Beeline to Trouble

by Hannah Reed

  “I have a strong hunch that Camilla murdered Nova,” I said, finishing up. “After all, it fits.” I ticked off my bullet points for her. “Means: with her flavorist background, she should know her plants, including poisonous ones. Motive: Max told us about the growing conflict within the group. And opportunity . . . well, I’m still working on it now that Gil and Camilla gave alibis for each other. But Camilla certainly could have had the opportunity to pick water hemlock.”

  “Camilla is kind of strange,” Holly agreed. “They both are. But your motive and means could apply to Gil just as easily as they do to her.”

  “It has to be one of them. We know we didn’t murder Nova. And Max certainly didn’t. Who’s left besides those two?”

  “Patti.”

  “She didn’t do it,” I said, not for the first time. “I’m placing my bet on Camilla Bailey. Here’s my plan—since the only way to handle hemlock is with gloves, and Camilla was wearing a pair when I first met her, I’m taking all the gloves at your place to Jackson Davis for an analysis.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “We better get going,” Holly said, looking up at dark clouds forming in the sky.

  I scanned the growth. “No water hemlock here. Let’s go back to the house, but slower. You drive so I can keep my eyes peeled.”

  “Ick, I don’t even know what water hemlock looks like, and I don’t want to know.”

  About a quarter mile down the road, I asked Holly to pull over near a marshy area. She waited on the ATV while I made my way down to the water, carefully inspecting the flora. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally brush against the stuff. All the years I’d been so carefree, but now paranoia had set in.

  And with good reason: I spotted the water hemlock almost instantly, lacy flowers waving gently in the increasing breeze.

  I hurried back to the ATV and announced my discovery to Holly. “She must have picked it right over there,” I decided. “Too bad Johnny Jay refuses to hear a word I have to say.”

  “I’d like to wrestle that guy to the ground and get him in a scorpion death lock for what he’s doing to our family.”

  I took a moment to savor the image of Johnny trapped in my sister’s vise grip.

  I felt a drop of rain, then two. Overhead dark clouds grew angrier.

  “Hurry up,” Holly said, “and get on.”

  “Let’s go collect some gloves.” I swung up behind my sister and we were off as the rain came beating down on us.

  By the time we pulled into the outbuilding, we were soaking wet.

  Twenty-two

  “I’ve decided you can’t have them,” Holly said, taking one of her formidable wrestling stances right in front of the table with the gloves in the outbuilding.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked her, surprised that she was directing all that aggression toward me.

  “Think this through,” Holly said, water droplets dripping from her hair, her top plastered to her chest. “What if Jackson finds something with the gloves?”

  I gaped at her, just as wet. “That would be awesome!”

  “Okay, what would be the next step?”

  “Um, I guess at that point, Hunter could advise us,” I suggested. It was a good thing Patti wasn’t here. She hated asking for help from any male in one of our investigations. According to her, it was wimpy, sexist, clinging, subservient . . . the list went on and on, and none of it was complimentary.

  I used to wonder about P.P. Patti’s backstory, why she was so fiercely independent almost to the point of carelessness, and why she didn’t date. For a while, I figured that maybe she found women more attractive, since she had such a dislike for the males of our species. Now I knew the truth. She’d had to get super tough to survive and escape her abusive ex-husband.

  No wonder she’d dissed me every time I suggested including Hunter in any decision making.

  “And then, what happens after?” Holly prodded me. “What will Hunter and Jackson tell you to do once it’s established that a pair of gloves has residue from water hemlock?”

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust, because I hated saying it. “They’d insist that I take it to the police chief. Can you please come to the point?”

  Holly hadn’t relaxed her challenging physical position. Maybe because she could tell that I was still looking for an opening to snag the gloves. I should know better—I’ve never gotten past her when she went in pin-down mode, not once. “Then what?” she demanded. “What would the chief do?”

  I beamed. “He’d arrest Camilla Bailey for murder one.”

  “Really? That’s how you see it?”

  “Well . . .”

  I’m not completely dense all the time. I finally figured out where this was going. “And how do you see the next scene?” I asked rather weakly.

  “Johnny Jay would pull me in for questioning.” In case I didn’t know who “me” was, Holly jammed a thumb toward her own chest. “Or Max. Or both of us. Because all the gloves around here belong to us, not Camilla. He might even arrest you as an accessory to murder, claiming you were trying to implicate a guest while covering for me.”

  That did sound just like Johnny Jay. What had I been thinking? My word against Camilla’s, with Johnny Jay as judge? He’d never believe that I’d really seen Camilla wearing gloves the same day Nova was murdered.

  “Let’s take a breather and figure out how to get around this little glitch,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to make a phone call. Camilla told me she had a permit to pick wildflowers. If she lied about that, maybe she’d lie about her alibi, too.”

  We made a mad dash through the rain for the house and, after toweling off, sat down in the kitchen.

  I called the DNR and was redirected thirteen times (Holly actually counted) before a computer-generated voice advised me to use the state’s website. My sister hauled out her laptop.

