Mind Your Own Beeswax

by Hannah Reed

  Had Hetty helped Norm create the bizarre wall hanging? Had she known about his adventures as Lantern Man? Probably. The mean Witch would have loved the very idea of tormenting kids in the dark as much as she enjoyed hauling them through the woods by their ears. She might even have encouraged Norm the first time.

  I really could see her forcing him into it.

  I finished reading the last article. If Norm arrived, I decided to give him the same excuse as last time, the concerned neighbor spiel. I took a few minutes to study some pictures hanging on the wall. There was a younger version of Norm, wearing a Boy Scout troop leader uniform, framed in several different photographs, each with the same Boy Scout troop.

  Hetty hated kids and Norm had been a Boy Scout leader! Talk about opposites! So why would he attack campers in the woods? What a contradiction. Although, appearances weren’t everything. Just take a look at Johnny Jay.

  I thought of comments made by my customers and how some of them thought Norm was a killer. I wasn’t completely in that camp, but it was a good thing that I had Ben with me anyway. Just in case they were right and I was wrong.

  I decided to stick around. By the time Norm pulled into his driveway, I was sitting on the porch steps, throwing a ball for Ben and Dinky to chase.

  I couldn’t exactly come out and ask Norm about the things that bothered me, like why would a Boy Scout leader terrorize kids, because then he’d know I’d been snooping where I didn’t belong.

  So I handed over Dinky.

  “Where are her things?” Norm asked, cuddling Dinky in his massive arms. “You know, her blankie and other stuff? Did you leave them inside?”

  “Um, gosh, I forgot. I’ll bring them over a little later. Just as soon as I get back from a few errands.”

  “It sure is good to have my little pup home,” Norm said, looking like a great big teddy bear.

  “How old is she, anyway?”

  “Nine months.” Holly had been right. She was still a puppy.

  Looking at Dinky, who had settled contentedly in Norm’s arms, I felt something strangely familiar tugging at my heart. The same feeling I got after spending time with Hunter and watching him take off on his bike.

  “I’ll come and visit often,” I said to Dinky, realizing I actually meant what I said. Her ears changed position and she squirmed like she heard, understood, and approved.

  Ben and I drove slowly away, with me watching Norm and Dinky grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror.

  Twenty-four

  I found Stu Trembly’s brother, Eric, on a tractor, spraying apples in the orchard at Country Delight Farm on Creamery Road. He’d worked there as long as I could remember, starting out bailing hay as a teenager and progressing to manager of the farm. Based on an article hanging on Norm Cross’s wall, Eric had been one of The Lost Mile campers the night Lantern Man had stalked them and destroyed their camping equipment.

  After describing the details of the night, Eric said, “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” Eric wasn’t exactly an easy scare, so coming from him it really must have been a terrifying experience.

  “Describe the sound it made,” I asked, still trying to pin the local legend on Hetty Cross.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did it sound like a banshee?”

  Eric and I didn’t have an Irish bone in our bodies except on Saint Patrick’s Day, when the whole town pretended they had Irish blood. But since so many Irish immigrants had settled in the southeastern part of Wisconsin (right along with my German ancestors), we all knew what a banshee was—an Irish spirit, which sometimes appeared in human form and wailed across the countryside to foreshadow death.

  “It sounded kind of like this.” Eric let out a loud lingering howl, not piercing at all.

  “Could a woman make that sound?” I wanted to know.

  Eric hopped off the tractor and leaned against it. “I’m not sure. Maybe.” We watched Ben nose around an apple tree and lift his leg. This was the third tree he’d marked since we arrived and, knowing the dog, it wouldn’t be his last.

  “Thanks, Eric.”

  “Sure. What are you up to?”

  “Just fact-finding, feeding my curiosity.”

  “Well, I better get back to work. Nice seeing you again.”

  Halfway to my truck, I remembered something. “Hey, Eric, you were on a Boy Scout camping trip that night, right?”

