A Beeline to Murder

by Meera Lester

  “Look.” He held out his right hand. It was swollen, like a latex glove turned into a water balloon.

  “You were stung?”

  “Oui.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday . . . at your farm.”

  “Ouch . . . Have you ever been stung before?”

  “Non.”

  “And that’s why you want me to recommend a good doctor?”

  “Oui. This hand, I need.”

  “Well, I’m certain you need both your hands. What you mean is that you favor your right hand for writing and other tasks, correct?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I rather doubt a doctor will be necessary, but let me have a look.” Abby examined the red dot on Philippe’s swollen right hand. “Well, it appears the stinger is out.”

  “Stinger?”

  Abby looked into Philippe’s large light eyes. She cleared her throat. Wished she’d paid more attention in her French class. So . . . the French word for “stinger.” Let me see. Barbed lancets, venom, bee gut rupture, death . . . death. I know that one. La petite mort . . . No, no, that’s not right. That’s a euphemism for “orgasm.” Must be décès. Yes, that’s it. “Décès!” Abby exclaimed aloud.

  “Décès? I’m going to die?” Philippe’s expression conveyed alarm.

  “No, no, no, Philippe. I meant the bee. . . . The bee dies . . . died. Not you. You’re fine. Well, except for . . .” She took a deep breath. Not going well. Try something else. “So, I’ve got an analgesic cream in my car. It’ll make your hand feel better.” She pointed to her Jeep.

  Philippe nodded and followed her to her car.

  Abby rummaged around in the glove compartment until she finally located the analgesic, histamine-blocking cream. After removing the cap and squeezing a pea-size dollop onto a finger, she rubbed it on Philippe’s hand, at the site of the sting, and then smoothed some over his hand, up to his Cartier watchband. She could feel the heat in his hand. Her own skin prickled. Her heart hammered hard. When she looked up at him, those sparkling pale green eyes were gazing back at her.

  Abby quickly tightened the cap on the tube. “You okay to meet Chief Bob Allen?”

  Philippe nodded.

  “He’s expecting us in twenty minutes.” She tossed the tube of analgesic cream back in the glove compartment and turned to find Philippe planted in the same spot.

  His face took on a silly grin. He used one finger to open his jacket pocket. “My hand, it is useless for tying my necktie. Do you mind?”

  Abby leaned over to see a tie lodged in his pocket. As she withdrew the tie, Philippe moved so close to her, their toes nearly touched. He was close enough for her to smell his cologne and feel his breath against her face. He stood a head taller than she and was about the height of Clay. Don’t think about him right now. Abby flipped up Philippe’s dress shirt collar, slipped the Italian red, patterned silk tie under it, and flipped the collar back down. Standing directly in front of him, she began to perform the sequence of knotting the tie. Over, under, around, and through. Clay had taught her that. As she was tightening and adjusting the position of the knot, Philippe placed his hands on her shoulders. Electricity shot through her. She pulled the narrow part of the tie down and pushed the knot upward in one swift motion. Philippe stepped backward and coughed against the tightness of the knot.

  “There. Looks great!” Abby exclaimed. “Time to go.” She walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in the Jeep.

  Philippe slid into the passenger’s seat. His eyes held a bemused merriment as he reached for the seat belt and looked over at her. “This . . . I can do this myself.”

  Abby laughed. “Good. Pull it tight. Wouldn’t want you breaking the law. I’d have to make a citizen’s arrest and hand you over to the authorities.”

  Philippe grinned and snapped the belt into the buckle.

  When they arrived, Abby felt a familiar flicker of apprehension as she stepped inside the Las Flores Police Department. Her former place of employment held a lot of memories. Some were not so good. Catching the attention of the two dispatchers stationed behind the massive glass enclosure of the county communication center, Abby strolled over and waved. Both women nodded, but their eyes were focused on Philippe. It was not often that a handsome, debonair man walked into the station, or anywhere in Las Flores.

  Abby walked past a second glass window, which separated the waiting area from the office cubicles, the locked property room, and the interrogation rooms. She saw the department’s female crime-scene investigator hobbling toward her on crutches. They met on opposite sides of the security door.

