Beeline to Trouble

by Hannah Reed

  “All I care about is getting to the airport,” Gil complained, walking away. I heard him in the kitchen. “Effie, we need a ride to the airport.”

  “Not my problem,” she replied. “Sorry, I have other things to do.”

  “Now do you believe me?” Camilla said. “We ask her to do a simple task, and she refuses?”

  “I’ll drive you,” Milly offered, coming out, wiping her hands on a towel.

  Darn. So much for a peek inside the carriage house. I couldn’t think of any other ways to stop the two flavorists from flying off, but at least I’d slowed them down. Not that I supposed it mattered anymore.

  The next half hour was a flurry of activity: getting the couple’s bags into Milly’s trunk and that group on their way; Effie finishing up in the kitchen then vanishing, probably to hide out in the carriage house; and Max, refreshed after a shower and change of clothes, getting ready to rush back out to the police station.

  I caught up with him before he drove off, and asked, “Did you check the Andersons’ references before you hired them?”

  Max frowned. “That’s an odd question, but yes, of course. Why, is something wrong?”

  “No, I’m just getting a bit paranoid, worried about Holly. So they all checked out?”

  “Yes, of course, but I have to go. We’ll talk later. Okay?”

  “Later, then,” I said, watching him leave.

  Suddenly all was quiet.

  I was alone and back at Holly’s outdoor table.

  I called Jackson. He picked up this time.

  “Anything on the gloves?” I asked him.

  “Nothing helpful,” he said. “Compost. Pollen. That’s it. Nothing toxic.”

  “Thanks anyway, I owe you.”

  Disappointment set in after we disconnected. I didn’t have a single, solid lead. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Clues should build up, one after the other, guiding and pointing the way down the right path. Instead, I might as well have beat my head against the wall for all the puzzle pieces I was connecting.

  But wait. That wasn’t necessarily true. I still had lots of unanswered questions to explore.

  Like . . . where was Harry Bruno? He’d been released from jail. Had he left town? Doubtful, I decided, based on the way he’d been sniffing around Patti.

  And what about Chance Anderson, also missing in action? My internal radar told me to pursue that thread. I marched toward the carriage house for a showdown with the only other person still on the property.

  Effie Anderson had some answering to do.

  Forty

  I climbed the stairs on the side of the garage and banged on the door at the top.

  Nobody answered, so I banged again, this time trying the door. Locked.

  “I know you’re in there, Effie!” I hollered through the door, plastering my ear against it and listening for sound on the other side.

  Nothing happened.

  This was ridiculous. Was Effie actually avoiding me?

  I stomped back down the stairs, stood outside eyeing the carriage house above me, and wondered if I could find a ladder high enough to climb up there and bash out one of the windows. It really was as high up as Holly had told me when I’d suggested she climb up and spy on Effie.

  After searching the inside of the garage, I couldn’t find a long enough ladder. I’d have to be related to Spider-Man to get up there.

  Next I went to Holly and Max’s outbuilding. The Queen Bee Honey–stickered ATV was missing. I’d bet my honey business that Chance had torn off on that exact one yesterday. The work truck was also missing from the property.

  Effie said Chance was out running errands, so he’d have the truck. But if he’d come back after Harry had been arrested, then where was that ATV?

  I fired up another four-wheeler and drove over to the maple tree that had stopped Mabel’s forward motion. Fat tire tracks led off from the grass into a wooded area. The tracks were easy to follow since all the low vegetation had been packed down from the weight of the ATV and hadn’t sprung completely back.

  It was rough going, and I wondered why Chance had chosen to make his own path instead of using one of the groomed trails. It confirmed for me that he’d left in a really big hurry. As though he’d panicked.

  The tracks wove here and there, dodging trees, and came out onto the shoulder of highway E (which is more like a country road than a highway). I promptly lost the trail and had to zoom back and forth on the road, searching for a sign. But the trail was as cold as this case had become.

  Where was everybody?

