A Beeline to Murder

by Meera Lester

  Abby searched for a stack of prints—some were crime-scene photos she’d taken of Jean-Louis, and others were pictures of satisfied customers and friends taken down from the pastry shop’s corkboard. In one, Jean-Louis stood with a group of people as he sold pastries at the town’s annual strawberry festival. Another showed Jean-Louis and waiters catering a political fund-raiser. In yet another, he stood in front of the Black Witch with male friends, all of them holding steins of green beer for what surely must have been a St. Patrick’s Day toast.

  Meticuously, Abby examined all the photographic images through her magnifying glass. Something caught her attention in one picture of Jean-Louis and a fisherman, but she couldn’t quite figure out what was different or unusual about that particular photo. Weariness was compromising her discerning ability. The fisherman held a large swordfish on the deck of boat. Jean-Louis stood smiling at him less than an arm’s length away. Both men were bare-chested and were wearing swimming trunks. The tall, thin fisherman also wore a white panama hat. Out beyond the boat’s deck, nothing but water stretched to the horizon line. The swordfish was an ocean fish, she thought. Philippe had said his brother had planned a trip to the Caribbean for his birthday. Had he traveled there before? Was the fisherman a friend, foe, lover, or murderer?

  With the magnifier, Abby looked intently at Jean-Louis and then again at the fisherman. Her instincts told her something was significant, and even though her eyes and her brain kept searching the image, they weren’t latching on to what it was. She lifted her gaze to look over again at the sleeping Philippe. The brothers shared obvious similarities, including the same angular jawline, dark brows, thick hair, and muscular build. Both men were handsome, personable, and in the prime of life. But their differences had set them on different life paths.

  Of the two, Philippe seemed more courteous, quicker to smile, less extreme in his mood swings. She had wondered whether Jean-Louis had been using drugs, which might account for his temperamental outbursts. No analysis had been noted. Had the pressures of potentially losing the business and losing his lease, his dissatisfaction in his personal relationships, or something else driven him into a world of drugs? Had he used them with reckless abandon? The tox screen results weren’t included. She would check on that. Alternatively, had Jean-Louis crossed paths with someone who shared his short fuse to anger? Whatever it was in his makeup that had compelled him to make different choices than Philippe had made had led to this moment: one brother now slept in restful repose, while the other lay lifeless on a cold slab in the morgue.

  Abby reached for a small envelope sealed with red tape. She opened it, and then she pinched the small earring retrieved from the pastry shop and examined it closely. Laying the earring aside momentarily, she thumbed through the police report to look for references to it and to ascertain whether or not there had been a follow-up with a jeweler. She found the report of her own statement about it:

  She heard a ping while helping to hoist the chef’s body onto a gurney, whereupon she and Officer Katerina Petrovsky searched for the source of the sound and located the earring—but only one.

  At the very least, she would take it to the jeweler tomorrow.

  As she dropped the earring back into the envelope, the thought occurred to her that it was already tomorrow. The sun would soon be up. Her chickens would be pecking each other, relieving the stress of being locked inside the chicken house, while Houdini was already sounding his gravelly call. The animal world might be waking up, but Abby needed sleep. Two or three hours should be enough. She began packing the items back in the boxes. She’d leave a note for Philippe.

  Tips for Planting a Fairy Ring

  A fairy ring is a landscape design element featuring a tea rose ringed by several flower beds. You can use a white tea rose and plants with gray-green foliage or choose a red tea rose with pink or purple flowers. The gradation from the tall tea rose in the center to the shortest plants of the outermost ring creates a spectacular visual effect.

  • Plant a white hybrid tea rose bush, such as an Honor, Iceberg, Pascali, or Caroline de Monaco, to create an anchor for the surrounding rings of plants. The tea rose should be the tallest of all the plants in the fairy ring.

  • Create concentric flower-bed rings around the rosebush using shorter plants, such as white bearded irises, white bellflowers, sweet woodruff, and dusty miller. The rings should be placed a foot apart.