  “I doubt Camilla actually had permission,” I said, scanning one link after another within the spiderweb of a website. “It says here that nobody can pick wildflowers, especially on public land, without an endangered-species permit.”

  “Maybe she has one.”

  “Issued by Wisconsin?”

  “Probably not. She hasn’t been here long enough.”

  “That’s the only route to the permit here. Every state is different. And look at this—intentionally violating that law means a big fat fine and as much as nine months in jail. Or both. Actually, Johnny went easy on me.”

  Holly read the screen when I turned it toward her. “That’s what it says, all right.”

  “She’s busted for lie number one,” I announced, pretty pleased with our progress so far. We’d found a bunch of water hemlock on the path Camilla had taken; she’d picked flowers as a cover while wearing a suspicious pair of gardening gloves (I’d bet my store that one of Holly’s pairs of gloves would turn up with hemlock residue all over them); then lied about having a special picking permit.

  Still, it was all circumstantial, and since Holly refused to give up any gloves, the only really important thing I could do was destroy Camilla’s alibi. Because if I couldn’t break that, she’d get away with murder.

  Max and the others soon arrived back at the house, having been rained out of their tour of Holy Hill. I’d really hoped for more time so I could rummage around in Camilla’s bedroom, but that would have to wait. I remembered that Patti had snuck up there the night of the dinner. Had she discovered anything? Probably not, or she would have told me.

  At some point, I found myself alone in the kitchen with Gil. I decided to ask him about his work. “Tell me about the whole ‘making vegetables taste like candy’ thing you’re working on,” I said to him.

  He sat down at the table. “What would you like to know?”

  “Is it ready for market?”

  Now he gave me a huff. “These things take significant time. They need to be perfected, then pass rigid inspection before appearing on the open market. We have a long way to g
o.”

  “Can you and Camilla continue your research without Nova? Wasn’t her knowledge important to the project?” I suspected that Gil was the type of pompous ass who wouldn’t appreciate anyone else getting more credit than he.

  Another huff, and he proved me right. “She was a big nothing as far as the project is concerned. We’ll make more headway without her and her self-serving ways. She spent more time taking credit for my work and trying to get into the boss’s pants than actually producing anything.”

  Well, wasn’t that a harsh attitude considering she was a coworker and a dead one at that. Gil didn’t even try to hide his bad feelings toward her.

  “Any more contact with the police chief?” I asked.

  “Contact? Not really. We gave statements, he called a few times for clarification of a few facts, but other than that, he seems to be preoccupied with chasing down more realistic suspects in the case.”

  I arched a brow. “More realistic suspects,” I said. “Really?”

  “Everybody knows where I was during the time in question,” Gil said smugly.

  I looked into his confident eyes and thought, You certainly made sure of that, didn’t you?

  Twenty-three

  For the rest of the afternoon I stayed busy at the store planning new ways to create appealing displays and socializing with my customers. Being an integral part of the community is important to a business owner—caring about each and every person who steps through the entryway is one of the keys to a successful enterprise. So I encourage all my staff to chat.

  To a degree, of course. Carrie Ann has been known to abuse the privilege.

  At five o’clock, I turned things over to the twins and walked home.

  A Mercedes-Benz was parked outside Patti’s house. Or not exactly in front of her house, more like between mine and hers. It was black with heavily tinted windows, and it had an Illinois license plate. I didn’t have to be a good guesser to know who owned the car: Patti’s ex, the Chicago mobster Harry Bruno, that’s who.

  Instantly I came up with a scenario. Harry Bruno found out wife number two had been murdered. And he’d assumed that wife number one had killed her. Not a stretch considering Nova had pretty much died at Patti’s back door. How incriminating must that look? My brain said he was here for retribution.

  I made a snap decision that either Hunter was coming home right now with his sidearm, or I was calling Stanley Peck for some firepower. I imagined the trunk of that Mercedes was filled with automatic and semi-automatic armory.

  Even without the plates and insider information about Harry Bruno, I’d have known the car wasn’t from around here. Moraine is a truck and SUV town with an occasional oddball like the Cadillac Fleetwood Grams drives. But a Mercedes? Never.

  Speaking of Grams’s Caddie, just then I saw it come creeping around the corner from Main Street. I had a front-row view at the curb when Grams attempted to park in front of the expensive car by nosing in. She almost made it. But then she clipped its front side panel with her nice and sturdy back bumper. As soon as she felt the impact, she slammed on the brakes and rolled down her window. I saw Dinky in the passenger’s seat take a header onto the floor, but he bounced right back up like he was used to doing summersaults.

  “What happened this time?” Grams asked me. “I thought I had plenty of space.” Which she did. Plenty of room in front (like a mile), zero in back.

  “Just a minor graze,” I lied, eyeing some significant damage to the Mercedes. As usual when Grams misjudges, I couldn’t see any damage to her car, not a scratch. The Caddie was like an armored vehicle.

  I glanced around. Nobody was rushing us. “I suggest you swing hard to the left but go very slowly, then pull into my driveway and tuck up close to the house.” Where the owner of said vehicle might not spot her right away and put two-and-two together. In which case he might show up wielding a two-by-four. Or sporting a forty-four.