  The woman pushed open the heavy door, and Abby and Philippe walked through. “Goodness, Nettie. You’re injured. Line of duty?”

  Nettie Sherman snorted. “If you want to call it that. Chief Allen didn’t want to buy a new desk and chair for me, so he dragged in his brother-in-law’s old metal desk and had a chair brought up from the basement, where, as you know, stuff goes when it’s broken. First day in it, I leaned forward and heard that chair crack like someone had snapped a bullwhip. Next thing I know, my body was flying into a file drawer.” Nettie adjusted the crutches under her arms and glanced down at her right leg. “My knee had an old injury. Now it has a new one.”

  Abby couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Oh, Nettie, I’m so sorry.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “It’s not funny, but you’re such a fabulous storyteller.”

  “Well,” Nettie continued, “I’m stuck with that dang dinosaur of a desk, but I did get a new chair.”

  Abby chuckled. “What happened to the old one?”

  Nettie rolled her eyes. “Where else? Back to the basement.” She pointed down to the end of the corridor. “Chief is expecting you.”

  “Yes.” Abby drew in a deep breath and tried to exhale the tension that had suddenly claimed her body.

  “I’m supposed to escort you there, so follow me.” Nettie hobbled on her crutches ahead of Abby for a few steps and then stopped to whisper, “What is it? Twenty-five feet? I could have watched you walk there from here. But he won’t bend the rules for anyone.”

  “Of course he won’t,” Abby replied, following Nettie again as she hobbled ahead.

  Before Abby could say another word, the chief’s office door flew open from the inside. He glowered from the doorway. “Mackenzie, you’re late. Your fault . . . or Nettie’s for yammering on about that knee of hers?”

  “Mine,” Abby said. “I apologize, Chief. Mr. Bonheur and I were unavoidably delayed.”

  Chief Bob Allen uttered one of his customary grunts, spun around, and marched back to his desk. “Take a seat.” He gestured to the two black metal institutional chairs in front of his desk, then sat down in his own chair.

  “Chief,” Abby said, knowing that the chief preferred to set the agenda and that by speaking first, she was preempting his privilege. “You’ve met Mr. Bonheur, and you know we are here because he has asked me to dig a little deeper into his brother’s untimely death.”

  “Waste of time. We’ve closed it.” The chief leaned back in his chair and turned a steely-eyed stare upon Abby. “It’s what we do when it’s a suicide. You know that, Mackenzie.”

  “Yes, sir, you’re very likely right, but we would like to review the police file as soon as it is possible.”

  “It hasn’t been redacted yet.”

  “When can we expect that to be completed?”

  “We’re shorthanded,” he said, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes.

  Abby met his gaze . . . waited.

  “A few more days,” he finally offered. The chief then addressed Philippe. “As I said before, Mr. Bonheur, we’re sorry for your loss. You can hire Ms. Mackenzie here if you want to, but there is no great mystery to unravel, so delving further into this would be a waste of Mackenzie’s time and your money.”

  “Thank you, Chief, but my family has many questions. I believe Ms. Mackenzie will help me answer those questions.”

  “Up
to you.” Chief Bob Allen leaned back in his chair again, then laced his fingers together over his stomach. “Are we done here?”

  Abby stood up. “Not quite. I’d like to review that surveillance tape the officers acquired from the pastry shop and any tapes from other businesses in the area. Philippe and I will also be compiling a list of the chef’s known associates. Your officers would already have started such a list. I’d like a copy of that. Finally, we’d like to take with us any property the department has belonging to Jean-Louis Bonheur.”

  Chief Allen rose.

  Abby understood how the chief would see that for him to remain seated while she stood put him in an inferior position.

  Chief Bob Allen addressed Abby directly. “Like I said, it was a limited investigation. When the coroner ruled the death a suicide, we closed the case.” The chief seemed to take particular satisfaction in emphasizing the word suicide. He walked around the desk and shot a steely-eyed stare at Abby. “You know how this works, Mackenzie. Find something my people can take to the DA, and I’ll take another look at it. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.”

