Mind Your Own Beeswax (18 page)

Carrie Ann snatched Dinky and cooed over her.

“I have to leave for a little while,” I said.

“Why?” Holly wanted to know.

“I have to go hunt morels for a newsletter recipe.”

Holly gave me a you-get-all-the-good-jobs look, one of those mouth-gaping, eye-rolling, this-is-so-not-fair expressions. “And, just so you know, I’m not watching your dog.”

“Do you want to do it instead?” I asked her. “Go out and hunt morels?”

Like my sister was suddenly Miss Outdoorsy.

“Once it stops raining and the sun comes out,” she said. “Yes.
You
can stay and shuffle stock around. Do all the grunt work.”

“The twins do the heavy lifting,” I shot back. “Counting money doesn’t qualify as grunt work. Neither does scheduling.”

“Scheduling is hard work, harder than you think.”

“There are only five of us working here! How hard can it be?”

Carrie Ann moved between us and said, “Forecast calls for rain right into the weekend. So whoever goes is going to get wet.”

Holly looked out the window.

“Then I might as well go now,” I said. “Besides, Holly, you don’t even know where to start looking and I do.”

I scooted out the door before Holly could volley another round.

I trotted through the rain to my house, changed into foul-weather gear, dug out my woven wood basket, and struck out into the woods with the hood of the jacket pulled up over my head.

My sister’s attitude had me grinding my teeth. My mother’s did, too. What they didn’t realize was that I bore all the responsibility if things didn’t go right with the business.

Holly never used an alarm clock. She got out of bed whenever she felt like it. She came in late, didn’t assume responsibility when one of us was sick, and gave me grief every time I asked for help with Queen Bee Honey. Total lack of cooperation!

And where did my mother get off rearranging my store’s shelves? The nerve.

I made an important mental note to find out when the twins’ school year ended so I could hire them full-time for the summer when the tourist traffic was the heaviest. They, at least, were normal, hardworking, dependable employees and, unlike my family members, actually took direction from the owner of the store.

It took quite a bit of stomping through the brush by the river before I calmed myself down and started enjoying the scenery. Being out in nature had that effect on me. Rain or shine, the fresh air and all the wildlife and flora gave me energy and new perspective.

And hunting for morel mushrooms was my favorite spring sport.

Facts about morel mushrooms:

I felt like Little Red Riding Hood skipping through the woods with my basket. Only I wasn’t skipping because the rain made the terrain slippery and also because of my klutz disorder. Walking without tripping was my highest priority. And this time I’d remembered to wear hiking boots rather than flip-flops, which gave me a huge advantage.

Anyway, I made it to the small clearing, within shouting distance of The Lost Mile, where several elms had died last year, making them primo spots for morels this year. I found a long fallen branch and used it to flick leaves around, peering underneath them, while the rain fell gently and steadily. Thankfully, I was toasty warm and dry in my waterproof jacket.

There! Several. And some of them were as big as my fist. Once I spotted the first camouflaged one, my eyes adjusted to their size and shape and others popped into focus.

I hunted and picked until I was sure I’d covered every square inch of the clearing.

Then I hid the basket under a dense bush and made my way into The Lost Mile, along the overgrown logging trail, weaving around puddles and muddy spots until I stood beneath the tree where my bees had swarmed above a dead woman.

I wondered where Hunter had ultimately found Lauren’s body.

Evidence of the murders was gone—the crime tape, the dark stains on the ground, the gun. All gone. The forest had been restored to its natural order. One thing that impacts me every time I go into the wild is how temporary we are and how permanent the natural world is.

Norm Cross’s house and the edge of his property that abutted the tangled web of county and town land should be close by, although I couldn’t be exactly sure of the boundaries. Trees, bushes, and undergrowth all melded into one continuous woodland scene, unconcerned over man-made lines of ownership.

I spotted a tiny worn path that turned into a well-traveled deer trail. It headed in the general direction of the Crosses’ house and probably had been used by them to access the logging road.

So I followed it until it veered off away from the house. But by then I could see the neglected prefab through the trees. I made my way toward it through thick brush, where I managed to run headlong into a wild rose bush. Thorns embedded in cheek flesh really hurt. Much worse than a honeybee sting.

Rule of thumb—watch where you’re going!

It took some effort to pry myself loose and I saw tiny dots of blood on my fingers when I patted my cheek. No big deal, although it felt like my face had been gashed open. I lifted my face to the sky to clean the wounds with rainwater, but as soon as I did, the rain completely stopped. Just my luck.

I kept going, motivated mainly by Hunter’s description of Norm’s Lantern Man poster board. I really wanted to see it. Although I didn’t have a master plan regarding how to accomplish that feat.

If Norm Cross answered the door, I’d talk about Dinky, give him an update, ask him if he was ready to take her back. Then I’d make some kind of excuse to get inside and hope an opportunity arose to get a look at his wall hanging and maybe ask him questions about it.

As an afterthought, I should have brought Dinky along. But I was improvising as I went. This part of my outing wasn’t preplanned.

He didn’t answer his door. I figured I’d for sure get a chance to see the poster board now because most people in our neck of the woods didn’t bother locking their doors. Why should Norm be any different?

