Death By Drowning

by Abigail Keam

  ***USA Book News “Best Books of 2011” Finalist***

  ***Gold Medal Award – Readers’ Favorite 2011***

  “Abigail Keam writes with vision and understanding. Her tale is fresh and original...after all...what could beekeeping and murder have in common? Readers will have no trouble being drawn into this charming mystery. Keam leaves the reader yearning for more. DEATH BY DROWNING is an excellent second effort by Ms. Keam. Characters and action are well wrought, and the plot sizzles.”

  Midwest Book Review

  “In this tale, once again, Abigail Keam does an excellent job of creating a middle-aged heroine, whom I can totally relate to, an eccentric cast of characters, beautifully descriptive settings, and she also incorporates interesting tidbits of history that took place around where she lives. Her mysterious daughter also adds to the suspense. DEATH BY DROWNING is a must read. Fans of mystery will absolutely love it.”

  Reader’s View

  “The characters are well developed, each rich with his or her own eccentricities.”

  Kentucky Monthly

  Death By Drowning

  Copyright © Abigail Keam 2011

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author.

  All characters are fictional and any similarity to any living person or physical place is just coincidence unless stated otherwise. It’s not you. So don’t go around town and brag about it.

  Library of Congress 2010919448

  ISBN 978-0-615-42908-3

  Published in the USA by

  Worker Bee Press

  PO Box 485

  Nicholasville, KY 40340

  eBooks created by www.ebookconversion.com

  For Diana,

  who shines like

  the northern star.

  By The Same Author

  Death By A HoneyBee

  (Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal Award Winner)

  (USA Book News “Best Book List of 2011” Finalist)

  Death By Bridle

  2012

  Death By Bourbon

  2012

  The author wishes to thank Stephen Powell, who consented to be a character, www.powellglass.com, Al’s Bar, which consented to be used as a drinking hole for my poetry-writing cop, Kelly, and Morris Book Shop, www.morrisbookshop.com, which consented to be a meeting place for Meriah Caldwell and Josiah in the Josiah Reynolds series.

  Also Anna Lowery and Susan Smith-Durisek for their comments.

  Thanks to the Lexington Farmers’ Market, which has given me a home for many years. www.lexingtonfarmersmarket.com

  Special thanks to Neil Chethik for his unwavering support. www.neilchethik.com

  And to my editor, Brian Throckmorton.

  Art Work by Cricket Press

  www.cricket-press.com

  Great job.

  Book Jacket by Peter Keam

  With much gratitude.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Bonus Chapter

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  PROLOGUE

  He silently paddled the kayak through the chilly waters of the Kentucky River, alone except for occasional river otters slipping playfully down their muddy slides or the screech owl beckoning mournfully from a redbud tree ready to open its pink blossoms announcing spring in the Bluegrass.

  There were no homes on this part of the river – just low sloping farmland on one side of the river and the high gray limestone wall of the Palisades on the other. He didn’t need the lights of buildings to help navigate the river. He knew the curving green ribbon of water like his own flesh – besides, there was a full moon. He could see fine – just like the catamounts that roamed the Palisades. Ever so often he could hear one of them scream. Their eerie cries might have given a lesser man pause, but his mind was made up.

  Finally he came to one of the few sand beaches on the river and beached the beat-up, green kayak, dragging it upon the loose sand. On either side of the kayak were tied red gasoline cans. He cut the ropes binding them with quick, assured movements. He tugged on a waterproof bag, checked its contents of rags, matches and lighters, and then slung it across his back. He had several miles to trek before he reached his destination. He began the march. There was no doubt or wavering in his manner. His features showed no sign of the tension that was churning in his gut.

  He was not going to waste any more time thinking of an alternative. He was determined. There was a vineyard to burn.

  1

  Death had stood on the doorstep and knocked on my door – but I didn’t answer. I didn’t die. There were days I wished I had – the pain was so great.

  I don’t remember very much except that I awoke once only to open one swollen eye slightly to see Matt, my best friend, reading to me. Over his shoulder stood Brannon, my late husband, observing the both of us. Seeing me conscious, Brannon said, “He’s reading to you from the Book of Ruth.”

  Ruth, my favorite story from the Old Testament, told the tale of loyalty between two women facing starvation. When the mother-in-law, Naomi, tries to turn Ruth away in order to save her, Ruth says, “Where thou goest, I go; where you lodge, I lodge; your people shall be my people; your god shall be my god; where you die, there shall I also be buried.”

  It was too bad Brannon had never understood this concept of loyalty when alive. Now dead, he was nothing but a pile of dust in a cardboard box stored in my walk-in closet. What was he doing here now? Brannon turned so I could see my daughter asleep in a chair lodged in a corner. Loyalty. I smiled. At least, I think I smiled.

  Matt turned a page and kept reading. I realized that I couldn’t hear Matt. I thought to myself – why can’t I hear?

  “You’re deaf, Josiah,” Brannon said. “From the fall.” He held out his hand. “Come with me.”

  I’m not going anywhere with you. You abandoned me, I thought in a huff.

