“I think they’re gone, now,” I told the boys through gritted teeth. “Did anyone get stung?”
Six of the seven raised their hands. “Three times,” a boy with glasses said proudly.
“It’s a good thing you’re tough,” I said, scanning them all and seeing no signs of distressed breathing or all-over redness or welts. I herded them back toward their parents and the pavilion, saying, “Isn’t there a Scout badge for camping and stuff, or first aid? Did you learn what to do for bee stings?”
“Don’t try to pull out the stinger,” a short boy with a welt on his knee said. “That makes it worse. Did you know bees die after they sting you? When they stick the stinger in, it pulls out their guts.” He said it with eight-year-old relish and looked pleased when I said, “Ew.”
The parents had organized by now and quickly checked their offspring. One mother pulled ice cubes from a cooler and applied them to the stings. I gratefully accepted one and held it to the welt on my neck. It helped a little. The hubbub gradually died down, but several of the younger kids were crying, from fear or overstimulation, and some of the parents began packing their offspring into SUVs and minivans. The event was breaking up prematurely, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I headed back toward the corral, hoping Reina, the pony wrangler, might be able to tell me what had happened. However, I was only halfway there when the Big Cheese Scout Leader hailed me, coming from the direction I was headed.
“She says there was a swarm of bees,” he said, indicating Reina with a jerk of his head. “They stung the pony.” His rubbery lower lip jutted out. “We’re lucky no one was seriously hurt.”
I nodded fervently.
“They came out of that hive.” He jabbed a finger at the white box I’d noticed when I first arrived. “What kind of moron,” he continued, “sets up a beehive in a park where kids play games?”
I shrugged, preparing to admit that I didn’t know what kind of moron that would be and was already planning to call parks and rec, but he forestalled me with a more pointed question: “And what kind of moron doesn’t check the field for hazards when she’s expecting a hundred young boys to be running around and has been paid to make sure things go right?”
That would be my kind of moron, I guessed. It wasn’t totally fair to blame me for the bee invasion, but if I’d checked out the white box when it caught my eye, we could have avoided this fiasco. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine why or when someone put—”
“I can’t imagine why someone would hire you to organize dinner for two,” he said and strode off without giving me time to reply.
I guessed that meant I wouldn’t be organizing next year’s Scout picnic. Too bad. With a little heads-up, I could maybe have arranged a killer piranha infestation for everyone’s amusement. Shoot. I’d talk to the Big Cheese in a couple of days, when he’d cooled off. Right now, he was probably still suffering from the adrenaline rush of realizing dozens of parents might have sued the organization and him personally if any of the boys had reacted badly to the stings. I couldn’t blame him for fearing litigation; people had tried to sue me for the “mental anguish” associated with not having centerpiece flowers the exact shade of blue as their bridesmaids’ sashes, for a freak July snow shower ruining an outdoor commitment ceremony, and for the dry-cleaning bills associated with being spat upon by an annoyed camel (long story). Even in Heaven, too many people were willing to drag their neighbors into court for the most trivial slights and wrongs.
Squaring my shoulders, I continued on to the corral and made sure the ponies and Reina were all right. Learning they were, I helped her load the stolid beasts into her trailer and then cautiously approached the hive. As I got closer, a humming seemed to vibrate the air. I could tell, somehow, that the humming was bees happily going about their bee business, not preparing to go on the warpath. A few bees left the hive, crossing paths with a similar number returning to it. I wished I could peer inside, but I didn’t want to incite the bees again.
A splash of chartreuse some feet in front of the hive caught my eye, and I stooped to retrieve a tennis ball. Odd. I tossed it in the air, figuring one of the Scouts must have brought it. Leaving the bees behind, I returned to the pavilion in time to watch the inflatable slide hiss and sag when Bowie pulled the plug on it. That was kind of how I felt—like someone had pulled the plug on me. I took Al up on his offer to finish supervising the cleanup and headed home for an ibuprofen, a salve of vinegar and baking soda on my bee sting, and a phone call to parks and rec.