When I turned the doorknob though, it didn’t open. Against all the rules of small-town living, his door was locked. I peered in through a dirty window.

“One is open in back, if you want to get in.” A voice came out of the wet background, scaring me into a high-pitched squeal. Jeez!

I clutched my chest and attempted to breath. “Patti! What are you doing here?”

“I scared you,” she said smugly. “You didn’t even know I was here.”

“Where did you come from? You’re right, I didn’t hear you coming.”

“You’re going to make a poor investigative partner unless you start paying attention to your surroundings.”

Partner? Not likely.

“I went in through the back window,” P. P. Patti said.

That’s when I stepped back and noticed she was dressed a lot like me. Rain gear. Outdoorsy jeans. Boots. Dripping water. Except Patti also wore a pair of long yellow latex gloves. “Want to see what I found inside the house?”

“You broke in? Isn’t that illegal?” I figured Patti’s method had to be much more unlawful than my foiled attempt to breeze in the front door.

“I didn’t break in. I crawled in.”

“Same difference.”

“Do you want to see or not?”

“What if Norm comes home?”

Patti shrugged. “If you’re going to be a whiner, forget it.”

Look who was calling me a whiner. That woman could win a poor-me contest in a third-world country hands down.

She proceeded to prove it. “This reporter stuff is rough. I have to carry tons of heavy equipment around like my binoculars and recording unit and pads of paper. And people slam doors in my face the minute I start asking questions. I even got a cut knee from a nail jutting out from the window. See?”

She hiked up her jeans and showed me. After she rolled down her pant leg, she said, “What happened to your face? You look like you were attacked by something with claws.”

“Is it still bleeding?”

Patti moved in close. “It’s kind of dried in ridges. What happened?”

“Rose thorns. What were you doing here in the first place?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“I have Norm’s dog,” I said. “He didn’t answer my phone calls. I’m checking on him.”

Her eyes narrowed, like she had entered my brain and found a whole different story. “We should be official partners.”

“Partners in crime?”

“In solving two murders.”

I’d already decided to stick my nose into the case. Ever since Johnny Jay’s name came up as a suspect, I knew I’d have to add fuel to the fire at his feet and help burn him up. But not with Patti helping me! “That’s why we pay taxes,” I said, arguing against any kind of partnership. “So cops can do that for us.”

“Cops,” she said with disdain. “Johnny Jay is a major suspect, if you believe what’s going around town.”

“Hunter’s on the case, too.”

“Johnny will make it hard for him. He’ll tie Hunter’s hands up so tight, he’ll have rope burns into old age.”

That sure was true. I gave Patti a bit more respect for having some guts and for challenging the legal system. Others in town might be speculating on Johnny Jay’s role in the deaths and talking tough, but when it came to action, most of them would stay home with their blinds drawn rather than take a public stand.

“The police chief is winning the popularity contest.”

“That’s no reason to ignore the other suspects. That is, unless we can really eliminate them with solid proof.” Patti had this weird way of staring without blinking. She was doing it now. “We’ll compare notes later. Do you want to see what I found, or don’t you?”

“Okay, let’s go in,” I said. “Just for a quick peek.”

“You first,” Patti said, walking around to the back where one of the windows was wide open. A window screen leaned up against the side of the house. Patti had raised the window and removed the screen to get inside Norm Cross’s house. What nerve the woman had!

I had to wonder if she’d used the same technique on my house. Spyglass Patti with her binoculars and telescope and her snoopy nose for trouble. Bold. Brassy. And, I hated to admit it, but she’d probably make a really good reporter.

I heaved myself up on the window ledge with a little bit of a butt push from Patti and wiggled in, dropping to the floor hands first. The first thing I noticed was all the water I’d collected out in the rain and how much of it came inside with me. The second thing I noticed were my muddy footprints mingling with Patti’s. We’d have to clean up before we left.

Rising up, I had to give Patti even more credit. She’d heaved me through a window right into the room with the poster board. She knew her stuff.

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked when I noticed she hadn’t made any moves to join me.

“My leg hurts. Not the one that got ripped on a nail, the other one. I whacked it on the window sill coming out and it’s swelling up and I’m going to have one monster of a bruise and—”

I walked away, shutting her voice out.

But if I’d just not been quite so anxious to get inside, if I’d waved a fond farewell to Patti and chucked the whole plan to go inside my neighbor’s house, if I had known ahead of time that Norm was so paranoid he had installed a do-it-yourself burglar alarm and it wasn’t the loud and noisy kind that scared intruders away, but rather the silent kind that auto-dialed the police department and played a prerecorded message which included the exact address of the break-in . . .

If only I could have seen all that in Aurora’s crystal ball, I never would have let Patti suck me into her game of intrigue and espionage.

Or at least, I would have handled things differently.

There’s something exciting about being where you aren’t supposed to be. Exhilarating and frightening all at the same time. My heart pounded in my ears. My breathing grew shallow and rapid. Not at all like yoga uji breath.

I was in a spare bedroom Norm and Hetty had obviously used for storage. Junk was thrown everywhere. A metal-legged table held the following interesting items: