She clasped her hands together and giggled. “I went down to Simmons Hardware and put the paint on the credit card and rented the dumpster. I think I can actually turn this into a profitable business now, but the first thing I have to do is make this place look presentable.”
Martha was a transformed woman, and I liked the “new” her.
“I know you probably think I’m not in enough of a state of mourning for Lenny,” she said, “and there are moments here and there when I actually miss the old fart.”
Good to know she was dealing with it so well. She had seemed so mousy when I ran into her in the supermarket. Now she was nothing of the sort.
“The thing I can’t get over is how he went,” she continued. “His whole life he sent out stingers in one way or another. He told people off left and right. We had to shop in Andersonville because he got into an argument over the peas being in the wrong place at the Fiesta grocery. We stopped taking the paper after he got into it with Miles, our rural carrier. Lenny called them at 5:01 in the morning, every morning, if that paper wasn’t on the doorstep. He also called if the paper was near the doorstep, but not on it. Rocky Whitson finally called him up and told him he could do without his subscription so don’t call back.”
Lenny Stokes had to have been pretty bad for Rocky to give up on the chance to deliver a paper. He kept his subscription count up on the bulletin board and changed it daily.
“Martha, I’m glad to see you’re doing so well, because I came out to ask a favor of you,” I said.
Martha motioned for me to follow her. We passed through the front room, now converted to a makeshift flower shop, and as we entered the house itself, I noticed some of the dreariness had faded there as well. The curtains were open to let light in the room, and there was a bouquet of daisies on the coffee table. I followed her into the kitchen where she put the casserole in the freezer.
“I know this is a bad time for you,” I said, “but would you consider doing the flowers for my wedding?”
“I thought that wedding planner of yours said you had somebody.”
“It turns out having a Valentine’s Day wedding and expecting a local florist to be there for you is quite a fantasy. Prissy Olin is also getting married on the 14th, so finding people to help me with my wedding is getting pretty difficult,” I told her. “You’re the only one who can do the job unless we try to ship them in from Dallas. I think you probably know every inch of the church, but I could get you a sketch of Chateau Fischer, where we’re having the reception. It would really help us out if you would consider it. You said work helps.”
Martha looked out the kitchen window at the greenhouses. “You know, Lenny and I built those greenhouses together. It was our dream to supply flower shops all over central Texas and to arrange and sell our flowers from here. Then, when Lenny got to be a grumpy, cantankerous, miserly old fool, no one would do business with us. That meant we were down to selling flowers piecemeal. It was no wonder he had that terrible rash. Some days I thought the badness in his soul was eating him from the inside out.”
Just what I didn’t want to talk about – the rash and how I might have made it worse. “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about that,” I said. Even though I hadn’t.
“You should probably know, my church made a batch of your calamine lotion,” Martha said. “As a matter of fact …” She walked back through the house and hurried to the old stump near the beehives. “Lenny used a bunch of it. Said it helped the itching. I even put a little of my rose-scented perfume in it to make it smell pretty.” She stopped and wrinkled her brow.
I worried she would blame me for her husband’s death and decided to change the subject. I glanced over and could see the outline of another house.
“Is that Lavonne’s house over there? She’s doing the alterations on my dress.”
“Yes,” said Martha. “I absolutely hate that woman. We’ve been to court with her. She knows we need water to run our business and has found a way to make a profit off of it.”
“I thought the judge ruled in her favor,” I said.
“Who told you that?”
“Lavonne.”
“Well, she’s living in a dream world. We paid for the use of that water,” said Martha.
“I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood what Lavonne told me.”
“Who knows what that woman told you. We used to be friends before all this happened. Seems like whenever you get a chance to get ahead, someone just has to try to step in and spoil it for you.” She handed me the jar. Here, smell this. Nice, huh?”
“I never would have thought of putting rose perfume into calamine lotion,” I said.
“Lenny told me he liked the smell. It kind of surprised me, but then he did grow flowers for a living.”
“Did you ever stop to think the smell of roses would attract bees?”
Martha’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my. I never thought of that. Do you think that my adding the rose scent might have killed him?” She sat down on the stump, and as the horror of what she might have done to Lenny occurred to her, she brought her hands to her forehead.
I sniffed at the lotion again. Something was wrong. “This doesn’t smell like roses anymore,” I said. Something in it must have turned.” I couldn’t smell any roses. The calamine lotion had an overpowering banana scent to it. I handed the jar back to Martha.
“What is that?” she said. “It’s sweet or something. Kind of nasty.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw him put on the calamine?”
“I left to go to the church that day.” She bit on her lower lip as she thought. “I can remember doing the breakfast dishes and him sitting in the kitchen rubbing it into his arms. That was right before I left.” She slumped as if all the air had gone out of her good mood.
“Maybe it did turn,” I said. “I haven’t ever smelled anything like this. I’ll have to check the bottles I’ve made at home. Do you mind if I take this with me?”
“Please take it away. I never want to see it again. Oh God. Maybe I killed him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve upset you. We can talk about flowers for my wedding some other time.”
