Honey-Baked Homicide

by Gayle Leeson

  “That’s all right. You were awfully absorbed in trying to pick out some rice.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a smile.

  He picked up a bag of the basmati rice like the one I held. “What’s so special about this kind? I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Basmati rice is an aromatic grain that comes from India. When you’re cooking it, it kinda smells—and actually tastes—like popcorn.”

  “Weird. How do you know so much about it? You don’t look Indian.”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but he interrupted.

  “Wait, I know! You’re Amy Flowers, the gal who bought and redid Lou’s Joint,” he said. “Turned it into the Southern Café? Is that the name?”

  “The Down South Café. And yep, I’m Amy.”

  “My wife and I have been meaning to come in there. We’ve heard the food is out of this world. But we typically have dinner whenever we go out to eat and you’re always closed by then.”

  He had me at a disadvantage. He knew me—or knew of me—but I had no idea who he was. Still, I smiled and told him they should stop in sometime.

  “You know what? I’m off on Monday. Are you open on Mondays?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re open every day except Sunday.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best to bring my wife over there for lunch on Monday,” he said.

  “Thank you. I’ll look forward to seeing you both.” I began walking away, but he stopped me.

  “Um . . . the . . . uh . . . the parking lot is all cleaned up and everything . . . right?” He frowned down at me. “I mean, I heard that Stu Landon’s body was found there.”

  “The parking lot is fine. You’d never know such a terrible thing had happened there.”

  “It was terrible, all right. I couldn’t believe it.” He shook his head. “Stu and me . . . we were neighbors.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. My farm is right next to his.”

  “Oh.” Could this be Chad Thomas? The Chad Thomas with the terrible temper? “What’s your name? I’d recently started selling Mr. Landon’s honey on consignment. Maybe he mentioned you.”

  “Chad Thomas.” He watched my face carefully.

  I hoped I didn’t give anything away as I said, “No. But then, Mr. Landon wasn’t much of a talker. He generally left most of the talking to me.”

  He chuckled. “Nope, Landon didn’t say much. He sure loved his bees, though. I think he liked bees better than he did people.”

  I merely nodded.

  “There’s been somebody staying at his place for the past day or two,” Mr. Thomas said. “Have you heard anything about who that could be?”

  “It’s Mr. Landon’s daughter and son. I took them some food yesterday.”

  “So are they living here while they make their dad’s arrangements, or are they planning to make Winter Garden their home now?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t know them well. I feel just terrible for them, being here for the first time under such tragic circumstances.”

  “First time? Huh. I reckon that explains why I didn’t know Landon had any family. He’s lived next door as long as I can remember—my farm was my dad’s before he passed on and handed it down to me—and I never knew Landon to have a wife or kids,” he said. “Where’ve they been?”

  “I believe his daughter said she drove up from Tennessee.” I lifted my shoulders. This conversation was making me uncomfortable. I’d never met Chad Thomas before today, had heard some very unflattering things about him, and didn’t want to discuss Stu or his family with someone who’d probably killed a bunch of the man’s beloved bees.

  Once again, I turned to leave.

  “You haven’t heard anyone say anything about what they plan on doing with the farm?” he asked.

  “No.” I’d already answered this question. Why was he asking it again?

  “I’m just really curious about it because if they want to sell, I’d sure be interested in buying. If you hear that they’re selling, would you ask them to talk with me first?”

  “I honestly don’t know his family,” I reiterated. “I only just met them.”

  His eyes hardened.

  “But if I hear anything, sure, I’ll let you know,” I said.

  He smiled. “I appreciate that. You have a good weekend now, you hear? And me and the missus will do our best to make it in on Monday.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.” I hurried to the dairy case.

  • • •

  Ryan had a corner unit in his apartment building. The buildings were white with burgundy trim. Each apartment had its own small covered porch on the front and a deck on the back. Ryan waved to me from the deck, where he was grilling.

  “Hi,” he called. “Come on up. The steaks are almost done!”

  I walked around to the back and came up the stairs to the deck. I held out the bag. “Here’s your butter.”

  “Thanks. We’ll need it for the rolls.” He gave me a quick kiss before taking a pair of tongs and turning the steaks. “Are you okay? You’ve got sort of a dazed and confused look on your face. You’re not that surprised by my invitation, are you?”

  “No. I just met Chad Thomas in the grocery store.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah . . . I was looking at rice, and he came up behind me. I thought I was in his way, but then he started talking to me. He was probably just trying to be nice.”

  “He probably wasn’t,” Ryan said. “I haven’t had any personal dealings with this man, but from what I’ve heard, he’s someone to be avoided.”

  “I’ve been hearing the same stories you have—well, other than what you’ve seen in police records and stuff—but he was friendly with me, albeit nosy. He said he and his wife had been wanting to check out the café and that they might be there Monday for lunch.”

  “What else? I mean, what was he nosy about?”

  “He started talking about Stu Landon. That’s when he told me he was Mr. Landon’s neighbor,” I said. “And he asked me twice what Mr. Landon’s children intended to do with his farm.”