Parking the van in my driveway fifteen minutes later, I descended wearily. I tucked the expandable file holding receipts for the day’s vendors and supplies under my arm and walked to my front door. As I fitted the key into the lock, a yellow paper spiraled to the ground, loosed from the piece of tape used to stick it to my door. I picked it up and almost crumpled it without reading it, figuring it was an ad for a roof inspection or a Realtor begging for a listing. It looked homemade, though, so I scanned it after laying my folder on the kitchen counter.
“QUIT BUZZING ABOUT IN THINGS THAT AREN’T YOUR BEESWAX,” it read in printed capitals. “NEXT TIME THE STING MIGHT BE FATAL.”
Chapter 13
Brooke tried to soothe me. Scared by the threat and by the fact that someone had been to my house to deliver it, I’d dashed out, not even grabbing my purse, and driven straight to Brooke’s. We sat in her kitchen, the only room in her house that wasn’t formal and expensive and intimidating. Well, it was expensive—acres of granite, appliances with foreign names I couldn’t pronounce, and extras like warming drawers and a second oven and a walk-in wine cooler—but it was homey, too, with red brick around the stove and floral cushions on the chairs. We sat at the table in her breakfast nook, which looked out on a backyard so designed that it looked like it’d been imported rock by rock and plant by plant from the Denver Botanic Gardens.
Troy stood at the stove in running gear, reheating last night’s stew for lunch, while Brooke fetched me a glass of cranberry juice.
“Drink,” she said when I started to talk.
The glass chittered against my teeth as I drank. The sugar washing into my system made me feel more stable. “Thanks.” I swiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Is it girl stuff?” Troy asked. “Do you want me to go away?” Tall and slender, he had slightly droopy posture and seemed younger than thirty-two. His pleasant, open face and light brown hair, which waved around his ears, could have gotten him cast in any high school movie as the hot girl’s loyal guy friend who would turn out to be her true love.
“Not girl stuff,” I said, shoving the threatening note across the table to Brooke. Troy came to peer over her shoulder.
Brooke read it and looked up, puzzled. “It sounds vaguely nasty, but I don’t get it. ‘Buzzing’? ‘Sting’?”
I explained about the mysterious beehive and the Boy Scout picnic fiasco.
“So now you think someone put the beehive there on purpose?” Troy asked. He returned to the stove and ladled rich-smelling stew into three bowls, inserted a spoon into each one, and set them on the table.
I began to eat automatically, not realizing until the first savory bite hit my tongue how hungry I was. “That’s exactly what I think. Furthermore, I found a tennis ball not far from the hive.”
This revelation only confused them further.
“I think someone was hiding in the woods and threw the tennis ball at the hive to agitate the bees.” The thought had come to me on the ride over here, when the tennis ball rolled off the passenger seat and under the gas pedal. “Someone deliberately pissed off those bees, hoping they’d ruin the picnic. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Brooke and Troy exchanged a glance.
“Exactly why would someone do that, honey?” Brooke asked.
They didn’t know about Ivy’s house being vandalized or the cod
ed ledger page. I quickly filled them in, ending with how I’d dropped the ledger page at the police station Friday evening and talked to Flavia after the funeral. “Someone’s trying to scare me away from looking into Ivy’s murder,” I announced, scraping my spoon against the bowl to get the last of the gravy.
“How would they even know?” Troy asked. “I mean, who have you discussed it with?”
That was a darn fine question. I sat up straighter and thought about it. “Well, all the Readaholics. And Ham Donner knows I was at his sister’s house Friday. Maybe Kirsten at her office, because I took the tea canister. And the police know, obviously.” The shortness of the list made me uncomfortable. “And I suppose any of those people could have told other people.”
Troy nodded, unconvinced. “I think you’re paranoid, Amy-Faye.” Picking up our bowls, he carried them to the sink and ran water into them.
I could hear Maud’s voice saying, Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Brooke watched her husband. “Remember, your mother’s coming by later to talk about the gala.”
