by Hannah Reed
• He had an ongoing battle with me. Our relationship was as explosive as dynamite, as toxic as pesticides on honeybees (still nothing new).
• Johnny Jay was out for retribution and had been lying in the weeds waiting for his chance to attack me out of video range (probably true, but not for public knowledge).
• And last night he made an attempt on my life, tried to run me down on a dark street. (How did she know about that?)
“I’m not participating in this interview,” I said.
“It won’t look good in the paper, you refusing to comment.”
“He’ll sue the paper if you print that.” Not to mention that Johnny Jay would come after me even harder. “And you can leave now.”
Joel looked disappointed, like he was a soda can and I’d just crushed him between my hands. “I’m going to interview the police chief next,” he said. “If you won’t give me a quote, I’ll have to paraphrase.”
“You and Patti better run that article past your editor,” I warned him.
“He’s on vacation.”
Great. Just great.
Once Joel left and I had a chance to tell Carrie Ann about the article, she said, “When Johnny Jay reads that, he’s going to kill somebody.”
“He was going to anyway. Now he has another target, too. Patti. Plus, I look at it this way, if everybody knows he’s after me, maybe he’ll think twice before making a move.”
“No, he won’t,” Carrie Ann reassured me.
“We need to talk. You and me. Privately.”
“Am I fired?”
“No,” I said, grudgingly. “As soon as we slow down again, let me know.”
With that, The Wild Clover sprang into its daily live action.
Milly Hopticourt came in with her morel mushroom creation.
“Try this,” she said.
My taste buds exploded. “Oh my gosh, what is this deliciousness?”
Milly looked pleased. “Morel sauce. Butter, wine, heavy cream, this and that.”
“It’s an absolute winner. Use it. How’s the rest of the newsletter coming?”
“Almost done.” And she bustled off with a shopping basket over her arm, leaving the rich sauce for me to sample again. Yum. It was hours before I had a chance to get Carrie Ann alone.
Twenty-nine
Holly arrived (late as promised), glowing and not overly chatty, which was fine with me. Let her bask in the sunshine of her renewed relationship with Max. Not once did she mention anything about guard duty, but maybe she figured Ben had taken her shift.
My protector sat near the front of the store acting as greeter. The kids loved him even more than the candy bins, swarming around him like he was a queen bee. Or king, if honeybees had male rulers, which they didn’t.
“Dogs aren’t allowed inside grocery stores,” Lori Spandle announced when she walked in for her daily potshots. “This is totally illegal. I’m calling the health inspector.”
“Americans with Disabilities Act,” I said. “I can’t turn away a service dog.”
“Who’s disabled and with what?” she wanted to know.
“You can’t ask that.”
“I want to see his papers.”
“Nope.” The Act was clear about special dogs. If I couldn’t ask customers for proof that they needed a service dog and if I wasn’t legally allowed to request registration papers, neither could troublemaking Lori.
“I’m taking this to the town board.” With that she took several photos of Ben with his new buddies and marched out without buying anything.
I was sure Ben had the proper paperwork. Or at least pretty sure.
If Lori didn’t spend so much time going head-to-head with me, coming into the store and destroying the atmosphere, maybe she’d sell the house next door. Although I kind of liked the added privacy with it empty.
When Ali came in, I finally had an opportunity to have that conversation with my cousin.
“Now what did I do?” Carrie Ann asked, making me realize the distance between us had become almost as wide as one of our great lakes. My cousin and I had been good friends for so long, but our relationship had changed. That really bothered me. Especially since Carrie Ann hadn’t been a stellar addition to the staff, and I was forever taking calming breaths to cope with her constant problems.
At least the twins were easygoing and didn’t have issues.
We went out in front of the store and sat down on a wooden bench, soaking up some springtime sun rays and sizing each other up. Business had slowed by midafternoon. Ali and Holly were inside. Ben sat at our feet, alert but calm, in his standard mode of operation.
“Carrie Ann, I’m so worried about you,” I said to her. “My concern has absolutely nothing to do with your job performance. We need to have a personal talk, an honest one, because no matter what happened, what you might have done or not done, we’re family and I love you.”
“I need a cigarette,” my cousin said. I knew for a fact (the smell factor) that Carrie Ann hadn’t smoked for at least six months, maybe longer.
“You don’t need a cigarette, you need to talk to me.”
“Okay, what do you want to know?”
“For starters, where you were the afternoon and night when Lauren and Hetty were murdered?”
My words came out suspiciously close to an accusation. I hadn’t intended to sound so harsh. Damage control time. “I mean, I missed you. Everybody in town was bonding and banding together and you weren’t around. Then Gunnar came into Stu’s and he said he couldn’t find you, either.”
Carrie Ann started looking around for an escape route.
“Don’t even think it,” I said. “I’ll chase you down.” Okay, that wasn’t much of a threat. I glanced at my flip-flops and added the clincher: “And if I can’t catch you, Ben will.”