  “Yeah. The whole troop can vouch for what I told you just now.”

  “Was your troop the only one camping?”

  “No, a bunch of them were, but ours was the only one in The Lost Mile.”

  “Was Norm’s troop out?”

  “Probably.”

  Two and two were beginning to add up to four.

  I thanked Eric for his time and called out to Ben, who came running. The tractor started back up. My brain churned, the squeaky gears started turning.

  I became more and more convinced I was right, in spite of Hunter’s brush-off.

  Norm Cross had as much potential for filling the legendary Lantern Man shoes as I had for morphing into Wonder Woman. In other words, no chance whatsoever.

  He was covering for somebody and that somebody had to be his wife, Hetty, who had been a much nastier human being than Norm ever would be. The role suited the old biddy perfectly.

  The Witch had been Lantern Man.

  Or rather, Lantern Woman.

  Hetty had been out patrolling her woods that night, making sure intruders weren’t lurking around once the sun set in the west. Maybe she heard voices, Lauren’s and her assailant’s, and went to investigate.

  Hetty spotted trespassers, all right. She had probably been thrown off by that, because no one had dared trespass on her turf for a very long time. Judging by layers of dust accumulating on those lanterns, they hadn’t been used in the recent past. She must have stumbled into a confrontation, maybe even witnessed Lauren’s death and could identify her killer, therefore leaving the murderer no choice but to kill her, too.

  And I thought I had bad luck!

  That would mean Lauren was definitely the prime target, and only one name stood out in boldface on my list of persons of interest in that case.

  Johnny Jay.

  He wasn’t going to be a free man long if I had any say in it, which I didn’t, but aspirations and short-term goals are always good incentives. What if he’d already been arrested by Sally Maylor and Hunter and charged with two counts of murder? I could imagine the scenario—Johnny in that very public holding cell instead of me, stripped of his dignity and position, having to use that open toilet right in front of everybody.

  Johnny Jay had gone too far and would get his comeuppance, a word my mother used frequently.

  If Johnny really was a killer, Hunter had better arrest him before Johnny had a chance to hunt me down.

  For the first time ever, I considered buying a weapon for self-protection.

  Although, thinking about it, a weapon hadn’t helped Lauren. Her gun had been taken away and used against her.

  As I pulled into The Wild Clover’s parking lot, Holly came out of the store. She flung a filled garbage bag into the Dumpster. I rolled down the driver’s-side window, and she moseyed over.

  “What are you up to?” she said. “And why are you chumming with Ben? That isn’t like you.”

  “I love Ben. He and I are plotting an arrest, but I’ll tell you more about it later. We found Dinky. She had gone home, so I left her there with Norm.”

  Holly banged her open hand against her chest in a show of relief. “Whew. I was really worried about her.”

  “Not as freaked as I was.”

  “BTW, Stanley Peck needs your help, something about beekeeping advice. He said he’ll be home if you get time to stop by and take a look at one of his hives.”

  “Want to ride over with me?”

  Holly rolled her eyes, as if that was the silliest question of the day. “NFW (No Freaking Way). I hate bees.”

  “Oh, c
ome on. You have from now until tomorrow morning totally free. Ali and the twins don’t need your help and your man’s still out of town. Have you two made up yet?”

  “Sorta. We’re talking. He’ll be home AND (Any Day Now). Thanks for letting me stay with you. It’s helping to have family around.”

  “Hop in.”

  Holly still stood by the window, not moving. “I can’t go along with you. The store might get busy. One of us should stay close by in case.”

  “Since when did you become Ms. Responsible Store Partner?”

  “Since two seconds ago when my only other choice involves bees.”

  “You’re my bodyguard.”

  “AIR (As I Remember) you promised not to make me help with your bees if I got rid of Mom the other day. Which I did.”

  “These aren’t my bees.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Well, you promised to protect me after I made my promise, so your promise to stick close to me overrides mine. Besides, we’re family. I need you.”

