A Fresh Kill

by Eryn Scott

  It had to be something else.

  They each began spouting their own excuses. Paul was stressed, Suze tired. It was nothing. Really. Hadley’s stomach dropped as she took in their expressions, their stories. Sure, she could tell something was up, but she still didn’t have a clue what it was or why they would need to keep it from her.

  Great. She could read Luke Fenton now, but not her brother and her best friend?

  “Just forget it, both of you. I’m sorry I brought it up,” Hadley said, frustrated. “Plus, we’ve got some information you’re going to want about the case,” she said to Paul, walking over to the couch and plopping herself into it.

  Suze was already standing near the armchair, so she sat in that while Paul came around and settled on the opposite end of the couch from Hadley.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  The spilled all they’d learned about Vivian and her rumored affair with Charlie.

  “Love and lust are good motives for murder, for sure.” Paul rubbed the back of his neck as he seemed to be thinking through the implications of what they’d told him. “Okay, I think that’s enough to get McKay involved. I’ll ask him if we can go in and question her.”

  “Any movement with the other suspects?” Suze asked.

  “Leo doesn’t have an alibi other than he was setting up for the market. He was back and forth, though, and everyone is always so focused on their own booths it would’ve been easy for him to slip away and go over to Charlie’s van.”

  “And Barry?” Suze asked.

  Paul sighed. “Pretty much the same story as with Leo. Barry was at the market setting up, so he had just as much opportunity as Leo.”

  “The difference between Leo and Barry, though, is Barry has access to the murder weapon.” Hadley cringed at the unavoidable truth.

  “Yeah, I’d say both of them have an equal reason to want Charlie dead, but Barry has bees at his disposal.” Suze’s face wrinkled into a frown.

  “I just can’t…” Paul paused. “Barry seems like the last person who would use bees as weapons. He keeps honeybees, which means they die when they sting. I can’t see that man sacrificing more of his bees just to teach someone a lesson, whether he meant to kill him or not.”

  “Can you send the bees found in the van to a lab somewhere to figure out if they’re the same kind Barry keeps?” Hadley leaned forward. When Paul agreed and wrote it on his list, she added, “That brings up something else that doesn’t make sense to me. How would Barry know Charlie was deathly allergic to bees in the first place? He barely knew the guy.”

  “Leo would’ve been much more likely to know, given their history together,” Suze said.

  “Or, the person who makes even more sense is someone who was romantically involved with him.” Hadley tipped her head to one side. “Vivian makes the most sense to me.”

  Suze snapped her fingers. “If he was having an affair, maybe his wife or Vivian’s husband found out! We need to put them on the suspect list as well.”

  Taking it all in, Paul nodded. “I’ll let the sheriff know to question Vivian’s husband about his whereabouts, but I know he already cleared Charlie’s ex-wife. She was out to brunch with friends and the restaurant staff. If she’s his ex-wife, and has been for some time, it takes away most of her motive. I’ll dig deeper into Vivian’s relationship with Charlie and see if we can analyze the bees. I think there’s an entomology department at Northern Washington University we might be able to send them to,” he said, naming the university just over the mountains in Pine Crest.

  “Speaking of M&M,” Suze said, “who does he think the killer is?”

  Paul’s face tightened. “He’s convinced it’s Barry. He won’t say it outright until he has definitive proof, but I can tell that’s what he’s betting on.”

  “Did you tell him what you said to us about Barry hurting bees?” Hadley’s voice cracked around the question, scared for her favorite beekeeper.

  Her brother nodded. “I did, but I didn’t push him. He’s letting me take more of a lead on this case, something he’s never let me do before, and I don’t want to ruin it. Plus, I think I can do more to help Barry and Leo by finding who actually did it rather than arguing with McKay.”

  Hadley chewed on her lip, but conceded he was right.

  “I think you’re right.” Suze smiled at Paul. “The best thing we can do is to focus on finding the real killer.”

