by Bree Baker
She shook her head in disbelief. “It was as if someone uncorked fifty years of pent-up pining the minute he heard Mitzi Calgon was coming to Charm. He’s binged all those old Blackbeard’s Wife movies a half dozen times this week alone, and he reconnected with her fan club, which is online now but was originally a newsletter sent through the mail.”
I wrinkled my nose and mouthed, “Wow.”
“Yeah.” Amelia’s blue eyes were tight with humility. She and her dad were close, but he still embarrassed her on occasion. When he went out in public dressed as Blackbeard, for example.
“Mitzi went to eat lunch before the show starts,” I said. “You must’ve just missed her.”
Mr. Butters turned for a look down the hallway he’d just exited, the long plastic sword on his belt slapping against chair legs as he moved, like playing cards in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. The multitude of buckles on his knee-high pirate boots jingled with every step. “Bummer.”
Wyatt frowned. “I gave up my office when her assistant said Mitzi needed a dressing room for the day. We poked our head in there after I snuck these two through the back door, but she wasn’t there.”
Amelia sighed. “The whole building and most of the parking lot is full of folks trying to get a look at Mitzi, so Wyatt figured the back door was our best chance of getting in without half the crowd screaming over the injustice.”
“Smart,” I said. “We’re going to invite Mitzi to Aunt Fran and Aunt Clara’s tonight for dinner. You should come.” I slid my gaze to each of the three faces, extending the offer to Wyatt if he was interested.
Mr. Butters’s jaw dropped.
Amelia smiled. “We’d love to.”
A sudden bout of feedback screeched through the speakers and a pleasant female voice temporarily replaced my classical playlist. “Testing,” drawled a woman I recognized as Rose, the documentary’s producer. She gave the microphone’s padded cover a few sound whacks with her finger.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Several stagehands offered her a thumbs-up.
“Ten minutes until the doors open,” she said. “This is it. Everyone in your places. Does anyone need a pep talk? Any last-minute questions?”
A handful of volunteers in Bee Loved T-shirts gathered at the front of the stage, beaming at their leader.
Rose shaded her eyes against the spotlight with one hand and squinted into the sparse audience. “Where are Mitzi and Odette?”
“Who?” Amelia asked.
Aunt Clara leaned in. “I think Odette is Mitzi’s assistant’s name.”
“I’ll get them,” I volunteered, throwing one hand up and nearly shouting the words. “Be right back!” I turned and scurried away, thrilled for an excuse to talk to Mitzi again so soon.
To my great dismay, Wyatt’s office was still empty. A salad sat, untouched, in its clear plastic take-out container on his desk. No signs of Mitzi or the blond. I turned in a small circle, considering the possibilities, then darted back into the hall. I headed for the staff’s restroom next. “Mitzi?” I asked, pushing the door wide.
Every stall was open and the sinks were all dry. No signs anyone had been there recently.
I raised my shoulders and palms as I entered the luncheon room, all eyes on me. “I didn’t see them.”
Rose groaned into the microphone, then whipped a finger in large overhead circles. “Twelve o’clock.”
Wyatt, now positioned at the back of the room, pulled the double doors open. The guards standing sentinel outside began accepting tickets from those lucky enough to have gotten their hands on them.
“Are you taping this for the blog?” Amelia asked.
I rubbed sweat-slicked palms over the material of my dress before taking a seat. “I think so,” I said. Assuming I could keep my anxious hands from shaking.
Tables filled quickly, and the lights dimmed. I crossed my fingers under the table, hoping Mitzi was in place behind the curtain, awaiting her introduction.
A spotlight followed Rose across the stage to the podium, her trendy blouse and thick dark hair fluttering with each brisk step. “Flight of the Bumblebee” rose through the speakers, eliciting laughter from the crowd.
“Hello,” Rose began in the slow, easy drawl of someone clearly from the South. “Thank y’all for coming out tonight. My name is Rose Long. I’m a member of the Bee Loved board of directors and producer of our upcoming Bee the Change documentary.” She paused and smiled through a small amount of clapping. “I appreciate that,” she said as the room quickly quieted once more. “I know who you’re really here to see, and that’s okay by me.”