  “Why’s he so interested? Did he say?”

  “He said he was interested in buying the place. I suppose he wants to expand his farm.”

  Ryan removed the steaks from the grill and placed them on a porcelain serving tray. “So that’s what he was getting at—he wants to buy Landon’s farm, and he thought you’d put the word out for him.”

  “I guess. I told him I’d only just met Madelyn and Brendan.”

  “Get that door for me, would you?”

  I opened the sliding glass door, and we stepped into Ryan’s kitchen.

  “And given his behavior every time he’s been around me, Brendan would do the exact opposite of anything I’d suggest,” I said. “That guy has taken a real dislike to me. Homer says that it might not be me but his dad that Brendan has such animosity toward. But it sure feels like that hostility is being directed at me.”

  Ryan sat the tray on the butcher block table, which he’d set with china, silverware, napkins, and candles.

  I smiled as he lit the two taper candles. “This is beautiful. Thank you for doing all this for me.”

  “You’re welcome. And I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to take Brendan’s behavior too personally. He’s young, he’s just lost a dad who didn’t live with the family, and he’s likely suffering more loss than he even realizes at this point.”

  “Now I feel like a jerk,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been a baby and whined about Brendan not liking me and possibly blaming me for his father’s death.”

  He smiled as he pulled me in for a hug. “You’re the least jerky person I know. You just worry too much sometimes. But tonight we aren’t going to worry about anything.”

  “Okay.”

 
“Promise?”

  “I promise,” I said.

  After we ate dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, we went into the living room. It had light-colored wood flooring, a dark brown leather sofa, a maple and bronze coffee table, and matching end tables. On each end table, there was a lamp with an amber shade. There was a basket in the center of the coffee table containing magazines—the top one was Law Enforcement Technology—and the television remote. The television was located on the wall above the stone fireplace directly across from the sofa. A ficus grew in a large blue vase placed near the window, and there was a bronze-framed mirror above the sofa. I remembered his telling me that his mom had decorated it for him.

  We sat on the sofa and Ryan draped his arm around my shoulders. I rested my head against him.

  “Thanks for dinner,” I said. “I love to cook, but it was nice to have someone prepare a meal for me for a change.”

  “I’ll have to do that more often then.”

  Chapter 8

  I slept in until nearly nine o’clock Sunday morning. Actually, I woke up at my regular time but snuggled back under the covers and dozed off again. And again. I finally dragged my butt out of bed at nine. Then I took a quick bath, had a granola bar with my coffee, and then got dressed and headed for the big house, where Jackie and I always made Sunday lunch for Mom and Aunt Bess. The menu for the day was barbecued chicken breasts, zucchini potato casserole, a garden salad, garlic cheese biscuits, and banana pudding.

  Jackie was already there when I arrived. She was sitting at the kitchen table chopping zucchini. I got another knife and started on the onions. Mom and Aunt Bess were sitting at the table too, and Mom offered to help. I put her to work shredding lettuce for the salad.

  “Jackie was telling us about a man who’s been nosing around trying to find gas,” Aunt Bess said.

  I gave Jackie a questioning look.

  “Roger was working at a construction site when a man from Ives Oil and Gas came by and asked to test the property for natural shale gas,” Jackie explained. “Of course, Roger told the man he’d have to get permission from the owner, but then the man went on to tell Roger that Appalachia has one of the United States’ five largest potentially undiscovered shale gas reserves.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “That’s what he said. He told Roger that the Appalachian Shale Basin is at the top of the list but the area is hampered by the mountainous regions.”

  “I had no idea we could be sitting atop a basin of natural gas,” I said.

  “Neither did I,” said Aunt Bess. “And now I’m afraid our house is right over one of those gas pockets and that we’re all gonna blow up!”

  “I doubt there’s even any gas around here,” said Mom. “From what I’ve heard, that company has been poking around Winter Garden for several days now, and they must not have found a thing. If they had, more people would be talking about it.”

  “Will you call up that Ives man to make sure there’s no gas underneath our house?” Aunt Bess asked.

  “Of course I will.”

  “I’ll go in here to my computer and see if I can find a phone number for them.” Aunt Bess pushed away from the table and strode to the living room.

  “I’m really sorry I opened that can of worms,” Jackie said softly. “I had no idea it would make Granny freak out about the house blowing up like that.”

  “With Aunt Bess, you just never know,” said Mom. “Later on, she could decide that having gas on our property could make us as rich as Jed Clampett and that I could take up with Dash Riprock.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mom. You know Aunt Bess is the one who’d land Dash—especially if she’s telling the story.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  “Hey, guess what?” I asked brightly. “I got to visit one of Stu Landon’s beehives on Friday with his daughter, Madelyn. I was really surprised by how many bees were in the hive.”

  As I was speaking, Aunt Bess returned with a scrap of paper. She slipped it into Mom’s pocket. “There. Now you can call them in the morning.”