  “You’ve got a long list of stuff there.” Hadley pointed to the pad sitting next to her brother. “What can we do to help?”

  Paul scratched his forehead, his signature stalling-for-time move. Though he let the two civilians help out, he was careful about what he let them do.

  “If you two could figure out what kind of bees Barry keeps, it would be helpful to know for when we get information back about the ones that killed Charlie,” he said finally.

  The women agreed, and Hadley held back her excitement at having a job to do, knowing it was nice of Paul to let them be involved at all.

  “Okay.” Paul stood, tucking the pad of paper into his back pocket. “I’d better get going.”

  “Me too,” Suze said, following suit. “I’ve got some work to catch up with after all our sleuthing.” She shot a smirk in Hadley’s direction.

  Hadley only groaned. “I’ve got packing to do. So much packing.”

  “You’ll find a house. Don’t worry,” Paul said with a reassuring pat on her shoulder.

  “Thanks,” she said, waving goodbye as they left.

  When she turned around, Ansel was back at the laundry room door, hissing and pacing. Sighing, she went over to try to calm him down. She sank to the kitchen floor, petting him as he climbed into her lap.

  “Maybe bringing the kitten home was just another in a series of terrible ideas I’ve had lately, huh buddy?”

  Even though he purred, the cat glared as he blinked up at her with his amber eyes.

  15

  The next day was cloudy and muggy. Suze and Hadley weren’t the only slow-to-move vendors that morning as they set up for the Saturday market. By the time she sat down in the chair behind her jam table, Hadley’s T-shirt clung to her uncomfortably. She couldn’t tell whether or not to wear her sunglasses to block out the white glare the clouds created.

  It was a good thing they still had a few minutes before the market opened. Hadley needed to cool down a little before she was expected to talk to customers.

  “Any changes with the felines?” Suze asked, swiping sweat off her forehead.

  Hadley shook her head. “Nope. If anything, it’s worse. Ansel hissed at me this morning when I tried to move him away from the laundry room door.”

  “And Miss Kitten?”

  “She’s gotten over being tired and has now become playful. She seems upset being cooped up in that tiny laundry room.”

  Hadley couldn’t believe the amount of stress she’d created for herself by bringing the kitten home. She’d thought she was doing the right thing, and it had backfired completely.

  “You know, Paul’s not your only option if you don’t want to keep her.” Suze arched an eyebrow.

  “You want a cat?” Hadley asked. “I thought you were a dog person?”

  Suze had said as much on many occasions, which was why Hadley hadn’t even thought of her when they’d found the kitten yesterday.

  “I am a dog person.” Suze fanned her face with one of the signs for her table. “I didn’t mean me. There are tons of cat lovers in Stoneybrook. And people love kittens.” She shrugged.

  Hadley pressed her lips together. “Oh. Right. Yeah.” She bobbed her head in agreement, but deep down knew she didn’t want to give the kitten away. Last night, she’d gone into the laundry room to sit with her for a little while so she wouldn’t get lonely. She was not only cute as pie, but super sweet to boot. She’d given Hadley about a million head boops, all while purring up a storm.

  “But...?” Suze smirked.

  “I like her. A lot.”
<
br />   “So give it time.”

  Hadley agreed as customers began walking through the market.

  They were quite busy for the first hour—Hadley barely had a chance to catch her breath in between customers. But she managed to sell out of all of her stock in that hour. The peach lavender jam she’d made on a whim had been a big hit. She put up her “Sorry, sold out!” sign, glad she’d made it for the few times a year such an event took place.

  “Hey, I’m gonna go shop around,” she told Suze as she headed toward the beginning of the market. Suze waved as she rang up a customer buying a dozen of her printed cards.

  It was funny that such a cloudy day would bring out so many shoppers. When she’d first started selling at the market, Hadley expected the sunniest days to be the busiest. But it was often the opposite. Pure, sunny days in the valley often stole customers off on hikes, bike or horseback rides, or river rafting. Rainy days weren’t great for crowds either, but it was those overcast days which tended to be the biggest moneymakers.