  I was sitting on the ATV while it idled, feeling depressed, heading for one big confused funk, when Holly’s work truck suddenly roared toward me at about a zillion miles an hour. It wasn’t heading for Moraine, either. Exactly the opposite—away from town.

  Was that Harry Bruno in the driver’s seat? Oh my gosh, it was! And he had a passenger. A woman, I thought, or a long-haired man. Was it Effie?

  So what? I thought next as the truck blew by. Big fat deal. Let them all disappear—Chance, Harry, Effie, throw in Patti, too—and may their spaceship never return. Although, speaking of Patti, where was she? Shouldn’t she be snooping around by now, inserting herself and all her crazy ideas into our lives, looking for, or causing, trouble?

  I drove back to Holly’s empty house and called 9-1-1. “Harry Bruno has my sister’s truck again,” I told the officer who answered. “I’m reporting it stolen. Again.” He put me on hold. Johnny Jay came on the line. “You’re making this up, Fischer,” he said.

  “Honest. I just saw it with my own eyes. He’s heading south, he’s with someone, and he’s traveling fast.”

  “I’m on it. Unbelievable. Where are you?”

  “Why?” Suspicion always pays off when Johnny Jay is involved.

  “I have a few follow-up questions for you. I’ll expect you at the station in the next half hour.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “That not what they told me down at your store.”

  Johnny Jay had been out looking for me? That wasn’t good. “It’s my day off,” I told him. “I’m not spending it down at the police station.”

  “You will if I say so.”

  Who did he think he was? What a pompous, arrogant, control-freak bully. Ha! Maybe I’d just hang out here at Holly’s house all day. Later I’d call Hunter and have him meet me on the dock for a boat ride and a little fishing. Surely Holly had a nice bottle of wine inside her wine fridge. And cheese and crackers. Yes, that sounded like a great idea. And maybe when Holly got out of jail, which I hoped would be sometime today, I’d be here to welcome her and Max home. The four of us could go out to dinner at Stu’s Bar and Grill. A wonderful evening with loved ones.

  With that plan in mind, I hung up on Johnny.

  After rummaging around in the house, I found a pad of paper and pen and poured a glass of lemonade from a pitcher in the refrigerator. Pausing with the glass at my lips, I dumped the contents down the sink drain and popped open a can of diet soda instead. One can never be too cautious in a kitchen that produced a toxic drink that actually killed a human being.

  Back outside, I started to make a bullet list of things to follow up with. Then something lodged in my brain. Nagging at me, poking, saying things like—everything doesn’t always have to be what it seems.

  Well, that was really helpful. I have to say that my intuition could be more . . . well . . . intuitive. Or more helpful in weeding out the quack grass from the rose bed. More user-friendly. Instead, it makes me try to sift through stuff and that never works well.

  Everything doesn’t always have to be what it seems.

  What the heck did that mean? That I should try making an assumption that Nova Campbell wasn’t really dead?

  She was dead all right. I’d witnessed the whole sorry event. Not to mention viewing her body in the morgue. Okay, but I’d already decided I may have misjudged the motive. That maybe it wasn’t work related. Let’s see. I made a Beginners 10
1 list of possible motives based on TV shows I’ve watched:

  Jealousy

  Revenge

  Greed

  Rage

  Fear

  Love

  I crumpled up the list.

  I had to be missing an ingredient, something other than carrot juice and water hemlock. So what if the motive really wasn’t obvious?

  I was making scribbles and cryptic symbols all over my paper pad, tearing them out, crumpling them up, tossing them into a pile.

  I wrote down Patti’s name in capital letters, since she was on my main suspect list. It was her water bottle that had been poisoned, and she’d been in the river while Nova breathed her last breath. And she had a powerful connection to the dead woman.

  But why would Patti leave behind a bottle that so clearly could and would eventually be traced back to her? I mean, really, how many people put “Stalkers Have Rights, Too” on their water bottles? And “I’m Watching You.” It was only a matter of time before Johnny Jay would have been all over her even without my help. Patti certainly was an obvious choice.