The crowd erupted.
“Mitzi Calgon is one of the kindest, most selfless, most generous people I know, and we’re honored to have her here with us. Her incredible passion for the future of the American honeybee is absolutely priceless.” Rose waited through a much longer round of applause before speaking again. She scanned the room slowly and carefully. Looking for someone? Something? Mitzi? She gripped the microphone in one hand and gave the curtain behind her a hopeful look. “Without further ado, Ms. Mitzi Calgon.”
Rose stepped aside and the heavy velvet curtains were drawn apart with a flourish.
The spotlight hit the X taped to the floor, but no one was there.
Then, searching, the beam landed on the large plexiglass box situated along the far left of the stage.
A horrendous scream ripped from my throat, joining multiple others, as Mitzi’s red and swollen face came into view, pressed firmly against the plexiglass from inside the bee box. Her unseeing eyes stared blankly back at the sea of horror-struck fans.
Chapter Two
Two hours later, I sat against the wall of a room crawling with men and women in uniforms. EMTs had treated numerous audience members for shock. The coroner had examined Mitzi before loading her onto a backboard, then wheeling her away on a gurney. My heart was in a vise.
Members of the crime scene team photographed the area and searched for clues as to how a woman allergic to bees had wound up inside a giant box filled with them. Everyone already knew the answer. Murder.
Amelia leaned against her dad as they awaited their turn to speak with Detective Grady Hays, Charm’s newest and only homicide detective. Grady had single-handedly interviewed every guest in the room, beginning with those farthest from the stage, dismissing them quickly until only those seated at my table remained.
“Amelia,” Grady said. “Mr. Butters.” He shook their hands, looking completely exhausted.
I wished I knew why, but Grady had put a substantial distance between us after kissing me under some mistletoe at Christmas. It was rude behavior by any standard, and I often fell asleep at night stewing over all the ways I’d tell him about it. Strangely, the sunrise routinely made a coward of me, so I’d kept my thoughts on the matter to myself so far. Now that spring had sprung, I was fairly certain any perceived injustice I’d felt during the winter had passed its statute of limitations.
I gave Amelia an encouraging smile, then turned to watch my aunts, now dressed in their beekeeping attire, deal with the bees still inside the box. They’d been given booties for their feet and instructed to touch as little as necessary while righting the observational beehive. The fear I’d harbored for the bees before was nothing compared to what I felt now. Still, my aunts carried on, righting the toppled hive and tending to the tiny killers’ needs.
Grady’s voice drew my attention away from the scene onstage. “You too, huh?” he asked Mr. Butters, examining his costume.
Mr. Butters had taken off the faux black beard and big hat with the plume, but his ruffled white shirt, stretchy black trousers, and tall buckled boots remained. “Mitzi Calgon was pure talent. She was my hero when I was a drama major.”
Amelia patted her father’s arm. “Mine too, Dad.”
Amelia had followed in her father�
��s footsteps, studying art and theater, music, and literature, though in the end she’d chosen a business degree and used it to open a bookstore on Main Street, Charming Reads.
Grady gripped his deeply creased forehead. “Any idea who’d want to hurt her?”
“No,” Mr. Butters answered flatly. “It’s nonsense. Mitzi was a legend. An American icon. A treasured part of cinematic history.”
“Detective.” One of the local cops strolled in our direction, a series of evidence bags gripped in one hand, a painting on canvas in the other. “We found these in the victim’s dressing area.”
Amelia’s tanned cheeks went pink. Mr. Butters closed his eyes.
I made my way to their sides, unclear about the reason they both looked so uncomfortable but ready to support them however I could.
Grady flipped through the evidence bags, squinting briefly at the contents in each. The first few contained photos of Mitzi taken in Charm. She didn’t seem to be aware of the photographer’s presence. Next, Grady stopped at a bagged sheet of parchment paper, intentionally ragged at the edges and discolored for an aged look. “You are moonlight on the ocean,” he read. “A siren song in my heart. Love me the way I love you and we shall never be apart. Deny me this gift and sorry you’ll be, when your beautiful soul is swallowed by the sea. Forever your beloved.” Grady grimaced. He returned the awful poem and stalker photos to the cop before taking a closer look at the painting.