She glanced at Ben. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
I’d have to ask Hunter for a comprehensive list of commands Ben understood. Other than the basics like sit and stay and the attack command, which I’d discovered on my own, I was clueless. If Carrie Ann decided to test me, I really didn’t want to ask Ben to attack her. Just fetch her in a nonaggressive, but firm way.
Carrie Ann raked the fingers of her right hand through her short spiky hair and considered her options. She didn’t find any.
“I’ve been sneaking a few drinks,” she said, like that was some kind of big surprise. “And I had an alcoholic blackout. And don’t look at me like you don’t believe me. It happens sometimes. Ask Hunter about blackouts. Alcoholics get them.”
That was the first time I’d ever heard Carrie Ann call herself an alcoholic. It might have been a first for her, too. Outside of AA, I mean.
“I believe you,” I said. “So you have no idea at all where you were or what you did?”
“Nada. All I know is I woke up in my own bed the next morning, still in my clothes, and . . . oh God, please don’t tell anybody . . . ”
“You can trust me,” I said.
“I was all dirty, like I’d been stumbling around in the woods . . . and what if I’m the one who”—she started choking up—“killed them?”
I gaped. Closed my mouth. Opened it again. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”
“But it could be true.”
“No, it can’t. Besides, Johnny Jay is the main suspect.” At least in my book, he was.
“Things are looking really, really bad,” Carrie Ann said.
“You aren’t a killer.”
“Are you sure?” Carrie Ann sniffed.
“Absolutely,” I said with complete conviction. “If you were a killer, you would have murdered Gunnar after he had your visitation rights taken away when you were drinking so heavy.”
“That’s true,” she said. “I think.”
“Okay, forget that for a minute,” I said. “Hunter questioned Gunnar. He told me he was looking for you, too. What was that all about?”
“He questioned me.” Carrie
Ann chewed the inside of her cheek. “Wanted to know where I was that afternoon and evening. He wasn’t like the Hunter we all know. It was almost like he was accusing me of something.”
“Were you and Gunnar together at all during that time?”
“Not according to Gunnar. I told Hunter about my blackout but I didn’t say a word about the condition I was in when I woke up.”
“He would have hauled you in.”
“You aren’t going to tell him, are you?”
I shook my head. “No, we’ll work this out together.”
“And he wanted to know what I could remember from when Lauren ran over Johnny’s dad.”
I thought about what Aurora had said—how the present was predetermined by the past. And now Hunter was looking hard for the truth way back in time. Was it possible the connections were more complicated than I thought, that there was some basis to the medical examiner’s theory?
“What did you remember about that night in The Lost Mile?” I asked her.
“Nada,” Carrie Ann said.
“Let me guess. Another blackout.”
“Noooo. But we were drinking and it was a long time ago. If I can’t remember what happened less than a week ago, how am I going to remember way back when?”
She had a point.
“Okay,” I said. “Then concentrate on last Saturday. Try to remember.”
“I’ve spent hours trying to remember where I was and who I was with.” Carrie Ann frowned. “That’s the worst blackout I’ve ever had.”
“Someone must have seen you. Keep trying to remember and let me know if you do.”
“I will,” Carrie Ann said. “How’s it going with Hunter?”
I smiled, taking a moment to savor the image I had of him in my mind. Being appreciated was good for the ego. “Going good,” I answered.
“Don’t you sometimes wonder why a man like Hunter, in his mid-thirties and as hot as he is, hasn’t been married by now?”
I shrugged. “The right woman hasn’t come along? Or he’s the type of guy who can’t commit.” That last part really bothered me. What if Hunter got to a certain point on the relationship path, then backed out?
“Boy, you’re dense,” Carrie Ann said. “The right woman was there all along, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him.”
By the expression on Carrie Ann’s face, I assumed she meant me. Hunter and I had split up the spring of our senior year in high school, not that that was so unusual. Lots of couples went their separate ways around then. It had been a transition I needed. I did the breaking up, I left for college, and I married another man. A really bad one, but that’s a whole other story.”
Carrie Ann wasn’t finished. “Hunter went out with every available woman in town and beyond while you were away. He never got serious with any of them. And it was because of you!”
“No way!” I said, suddenly jealous of those other women but secretly pleased by Carrie Ann’s observations. “No man would wait that long just for me.”
“He told me himself.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.
All Carrie Ann and I needed to do to cement our recovered friendship was hug, which we did—a long, hard squeeze to let each other know we’d be there, no matter what. She’d watch my back. I’d watch hers.
Carrie Ann wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a human being.
After that, Ben and I headed out to check on bees.
Thirty
I love all creatures, big and small, so deciding to raise bees was a hard decision for me, mainly because I can’t stand to witness living things die. And honeybees die all the time. Every fall when they prepare for winter, the girls kick the boys out of the hives. Every last one of them. The drones stay close to the hive, hoping for a reprieve that never comes. They starve or freeze to death.
Which might leave you wondering where the next batch of males comes from. That’s one of the fascinating things about bees. The queen can actually determine the sex of each egg. If she fertilizes it (and most of them are fertilized because she needs workers and nurses), the egg becomes a female. If she doesn’t, they’re male.