  Almost too obvious.

  Thinking of Chicago and Patti’s past brought me to Harry Bruno. Harry certainly had the background and history to pull off a homicide and get away with it. Right? But he and Nova had already divorced. If he was going to kill her wouldn’t he have done it before now? And how would he get his hands on Patti’s bottle? Besides, Harry was obsessed with Patti. Why would he frame her?

  What about the Andersons? Something had sent Chance packing in a great big hurry. I didn’t believe Effie when she said he was out running errands. Especially now that Harry Bruno had sped past me driving the same truck Chance was supposed to be out and about in. And I was almost certain he had a woman, probably Effie, with him. No, I believed Chance had taken off on the ATV yesterday, almost collided with Mabel in his hurry, and hadn’t returned.

  I glanced up at the carriage house again.

  And that’s when I ruled out Effie as Harry’s recent passenger.

  Because she was coming toward me with a pitchfork.

  Forty-one

  It wasn’t as though Effie was rushing at me with rabid foam dripping from her mouth, or with the pitchfork’s deadly prongs aimed directly at my heart, or anything like that. She was probably about to work in the garden and my so-called intuition was going off on a tangent. Since she wasn’t netted head to foot, the spider invasion must finally be under control.

  “Hey, Effie,” I called out, as friendly as can be, considering the enormous weapon at her disposal. “I was just looking for you. Come sit with me.”

  I would have loved to add, “And ditch the pitchfork, please,” but even I can recognize overreactions when I see them.

  Effie stopped, jammed the tines of the pitchfork into the grass at the end of the patio, left it standing upright, and joined me empty-handed. My inner mouse sighed in relief.

  “Why are you still hanging around?” Effie asked in a light voice that matched mine. She glanced at the pile of crumpled paper before sweeping over to my most current written musings, which I hid by laying an arm across them. Nonchalantly, coolly, I might add.

  “I love this view,” I said. “The peacefulness, the quiet. I don’t get much personal space in my life with the store and all.” Which wasn’t untrue. Just try to have a moment of peace with “I Spy” living next door and Hunter always after the bennies that come with living together.

  “So you’re hiding out for a while?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s too bad that you have to hide to find personal space.”

  “Yes, but what is, is. By the way, didn’t you hear me knocking on your door a little while ago?”

  “No. I must have been in the shower.”

  “You don’t have to lock up your home in broad daylight. Not in Moraine anyway. I know Chicago is different, but here, you’re safe in your own home.”

  Effie looked up sharply at my reference to her hometown then nodded as though she was going to take my advice in the future. “Old habits,” she said.

  “When is Chance coming back?” I asked, thinking fast. “I have a landscaping problem he might be able to solve for me.”

  “Not until later.”

  “Did he take the truck?”

  “Yes,” she said, either lying through her teeth, or maybe she really didn’t know that Harry had it in his evil clutches. If the latter was the case, I clued her in.

  “I saw Harry Bruno driving the work truck going south. He had someone with him, a woman. I thought it might be you, but . . .” No sense stating the obvious, which was that I’d been mistaken about the identity of the woman.

  At this point, Effie should have seemed more concerned about her husband’s actual whereabouts if the errand thing was true. Instead, she looked off toward the lake. “Is that right?” she said.

  “How do you and Chance know Harry?” I said, doing my best to sound firm, determined, with a no-nonsense tone that implied I wasn’t likely to accept any fabrications on her part.

  “What makes you think that we do?”

  “You let him use the Paines’ truck. And he was staying with you.” I wasn’t certain of that last part, but it made sense. Where else would he have holed up? That did the trick. Sometimes guessing pays off.

  “If you must know, I used to work for him. But Harry Bruno is a bad man,” she said. “That’s why I left his employment. He showed up here and said I owed him a favor and that he wanted a place to stay for a few days. I was afraid to say no.”