“I forgot.” Making a face, Troy transferred the bowls to the dishwasher, sponged up a spot of stew on the range top, scrubbed out the sink, and folded a dish towel precisely, talking while he worked. “Isn’t it more likely someone at the picnic wrote this note, maybe as a prank? Or maybe it was an angry parent—pissed off because little Johnny or Janet got stung—who wanted to scare you a little bit.”
“I don’t see how the line about ‘mind your own beeswax’ fits in that scenario,” I said. “Someone’s telling me to butt out—of something—or else. The only ‘something’ I can think of is Ivy’s murder.”
An impatient look flitted across Troy’s face. “Come on, Amy-Faye. It’s probably not even a murder—the police said she committed suicide. You’re just bored and upset about Elvaston getting married—”
Brooke’s guilty look told me she’d discussed it with him.
“—and looking for attention. You need to get out of here for a bit, get a fresh outlook. Take a little vacation, say, a long weekend in Denver. Brooke could go with you. You could do the spa thing”—he mimed painting his nails—“and do some shopping.”
Brooke looked from her husband to me, half-embarrassed (presumably because he’d called me an attention hound) and half-hopeful. “It’d be fun. We could—”
I rose, hurt and angry. “I don’t think so. I am not acting out because Doug’s getting married. I am not making any of this up. It may turn out that Ivy wasn’t murdered, but I owe it to her to make a serious effort to find out, bees and threats and skeptics”—I included both of them in my angry look—“be damned.” I stalked toward the front door.
“Amy-Faye—” Brooke started to follow me.
“Thanks for the stew,” I said, closing the door oh so gently and dignifiedly behind me.
* * *
I drove off and parked around the corner to pound on the steering wheel. Troy and I had never been best buddies—I’d thought he was stuck-up and snotty in high school, and the way he knuckled under to his parents on every important issue since he and Brooke got married drove me batty—but I’d thought he respected me, a little, and my friendship with Brooke, and I’d always respected their relationship. Saying I was making stuff up about Ivy because I craved attention, implying that Doug getting married had caused me so much stress I needed a vacation— Ooh! I banged the steering wheel one more time, took a deep breath, and resumed driving.
I drove for a couple of blocks before realizing I didn’t have a destination in mind. I was a little bit nervous about going home, although obviously I’d have to do so eventually. I could go to Maud’s. She’d believe me about the note—she’d be eager to believe me, and immediately start spinning conspiracy theories to account for it. I wasn’t in the mood. Should I take it to the police? It was a threat, after all. I shook my head. No. I wasn’t going to run the risk that the police would think as Troy did, that I was some sort of unbalanced woman, looking for attention. I’d already been to the police station twice in the last forty-eight hours; I wasn’t going back.
I realized that while I was thinking, the van had steered itself toward my parents’ house, a rambling two-story on the east end of Heaven, and I remembered my new resolution from the memorial service to connect with my folks this weekend. The house had flaking gray paint, an overgrown yard with apple trees, and a detached two-car garage. Neither Mom nor Dad was much for home maintenance. Mom thought of it as man’s work, and Dad was so engrossed in trying to solve unsolvable mathematical equations that he wouldn’t notice if a meteor hurtled into his study, never mind if the driveway was more green than black due to the weeds growing through cracks in the asphalt. I pulled into the sprouting driveway with a feeling of relief. At least being with them would take my mind off my troubles.
Not bothering to knock, I opened the screen door and let it slap shut behind me. The noise called to mind my mother’s constant reminders of “Don’t let the screen door bang” from my childhood.
“Hey, guys, it’s just me,” I called. The air smelled faintly of books from the shelves lining every wall—and I mean every wall—and more strongly of corned beef and cabbage in the slow cooker. I decided I would stay for dinner.
“Out here, dear.”