I recognized the familiar strokes and style immediately, then understood the source of Amelia and her father’s discomfort.
“Is this your signature?” Grady asked, turning the painting of a youthful Mitzi to face Mr. Butters. Anyone who’d spent time in Amelia’s bookstore would recognize the bulbous letter B and series of jagged scratches. It was a match to every fairy-tale rendition he’d made to mark her aisles. Grady’s son, Denver, probably had at least one work with a matching signature on his bedroom wall.
“Yes,” Mr. Butters whispered, “but it’s not what you think.”
Grady gave the painting another long appraisal. “It looks like a nudie version of Mitzi Calgon in her twenties.”
Amelia’s face went red. “It’s a swimsuit!” she gasped. “This is a scene from the first movie.” She covered her horrified expression with both hands and turned to me, wide eyes peeking over the tops of her fingertips.
I stared at the ethereal image of Mitzi submerged in water. A muted gray scale gave way to hints of lavender and teal along the canvas’s edges, where lost air bubbles drifted away from her. Long raven hair curled over her shoulders and hovered around her iridescent skin like an apparition in the dark water. The string bikini hung low on her narrow hips, leaving little to the imagination.
Mr. Butters’s work was both moving and powerful, but given the day’s events and the uncanny way this image went along with the creepy parchment poem, an argument could be made that this was a work of foreshadowing. An image of Mitzi’s soul returned to the sea.
Grady passed the canvas back to the waiting cop, who marched it away. “What about the letter and the photos?”
“I’ve never seen those before,” Mr. Butters said.
“Anything at all you can think of that might be useful in some way to me right now?” Grady asked. “Maybe as a fan you’ve heard rumors about a stalker? Someone who was bothering her?”
Mr. Butters’s grave expression fell further. “No.”
Grady gave them each a business card. “Don’t leave the island. Don’t talk to anyone about any of this. Call me if you see, hear, or think of anything I should know.” He shook their hands. Then the three of them looked at me.
“What?” I asked. My croaking voice startled us all.
Amelia smiled sadly. “If you want us to wait, we can walk home with you.”
“No. I’m okay,” I promised. “I’m not on your way, and I’m going to wait for my aunts.”
“Okay,” Amelia said.
“Detective?” A woman in a Charm PD windbreaker arrived with Odette at her side. Amelia and her dad hung back, listening covertly, I suspected, while I stared openly at the leggy blond last seen with Mitzi. “I found this one in the dressing room with the victim’s lunch in her hands,” the officer reported. “She says she’s Ms. Calgon’s personal assistant.”
Grady cocked a hip. “You got a name?”
“Odette Minoa.”
He nodded. “What were you doing in the victim’s dressing room?”
Odette shifted her weight, looking simultaneously heartbroken and ashamed. “I went to collect her meal and clean up, but she hadn’t eaten, so I was going to put the whole thing in a refrigerator if I could find one.”
Her story sounded wildly suspect to me. “Where have you been?” I asked, anger burning more loudly in the words than I’d intended. “I looked for you and Mitzi, but you were nowhere. Not in Wyatt’s office. Not the restroom. And now she’s dead.” A tidal wave of emotion crashed into my chest, stealing my breath. How had this happened? How could Mitzi Calgon be gone? We’d just met. We were going to have midnight pancakes. My knees went weak, and I collapsed onto the nearest chair.
Odette crossed her arms. “I went outside to make a phone call. I came in when I heard the sirens.”
“What about Ms. Calgon?” Grady asked.
“She went to eat. I figured she’d call if she needed anything, but she rarely does. She should’ve been busy with her speech and the luncheon for another hour at least. If she stayed to sign autographs, she might’ve been here all afternoon. So I took my time.”
My aunts appeared in my periphery, moving slowly in our direction, each with her protective hat and veil tucked under one arm. Their eyes were red and puffy and their faces splotchy—not from the bees, but from tears shed as they’d worked. They enveloped me in a group hug when they reached my chair, and my tears flowed freely.