  “How did he find you?” I leaned back, pretty proud of my interrogation skills. I’d done much better than Sally or Johnny. Wait until they all heard this.

  Effie certainly seemed fearful. “He has resources, that’s what he told me.”

  “If you worked for him, you must have known his wives?” Why hadn’t any of this come out earlier? Was Harry that scary?

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t know either of them, not until after Nova Campbell died. Harry or Patti did it, one of them had to. I’m so sorry for bringing that bad man into your lives.”

  Poor Effie. She seemed nervous, intimidated by Harry Bruno, and sincerely apologetic.

  Still, I couldn’t help asking, “Where were you that morning? Where was Chance? And can anyone vouch for either of you?”

  Immediately Effie became visibly agitated. “Are you implying that I or Chance had anything to do with Nova’s death?”

  “Of course not.” Okay, I was doing a little wishful thinking. Better one of you than my sister. Although Harry would do just fine. I wasn’t so sure how I felt about Patti being the murderer, though.

  “I’m sure you want to get your sister off,” Effie said, sort of huffy, “but don’t go making accusations against us. She’s in jail for a reason.”

  And with that, Effie got up, walked over to the pitchfork, pulled it out of the ground (I went on guard momentarily), and stomped out to the garden.

  Geez. Did I believe her? She still hadn’t accounted for her husband’s whereabouts. Should I go after her? Ask more questions?

  On the side of the rose garden, Effie began using the pitchfork to dig into a pile of compost, lifting and turning the fertile matter the same way I work mine. Roses (actually all flowers and vegetables) love organic compost, and last year I’d convinced Holly to insist on keeping a compost pile going. It was good to see that she still was following through.

  I called Patti’s number. She didn’t pick up. I tried calling Hunter but only got his voicemail. I was annoyed that he snuck out earlier, but still I left a message to meet me at Holly’s house for some fun in the sun. “And bring Ben,” I said to the machine, “since he loves a good swim, too.” Maybe we could salvage our day after all.

  Speaking of the sun, it was really turning out to be a hot one today, but it was still comfortable in the shade with a bit of a breeze blowing off the lake. I went inside and opened another soda. Then went back to writing down more meaning
less junk.

  And that’s when more than just Harry in Holly’s truck started going south.

  Forty-two

  Johnny Jay’s police car pulled up alongside my truck. I spotted it instantly from my peripheral vision. He climbed out, hitched his bossy pants, shoved on a pair of mirrored shades, and headed my way with his usual swagger.

  I seriously considered hightailing it out of there. The chief isn’t much of a runner. I’d beat him in foot races so many times growing up, I’d lost count. Some of the time we were having competitive races with other kids, seeing who was faster, and I’d won my fair share. But some of the time I had to run to save my skin when I’d caught Johnny Jay bullying some poor kid. Wanting to redirect his focus to me, I’d thump him in the back of the head, not hard, it didn’t take much to get his attention. Trust me when I say the guy really can’t run.

  However, these days he had a gun within easy reach on his hip and was probably an expert marksman. I might be rather impulsive, acting before thinking an action all the way through, but I’m not a total idiot. Johnny just might dislike me enough to shoot to kill.

  “How did you find me?” I wanted to know, when he came to a frowning halt.

  “You called our emergency number when you reported the truck stolen again. Your cell phone pinged off a tower not too far from here,” he said all proud of himself. “A little triangulating got me close enough to figure out where you were. It’s high tech all the way for Moraine law enforcement.”

  Damn my phone. Or rather damn modern technology and whoever decided to make an innocent person’s cell phone into a homing device for overzealous law enforcement officials who had nothing better to do than stalk the very citizens they were supposed to be protecting. Was nothing sacred anymore?

  In the garden, Effie stopped working and rested on the pitchfork. Her eyes were glued to us. I hoped they stayed that way. Johnny Jay didn’t always operate within the law, but he only committed abusive indiscretions when he didn’t have an audience.