  He slid a hand into his pants pocket and extended the other to Philippe. “There’s no delicate way to put this. Up behind your brother’s left ear was the mark made by the knot in the ligature he used to hang himself. His brain got no oxygen because of his strangulation. That was how the coroner’s investigator put it.” The chief’s words hung in the air.

  Philippe rose, grasped Chief Bob Allen’s extended hand, and shook it. “And do you have this knot?”

  “We have a large section of the twine he used. We found it on the doorknob of his pantry.”

  “You are paid by the people of this community, n’est-ce pas? You protect them, oui?”

  Chief Bob Allen raised his eyebrows and nodded, undoubtedly wondering what his visitor was getting at. “That’s my job. I think I speak for our community when I say your brother’s untimely death was also a loss for us. But there comes a time when we must get past it and move on.”

  “If my words offend, forgive me, but you did not protect my brother.” Philippe’s gaze darted to Abby, who remained poker-faced but pivoted slightly to face the two of them. Intensely staring at Chief Bob Allen, Philippe added, “You seem to want only to make the news of his death go away as quickly as possible. Do you not care that a murderer could be hiding in your town? Tell me, Chief Allen, how well do you sleep at night?”

  “I sleep just fine, Mr. Bonheur. Just fine.”

  The chief strode to the door, jerked it open, and summoned Nettie with a “Come here now” hand gesture. Abby cringed. She knew Nettie would stand up to him when others wouldn’t. But she could just hear him saying something like, “Good God, woman! When are you getting off those damn crutches?” Any knee-jerk reactions to his comments only made the chief come down even harder. Abby shifted her attention to the massive collection of black-and-white photographs lining the walls on either side of the door. The chief was in every photo. No surprise there. A collection to match his ego!

  She walked over to one of the walls and studied the photos. She knew the chief had hung them there so people would gaze at them. He liked that. Because, after all, it is all about him. One image showed the chief with the mayor and the town council members. In the next image the chief was in his class A uniform, his badge fitted with a black sash to show respect for a fallen officer. The occasion would have been a funeral.

  In another picture, Abby spotted herself standing in a group with the chief at a promotion ceremony. Abby had worked as hard as any of them, putting in overtime, working weekends, taking on extra responsibilities, and studying for the sergeant’s exam. Although her turn at a promotion had been coming—or so the chief had promised year after year, all seven of them—it had never materialized, not even when she passed the exam. But she had never given him the satisfaction of letting her disappointment show.

  Nettie hobbled in.

  In an authoritative tone, the chief addressed Nettie. “Give Mackenzie and Mr. Bonheur his brother’s belongings and any evidence we took from the pastry shop during our investigation. Oh, and she wants a copy of the police report, too, when it’s ready. Make sure we get a signature for everything they take with them.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nettie turned her heavy body as best she could, taking care to favor her bad knee, before leading Abby and Philippe back down the corridor. The chief’s door slammed, and Abby was pretty sure she heard Nettie whisper beneath her breath, “Someday, karma’s going to bite you in your chiefly butt.”

  Dashing into the drizzling rain, Abby and Philippe each carried a box sealed with the tape used by the police department for evidence. Once the boxes were safely stashed behind the car seats and she and Philippe had climbed in, Abby turned the key and flipped on the windshield wipers. She looked over at Philippe and asked, “Your place or mine?”

  Philippe twisted in his seat and gazed quizzically at her, as if not sure he had understood the question.

  “We should go through your brother’s property together. If there are photos in those boxes the police gave us, you might be able to identify who is in them. You know the saying, ‘Two heads are better than one’?”

  Philippe nodded. “Alors, in that case, shall we put our heads together in my suite?” A sheepish smile crept across his face.

  “Actually, I was thinking of the lodge’s library,” Abby countered, in case Philippe was having ideas about something other than work. “It’s a spacious room with a massive table, comfortable chairs, a fireplace—always good to take away the chill—and complimentary wine and cheese at this hour of the day. Sound good?”

  A beat of silence ensued. Then, in a tone of acquiescence, Philippe replied, “Oui.”

  “Alrighty then.”