  Toward the market entrance, Hadley spotted Barry’s honey stand and noticed he was without customers at the moment. She remembered, all too late, that she was supposed to come up with a way to inconspicuously figure out what kind of bees Barry kept. Instead, she’d been too focused on the kitten and packing. Wracking her brain as she walked forward, she tried to make it up on the spot.

  I could tell him I’m doing research for… No. Maybe if I tell him I want to keep my own bees? Or would he just see me as competition? Her thoughts raced for a solution as she closed in on his booth.

  Then she overheard a customer standing in front of Wendy’s coffee cart tell her husband, “Honey, doppio is just a fancy way of saying decaf.”

  Wendy said, “Actually, doppio is a double shot of espresso.” She winked at Hadley as she noticed her passing by.

  The woman’s gentle correction caused a light bulb to go off in Hadley’s brain. That was it! She loved talking to customers about the difference between jams, jellies, and preserves whenever they asked her, or—on certain occasions—when they called her jams preserves. The corrections were never borne from a frustration with the customer, but rather an excitement about her craft.

  An excitement she knew her fellow vendors shared for their creations.

  Barry smiled up at her as she stepped up to his booth. His wild, white hair framed his wrinkled face. “Morning, darling.” Lovely crow’s-feet appeared next to his brown eyes as he greeted her.

  Hadley’s heart stepped in the way, almost blocking her from her mission from Paul. The man was the sweetest and had never been anything but supportive and lovely to her.

  Finding out the truth is helping him, she reminded herself with a steadying breath.

  “Hi, Barry.” Hadley picked up her favorite blend of his honey, knowing she’d need more to make another batch of the honey chutney, and handed him cash for her purchase.

  Thinking one more moment about her plan, she decided on the untruth she would use to bait the man into a conversation.

  “I have to tell you, I learned the coolest thing the other day, Barry.”

  He leaned forward in anticipation. “You don’t say.”

  She nodded. “I learned there’s a certain type of honeybee that dances.” A smile overcame her features as she remembered the first time she’d seen a video of the waggle dance which bees used to communicate the location of flowers to their hive.

  Hadley’s grin was mirrored on Barry’s face. “Actually,” he said, “most types of honeybees have their own dialect of a dance-like form of communication.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek to hold her smile from getting any bigger as he took the bait. “Interesting. I saw a video of it. They were so cute, wiggling around. The bees in the video were a lot darker than the average honeybee, though. I just figured it was specific to that kind.”

  Barry ran a hand through his white beard. “A darker bee might be Russian. I’d have to see it to tell for sure.”

  “Are those the kind of bees you keep?”

  “Oh, I’ve always kept Italian honeybees. They’re what my father kept, and we tend to stick with what we know, right?”

  Hadley agreed. “Well, now I learned a second thing. Russian, Italian. I didn’t know bees came from so many different places.”

  “There are also Carniolan, Buckfast, Caucasian, and German.” He beamed, obviously loving a chance to share his knowledge with a willing listener.

  “Well, thank you. For the honey and the information.” She held up the jar and waved as she left him.

  Dropping the jar off at her own table, Hadley checked in with Suzanne now that she was done helping her customer.

  “Italian bees,” she told her after she explained how she’d gotten Barry to talk.

  Suze frowned. “Aww. I can’t believe you went sleuthing without me.”

  “Sorry.” Hadley wrinkled her nose. “I just got excited. But you can help me with the next part.”

  “Next part?” Suze narrowed her eyes. “Paul just said to find out about the bees.”

  Hadley put a hand on her hip. “Since when do we do everything Paul says?”

  Suze swallowed, but then grinned. “Right. What’s the plan?”

