Mind Your Own Beeswax

by Hannah Reed

  Yeah, right. How?

  Ali walked in carrying a metal tray. I could see more dental equipment on it. One was a big honking syringe.

  “Whoa,” I said. “That isn’t for me, is it?”

  T. J. glanced at Ali. “I asked you to make another appointment for her.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Ali said. “I thought you said set up to fill Story’s cavity. I misunderstood.”

  T. J. picked up the syringe. It could’ve been my imagination, but I swear I saw a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. “How about it, Story? I can have you out of here in fifteen minutes and you won’t have to come back again for six months. Really, it’s a bitty baby cavity.”

  I checked my cell for the time. It could work. That is, if I really wanted to be drilled and stabbed, which I didn’t. But why not get it over with?

  “Do your thing,” I told him.

  Fifteen minutes later, T. J. (aka mad torture dentist) was still trying to numb my mouth with a third application of the needle. He eyed up my chart. “I don’t get it. We’ve used this on you before without any problem.”

  “I donth geth it, either.”

  “You weren’t drinking alcohol recently, were you?”

  “Vy?”

  “Were you?”

  “Vine las nith,” I said, remembering the bottle of wine Holly and I had shared. What did wine have to do with the current situation? My face felt like an overinflated balloon filled with helium. My lips and cheeks were missing in action. I couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing, that was, except the drill every time he thought I was numb enough to start. Each time he began drilling, a sharp nerve-racking pain shot through my head. “I quith. Leth me up.”

  I ripped off the plastic bib. A long string of spit dribbled on the front of my shirt.

  “I’ll have Ali call you at the store about rescheduling,” T. J. said. “And next time don’t drink alcohol the night before. I’m sure that’s where the problem comes in. That happens sometimes.”

  Just like everybody else, T. J. had to blame what happened on something or someone else. In this case, me for drinking wine. Believe me, it would take an entire bottle of the stuff to get me back in that chair.

  I bolted out the door and hustled down Main Street to meet Hunter. I waved at Ben, who sat in the passenger seat of Hunter’s SUV, waiting for his partner. His ears twitched slightly in greeting. Ben wasn’t big on public displays of affection.

  Stu’s Bar and Grill was busy with the lunchtime crowd. Hunter waited at a table by the window where he had a clear view of his vehicle and police partner.

  I tried to smile, but it didn’t happen. Or if it did, I couldn’t tell.

  “I ordered for you,” Hunter said. “Hope you don’t mind. You’re running late and I know you’re crunched for time.”

  “Tank ow.”

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Dentith.”

  One of Stu’s part-time waitresses came over with two baskets filled with burgers and fries and placed them on the table.

  “I guess you won’t be eating that?” Hunter said.

  I shook my head, holding my jaw.

  “Okay, I’ll talk for a while. You listen.”

  I nodded.

  Here’s what Hunter told me between bites of burger while I alternated between sucking on French fries and swishing ice water in my mouth:

  • The cops had obtained a warrant to search Norm Cross’s house after Norm refused to let them in.

  • Since Hetty was a murder victim, the police needed to search for clues to her death. They had a perfect right to force Norm’s hand, whether or not he was a suspect.

  • This morning, Hunter, Johnny Jay, and various other law-enforcement officials arrived and searched the premises. Nothing was found to indicate Norm might have killed his wife or to help them solve the case.

  • But a poster board in a spare bedroom drew Hunter’s attention. Newspaper clippings were arranged on it. And each and every one of them featured a phenomenon from The Lost Mile: Lantern Man.

  “Over the years, the local papers have run quite a few stories about Lantern Man,” Hunter said. “Especially after the camper attack. Then every time someone claimed a sighting, here came another article.”

  One side of my face twitched in amazement at all the developing news. Moraine wasn’t exactly a hub of interest. That is until now.

  Hunter continued, “Why would Norm save the articles and mount them on the wall unless they mean something to him?”