She drew in a breath. “No, I need to do this. Get me a sketch.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After Martha’s place, I decided I needed to come clean with my father. I stopped in at the Pecan Bayou Police Department. Mrs. Thatcher was knitting up what looked like a red stocking cap for Valentine’s Day.
“That’s pretty.”
“Thank you,” she said, her needles clicking. “Making it for my granddaughter. They’re up there in that cold Wisconsin, you know. Not much need for a hat like this down here. It’s a shame. They’re fun to make.” She peered around the corner. “He’s in there.” I walked the few feet to my dad’s office.
“Well, hello there, Betsy. Nice of you to come by,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I just visited Martha Stokes, and I need to share something that’s been worrying me.
“Okay. Does this have to do with Lenny Stokes’s death?”
“Maybe. The ladies at her church made a big batch of homemade calamine lotion from the recipe I put in the paper. Martha made some for her husband. He had a terrible rash on his hands and arms, and she thought it might help.”
“And why is that important to me?” my dad asked.
I continued. “She also told me she added a rose scent. Could something like that cause the bees to go into an alarm state?”
“Darlin’, I don’t think we would even know what to test for.”
“Leo’s friend Mark seemed to know a lot about bees. I can give them a call, and maybe he can steer the coroner in the right direction.”
“So let me get this right. You’re thinking that maybe Martha made the batch wrong? Or maybe Martha put something into the batch on purpose?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” I said. “To tell you the truth, the first thing I thought about was
that maybe I was at fault somehow. What if my recipe for calamine lotion caused a desperate reflex in the bees? So far no one else in town has been attacked, so maybe I’m wrong. But Rocky has been getting phone calls from people who knew Lenny was using it on his rash.”
“Well, to go with your first theory, I just don’t think Martha has it in her to do anything to Lenny,” he said. “I’ll concede that most of the town was probably scheming ways to get rid of the guy, but not Martha. She’s a church lady, for heaven’s sake. Church ladies don’t do those kinds of things.”
“I know, Dad. I thought the same thing, but don’t forget – Lizzie Borden went to church.”
“I don’t remember Lenny having any kind of skin problems,” he said, thinking back. “You really get to know a man when he comes in every week to file a complaint against somebody else. I think I would have noticed if his skin was bubbling up with something.”
I reached into my bag. “She gave me her jar.”
My father sat up in his chair and took the jar from me. He opened it up and sniffed. “I don’t know what I’m smellin’ for. What is that? It sure isn’t roses. Are you sure this is the lotion Lenny put on himself?”
“Only one way to check. Take it over to Art. He could tell us.”
“You just better hope you’re wrong about this,” Judd said. “Either Martha’s at fault because she added in something, or you’re at fault because your recipe’s a killer.”
“And if it’s my fault?”
“Rocky’s next obituary just might be for the Happy Hinter.”
******
Later that evening as Aunt Maggie and I constructed little white net bags of birdseed, I couldn’t get Lenny out of my head. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if someone could create some sort of chemical that would cause bees to attack. If that could be done, then who would do something like that? Someone really had to hate Lenny to wish him a death like that. Had Aunt Maggie heard anything through the grapevine about people’s fears over the calamine lotion that was sold at the bazaar?
Just as I felt that my thumbs were in knots, a knock at the door relieved me of my crafty duties.
“You know, I usually arrest people for spending the night putting things into little bags to distribute later,” my father said, taking off his Stetson.
“Very funny, Judd,” Maggie said.
“Well you’re not going to believe this, but there does seem to be some sort of strange chemical in the calamine lotion.”
“The lotion from Betsy’s recipe?” From Aunt Maggie’s surprise I had to guess the town gossip line hadn’t included her this time.
“I knew it!” I said.
“Well, we have a call out to Austin to the entomologist Mark Garret gave us to confirm what we’re thinkin’. Art reports that there is definitely something wrong with Martha’s mixture of calamine lotion.”
“I don’t know what I’m more relieved about,” I said, “you finding something that might potentially lead to solving the mystery of Lenny Stokes’s death or you getting me off the hook for publishing a recipe that might be killing people in Pecan Bayou.”
“Betsy, I’m going to need another jar of the stuff so that I can verify that there is an extra ingredient in Martha’s lotion,” he replied.
“I have one,” Maggie said, rising from the table. “I’ll go get it for you.”
“It’s all still pretty preliminary, but if we do find that there is a chemical that caused the bees to sting Lenny, then we might just have a murder case on our hands.”
“You told me that Lenny filed complaints against a lot of people in town. Is there a possibility I could go through that stack of complaints?”
“Betsy, that’s police business, now, and I can’t let you just go digging through our files. If Chief Wilson found out I let you investigate anything on your own, it could get me into a lot of trouble. What if we actually arrested the murderer but it got thrown out of court because the killer’s lawyer found a right you violated? We have to keep to procedure and do it right.”
“I don’t have to read each and every complaint,” I said. “You can just give me a list of the people who were upset with Lenny.”