  Ignoring my directions, my grandmother rolled up her window, hit the gas, bounced up onto the curb, ran over my lawn and, after a lot of arm waving and pointing from me, ended up right where I’d told her to park.

  As soon as she got out, I hustled Grams and Dinky into my house and ran to peer out one of my windows facing Patti’s house.

  “What are you looking for, sweetie?” Grams wanted to know, practically breathing down my neck.

  “The owner of that Mercedes.”

  “There was some kind of animal crawling around behind the car,” Grams pointed out. “It came out of the bushes on the opposite side of Patti’s house. I think it’s a bear.”

  “We don’t have bears around here.” I swung my head and caught motion behind the Mercedes, but couldn’t make out anything more.

  “Sure we do,” Grams insisted. “Once in a while one gets lost and shows up. I’ll go throw stones at it before it gets into your garbage can.”

  I grabbed Grams. “Stay here where you’re safe.” Then I looked out again. “Where did it go? Is it still there?”

  For a minute, neither of us said anything or saw anything. Then I called Hunter on my cell phone. “Time to come home,” I told him.

  “I love how you miss me.”

  “Are you almost here?”

  “And I love that breathy voice, it’s really sexy.” I assumed he was talking about my panicked breathing. Wasn’t a cop supposed to be able to tell the difference between lusty desire and abject fear?

  “Please tell me you just turned off Main Street with Ben.”

  “Not even close. I took a call right before my shift ended. I’m way on the other side of Waukesha . . . Boy you sure are acting smoking hot. Next time can you give me a heads-up?”

  “Gotta go,” I said, disconnecting and speed dialing Stanley.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Grams said from beside me while I prayed that he would answer. “The bear went right under the car, just flattened and scooted underneath!”

  I swung my head in that direction but missed the action again. As soon as I heard Stanley’s familiar voice I said, “Something’s going down over at Patti’s house. How fast can you get here?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  No need to tell him to come bearing arms. That was Stanley’s standard mode of operation. How he’s managed to stay out of jail this long is a miracle, and one I hope continues.

  “We should call 9-1-1,” Grams said.

  “That means Johnny Jay.”

  “Oh, Lordy, forget it then. I have a better idea, I’ll take pictures from the window, you go investigate.”

  I spotted movement inside the living room window next door. “Someone’s inside Patti’s house. See there?”

  Grams squinted where my index finger pointed. “The light’s not too good. Why don’t I go over and knock on the door? See who answers.” She had her point-and-shoot camera clutched in her hand.

  “What about the bear?” I asked.

  “I was only playing with you,” Grams answered. “I’m pretty sure that’s just Patti Dwyre, acting suspicious. All dressed in dark clothes and sneaking around like some kind of ninja.”

  “Who’s in her house if Patti’s under the Mercedes?”

  “Can’t be a good thing,” Grams observed, understating the obvious.

  Right then, Stanley came running in through my back door, his eyes almost as shiny with excitement as crazy Patti’s can get. Grams, who was really getting into the spy act, said to him, “I’ll knock on Patti’s door. You cover me.”

  And before I could blink, she had scooped up Dinky and was gone, with Stanley right behind her. I ran out after them and swung my head toward the car on the curb, watching them with one eye as they headed for Patti’s front door.

  Before I knew what happened, I heard something loud, a big kaboom.

  And the Mercedes at the curb actually blew to pieces!

  Deafening noise, shooting flames, the works.

  I let out a scream, realizing that Patti (or whoever) might have still been under the car when it exploded
.

  Everything after that seemed to play out in slow motion.

  Me, with my hand over my mouth, rooted to the spot.

  Grams with Dinky and Stanley on Patti’s porch, staring out at the street.

  The front door wrenching open, and a man rushing out, almost bowling Grams over. So this must be Harry Bruno. He didn’t live up to the stereotypical Italian mobster persona. He was all around medium: medium height, medium brown hair, medium weight (no big plates of pasta for this guy), casually dressed rather than wearing an expensive suit. He wasn’t even wearing a Rolex. But most important, was he armed?

  Stanley waved his weapon, which had appeared out of nowhere.

  The guy’s face twisted in disbelief and rage when he got a look at what was left of his car. He turned back and pulled out a gun even bigger than Stanley’s. Nobody breathed while Harry and Stanley played chicken with their pieces.

  Out of the cover of my eye, I was relieved to see a big black blob disappear around the other side of Patti’s house. Presumably Patti herself, which meant she was okay.

  I also realized how lucky my grandmother was, safe from mob retribution for winging the Mercedes since the front end wasn’t recognizable any longer. At least somebody might live through this.

  A tire rim actually rolled down the street, just like in the movies.

  Stanley yelled at the guy to explain himself, then put his own weapon down on the ground and his hands in midair in a white-flag gesture.

  The guy slung the ugliest foul language I’d ever heard at my friend, and Grams threatened to wash his mouth out with soap.

  “We didn’t do it,” I yelled, thinking he probably thought we had.

  At that point, the guy turned tail and hustled to the corner before disappearing down Main Street with sirens screaming in the distance.

  Grams had been right.