Aunt Fran was the first to pull away and straighten her spine. “We never should have invited her here.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t say that. This isn’t our fault.”
“Not your fault,” she said, “It was Clara and I who recalled her friendship with Hazel and tried to capitalize on it. We’re the ones who asked her to come. She was retired, and we dragged her out here so she could be murdered.”
Odette shrieked. “Murdered! You said she’d been stung!”
Grady cleared his throat, clear gray eyes scanning Odette’s face. “Ms. Calgon was in the demonstration box with the bees and educational hive when the curtain was pulled back. She was stung multiple times, but the cause of death is still being determined.”
Odette swung her attention to the plexiglass box on stage. “Where is she now?” she demanded. “I want to see her.”
Grady gave a stiff dip of his chin. “I have a few more questions if you wouldn’t mind coming with me.” He lifted a hand to the nearest cop and received an answering nod in return. Grady moved his gaze to my aunts, then to me. “You ladies going to be all right?”
Aunt Clara wiped her eyes with a small eyelet handkerchief and sniffled. “Yes. Wyatt’s taking us home as soon as he finishes locking up.”
Locking up? I turned for a look at the now-empty room and through the double doors, standing open and unguarded. The lobby was empty. The building quiet. Guests had been evacuated. Witnesses questioned and released. The nature center was a crime scene.
Wyatt moved into view, cutting through the doors as if on cue. He shook Grady’s hand, then wrapped one strong arm around each of my aunts’ narrow waists. “Everyone ready?”
I lifted an index finger to the numerous bruises lining his forearms. “Wyatt?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, catching my eye with a wink. “I’m good. You okay to get home? There’s plenty of room in my truck. Extended cab.”
“No. Thank you. I think I need the fresh air and exercise.” I forced a tight
smile and followed Wyatt and my aunts to the lobby and waited to be released by the officer manning the door. Grady and Odette brought up the rear.
I thanked the officer at the door for setting me free, then stopped to take in the presence of Grady’s former mother-in-law on the sidewalk.
She straightened when she saw us and immediately locked her gaze onto Grady.
The officer she’d been waving her hands and barking at nearly ran when she flipped her palm to dismiss him.
I raised an exhausted hand in greeting. “Senator Denver.”
“Everly.” Her gaze flicked briefly to me before returning to Grady. His son had been named after the senator, his late wife’s mother, and Senator Denver had recently purchased the largest manor on our island for a part-time home. She claimed to want to be near her grandson and maybe run for mayor of Charm instead of continuing her career in DC, but so far, she’d shown no sign of giving up her previous life. In fact, I suspected her underlying motivation for the move and property purchase was to persuade Grady to help her with a project. She’d said as much last winter, but since Grady had withdrawn from my life, I couldn’t be sure.
Senator Denver had spent time in the military before making a move to politics, and it was evident in her disposition, posture, and stare. That was probably why her slightly unsettled expression struck me as something to worry about. If I wasn’t emotionally drained already, I probably would have worried.
Instead, I turned to study the wordless exchange passing between her and Grady. A nearly imperceptible shake of his head dragged her shoulders down by two inches.
Whatever that was about, I didn’t want to know. I wanted to go home, relieve my helper, and serve twenty flavors of delicious iced teas until Mitzi’s swollen face was no longer in the forefront of my mind.
“See y’all later,” I said quietly, stepping into the crowd corralled in the parking lot.
Apparently, escorting folks from the building hadn’t guaranteed they’d leave the premises. The crowd had easily doubled since my morning arrival, and the number of people in pirate costumes had quadrupled. Just two hours since Mitzi’s death and the fans were in a frenzy. One Blackbeard impersonator was selling black armbands from a big cardboard treasure chest for five bucks a piece and calling them “remembrance bands.” Other loiterers and lookie-loos carried poster boards on sticks and handmade banners proclaiming their devastation at the loss of a national treasure. Everywhere I looked there were images of Mitzi with angel wings, ascending into the clouds or sailing off on a pirate ship under captions like “The maiden’s final voyage.” I bit my lip against the argument that Blackbeard’s wife wasn’t exactly a maiden and the sign made no sense. Mitzi’s death made no sense.
