by Hannah Reed
Now that she mentioned it, I had. People liked to tell stories about the deceased and that involved stories that included the loved ones left behind. Some of the stories were told in groups, some during eulogies, and some in quiet corners where the main focus of the story couldn’t be overheard.
“I still think we should wait.”
“Okay.” Patti shrugged like it didn’t matter. “But I have inside information and I might think it over and decide to keep it to myself.”
She was making it hard on me.
“Who around here found out about them first?” I asked.
“Me, of course. I saw them together.”
Right then, DeeDee Becker, Lori Spandle’s little sister, walked past and entered The Wild Clover without a glance in our direction. DeeDee was into lots of pierced flesh, loud clashing colors, and carrying a purse the size of a suitcase. I was sure she’d been shoplifting from my store, but I hadn’t been able to prove it. Then I realized I hadn’t warned my sister to keep an eye on her.
“Sorry, Patti, I’ve got to get back inside,” I said, deciding on the spot to speak only kindness about surviving loved ones. At least for one day.
Twenty-one
I went back inside and shared my suspicions with Holly. Then I followed DeeDee around the store for a while without any red-handed results and was about to call it a day when I heard commotion at the front door. Holly had busted DeeDee with a bag of potato chips in her purse and four packs of gum in her jeans’ back pockets.
My sister had tackled DeeDee right on the sidewalk, pinned her to the pavement, and still had a hand free to use her cell phone to report the crime. Talk about multitasking.
“Since when did you learn wrestling holds?” I asked my sister.
“Let me up,” DeeDee wailed. “I didn’t do anything.”
After a little more scuffling, Holly produced the evidence.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Gum and chips? How damn dumb can you get, DeeDee? I know you have enough money to pay for that!”
“I’ll never do it again,” DeeDee said, crying full-out. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
Yeah, sure. Owning a store had taught me a few things I wished I didn’t have to deal with. Shoplifting was the biggie. I’d learned a little bit about shoplifters:
• Most shoplifting crimes aren’t need-based.
• A lot of shoplifters get some kind of high out of it.
• It can be as addictive as drugs.
• Many of them keep doing it even after they are caught.
In my opinion, DeeDee was a classic case.
Holly still had her in some sort of professional power hold.
Sirens in the distance were coming our way. DeeDee looked at me like a trapped wild animal.
“Maybe we shouldn’t press charges,” I said to Holly. My sister, though, wasn’t about to catch and release this bottom-feeder. If it had been up to me, I would have let her go with a warning. “She feels bad enough,” I argued, “and she doesn’t need a criminal record. But I really do want to know where you learned those moves.”
“Self-defense class,” my sister said. “I modified just now, added a little offense.”
I asked Johnny Jay not to call any more attention to us than we’d already attracted by Holly’s sidewalk tackle, but he still left the lights flashing on his squad car while we all piled back into the store to find a private corner. All the while, DeeDee was denying any wrongdoing and begging to be released, but Johnny Jay kept a firm grip on her arm while he walked her to the back of the store.
I ended up working the cash register while Holly gave her report from the storage room. I tried to listen in, but it was hopeless. The squad lights had the locals all coming in for “forgotten” items, and I was stuck up front. It appeared that DeeDee had rounded up a little extra business for me while she worked on ruining her own life.
“The police chief locked himself out of his squad car with the lights going,” I replied to everyone’s inquiries, although they’d have the facts straight soon enough. Nothing was a secret around here for long. “He went looking for someone to bring a spare key. No big deal.”
After a while, the three of them came out of the back. DeeDee wasn’t wearing handcuffs, which was a good thing. Chatter in the store ceased. You could have heard a single corn silk hit the polished wood floor.
“It’s your call,” Johnny Jay said to me. “You own the store. She stole from you. What do you want to do?”
I didn’t know what I wanted. Lori was my sworn enemy, and this was her sister. On the other hand, I couldn’t blame DeeDee for having a rotten sibling. Although she wasn’t much of a gem herself.
“I don’t have all day, Missy Fischer,” the police chief said.
“Let her go, but I don’t want her in my store anymore.”
“I can go along with that,” Holly, the female all-star, said, nodding in agreement.
A few customers applauded. I heard one boo.
DeeDee was out the door and gone before we realized that the packs of gum were still missing. I hate it when I’m outsmarted.
But I had bigger robberies to worry about.
“I want to report a theft,” I told the police chief after Holly went up front and I had pulled him into a corner. I explained how Manny’s bees had vanished. “You’re all over the county looking for trouble,” I finished. “I’m just giving you a heads-up in case you see beehives where there weren’t any before.” Then I remembered that I’d moved my bees to Grams’s back field, which would constitute a bee change of venue in the picture I was painting. “Except if you spot any near my Grams’s house.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Johnny Jay said. “You can’t file a report for something that doesn’t belong to you in the first place.”
“I’m just keeping you in the loop, then.”
“What makes you think I care about your loop?”
“Fine, forget it.”
Johnny Jay looked pleased, like he’d won a round, and I remembered what Sally the dispatcher had said about the consequences of turning down Johnny Jay’s prom invitation. I’d suffer for the rest of my life for that one.