  “Unlesh heesh Lantern Man!” If I spoke slowly, I almost sounded normal.

  “That’s what I’m thinking. I suggested that to him this morning, but he denied it.”

  “Of courth.”

  “Get this part, though.” Hunter leaned over his plate, closer to me. “I also found a collection of lanterns in the same room.”

  “No kiddin’.”

  “He said he’d collected vintage lanterns for years.”

  “Like Coleman lanternsh?”

  “And railroad lanterns. I came on stronger, putting pressure on him, but he still denied any knowledge of Lantern Man’s identity.”

  We thought about that for a while. Why couldn’t Norm be Lantern Man? His property abutted the state and county land and he’d told me just yesterday how much his wife hated having kids hang out in The Lost Mile. Maybe Norm hated them even more. Enough to terrorize anybody who ventured in there after dark, scaring them silly so they wouldn’t come back.

  “Well, now we know,” I said, forming the words carefully and hearing them come out just right. “Even if we can’t prove it.”

  “Remember the night the group of us went in there?”

  “It’s not a nith I’ll ever forget.”

  “Right. But Lantern Man didn’t make an appearance.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Busy doin’ somefin’ else?”

  “I’m guessing we made plenty of noise.”

  I shrugged. We’d been so bombed—or at least some of us had been—that we would have been really loud. “I dunno.”

  “I think I’ll see if I can dig up police dispatch logs and records for that period of time.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a small community. What do you do when you’re going to be gone for a few days?”

  “Tell one person, den everyone knows.”

  “Exactly. Everybody finds out. Including Johnny Jay. And what does he do?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “I’ll rephrase that. What does he do as a service to everybody other than you?”

  “I dunno.”

  “He does drive-bys. Makes sure nothing is going on that shouldn’t be.”

  “He does?”

  “Sometimes residents even call in and ask him to check on their places. So if Norm was out of town during our walk in the woods, that’s just one more nail in Norm’s Lantern Man coffin.”

  “But why go to all dat twouble?”

  “Because Hetty Cross and Lauren Kerrigan are dead. And because Lantern Man was an unknown entity back then and still is. And because all our paths are converging in one place.”

  “In Da Lost Mile.”

  I couldn’t help being intrigued.

  “What we talked about just now is private,” Hunter said. “Between me and you. If we’re wrong and this gets out, it wouldn’t be fair to Norm. He just lost his wife. He doesn’t need more troubles. And I know you can keep a secret. That’s why I came to you.”

  That felt good. He trusted me. I spoke carefully, feeling little needles jabbing at my lips and cheek. “I’ll keep my ears open at the store.”

  Hunter chuckled. “Anything coming from the store’s gab group can’t be taken too seriously. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but let me know what’s going around, okay?”

  I gave him a lopsided grin at that, since normally Hunter hated gossip. His about-face could only be in the line of duty. “K,” I said.

  By the time I got
back to The Wild Clover, my mother had rearranged the shelves.

  Sixteen

  My mother hadn’t reorganized all of the shelves. Just the ones nearest the front of the store, those carefully and creatively designed by me. Shelf placement is a science in the grocery business and I’m constantly looking for creative ways to build displays, end caps, and case stacks into attractive sensory experiences that sell products.

  As they say, retail is detail.

  So the first things my customers encountered when they walked in the door of The Wild Clover were the hard-to-resist items like:

  • Fresh flowers from Milly’s yard and from Moraine Gardens

  • Just-baked loaves of bread from a wonderful bakery in Stone Bank

  • Woven baskets filled with old-fashioned candies like candy lipsticks, Pixy Stix, lemonheads, pop rocks, and laffy taffy

  • And a special case stack of Queen Bee Honey products: pure wildflower honey, both processed and raw; honey sticks; honey candy; beeswax candles; and whatever else I could make from my bees’ honey

  But now everything up front had been drastically changed, replaced with toilet tissue and laundry detergent. Talk about first impressions.