  “Where we’re going, your anger won’t matter. It will be forgotten.”

  Go away, Brannon. Mad at you. Mad. Mad. Mad.

  “Ahh, Josey, you were always stubborn,” he chided, his image fading.

  Closing my good eye, I slipped back into a coma. I didn’t awaken until several weeks later. I couldn’t stand the intense pain and would have flung myself out a window – if I could have moved. When my daughter begged the doctors to put me back into a medical coma, they refused. They were going to let me sweat it out. My daughter couldn’t stand the screaming – my screaming.

  I must be rotten deep inside the way I hated them, the very men and women who saved my life, but hate them I did. I loathed the way they thought they were doing me a great favor by prescribing measly dosages of pain medication. I reviled their condescension, their tired jokes and heartless procedures. That suffering is good for the soul is a fool’s philosophy. I don’t like pain and have no use for suffering.

  Neither has my daughter. I hazily remember bits and pieces of leaving the hospital – Matt leaning over me and holding my hand, mouthing goodbye; the doctors arguing with my daught
er as she had the bandages, IV’s, monitors, and everything else, including me, packed up; the humming of the plane engines as I was flown to Key West where the medical profession doesn’t frown on dispensing large dosages of painkillers.

  I was later told the decision to move me to Key West was made on that day when I was shrieking like a lunatic about the unbearable throbbing on my left side . . . the side that impacted the cliff ledge . . . because the doctors wouldn’t give me more morphine. My daughter installed me in a three-bedroom bungalow complete with a pool on the ocean. She brought in her own physician’s assistant to stay with me. Then what pain medication she couldn’t get legally, she bought off the black market. I didn’t scream again.

  During the few times I was somewhat lucid, I tried to ask her what had happened, but my lips wouldn’t move.

  The guttural noises spilling from my mouth were confusing and animal-like, so I fell back asleep. I dreamt I was falling, falling, falling from a cliff, plunging into the murky swirling water of the Kentucky River . . .

  I sat up. Somewhere a bell rang loudly. A man with a military crew cut ran into the room and leaned towards me. He frightened me, so I tried pushing him away with my hands, but only my right hand would move and not in the direction I wanted.

  Who was this man? Was it O’nan? Were we still fighting? Were we falling off the cliff together? No, that was Sherlock Holmes falling off Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty.

  The strange man morphed into Basil Rathbone as he turned off a monitor. He was wearing a Key West T-shirt and shorts. A chuckle bubbled up my throat thinking of Sherlock Holmes in shorts. Sherlock turned towards the bed and smiled. There was a gap in his front teeth. Now, his face reminded me of Alfred E. Neuman’s, but more exotic, more ethnic. I couldn’t place why. His lips were moving and I concentrated to understand what he was saying.

  Why couldn’t I hear him?

  “My name is Jacob Dosh. You can call me Jake. I am a physician’s assistant. I’ll be taking care of you,” he said in loud, exaggerated tones. He held a silver pen light, which he kept flashing into my eyes. “You’ve had an accident, but you’re all right. I need to check you. Understand? Nod yes, if that is okay.” The man smiled and repeated what he had said – again and again.

  It finally sank in. I nodded slightly. His hands were warm and gentle, almost caressing as they moved about my body. There were calluses on his fingers and a raised scar down the length of his left forefinger. My skin was extremely sensitive to touch.

  I felt the vibrations of someone running into the room. My daughter peered anxiously from the foot of the bed and then spoke to the man. I whispered her name and tried to keep my head up, but sank back into the pillows. I mumbled, “Watson?” Sherlock and I were on a case in London.

  He shook my shoulder again. “Hey, stay with us. Don’t go back to sleep.”

  Struggling to keep my eyes open, I attempted to smile at my daughter but couldn’t make my lips curl up.

  “Well,” said the man called Jake, checking my vital signs. “Who’s Watson?”

  My daughter grinned. “The sidekick to my mother’s favorite beekeeper, Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes was a beekeeper?”

  “He retired in Sussex Downs and kept bees. He wrote The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.”

  Jake scribbled on a chart and placed it on the end of the rented hospital bed. “I always thought Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character. I didn’t know he was real.”

  My daughter waved to me. “Cut down on the morphine. She’s ready to come back to the living.”

  But my daughter was wrong. I wasn’t. I liked living in the dream world of Morpheus, believing I was safe, knowing that in real time, tragedy cannot be undone. Tragedy was a bucking horse. Sometimes you were able to stay in the saddle and ride it out – sometimes not. And I wasn’t even prepared to put my foot in the stirrup.

  2

  My name is Josiah Reynolds and I’m a retired art history professor. I keep bees now and sell honey at the local Farmers’ Market. I live in an iconic house called the Butterfly that was supposed to have been featured in Architectural Digest this spring. I guess that has been postponed. When I was flush with money, I collected Kentucky art and vintage movies.

