Death By A HoneyBee (20 page)

    
“Is that what you call it?” retorted Matt.

    
“My Cherry Valance to your Matthew Garth,” Franklin quipped, referring to Howard Hawk’s
Red River
.
 

 
   
I looked accusingly at Matt.
 
“You taught him the movie game?”

    
Matt grinned sheepishly.
 

    
“You are not thinking correctly,” continued Franklin.

    
Both Matt and I looked cluelessly at each other.
 

     
“Look, someone is trying to spook you, Josiah, may I be so familiar. Mrs. Reynolds is just too formal after seeing you in your old lady undies. Sorry, but your shift had pulled up, let’s not talk about how embarrassing that was to see. I thought I was going to go blind.”
 

     
He turned to Matt, who stared furiously back at him.
 
“Well, I did,” Franklin said.
 
“Who want to see an old lady catcher’s mitt?”
 
He continued, “Instead of spending a fortune on lab tests and lawyers, just use the Internet.
 
Everyone spills their most personal affairs on the web.”

    
I had no idea where Franklin was going with this diatribe.
 
I was still wondering if I had had clean underwear without holes on when they found me.

    
“First of all, the language is just over the top.
 
Who uses thee as you anymore?
 
Comes across as very theatrical.
 
Know anybody that speaks this way, maybe some old Amish lover you’re not telling us about?”

    
I shook my head.

   
“While you were at the hospital with your husband, did any of the nurses, staff or doctors disapprove of your treatment of your husband?” asked Franklin.

   
“Not that I know of.
 
Everyone was professional and courteous.”
 
I thought for a moment.
 
“Golly, Franklin, I’m only fifty.
 
You make me sound like I’m decomposing.
 
Matt, do I really look that bad?”
     

   
“Josiah, stay focused.
 
Okay?”

   
“Oh my God!
 
My body really does disgust you,” I said with my voice raised.
 

   
“Josiah,” said Matt exasperated.
 
“I think you are gorgeous for someone your age.”

   
“
My age!
”

   
“Let’s get back to the subject at hand,” commanded Franklin. “I bet everyone was listening and someone on the staff disapproved.
 
There are no secrets kept from the people who empty the bedpans.
 
It may have looked like you were a harpy trying to keep this man’s true love away.
 
Do you remember any names?”

   
“No,” I answered sullenly.

   
“That’s okay,” said Franklin, ignoring the storm clouds gathering in my eyes.
 
He began typing.
 
“I would bet that either Tellie or Taffy has a Facebook page.
 
What we can do is see if any of their Facebook friends worked at the hospital during the time your husband was admitted.
 
That person could have told Tellie or Taffy about your fight with the mistress.”
 
He fiddled with the laptop.
 
“Tellie doesn’t have a page but Taffy does.
 
Let’s see who her friends are.”

  
He typed some more while whistling.
 
“Okay, here is a list of friends.
 
Let me know if any of the names seem familiar - or, better yet, look at their pictures.”
 
He placed the laptop on my lap.

  
“Don’t you have to be accepted as a friend first before you can have access to her page?” quizzed Matt.

  
“Not if she hasn’t put that on her privacy setter,” said Franklin.
 
“She’s letting everyone have access to her page.”
  
                                                                                                                                             

  
Matt looked over Franklin’s shoulder.
 
“It says right here on Taffy’s profile that she works in the tourist industry in Berea.
 
She must go through Richmond to get to work.”

   
I scrolled down several dozen pictures trying to ignore the incendiary comments on her page about her father’s death.
 
My name was mentioned several times.
 
Great.
 
Finally I came to a woman who seemed familiar.
 
I pointed her out to Franklin.
    

   
“See – all you needed was a computer.
 
Not a detective.”
  
Franklin took his computer back and typed in some more.
 
He looked up triumphantly.
 
“It seems a Nancy Wasser is a retired ICU nurse from the Medical Center.
  
You now have your link and can reasonably conclude that Taffy sent those letters.”
 
He punched in some letters.
 
“I’m going to email her that I know Miss Josiah and that I think her honey tastes awful.
 
Let’s see what she says in return.”

   
“No way,” said Matt.
 
“Unethical. That might be considered entrapment.”

   
“Horse poo!
 
I will do it myself using another name and my other email address.”

   
“If this backfires, I had no knowledge of it – got it?” I said.

   
“Ditto,” said Matt.

   
Franklin smiled.
 
“Quote from
Ghost
?

   
Matt might be right about Taffy.
 
We knew the connection and the manner of the letters.
 
But why would Taffy use such archaic language?
 
Thee and kilt was old mountain language, not in her frame of reference. And why send the letters to me?
 

  
Matt started to say something but my doctor came into the room.
 