  “It looks so much better now,” Mom said, dusting her hands, finished righting her world, forcing her unbending ideas into my world. “More functional.”

  Adrenaline was unnumbing my face fast.

  “I wasn’t going for functional,” I said with a neutral tone, proud of my self-control, although I had a twitchy left eye. “Where’s my honey?”

  “With the peanut butter where it belongs.”

  Carrie Ann shot me an amused glance. Holly had run for cover when she saw me coming in, probably hiding out in the back in case I blamed her for Mom’s actions. She should realize by now that I understood.

  Nobody controls Mom.

  Voices came floating down from the choir loft, reminding me that today was Sheepshead Day for the seniors at The Wild Clover, as it was every Monday, and the games were on. Sheepshead is Wisconsin’s official card game, ever since so many Germans settled here and brought the game over from the old country. It’s a trick-taking game and, when played five-handed, the way we like it best, the dealer’s partner is a big secret, even from the dealer.

  I heard Grams say, “Pass,” meaning she was passing on the blind.

  Mom pursed her lips, her eyes shifting upward. “Your grandmother gets very aggressive when she plays cards. You should hear some of the things coming out of her mouth.”

  “She’s fun,” I said, defending Grams, as always. “She’s like the queen bee of her generation. Everybody likes to be around her.”

  “Humph,” Mom said, since everybody knew there could only be one queen bee and she was it, not Grams. “If you girls can handle the store without me, I’m walking down to the library.”

  A hoot sounded from up in the choir loft, and then someone said, “Thanks for taking me for a ride!”

  With that, Mom rolled her eyeballs in disgust and left.

  I surveyed the damage to my store.

  Somebody rapped on an upstairs table, doubling the pot.

  “I’ll help you put everything back,” Holly said from behind me, sounding apologetic. “SS (So Sorry), but she gets something in her head and nothing can change her mind. Believe me, I tried.”

  “She is stubborn.”

  “Not like us at all. LOL (Laugh Out Loud).”

  And there was some truth to my sister’s tongue-in-cheek remark. She and I came from a long line of Amazonlike matriarchs. Even sweet Grams had a strong-as-a-tornado side, revealed on very rare occasions and only when it came to defending her family.

  “I can manage here,” I said. “If you help Carrie Ann.”

  The toilet paper was the first to go to the back of the store with the rest of life’s necessities. Out came my containers brimming with wildflower honey sticks, jars of Queen Bee Honey, honeycomb, and honey candy with those marvelous soft centers. I stopped long enough to unwrap one and pop it in my mouth.

  While I worked on restoring order, customers came and went, the card-playing seniors grew louder, and the shocking murders of Hetty Cross and Lauren Kerrigan remained everyone’s main topic of conversation.

  I stayed in the background, doing a lot more listening than commenting. As a local business owner, I learned a long time ago to keep my opinions to myself, especially when it came to sensitive topics. No sense jeopardizing business by coming on strong and opinionated. We had enough loud know-it-alls around to pick up my slack. In public, I tried not to talk religion, politics, sex, or now, murder suspects.

  The big question was: Which woman had been the original target?

  If it was Hetty, then Norm had most of the town’s guilty votes, simply by association. If Lauren was the one who the killer had sighted in on, then Johnny Jay had the most motive and all the opportunity. In both of those cases, people figured that the other woman had been an accidental bystander.

  But if both women were intended victims—a stretch for all of us—nobody had a clue. As far as anyone knew, the two women barely knew each other, if at all. Hetty kept to herself. As her closest neighbor, I didn’t even know her well. Hetty didn’t have children, hadn’t belonged to any church groups, and didn’t make appearances in town unless she absolutely had to.

  And Lauren had been gone for a long time. When she did reappear, she hadn’t contacted any of her old friends, so why would she have hooked up with Hetty Cross?

  So first we had to sort out that dilemma.

  Lauren Kerrigan’s brother, Terry, came into the store and gave us some useful insight, facts we hadn’t had before. Which was amazing considering how close-knit and closed-mouthed that family usually was.