  Releasing the emergency brake, Abby guided the Jeep back down Main Street. At the theater, she pointed toward the marquee. The newest movie being shown was a French-language film. But Philippe was already looking past the theater, toward the plate-glass window of his brother’s patisserie. And there was Dora. The town’s eccentric homeless woman, perhaps in an effort to find refuge from the rain, had pushed her grocery cart laden with bags under the pastry shop’s roof overhang. With nose pressed to the glass, and the sides of her eyes shielded with gloved hands, she stood staring into the darkened interior.

  A sudden sharp twinge of sadness gripped Abby’s heart. Hoping to lighten the heaviness, she quipped, “Suppose the poor woman is still waiting for that coffee Jean-Louis promised her.” Abby lifted her foot to the brake and slowed. After rolling down the window, she called out, “Everything all right?”

  Dora turned. The distraught look on Dora’s face suggested to Abby that all was not okay. The homeless woman pulled anxiously at a tuft of matted gray hair and muttered inaudible words. Then, abruptly, she grabbed the handle of her grocery cart and turned back into the rain, heading in the opposite direction of Abby and Philippe.

  Abby swiftly maneuvered a U-turn. “Sorry, Philippe, but this can’t wait. I’ll be back.” She guided the car into a parking spot and left the engine running and the wipers slapping as she jumped out and raced to catch up to Dora. Not wanting to spook the poor woman, widely rumored to be schizophrenic, Abby strolled alongside the shopping cart until they reached the park opposite the police department.

  “Can I buy you coffee, Dora?”

  Dora cocked her head, as if listening to other voices.

  Abby waited.

  Dora finally turned a blue-eyed questioning stare toward Abby.

  “You want some hot coffee, don’t you, Dora? And maybe a sandwich?”

  Dora nodded.

  “So . . . how about I help you push your cart with all those bags to the diner over there?” Abby proffered a helping hand, but Dora adamantly pushed it away.

  “Okay. You push, and I’ll walk with you. We can leave the cart next to the diner window. You can see it from inside.” Abby knew the way to communicate with Dora was through simple,
direct sentences and nonthreatening actions. She had dealt with Dora before and understood how quickly and easily the woman became overwhelmed. Certain that Dora was more troubled than usual, Abby wondered if the chef’s death haunted her.

  When they got to the door of the small diner, Dora, emaciated and surely hungry, refused to go inside. Abby entered the diner, where she ordered and paid for a turkey sandwich and coffee. Then she darted back outside and stood in the rain while Dora devoured the sandwich as if it were her last meal.

  Abby waited while Dora sipped the hot coffee, stroking the cup to warm her hands. Finally, she decided to broach the subject of Jean-Louis.

  “Miss our pastry chef, Dora?”

  The gray-haired woman nodded. “My friend.”

  “He gave you coffee, too, didn’t he?”

  Again, Dora nodded.

  “You liked him, Dora. I suppose everyone liked him.”

  Dora shook her head. “No. Not everyone.”

  “Really? Who didn’t like him, Dora?”

  Dora didn’t speak. She cocked her head, as if voices had started chattering in her ear. Abby waited her turn. A beat later, Dora tilted the paper cup and swallowed the last sip of the fragrant, hot coffee. She licked her lips and shoved the cup back at Abby.

  “Good, huh? Refill? You want another?”

  When Dora didn’t reply, Abby figured another cup of coffee couldn’t hurt. Although the poor woman’s thinking might be tortured and confused, it was also possible that she saw or heard something prior to finding the body. Dora frequently slept in business doorways and alleys, as well as by the creek. In fact, she prowled about at all hours, and she knew things. Abby would be patient and kind. Dora would open up.

  “I’ll be right back, Dora. Don’t go, okay?”

  But when Abby returned with the replenished cup of coffee, she discovered that Dora, like a wild bird, had flown away—shopping cart, bags, and all.

  The unseasonably cool breeze had chilled Abby to the bone. The drizzling rain had ruined her red silk skimmers and frizzed her hair. When Philippe offered his room at the lodge as a place for her to dry off and a change of clothes as a substitute for her drenched clothing, she demurely declined in favor of driving home to change and then returning. They would have a bite to eat and go through the property and reports together.