  “All right. I will.”

  “Is his daughter planning on staying and taking over the farm?” Aunt Bess asked.

  “She’s not sure. She told me she’d consider staying on but that her brother might want to sell the place.”

  “What’s she like—Stu’s daughter? Is she mysterious?” Her eyes brightened. “Is she foreign? Does she speak with an accent? That would make sense, him probably being a spy and all. It would be like James Bond having a baby with one of those weird foreign women he used to get tangled up with.”

  “Um . . . she’s lived in Cookeville, Tennessee her whole life, so she talks like we do,” I said. “And she isn’t mysterious, as far as I can tell.”

  “Well, just the same, I hope she stays . . . for the bees, if for no other reason. What would happen to the bees if she left? Would they die?”

  None of us could answer Aunt Bess’s question then, so I looked it up online when I got back home late that afternoon.

  I found one beekeeper forum in which a man said he’d been a beekeeper for four years and had eight hives. According to him, the bees practically took care of themselves. Of course, Stu had a different circumstance in that Mr. Thomas’s pesticide spraying forced him to keep his bees locked in their hives overnight.

  Another beekeeper on this same forum reported that a few feral hives and those abandoned by a beekeeper did well on their own but that the majority failed within two years due to disease or queen failure. The British Beekeepers Association advised that honeybees shouldn’t be left unattended for any length of time. The association recommended weekly inspections to prevent swarming between the months of April and August, treatments for parasites in August and September, and feeding during the winter months.

  While learning about honeybees, I also discovered that one should move slowly and wear light-colored clothing around bees because they apparently associated dark colors with predators. And ants, raccoons, skunks, birds, and bears could disrupt your hives. I had a sudden image of Winnie the Pooh—silly old bear.

  But thoughts of cartoon bears aside, there was a lot that could go wrong with the hives should they be abandoned. They would likely collapse soon. I wondered, if Madelyn decided not to stay on in Winter Garden, whether she could possibly relocate the hives. I realized she had more important things on her mind at the moment—her father’s arrangements, her sullen brother—but the bees had been so important to Stu Landon Carver. I knew he’d want them cared for. More than likely, Madelyn knew that too.

  After doing all that pointless research on honeybees—especially since I couldn’t tell Aunt Bess what I’d found without having her worry about them—I updated the Down South Café website. I put the specials for the upcoming week onto the home page. Then I went over to social media. Although most of our regular patrons were older, I’d seen an uptick in traffic among younger people and working professionals since becoming more active on social media. I posted an offer of ten percent off a customer’s total bill if they mentioned the ad when they came into the café.

  • • •

  On Monday morning, Madelyn came in for breakfast. Brendan wasn’t with her, and I was glad. Of course, I tried not to let on that I was.

  I got her some coffee and asked if she’d be dining alone this morning.

  “Yeah. Brendan couldn’t get up. He tends to stay up until dawn and then sleep like the dead.” She looked over at the display case. “I might take him a cookie or something to have when he wakes up.” She smiled wanly. “I know he hasn’t been very nice to you—and I can’t understand why for the life of me. He’s usually such a sweetheart. But he does have a lot on his mind.”

  “I know,” I said, handing her a menu. “You both do. I’ll let you look that over, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  “That’s okay. I k
now what I want. I’d like an omelet with ham, onion, and green peppers, a biscuit with some of Daddy’s honey on it, and a side of hash browns.”

  “Coming right up. Your dad’s honey is delicious. I’m guessing you’ve had it before?”

  She nodded. “It’s not like ours from home. I won’t say Daddy’s is better, just different. The bees here seem to draw from a wider variety of trees and flowers than they do at home.”

  “I know you have much more pressing things on your mind right now, but what will happen to the bees if you decide to sell the farm?”

  “I’d try to relocate Daddy’s hives to our house. Or see if I could find another beekeeper in this area to take them over.”

  “I wish you luck,” I said. “And if there’s anything I can do to help, just say so.” I went into the kitchen to prepare her breakfast.

  A group of students from a nearby college came in and ordered coffee and pastries to go. The pastries had already been made and were in the display case, so Jackie was able to serve them without requiring anything from me. She did slip into the kitchen to tell me that they used the ten-percent-off coupon, so that was good. The advertising was working.

  When I delivered Madelyn’s order to her, I mentioned that there was talk about Ives Oil and Gas Company sending someone to scout local properties for natural gas.

  “My poor Aunt Bess thought the house might blow up, so she’s having my mom ask the company’s representative to come out and test,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything there, but you never know.”

  “Actually, someone from the oil and gas company came out and spoke with Daddy,” she said, sprinkling pepper onto her hash browns. “He was positively not interested in letting them test his property. He was afraid they’d upset the bees.”

  I smiled. “He was awfully protective of those bees, wasn’t he?”

  “He sure was.”

  Homer came in and sat at his usual spot at the counter. “Good morning, Amy!”

  “Hey there, Homer. How are you?”

  “Doing well.”