Twenty minutes later, I was wheeled to Matt’s waiting car.
 
I felt ugly, fat, and repulsive, but I was on my way home.
 
Those boys should volunteer at a hospice.
 
There’d be laughs for all, including the corpses.
 

17

     
During the next several days, I stayed close to home.
 
Matt and Franklin both made it a point to be at the farm before dark, taking over responsibility for its security and feeding of the animals.
 
I think we were all a little spooked and needed life to assume an aura of calm and routine.
 
Normal and boring sounded pretty good.
    

 
    
It also gave me the time to sew my costume for the annual Cherokee Stump Harvest Ball, which was the farmers’ largest fundraiser.
 
Matt was to be my escort.
 
He was going as Prince Philip and I as Maleficent, one of my favorite Disney characters from childhood, which was not particularly healthy for an eight-year-old.
 
It should have given my mother pause for her child to be pricking her doll’s hands with a needle and shouting, “Touch the spindle.
Touch it, I say
!!!”

   
Sleeping Beauty was so passive, I was yawning even more than she was. Maleficent was a naughty fairy, who dressed in a truly magnificent purple and black gown with matching headpiece and a fantastic staff, making a real fashion statement to my eight-year-old mind.
 
She suited me perfectly

as I felt edgy and discordant, but I planned to have a good time with Matt, who happened to be an excellent dancer.

   
Franklin had already outfitted Matt with tights and a red cape.
 
Matt made Franklin throw away the huge rhinestone codpiece he had glued together, saying he wouldn’t be caught dead in it.
 
Matt topped the costume off by confiscating my great grandfather’s Civil War sword as the Sword of Truth.

  
On the night of the dance, Franklin showed up as giddy as a helicopter mom on prom night.
 
He proceeded to help me into my costume, did my makeup, help don the headgear, and then take pictures of both Matt and myself standing in the hallway holding hands.
 
The only thing missing was a corsage.
 

   
Baby growled as we were leaving and snapped at the back of my dress. Franklin reprimanded him by saying, “Bad Baby.
 
Bad Baby.
 
Be good or I’ll have to discipline you.”
  

   
Matt grinned.
 
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

   
Franklin groaned.
 
“
Dirty Dancing
. Take care now, kids,” he said waving goodbye.
 

   
I knew when coming home, Franklin and Baby would be happily ensconced in my bed while I would have to make do with the guest bedroom.
 
Matt would bed down on the couch or sleep in the cabana.

   
Matt drove my ten-year-old Mercedes to Spindletop Hall, a classically styled mansion built with money from the Salt Dome oil field in Beaumont, Texas.
 
It was so named, as it resembled a spindle top.
 
Miles Frank Yount had acquired the leases on supposedly tapped-out plots and drilled deeper until he hit a second vein of oil in 1925.
 
This was the origin of the great Spindletop fortune.
 
Too bad old Miles died at the age of fifty-three.
 
He didn’t have much time to enjoy his good luck.

   
Yount’s widow, Pansy, along with her grief, moved to Kentucky to take part in the American Saddlebred industry.
 
To claim her place among the gentry, Pansy built Spindletop Hall, a mansion that stood out among mansions in Lexington.

   
The house had 40 rooms including 14 bathrooms, which covered an area of 45,000 square feet.
 
All pipes inside and outside were made of copper, as were 102 window screens.
 
There were seventeen houses for servants, eighteen barns, one tennis court and one swimming pool, which sat on 1,066 acres of rich Bluegrass land.
 
Pansy also had the largest Jersey cattle herd in the United States.

   
But things did not turn out well for Mrs. Yount.
 
The Kentucky Blue Bloods did not accept Pansy or her newly acquired third husband, Mr. Grant, as the Texans were considered “new money.”
 
Our homegrown aristocracy can be very cruel.

   
The house was sold in 1959 to the University of Kentucky for less than its original building cost of a million dollars in 1935, and the locals have jealously guarded it ever since.
  
Brannon thought it one of the most beautiful private residences he had ever seen.
 

   
In 1962, it became a private club for UK and hosted a variety of functions.
 
One of the farmers, also a UK staff member, reserved Spindletop Hall for the farmers’ annual Cherokee Stump Harvest Ball.
 
The grand hall was decorated with pumpkins and its curved double staircase encased with blinking lights and glittering fall leaves.
 
The band played a mixture of rockabilly and swing music, and everyone was decked out in spectacular costumes – a great many of them dressed in authentic-looking Civil War garb.
 
Away from public glare, the farmers could just be themselves, dancing the Cherokee Stomp or old-school jitterbug.
 
There would be much drinking, eating, carousing and gossiping before the night ended.
 
Maybe a little bottom-pinching here and there.
 
Of course, that would occur after the church-going farmers had left.