  • Finish with a final flower-bed ring of even shorter plants with white blooms, such as spirea, baby’s breath, or ageratum.

  Chapter 8

  If you enjoy listening to songbirds, it might interest you to know that the male is generally the singer, since he uses song to attract a mate and defend his territory.

  —Henny Penny Farmette Almanac

  Abby steered her Jeep away from the lodge toward Main Street. She had left Philippe a note telling him they would meet at noon. She couldn’t remember when she had felt so exhausted, and only hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel while driving back to the farmette. Even her eyeballs hurt. According to her watch, it was 4:45 a.m., nearly the hour of early morning when Jean-Louis died. Although she was tired, Abby’s instincts told her to drive by the back of the pastry shop, see what it looked like at this early hour, determine how well it could be seen in the glow of streetlamps and neighborhood porch lights, and see who might be roaming about.

  Pulling the Jeep into a parking space under a dense magnolia tree shading the back side of Lemon Lane, Abby parked, flipped off the headlights, and fought the urge to nod off. She stared at the pastry shop. Nothing obstructed her view of its back door, the theater exit, the Black Witch Bar’s rear entry, and the Dumpster. Since she’d parked in the shadow of the tree, the pale predawn light made it possible for her to see without being seen. The starlight was growing fainter, and only a sliver of moon hung in the sky. The streetlight behind the pastry shop had burned out. The lane was quiet except for crickets chirping and frogs croaking along the creek that ran through the town a few streets away. Overhead, the mockingbirds had awakened and intermittently warbled off a medley of songs: the tweets, trills, dzeets, cheeps, and peet-a-weets of other birds and their own familiar worky-worky-worky.

  Suddenly, a car approached. Abby’s senses went on high alert as the small four-door sedan drove past. The car slowed. Stopped. A man wearing a dark knit cap climbed out. When Abby saw he wore a work apron for collecting coins and carried a bundle, she relaxed. Newspaper carrier. Delivering newspapers. What time is it? Almost five o’clock.

  Abby watched him drop the bundle and hustle back to his car. Disregarding the marked lanes, the man drove right down the middle of Lemon Lane, tossing papers to the left and the right, over the top of his car when necessary, onto porches and sidewalks. At the end of the lane he didn’t even stop at the stop sign, but turned the corner and disappeared.

  So, no one has canceled the pastry shop’s newspaper subscription. Suppose Philippe will have to do it. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Abby rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes while her thoughts rambled on. Had a newspaper bundle been delivered on the day Jean-Louis died? Where was that bundle now? Had a newspaper hitting the sidewalk made the scudding sound a neighbor claimed to have heard the morning Jean-Louis died?

  With monumental effort, Abby forced her eyes open. She yawned, straightened her posture, and scanned the lane for other signs of life. After a few minutes, a porch light went on. An elderly, balding man in a bathrobe moseyed out with his cat to retrieve his morning paper. After removing the rubber bands and slipping them into his bathrobe pocket, the man shuffled back to the door, then stopped momentarily to look for the cat, which had disappeared. The lane became quiet. Even the cat was gone. So the newspaper bundles are tied with twine, but the subscribers’ papers are banded.

  Her watch ticked away another few minutes. Listening to the mockingbirds, she fought against the urge to sleep. Then something at the end of the lane moved. Abby peered toward the darkness at
the end of Lemon Lane. A figure emerged, pushing a shopping cart bulging with bags, and trudged toward the Dumpster. Dora. No mistaking you, even in the dark. But this is your routine, isn’t it? Waking up and coming to the pastry shop for coffee? What did you see when you came around that morning? What did you do? What did you take?

  Dora shuffled right on down toward the Jeep, then finally stopped at the Dumpster. She hesitated, looked at the back door of the pastry shop, up and down the lane, and then at the Dumpster. She leaned over it, reached in as far as her arm would go. For the next few minutes, Dora riffled through the contents. Abruptly, she stopped, stone still. She peered into the dark shadows, looking straight toward the tree under which Abby was parked. Abby froze.