  Those were the magic words, because Holly made a face and that familiar lip pout while she went around the front of the truck, opened the passenger door, and got in. “I’m only doing this,” she said, “because you played the family card. Cheap shot.”

  On the way over to Stanley’s, I told her about Norm’s alleged Lantern Man lie, which I planned to prove soon, and how the real culprit wasn’t a man, it was a woman. Lantern Woman (aka Hetty Cross). And how I couldn’t understand why Hunter was wasting time interrogating Gunnar when he could be taking care of the real killer and keeping our streets safe.

  When we pulled into Stanley’s driveway, my cell phone rang. The number on the display wasn’t familiar. I shouldn’t have answered, but I did.

  “We need to talk, Missy Fischer,” Johnny Jay said without identifying himself. I’d know that voice anywhere.

  “Johnny, you need to stay away from me. Or I’m getting a restraining order.” Yes, I needed a restraining order pronto. Even if it involved face-to-face confrontation in a court of law.

  Holly, on the other side of Ben, sat up straight when she heard me say Johnny’s name. She stared at me.

  “I’m hanging up,” I said, but that wasn’t true. I needed to find out just how angry he really was and to what lengths he’d go to get his revenge.

  “I think you want to hear what I have to say,” he said next.

  “Uh, no, not really, but if you insist, say it.”

  “Not this way. In person.”

  Oh, right, like that was going to happen in this lifetime. The next thing I said just popped out. “Is that how you got Lauren to meet you in the woods? Pretending you had something important to tell her?”

  That was really the wrong thing to blurt, because I should have kept him off guard until I had more information. I hated when I blurted.

  The pause was pronounced, as in uncomfortable and awkward.

  Then he said, “So you’ve been sitting down at that store of yours, pointing your finger at me, telling all your customers I killed Lauren Kerrigan.”

  And Hetty, I could have pointed out, but what was left of my common sense took over. “Townspeople are smart. They don’t need me telling them what’s as obvious as the noses on their faces.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, a very big mistake.”

  “I’ll take that as a threat then,” I said and hung up.

  “I need a really long vacation,” I said to my sister. “Peru or Brazil. Columbia. Someplace safe.”

  Holly snorted. “Those places aren’t safe. They have terrorists and drug dealers.”

  “They’d be minor problems compared to this.”

  “Relax. You’ll be fine. Don’t overreact.”

  Easy for her to say. She didn’t have a care in the world other than deciding what color Jag to buy next time and whether or not to be mad at Max the Money Machine for working hard and keeping her in the style that she’d become accustomed to.

  With a sigh, I stepped out of the truck and greeted Stanley, who had waved to us from an outbuilding next to his house. “Come on, bodyguard,” I said to Holly.

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “No you won’t. You’re the one with the wrestling degree. Stay close. Johnny Jay could be around any corner.”

  “Yeah, right.” But she followed me.

  Ben moved over behind the steering wheel and watched out the open window, his tongue hanging out about two feet.

  “I have two problems,” Stanley said, standing next to one of his hives.

  I could tell what one of those problems was by the fact that the hive had been disassembled in a crude and rough way. Holly, I noticed, was as far away from the flying honeybees as possible, which sort of countered my plan to get her more involved with bees. She wanted a partnership and she was going to get it full blast.

  “Come take a look, Holly,” I said. “You should learn this, too.”

  “No,” she answered.

  I bent down and spotted raccoon tracks. Stanley was a total rookie, even worse than I’d been as a first year beekeeper. “Raccoons. They lifted the top right off the hive to get at the honey, then just kept taking it apart, one level at a time.”

  “You’d think all those bee stings would have chased them away.”

  “Raccoons have thick fur, dense enough to make it hard for bees to penetrate. Not much stops them. And they are as smart as some humans I know.” Smarter than a whole lot of people I knew, actually, but I kept that to myself.

  “What should I do?” Stanley said, worried. “They’ll be back tonight and do the same thing to the rest of my hives.”

