plants, the exposed steel frames, the wooden beams, the large expanse of glass overlooking the river, and the artwork, which had taken me a lifetime to collect, hanging on the concrete walls. One cop popped his gum and whistled in admiration.
O’nan waved his hand getting their attention. He separated them into groups of two. It would be hard for me to keep up with them as they were going through my things. I resumed my recording.