  After a beat, Dora shuffled away from the Dumpster and approached the back door of the pastry shop. She picked up the newspaper bundle, dropped it onto her bags, and left the way she had come. Now, why would you want a whole bundle of papers? Are you sharing them? Sleeping on them? Using them for blankets?

  I am so going to find out. Abby pulled latex gloves from the box in her glove compartment and put them on. She also grabbed a flashlight. She slid out of the Jeep and walked over to check out the blue Dumpster. Abby used one hand to push aside bags of plastic. Deeper down, she dug through loose flyers, mailers, torn theater tickets, real estate circulars, used drink cups, plastic bottles, and soda cans, and at the bottom, she found newspapers. Plucking them out, she counted fifteen.

  With her flashlight, she was able to check the dates and was not surprised when she discovered they all carried the date on which the chef died. So Dora had not taken the papers that day. Why? Newspaper bundles are always cross-tied and knotted with twine. Where’s the twine? That question stuck with Abby as she drove home with the car windows down to help her stay awake. The acrid scent of smoke drifting south on the wind from three wildfires burning in the wine country made falling asleep at the wheel unlikely. Good for her, bad for the guys working the fire line. Once back at the farmette, however, she drifted off into a dreamless sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

  It might have been the restorative sleep, the long shower, or the raspberry tea sweetened with honey that filled her with energy. Or maybe it was just the challenge of a new case, but whatever it was, Abby felt energetic and eager to begin working on the investigation again. It was a good thing, too, because it was nearly time to meet Philippe. While making her tea, she’d caught the weather report—hot and expected to get hotter. The rains were over. Watering by hand was a drag, but it was a necessary task to keep the gardens going during the hot Las Flores summers.

  A fierce onshore wind blowing from the northeast had gusted for hours, ripping off all but the most tenacious blossoms from the elm tree that stood at the back side of Abby’s beehives. The sun had not yet reached its zenith, and already the thermometer on the chicken house wall registered eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. High winds, high temps, and dry conditions would increase the demand for firefighters from outside the region because of recent cutbacks in funding for emergency police and fire services at the local level.

  With Sugar inside the cool farmhouse, Abby sat down in the rocking chair on her patio. With one jeans-clad leg sprawled over a chair arm, Abby sipped her tea, thinking about the afternoon agenda with Philippe. Normally, she wouldn’t allow a client to tag along, but he had been so insistent and had promised he would not interfere with her questioning. So, she’d relented.

  As she rocked and sipped her tea, she heard an unmistakable high-pitched whine. Bees! The rallying call of takeoff. Another swarm! Abby stood and looked high up over the chicken house. A cloud of circling bees ascended into the elm tree, while a few zipped about in ever-widening circles, as if waiting for the scouts to give them the landing location. You never choose a convenient time for me, do you? She put down her teacup, dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a stainless-steel pan and a wooden spoon, and laid them on the plywood counter. After taking her cell phone from her jeans’ hip pocket, she tapped in Philippe’s number.

  “It’s Abby,” she said breathlessly.

  “Abby. Are you in the parking lot? I am ready.”

  “Sorry, Philippe, but my bees are about to take off. I’ve got to stay here until they land.”

  “It is all right. Shall I drive to your place? Farm Hill Road, n’est-ce pas?”

  “If you are sure you don’t mind.” Abby grabbed the pan and spoon and dashed outside, closing the slider behind her. The last thing she needed was to have that dog, as curious as she was, underfoot and getting stung. With a little luck and a lot of noise, the bees might become disoriented and take refuge nearby.

  Balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder as she made her way to the elm tree, Abby said, “Philippe, you were only here once. Do you remember where I live?”

  “Oui, but not exactly.”

  “Last house, Farm Hill Road. Right side. If you hit the T, you’ve gone too far. Just look for the chicken on the mailbox.”

  “Oh, mon Dieu. What if it flies off before I arrive?”

  “It’s not a real chicken, Philippe.”

  He laughed. “Très bon. Nevertheless, for me . . . the chicken . . . it belongs on a plate, not on the box.”