  Hadley eyed the Valley Wildflowers booth down by the Fenton Farms stand. Jessie stood behind the table instead of Leo. It wasn’t unusual for Jessie to help out in her dad’s shop or in his place at the market, but this time felt different. Between his absence in the shop on Monday and a lone Jessie today, it felt to Hadley as if he were hiding.

  “We’re going to question Jessie and see if we can’t get her to tell us the real reason her dad hasn’t been around since Charlie was killed.”

  “Both of us at once? But who will watch our stands?” Suze asked.

  Hadley’s scheming smirk fell flat. While she had sold out of her jams, Suze still had prints and a few originals left. She didn’t want her friend to miss out on any sales. Because she was a good friend, Hadley said, “I got to talk to Barry, you take Jessie. I’ll stay here.”

  Suze smiled a thank you and was about to head that way when Potholder Penny walked over from the next booth.

  “You two looking for Leo, I hear.” The middle-aged woman snapped gum as if she were a teenager at the mall.

  Hadley crossed her arms in front of her. “You eavesdropping again, Penny?”

  Penny put up her hands as she said, “I can’t help it if you’re talking super loud.” The problem with the gesture was that she was still wearing a potholder on each of her hands as she often did to model their design.

  The sight of her standing there, potholder-covered hands raised, made Hadley and Suze sputter with barely contained laughter. Penny didn’t seem to find it as funny as they did, so they composed themselves as well as humanly possible and concentrated on her first statement.

  “Do you know where Leo is?” Hadley asked, wiping happy tears from her eyes.

  Lowering her mitts, Penny folded them in front of her. “I heard he skipped town because he’s the one who put those bees into Charlie’s van.”

  Luckily, Hadley and Suze had Paul, so they knew better than to believe obvious untruths such as that statement. Paul had been in to question Leo himself. The man hadn’t run away. But he was hiding something.

  “You really think he did it?” Suze asked, leveling her most dubious gaze on Penny.

  Penny slapped a mitted hand over her heart. “Me? I don’t think he did. I’m just hearing a lot of talk and there are people out there who think he did.”

  “Okay, so these people—who are definitely not you—” Hadley said, “what are they saying is the reason behind why Leo killed Charlie?”

  “Wedding Gate, of course.” Penny leaned forward as she whispered, her eyes widening.

  What Penny was referring to was, of course, the scandal that had taken place around Christmas last year when Leo had landed a high-end client from Seattle through a wedding expo. The young woman had been from an a
ffluent family, deeply entrenched in the coffee capitol’s social scene. Her wedding was to be featured in all of the popular Northwest bridal magazines and would’ve been amazing for publicity.

  Charlie, who’d been at the same expo, had tracked her down once she’d left the Valley Wildflowers table. He’d convinced her there was a new strain of beetle which was ravaging the Cascade Valley and even he wouldn’t have taken her on as a client because the beetles were ruining the flowers. He implied that Leo might very well destroy her wedding day with these hole-filled, infested flowers. The girl was as gullible as she was rich, it turned out, and she went straight back to Leo and canceled her appointment. Charlie hadn’t stopped there, doing the same thing to the next two clients, all three of them canceling even after Leo assured them it was a lie.

  Leo had been crushed, but even more than that, he had been furious.

  “But Wedding Gate was six months ago. Why would Leo wait until now to get his revenge?” Suze asked.

  Penny waggled her eyebrows as if she were a Marx brother who’d just spotted a pretty girl. “That’s the interesting thing. Thea Clark just told me she saw Leo’s flower shop listed on a realty site. Then, after Charlie showed up dead, the listing disappeared.”

  Hadley and Suze glanced at each other. They’d known about the shop being up for sale, but Hadley hadn’t gone back to see whether or not it still was. It was entirely plausible that Leo had gotten to the point where he had to put his business up for sale, had blamed it on Charlie, and killed him to get revenge. Or maybe Leo thought he would have to sell the place if Charlie was going to compete with him, but with the other flower seller out of the picture, he would get to stay open.