Then he said, “Maybe you have something after all. Where could those bees have gone? And do they figure into the break-in?”
“What break-in?”
“Manny must have told you.”
“I didn’t hear anything about it.” Not too surprising. Manny wasn’t a man of many words. Unless it had to do with his bees. Then he could go on for hours.
“I thought you two were such good friends.” He said friends in a suggestive way that I didn’t like, but that’s Johnny Jay. Always nasty. “The robbery happened about a week ago,” he continued. “Somebody broke a window in his kitchen and crawled through. Stole a camera and a few dollars out of the bureau. I chalked it up to an inexperienced burglar, kids probably. Whoever it was left behind things that were more valuable than what they took. Amateurs for sure.”
“Maybe the robbery has something to do with the missing bees.” I said that last part out loud instead of thinking it, like I planned.
“Well, Missy Fischer, you gave me a reason to think I might have been wrong about it being kids who broke in. Now I think bees were involved. The bees could have been looking for something special inside the house. When they didn’t find it, they must have tortured Manny to get it out of him and finished him off. Then they took whatever it was and disappeared.”
“Very funny.”
When the police chief strutted out, I knew he wasn’t going to help at all.
Twenty-two
The visitation and funeral for Manny Chapman was held at the new Lutheran church on the southern end of Moraine. At four o’clock we began arriving for the viewing. It was our last chance to see Manny in a state as close as possible to the one we saw him in when he was still alive.
A poster board with pictures of Manny doing what he loved best, hanging around in his beeyard and spinning honey
in his honey house greeted me as I entered, which surprised me, since Grace seemed to hate his bees so much. In one photo Ray and Manny were loading honey into the back of Ray’s truck for distribution. I distinctly remembered being there when Manny asked Grace to take that picture. In fact, my smiling mug should have been in the picture. I spotted more photographs that I should have been in, but wasn’t. I had a growing suspicion that Grace had used a software editing program to eliminate me. Delving into other people’s minds wasn’t my forte, however, so I focused on the open casket on the other side of the room rather than on Grace Chapman’s motives for cropping me into nonexistence.
“Nice pictures,” I said to Grace’s brother, Carl.
“Thanks. I put them together myself. Grace didn’t want me to include the bees, but they were Manny’s whole life, so I managed to talk her into it.”
“She didn’t help with the photographs at all?” I was pretty sure she had sliced me out, but wanted to confirm it.
“Grace made a few . . . uh . . . changes.” He had the decency to look embarrassed.
Grams and Mom arrived and agreed that Manny looked good in death, an observation they made at every funeral they attended. He certainly looked much better than the last time I’d seen him, when he’d been lying in the beeyard, swollen and red.
But the fact that I’d never see him again hit hard as I stood in line to offer my condolences. When my turn came, I extended my sympathies and gave Grace a hug. She stayed stiff like she couldn’t bear the thought of being touched by me.
“Did Grace hug you back?” I said to Mom a little later when she and Grams had gone through the line.
“Of course,” Mom said, then gave me a stern scowl and offered a tissue. “Get a grip, Story. Pull yourself together.”
“Here,” Grams said, digging in her purse, removing the cap from a medicine bottle and shaking out a little white pill. “Take this. You’ll feel better.”
Mom intercepted it. “She doesn’t need a Valium. And where on earth did you get your hands on those?”
“I keep a few for emergencies,” Grams said. “Times like now.”
She slipped one to me when Mom wasn’t looking. I wasn’t much of a drug user, preferring to stay away from even the basics such as cold meds and common pain relievers like ibuprofen. This time, though, under the circumstances, I popped the pill. After all, it came from my grandmother. How harmful could it be?
Fifteen minutes later, I was standing with Stanley Peck and Emily Nolan from the library, feeling much better. I wore a silly little grin. In spite of my efforts, it wouldn’t go away.
“How are you doing?” Stanley said, putting one arm around me and squeezing. “You spent more time with Manny than most of us did. This whole thing must be rough on you.”
I nodded, forcing the corners of my lips down. “Life seems upside down without him,” I agreed, briefly imagining a tilted universe.
“Nobody’s been bothering you or your bees lately, have they?”
I shook my head.
“Speaking of bees,” Emily said, looking at Stanley. “Are you enjoying the beekeeping book you checked out of the library? Sorry we only had one, but we’re so small I have to be very careful what I order. Maybe I could do a search for you with other libraries if you want more.”
Odd, I thought. This news seemed relatively important considering all the missing bees, but I couldn’t seem to keep my focus.
“I didn’t know you were interested in raising honeybees,” I said to Stanley, who had the same trapped-animal look I’d seen on DeeDee Becker only a few hours earlier.
“I like learning about all kinds of things, is all,” he said. “No big deal.”
“Well,” Emily said, “let me know if you want a few more.”
“One is plenty,” Stanley said.
The church filled up for the viewing. Based on past funerals in our community, most everybody would stay for the funeral service, then head to Stu’s. Except Manny’s family. They’d have a sit-down dinner someplace else.