  “Bricks on top,” I answered.

  “Ahhh.” Light bulbs went on in the dimness of Stanley’s mind. “I thought you put bricks on top of your hives so the tops wouldn’t blow off, which didn’t make much sense since the tops are pretty heavy. I should have figured that out.”

  Holly had edged an inch or two closer due to my constant gestures to join the conversation.

  “That one was an easy fix,” I said. “What’s your next problem?”

  “Mites,” Stanley said. “I found mites on my bees. Come look.”

  “I’m out of here,” my sister said.

  “Ben has more loyalty,” I called after her retreating back.

  Sure enough, Stanley’s bees had what all beekeepers had to deal with sooner or later. Varroa mites. Parasites almost invisible to the human eye. They attached to bees’ bodies like bloodsuckers or wood ticks, but instead of sucking blood, they sucked hemolymph. Varroa mites could weaken a colony so much that if the bad news bugs weren’t discovered and treated quickly, they could wipe out an entire hive.

  Stanley didn’t like my diagnosis, although he suspected it. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” he said.

  Which was true.

  Here’s a list of only a few predators that prey on honeybees:

  • Skunks—I had that challenge last year. They actually knock on the hives to draw out the bees and then they eat them.

  • Bears—There aren’t any in this part of the state, so we don’t have to deal with that one, thank goodness.

  • Raccoons—These bold, beastly critters are highly intelligent and creatively persistent.

  • Rodents—Mice and rats like to make winter homes in hives.

  • Birds—Martins, swallows, and woodpeckers eat the bees right out of the air.

  • Beetles—The small hive beetle, in particular, takes over an entire hive, eating the honey stores and chasing out the honeybees.

  • Varroa mites—Imagine carrying a fifty-pound bloodsucker on your back and you’d have some idea what a honeybee goes through.

  I told Stanley what to do for starters—sprinkle the honeybees with powdered sugar. The sugar made it harder for the mites to stay attached and it gave the bees a reason to do some extra grooming, which also caused them to fall off. “Let me know if that doesn’t work,” I said, walking with Stanley out to the
truck where my sister sat inside, talking on her cell phone while studying her fingernails to make sure they were picture perfect.

  “I heard Carrie Ann might be drinking again,” Stanley said.

  If Stanley knew, then everybody knew. “She’ll be fine,” I said, hoping that was true. “Lauren Kerrigan’s murder really stressed her out.”

  “We’re all a little edgy with a killer running loose.”

  “This can’t be over quick enough for me.”

  “That reminds me of something,” Stanley said. “Way back when Lauren ran over Wayne and plowed into that tree, I was the one who towed her car off to scrap it.”

  Thinking back, I remembered that, at the time, Stanley still ran his farm instead of renting it out to other farmers like he did now, and he had his hands into everything where money was to be had, including the towing business.

  I nodded. “I remember.”

  “Usually when a car is totaled like that, the family comes by and strips out personal belongings, but none of the Kerrigans ever showed up even though I let them know I had her stuff. I guess they had other things on their minds. So I went through the car and boxed up whatever was loose, which wasn’t much. Rita said she didn’t want the junk back and it’s been here every since.”

  I looked at the outbuilding. “You’ve held on to things from Lauren’s car for sixteen years?”

  “Yup. And now that she’s gone for good, I asked Rita again and she said to throw whatever I had away. Guess I’ll do that.”

  “Don’t,” Holly piped up. “Rita might change her mind someday.”

  Stanley shook his head. “It’s nothing but junk. I’m cleaning out that building, making room for other stuff, and it’s going.”

  “Throw the box in the back of Story’s truck. She’ll hang on to it for a while.”

  Gee, thanks, sis. I wondered why she couldn’t store it herself.

  But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal.

  Stanley limped away to get it, came back with a cobwebbed cardboard box that had seen better days, and added it to the junk in the back of my truck.

  One of these days, I’d have to clean out the back end and get organized.