  “Lauren was scared,” he said. “Terrified of what would happen at the end. I don’t care what my mother thought, Lauren was too afraid of dying to even consider taking her own life. I kept saying that over and over, but Mom wouldn’t listen. She’s having an awful time accepting that Lauren was murdered.”

  “Why do you think Lauren went to The Lost Mile? To meet Hetty?” I asked, since Terry seemed like he wanted to get his thoughts off his chest.

  A crowd was forming around us, although none of the customers wanted to be caught red-handed (or rather redeared) listening in on our conversation, so they pretended like they were shopping. Suddenly, everybody in the store wanted some of my honey products.

  Terry shrugged. “No idea. She didn’t know Hetty.”

  “And why did she think she needed a weapon?”

  Terry’s eyes scanned the store. “I really shouldn’t be talking about this. It’s personal family stuff.”

  “Maybe if we all put our heads together,” I reasoned. “We’ll think of something important that might help figure out what happened and catch her killer.”

  I heard murmurs of agreement. P. P. Patti slipped into the store, wearing a black fanny pack, a matching visor on her head, and something hanging from a lanyard around her neck.

  Terry still had the floor. “I already told everything I know to the . . .” He stopped there and we all could guess what he was about to say. He’d given his statement to Johnny Jay, probably under duress considering how well they got along. Johnny had to be a prime suspect in his eyes just like in mine.

  “Okay,” Terry said, deciding to tell us for his own reasons. “Lauren came home to die. She wouldn’t have even known about Rita’s gun. I bought it after Lauren went away. She would have had to search the house to find it. Why would she even do that? And if anybody knows the reason why she took it and went into the woods, you better speak up now.”

  The room went so quiet I could hear somebody in the loft slap down a card. Even the gamers hushed after that. Nobody around Terry had anything helpful to say. The silence stretched and became uncomfortable.

  “When’s the funeral?” Patti piped up and asked.

  “It’s going to be private,” Terry said. “Just family.” And wi
th that, he walked out without buying whatever he’d come in for.

  Pretty soon Stu showed up to remind us about Chopper Murphy’s Irish wake tomorrow night. Chopper had been a regular at Stu’s, bellying up to the bar until one day his lights went out exactly where he would have wanted them to. After a few shots of whiskey, his heart stopped beating. He pitched off his bar stool and that was the last of him.

  His wife, Fiona, buried him two weeks ago and the whole town turned out.

  But she didn’t give him an Irish wake. Chopper started haunting her, according to Fiona, and he couldn’t rest until she did it up properly.

  So Stu was helping her take care of details.

  Patti came close enough that I could read the words on the card dangling from her lanyard.

  “Press pass?” I asked.

  Patti beamed. “Isn’t it cool? I made it on my computer.”

  “So, you aren’t actually a member of the press and you don’t really have special rights?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  Okay then.

  After the twins came in to help out, I closed myself into the back room and sat at my desk with Dinky on my lap. Once she stopped trying to crawl up and lick my lips, she settled down and I had time to think.

  It didn’t seem fair that one night of bad judgment had changed Lauren Kerrigan’s life forever. Then to have terminal cancer and end up dead on the ground, murdered. But life wasn’t fair, a fact that announced itself over and over even if I didn’t want to face the truth of it. Some people just never caught any slack in life. They started out with more than their share of bad luck, and they ended the same way.

  There was a light tap on the door, and Holly slipped in.

  “She wasn’t suicidal,” I said to my sister. “Terry said she was afraid of dying.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “So she took the gun for protection against somebody.”

  “She must have been really scared.”

  “Maybe.”

  I told Holly about Norm, about the Lantern Man articles on his wall and about the lantern collection. I’d promised Hunter I’d keep that a secret, but like all secrets, they instantly go to work on a person and don’t let up until they’ve been shared with at least one other person. If I had to spill my guts to someone I trusted, Holly was the one.