I also have to watch my bees expire from old age way before they reach what we would consider old. The life span of a honeybee isn’t anything to aspire to. If they are born in the fall, they can live through the winter, otherwise they only live about a month, usually working themselves to death. Not much time to smell the roses.
Then there are the times a beekeeper opens up a hive and discovers every one of the bees, girls and boys, flopped over dead. That hasn’t happened to me as much as it has to other beekeepers, but just one dead colony had me undone for weeks.
A beekeeper has to have a thick skin. Which sometimes I don’t.
And my sensitivity extends to other species as well. Dinky, for example. I’d had some really bad thoughts about that dog, but if anything happened to her, I’d hurt like crazy.
So I’m always a little apprehensive out in the field, where I haven’t been able to check on my bees on a daily basis and monitor their progress. Although I felt lucky to have as much business as I did. Renting honeybee hives out to commercial apple orchards was a good chunk of my business, keeping it financially viable. Not only did I make some cash, I got to keep the honey, and my bees were helping out where they were really needed. The farmer, the bees, and me, we all came out winners.
I pulled into the first stop, a large apple orchard west of Moraine, and tucked the truck back far from the road so it couldn’t be seen, going the safe rather than sorry route. Just because I had a protector with massive hooked teeth didn’t mean I wanted a confrontation with Johnny Jay. Or, as my missing bodyguards had ventured, the killer who wanted it to look like my old nemesis had done me in.
A frightening possibility if Johnny Jay turned out to be innocent.
Looking around the field I didn’t see a soul, benevolent or otherwise.
I let Ben out of the truck to do his business and explore and lowered the tailgate to get my supplies.
I had fifteen acres to cover. With one or two hives per acre, I needed to check roughly twenty-five hives. These girls weren’t used to me like the ones in my backyard and, since I was a bit of a bumbler and stumbler, I played it safe. This time I wore the full beekeeper’s uniform.
At each hive, I lifted the top and inspected inside, making sure the colony had enough food and the queen was laying eggs. All of my hives were treated with tender loving care, but some were stronger and healthier than others. But that was part of this business. At least none of them I checked on had died off.
After making the rounds, I sat on the truck’s tailgate and pulled off my veil and hat. That’s when I spotted the box Stanley Peck had given me, the one that was sixteen years old and held items from Lauren’s totaled car. I pulled it out, sat swinging my legs on the tailgate, and rummaged through it.
Here’s what I found:
• An empty vodka bottle without a top (Figures. That girl had loved her vodka.)
• The usual glove box items, like car manuals, registration info, pepper spray (Okay, that wasn’t everybody’s standard car necessity, but not uncommon either. Note: it didn’t work anymore.)
• Female things that we all kept in our cars—hairbrush, lipstick (pink), eye shadow (blue)—whatever we needed to make up our faces in the rearview mirror while we were driving
• Clothing: a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a swimsuit. All girl must haves. What female teenager drives around without a small wardrobe for quick changes?
I started putting everything back in the box, deciding to throw it away. The booze bottle was empty, the paper products were yellowed and brittle, and mice had gotten into the clothing, making a nasty mess on the bottom layer of the box—droppings and chewed up material. Yuk.
Just then something caught my eye through the disgusting mouse stuff. Trying to avoid the droppings, which proved impossible, I pulled out a chain with a small, delicate locket—gold-plated
, heart-shaped, and engraved with roses. Inside the locket was a tiny picture of a much younger T. J. Schmidt.
Lauren’s locket. A souvenir of the brief period of time she’d managed to snag T. J., before all the bad stuff happened to her.
Holding that tiny lovers’ locket in my hand brought back memories of my own, of Hunter Wallace and me, how excited I’d been that the sexiest guy in high school was attracted to me, how just holding his hand sent electric shocks through my body. Still did, in fact.
I ran my fingers over the locket and remembered my own box of high school treasures. I should pull them out someday soon, go back in time, down memory lane. Didn’t I have a locket something like this one? Didn’t we all?
Before heading home, I took care of two tasks.
First, I stopped at a large Dumpster near the apple orchard and tossed in the box and its contents, tucking the locket in my pocket. I wasn’t sure why. T. J. certainly wouldn’t want a keepsake from a brief encounter that had ended in murder. But maybe Lauren’s mom might appreciate it. For all I knew, the locket could be a family heirloom. It looked older than just sixteen years. Although years inside the box had probably aged it. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
The second thing I did was pull into a hardware store where I found a restroom and washed the mouse gunk off my hands. Then I took a lesson from Lauren’s glove compartment stash and bought a pocket-sized canister of pepper spray. Except this one worked. I made sure of that in the store’s parking lot, sending a narrow spray into the air. Testing, testing.
Armed with attack-ready Ben and my pocket-sized version of tear gas, I was ready for anything.
“Where have you been?” P. P. Patti wanted to know, calling out from her backyard the minute I hopped out of my truck. Like she’d been trying to track me and had failed even with all her electronic devices. At least she hadn’t tinkered with my truck and installed some kind of locator.