  Then my husband, Brannon, died and left all his money to his mistress, who was pregnant with his second child. He left his daughter and me nothing but a life insurance policy, hiding his wealth in secret accounts and what-nots. Because of it, I’m almost bankrupt. I didn’t think things could get much worse until Richard Pidgeon, a honey competitor at the Farmers’ Market, was murdered in my beeyard last fall, and then, I discovered that things could get much worse.

  I now collect . . . trouble.

  It was Hemingway who said, “The world breaks everyone. And afterwards many are strong in the broken places.” It was because of Richard Pidgeon that I am now broken myself.

  I pushed O’nan, the investigating cop, off a cliff because he was trying to kill me, but he pulled me over with him. He deserved it. I didn’t.

  I smashed into a limestone ledge forty feet below, while O’nan plummeted into the Kentucky River, which swallowed him. But that was after he shot my dog, Baby, and plugged a hole in Franklin, my friend. He did it because I got him pulled off the murder case of Richard Pidgeon, which he was trying to pin on me. I didn’t kill Richard Pidgeon, but I know who did.

  I don’t like to discuss the details of my recovery, but it involved trips to Miami to visit plastic surgeons, dentists, innards doctors, ear doctors, brain doctors and leg doctors. I was poked, bled, stuck and scanned. I should have let O’nan just shoot me. It would have been less trouble for everyone.

  Between the Miami trips were visits from physical therapists with their painful repetitive exercises. My face was ruined and, no matter how much therapy I endured, I would always walk with a pronounced limp. The fall had busted up my left ear but good, so I wore a hearing aid. My teeth were either broken or knocked out, so implants were installed but only after the wires for my broken cheekbone had been cut from the inside of my mouth. My beautiful red hair had to be shaved and had grown back gray. Not a pretty gray, but a lifeless dull color that reminded me of gristle. There’s more wrong with me, but it is too technical to understand without a medical dictionary.

  On top of that, I had slipped into a severe depression, and felt there was no need to spend money on doctors and therapists who couldn’t really help anymore. Even Key West had lost its luster and the ocean no longer soothed. So you can imagine the fuss I put up when Jake informed me that several more months of therapy were needed before I could go home. Jumping Jehosaphat! I was done!

  “Are you going to get out of bed today?” asked Jake, taking my pulse.

  I shook my head.

  “I need to make your bed,” he said, tugging on the sheets.

  “Lea tit,” I mumbled. Now that the wires had been removed from inside my mouth, I could speak rather clearly if I took the time to enunciate carefully. I was still getting used to my new teeth. “’An I ’ave a fresh pain sot?”

  “Nope, not time yet. We’re trying to wean you off some of the pain medication.”

  “My doter gav instruckions . . . I was not . . be in pain.”

  “Spoken like a true junkie.”

  “Blow tit tout ur ass,” I said seething. I was tired of fighting the medical establishment for every hour of pain relief. Their constant harping on the amount of pain medication I was taking did not endear them to me, so I started to lie about it. They never cross-checked, but Jake knew the truth.

  “Having a pity party all by yourself?” asked Jake. “You should be thankful that you’re alive.”

  “Go soak ’our head.”

  “Ooooh whee. I sure understood that.” He studied me for a moment. “Depression is part of the process, but you are taking it down to a whole new level. You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “
’Cause that would be like giving everyone the finger after all the time and money that’s been invested to bring you back from the dead. I don’t come cheap, which is why your poor daughter is sweating over a crummy case in Amsterdam so she can pay for all of this.” He waved his hand around the room.

  I gave him a raspberry, but in the process just deposited spittle on myself.

  Jake pointed a rust-colored finger at me. “You’re mad that she’s not here, but she can’t be.” He lifted some pages on the bed chart and quickly read through them. “I am going to go against the doctor’s advice here. I hope you don’t get me in trouble with the medical establishment.” He put down the chart. “Now don’t kick or I’ll drop you.”

  “Wat . . . ’ou doin’?”

  “If the docs have their way, they’ll just put you on more pills. I’m trying to get you off that crap. You need some vitamin D, so out in the sun you go.” Jake lifted me, speaking to me like one gentling a spooked horse, and strode outside to where a small pool with pink tiling beckoned. Walking down the wide steps of the pool, Jake eased me onto a floating chair. As I was only dressed in a hospital gown, my fanny felt the free exposure to the water as Jake pried my hands from around his muscular neck. I shielded my eyes against the intense Florida sun. I felt naked, but then I almost was.

  “Nothing to worry about. It’s a beautiful day. Just relax and get some sun. And don’t pee in the pool. I might want to take a swim later.”

  “Gonna pu sunscreen lotion on me?” I burned very easily, being a descendant of Vikings.

  “Nope. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  “Jake, ’ou come back!”

  He shut the glass doors to my bedroom, ignoring my pleas. Giving up my whining, I watched him put clean sheets on my bed. Finally checking his watch, he came out and jumped into the pool. After rubbing sunscreen on my arms and hairy legs, he placed a big straw hat on my head and handed me sunglasses. “That will keep you from burning. Now if you want out of this pool, you will have to take your flabby arms and paddle over to the shallow. Once you do that, I’ll come out to get you.” He pushed my chair into the deep end of the pool.