  Amused, Abby replied, “Now you’re teasing me. Seriously, do you think you can find your way here?”

  “Do not worry, Abby. My phone, it has the navigation.”

  Abby watched the bees begin to drift from the tree. She clanged the spoon against the pan bottom. “Great. I won’t worry, then.” The bees lifted higher, as though suddenly caught in a whirlwind. Abby pounded the pan with such vigor, her arm ached.

  “What is that racket, Abby?”

  “I’m trying to disorient my bees so they won’t take off.”

  “Is it working?”

  “I can’t tell yet. Might take a while.”

  “In that case, Abby, I will find you. I will look for the chicken and listen for the banging. A bientôt.”

  Abby clicked off the call, dropped her phone into her shirt pocket, and banged the spoon slowly against the pan until the bees coalesced, wrapping themselves in a writhing mass around a limb. Please, just stay put.

  After racing back to the kitchen, Abby dropped the pan and spoon on the counter. She checked on Sugar, who was chewing on a rawhide bone that, apparently, she had just rediscovered in a hiding place behind the couch. Just as well you stay put inside, where it’s cool. We’ll go for a walk later. Abby darted back to the patio. From an oversize basket, she snatched her elbow-length kidskin leather gloves and her white beekeeper suit. Searching the backyard, she spotted the ladder lying on its side near the apricot tree from which she’d rescued the last swarm.

  With the ladder in hand and her suit and gloves under an arm, Abby lumbered toward the elm. She positioned the ladder as close as possible to the bees’ branch. Then she darted into the hive area, where she located the bee box that she’d prepared for the swarming season. In it, she’d placed one frame with a little honey and nine others without. Once the bees were inside that hive, they would have plenty of work to keep them busy, as they would build comb onto those empty frames. She wouldn’t have to worry about them taking off again.

  Abby suited up, then picked up the bee box, walked back to the elm, and mounted the ladder. Stopping short of the top three rungs, she aligned the bee box directly under the swarm, wedging it between the ladder and her body.

  You guys ready? Count of three. One . . . two . . . three. Abby gave the limb a muscular jerk. Thousands of dislodged bees vibrating en masse tumbled onto her and into the open box. What a rush! Their collective piping sound seemed to Abby like a wild cry of disorientation, but she was confident it soon would return to the happy buzzing of worker bees building a wax honeycomb onto the frames. The honeycomb would hold the colony inside, while sealing out intruders.

  Carefully, Abby descended the ladder with the bee box, then positioned it on the ground so that its front opening faced the l
imb. That way, the bees still flying around the limb, where they apparently still detected the queen bee’s pheromones that had communicated the order to swarm, could find their way into their new home.

  When, by her estimate, twenty minutes had passed, Abby approached the bee-filled hive and knelt to inspect it. Scout bees were doing the waggle dance around the edges, as if to say, “Calling all bees in our swarm. This is our new home.” Abby picked up the hive lid and, after tilting it against the side of the box, painstakingly slid it across the top to avoid crushing any insects. She would leave the hive until after dark before moving it into the bee apiary.

  There was no mistaking the sound of a vehicle crunching over the driveway gravel. A horn sounded. Philippe. Abby hiked the trouser legs of her beekeeper suit to her ankles to avoid stumbling and dashed to open the gate. She stared in astonishment.

  Lucas Crawford eased out of the cab of his old red pickup and strolled toward Abby. He wore a blue- and white-striped cotton shirt, straight-leg denim jeans, and scuffed leather boots.

  “Afternoon, Abby.”

  “Lucas.”

  “Am I interrupting your work?” He pushed the stained palm-leaf straw cowboy hat back a thumb’s length.

  “Not at all.” Abby tried to sound cool, in spite of the fact that she felt like she was going to have sunstroke inside the beekeeper’s suit, and the fact that the butterflies in her stomach were making her feel even more uncomfortable at his unexpected visit. “I was just about to peel off this suit. It’s an oven in here.”

  Lucas looked at everything but her.