As if I didn’t know where my mother was. In the summer, she spent approximately 90 percent of her waking hours at the patio table in the backyard, stack of books in a chair beside her, and a laptop and a bag of corn chips on the table. In the winter, she had the same setup in a small craft room off the kitchen. She’d been a librarian for years, and a voracious reader, and when online sites for booklovers popped up eight or ten years ago, she’d begun posting book reviews . . . by the thousands. She was both revered and feared in book circles and had been interviewed by national publications and even CNN about her reviewing.
I cut through the kitchen and out the sliding glass doors to the patio, where Mom sat in a webbed chair whose seat bowed ominously. She had naturally curly hair that she still wore almost shoulder length. Sheena at Sheena’s Hair Jungle was responsible for dying it back to its original chestnut every month or so. She had a complexion like a magnolia, the envy of every woman north of forty in the entire town, which she attributed to her religious use of sunscreen and the hats she’d worn from childhood on. Today’s was floral cotton with a floppy brim. Her eyes were hazel, like mine, and she had a wide mouth that was always slicked with bright lipstick. When my sisters and I were little, she used to let us pick out colors for her at the drugstore: Cherries Jubilation, Coral Splash, Neony Peony. She’d always had a tendency to put on weight and she’d ballooned since retiring from the library. Dad and I were seriously worried about her health. We were not alone—Mom worried about it, too, but since her worrying took the form of researching every new skin rash or cough and determining she had black lung disease or leprosy, she wasn’t doing much about her real health problem: obesity and its nasty side effects. She was the reason I watched my weight so carefully.
“Hi, Mom.” I kissed her soft cheek as she typed at the keyboard, and moved a stack of category romances so I could sit. “Writing a good review or a bad one?”
“Actually”—she looked up—“I noticed a red spot on my calf this morning when I got out of the shower. I’m trying to determine if it’s Chagas or maybe Lyme disease. Do you think it looks like a bull’s-eye?” She bent with an effort to pull up the hem of her cotton skirt.
I peered at her calf but could see nothing more than a reddened patch of dried skin. Knowing it was useless to downplay her concerns, I said, “Look, I’ve got a welt, too.” I lifted my hair so she could see the bee sting.
“Oh, Amy-Faye. I hope it’s not contagious.”
I laughed. “It’s a bee sting, Mom. Not to worry.”
“It’s my job to worry about all you kids,” she sai
d, finally shutting down the computer and giving me her full attention. Worry clouded her eyes. “Have you talked to your brother lately? He’s fussing about the pub not opening on time—something about inspections? And I think he and Gordon have quarreled again, although he didn’t say anything.”
Gordon was Derek’s business partner, a venture capitalist in his fifties who had financed restaurants, nightclubs, and bars in Texas and Colorado. He and Derek frequently argued because Gordon thought his investment gave him the right to make all the important decisions and my brother, the creative force and brewmaster behind the venture, disagreed. Frequently. Loudly. When he was mad, he called Gordon “Gekko” after the Wall Street character played by Michael Douglas.
“I’ll call Derek,” I said, “or maybe stop by. I’ve got some questions for him about the opening-night party, anyway.”
“Thank you, dear,” Mom said. “You’re such a comfort.” Her gaze strayed to the pile of books.
“The Readaholics just finished The Maltese Falcon,” I said.
That got her attention. “Brilliant book. The way Hammett made it seem as if the book was about the falcon, when all along it’s about Spade and his relationships, his failings, his character. The falcon is just a device. What did Hitchcock—I think it was Hitchcock—call it? A MacGuffin. No, the heart of the novel is Spade. It gives me chills every time I read his soliloquy about how when a man’s partner dies he’s supposed to do something about it.” She shivered. “Ooh.”
I looked at her, struck. When a man’s partner dies, he’s supposed to do something about it. Ivy wasn’t my partner, but she was my friend and I suspected the principle applied. I felt better, suddenly, less worried about whether Troy or the police thought I was a headline-grabbing nutcase, and more sure that I was doing the right thing by looking into Ivy’s death. Somehow, whether she meant to or not, my mom always made me feel better. I hugged her. “Thanks, Mom.”
The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco Page 13