“And you have time for this with planning a wedding? You need to realize that if someone was angry enough to create a mixture to kill Lenny, then you might be out there rubbing elbows with a killer.”
“It’s because I am planning a wedding that this thing is taking center stage – instead of me.”
I could just hear it now: “Here comes the bride … Y’all better hide!”
“Okay, that sounded pretty bad,” I admitted. “I just want it resolved, and when I walk down the aisle, I don’t want the whole town to be thinking I’m the calamine killer.”
“I’ll just bet Leo’s a little uncomfortable with that thought, too,” said my dad.
“I’ll probably be working late tonight on my column, so if I should just happen to get an email from you with the list of Lenny-haters, that would be nice.”
“You don’t need an email from me. You can figure this out on your own just by opening the phone book.”
Maggie came back in the room and handed a small baby food jar to her brother. “Here’s my jar, Judd. So what’s all this about? You think Lenny Stokes was murdered?”
“We hope so.”
Maggie’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and I suddenly realized how cold that might sound. “If he was murdered,” I said, “then someone put something into the calamine lotion. If he wasn’t, then I can get into a lot of trouble.”
“Well, the first person I would suspect would be his own sweet Martha,” said Maggie.
“She does seem to be the person that would benefit the most from his death,” I said. “I visited her the other day, and her life is so much better with him out of it. She’s starting to plan for her business and now knows that she won’t have to work around her curmudgeon of a husband. But for all she’s gained, she just doesn’t seem like a murderer to me.”
“Some people never do. Just look at those sweet old ladies who killed their boarders for their Social Security checks. You can’t always tell by the way someone looks,” said my aunt.
“But Martha?” said Judd.
“What does she gain? A chance to turn around a business that she’s watched her husband run into the ground. The gift of getting out of bed every day and not having to deal with Lenny’s latest squabble. His death is a tragedy and a gift for her. She has a very strong motive,” answered my aunt.
“But to kill a person with bees? To put someone to death with that much pain requires a certain degree of hate.”
“You never know what people have bubblin’ up inside of them,” Maggie said as she went back to the task of constructing birdseed bags.
“And that,” my father said, “is why you need to be careful, Betsy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
As I stepped out of the car at Chateau Fischer, my foot descended into a patch of mud. I pulled my foot back and heard a squishing sound as the slime fell off in clumps.
“Oh, Mrs. Livingston. I’m so sorry,” Morton Fischer said. Where had he been? I didn’t see him when I pulled up. “I was just clearing some of the fallen limbs from the storm yesterday. I sure hope this rain lets up soon. I don’t remember it ever being this wet. Let me just run over to the shed and see if I can find a rag for you.”
While Morton walked over to the shed, I decided to use my cell phone and take a few pictures to add to the sketch I planned to make for Martha. The white tent was flapping from the wind coming off the bayou. I leaned back and took a picture and then stretched to the backseat to grab my white notebook. Pulling out a blank sheet of paper and fishing a pen from my purse, I started drawing squares depicting each section of the “chateau.” I always thought of a chateau as a castle or estate in Europe, not a canopy strung up over a cement slab.
“Here you go, Mrs. Livingston,” Morton said.
“Oh, thank you.” I put do
wn my sketch and reached for the rag.
“Are you sketching our alcove?” Morton said, gesturing to the area where the trees joined. “Make sure you get my roses. Well, they aren’t actually there yet, but they will be. I have four different types planted, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s roses.”
“I’m making the sketch for Martha Stokes, but it sounds like you know as much about flowers as she does,” I said.
“Oh, Martha is a special lady, that’s for sure. I’m sure she knows a whole lot more than I do, but I try to learn in every way that I can.”
There were still some fresh puddles from the recent rain. As I lifted my arm to steady the cell phone, I noticed a mosquito balancing on it. Knocking it off, I began to wonder if an outdoor reception was such a good idea. The wind picked up, and the faint whiff of cooking drifted my way from the Bayou Restaurant farther up the shore. My own stomach growled as I stepped back to take a picture of the entire area. In only a few weeks I would be here, about to marry the man I loved. I felt a mixture of elation and terror.
******
I ran by The Pecan Bayou Gazette to turn in my latest article on homemade lotion. Hopefully this one wouldn’t kill anybody. If my calamine recipe was ever linked to be the cause of an accidental death, I could kiss my career goodbye. I could see it now: “Local Man Slathered to Death in Pecan Bayou.”
I transferred the “chateau” pictures to my computer and pulled them up on the screen. I figured I could do better than my pencil sketch and decided to use Rocky’s graphics software.
“Buzz, buzz, buzz.” I jumped as I realized Rocky had inched up behind me.
“Rocky, you scared me,” I said, now looking at the screen again. “I’m trying to create a diagram for my wedding flowers.”
Rocky peered down at the picture on the computer. “You’re getting married by the bayou?” he said.
“Well, at least the reception will be there. We’re going to be the first gathering out at the newly opened Chateau Fischer. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m borrowing the computer to work on this.”
Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) Page 10