Hunter Wallace came up to me. Looking around, I didn’t see Carrie Ann.
“Where’s your new friend?” I wanted to know.
“In the truck.”
“You left her in the truck?”
“Him,” Hunter said. “Ben’s a him.”
I stared at him blankly.
“You’re asking about my dog, right?”
Oh, right.
“Sure,” I said. The pill Grams had given me was doing a fine job of keeping me composed. The problem was, it couldn’t determine which parts of my brain to shut down and which ones to keep in operation. So it shut down everything. And I noticed that concentrating on any one thing was impossible.
I was trying to remember something about Stanley. What was it?
I noticed that people had started to look away when I met their gaze. Or they were whispering but stopped when I wandered by. What was up with that?
This wasn’t the first time I’d encountered this behavior. Live and let live was my new philosophy. If they knew something about me that I didn’t, someone would eventually clue me in. Or . . . oh, well, who cared? The paranoid thought escaped into the vast emptiness of my drugged mind.
I kind of liked shutting down. I should do this more often.
Grace came up to me. “Did you run across Manny’s bee journal?” she asked.
“Nope. I looked for it last time I was in the honey house, but it wasn’t there. I assumed it was in your house.”
“You’re sure it’s not out there?”
“Positive. Why don’t you look for yourself?”
“You know I don’t go near that place. The journal must be around someplace.”
“Why do you want it?” For the life of me, I couldn’t see Grace caring about Manny’s bee journal. She’d never shown any interest.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “But Gerald Smith called and asked about any notes Manny made concerning his bees. That’s when I remembered his journal. Gerald said it would be helpful to have it, since he will be working with the same bees. Manny wrote notes about the bees, you know, or whatever else beekeepers do.”
“Interesting,” I said, losing interest.
At that moment, ushers asked us to take our seats, and the funeral service began. Grams gave me a conspiratorial wink. I grinned. Hunter sat next to me, smelling fresh, like the outdoors with a faint hint of burning logs clinging to him. Nice.
Tears tried to form in my eyes as the funeral progressed, especially when they closed the casket, but something in that little pill refused to let them leak. The service was perfectly traditional, just like Grace, without any surprises or unscheduled oratories. Manny would have been pleased at the turnout.
Afterward, the family followed the hearse to the cemetery. The rest of us had a funeral procession to Stu’s Bar and Grill to send Manny off properly. I’d finished off my second beer when Grams came rushing in to find me.
“Don’t drink anything,” she said. “I forgot to tell you not to mix alcohol with the drug.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to slur my words. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I didn’t remember until I was home, then it dawned on me. You didn’t have any alcohol, did you?”
“Nope,” I lied, leaning against Hunter for support.
“What’s going on?” he said to Grams.
“I gave Story a Valium at the funeral.”
“And it really worked,” I said.
“She doesn’t usually take medications,” Grams explained. “So it might affect her more than it would someone else. As long as she doesn’t drink alcohol she should be okay. How do you feel, Sweetie?”
“Great,” I said.
“That’s not your beer, is it?” Grams pointed at a beer bottle on the bar, the one I’d just finished off.
“Nope.”
“Let’s get a picture of you two kids,” Grams said. “You make a cute couple.”
“Okay.” I put on my b
est smile and stepped in closer to Hunter while Grams clicked away. She disappeared as quickly as she’d come.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hunter said. “The party’s over.”
“No, it’s not,” I said with nice relaxed muscles and not an anxious bone in my body. “It’s only beginning.”
Smiling, I threw him a question that would never have left my lips under normal circumstances. While he guided me to the door, I said, “Your place or mine?”
Twenty-three
The next morning, I remembered everything. Absolutely everything. In the light of a new day, with the effects of the drug and alcohol fading, I was shocked by my suggestive—okay, maybe more than merely suggestive—proposal to Hunter. I was equally embarrassed that he’d driven me home, helped me into bed, clothes intact, and then had left without one single inappropriate move.
He could have tried at least, and allowed me a proper moment of rebuff.
I’d like to believe I would have proved that my principles were sound, but frankly I’d been overly agreeable last night and anything could have happened if Hunter hadn’t been in control of the situation.
I’d called Hunter a jerk the last time he’d shown affection. Then, when he was behaving himself, I’d propositioned him. If I was confused, imagine where that left Hunter. Talk about sending mixed signals.
In my fantasies, which I was quickly realizing weren’t so spectacular in real life, Hunter would have undressed me for bed. I would have been wearing silky undies and my makeup would have been just as fresh as my shorts. But in reality, the only fresh part of me had been my offer.
And what about my disloyalty to my cousin Carrie Ann? When my ex-husband hit on her, she hadn’t stabbed me in the back. Jeez. One little pill and a few beers and I had been ready to become as sleazy as Lori Spandle. Or Clay.
Where had Carrie Ann been, anyway? Sure she’d called in sick for her shift yesterday morning, but she must have really felt horrible. Otherwise she’d have been at the bar for Manny’s going away party, even if she’d skipped the funeral.