Mind Your Own Beeswax (35 page)

“T. J. will be right in,” Ali said before she left the room and closed the door softly behind her.

What was I supposed to say to T. J. now? Especially if Ali had been the one driving the car that night? But I didn’t have proof.

I had to get out of here and talk to Patti about this new development.

Patti popped up in the window again. I gave her a time-out sign with my hands. “Mission aborted,” I mouthed slowly.

Then I heard Johnny Jay’s voice from the front reception room. “Got a call,” I heard him say. “Someone’s lurking around outside the building.”

“Hi, Chief,” Ali said. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Made it official a few hours ago. Mind if I check around out back?”

“Not at all,” Ali’s voice said.

Oh no! Some do-gooder thought Patti was trouble. Which she was, but mainly only to me.

I tried punching a warning into my cell phone, but I was flustered and ended up fumbling with the keys. I saw Johnny Jay’s head as he ran past the window.

I considered bolting, since my backup had been exposed. In my panic, that seemed like the most reasonable course of action. Run like crazy. But if I wanted to be smart, I’d stay calm, not let on that anything was wrong.

There went Ali’s head past the window, going in the same direction as Patti and Johnny Jay. I heard voices.

“What happened?” I asked Ali when she came back into the room.

“The Chief chased after somebody, but whoever it was got away. He’s gone after them.”

I yanked off the plastic bib. “I have an emergency back at the store,” I said. “I’ll have to reschedule.”

“Relax,” Ali said. “I’ll handle whatever is going on at the store.” She picked up a mask.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll feel better with a little nitrous oxide. This will be like a three-martini filling.”

“Laughing gas?”

“Try it,” Ali said, drawing the mask and tube down toward my face. “You’ll like it.”

“I have to go.”

Then I noticed Ali’s eyes didn’t look right. They were kind of crazy and wild. And she kept coming at me. “You figured it out,” she said. “I worried that you might after you showed up with the locket.”

“It belongs to you?”

“So does T. J.”

“You killed Lauren,” I said, blocking Ali’s effort to place the mask, hoping the concealed recorder was working properly, since I was out on the proverbial limb without a safety net. “You killed all of them. Wayne Jay and Hetty Cross and Lauren Kerrigan.”

Ali tried to clamp the mask down on my face. She was strong and in a better position than I was. Fighting someone off from a prone position is a lot harder than it looks.

My cell phone went flying as we arm-wrestled over whether or not I would take the laughing gas.

“T. J.!” I yelled, hoping they weren’t in it together. I was dead if they were.

“He’s not here,” Ali said, her voice ragged as we struggled. “It’s just you and me. Like I wanted it.” The woman was lying on me, pinning me like my sister sometimes did, her forearm across my throat, cutting off my airway while she shoved the mask down at me.

“Take it,” she demanded.

I gave up fighting the mask and jabbed my index and middle finger into her mouth, aiming just under her tongue. By the gagging sound coming from her, I’d connected in the right spot. I also inhaled.

And felt a bit disoriented. So I grabbed her throat with both hands and squeezed.

That next inhale was a doozy.

I relaxed, dropping my hands and leaning back. “That’s right,” Ali said from far away. “Relax. Let it work.”

My legs felt like concrete. Ali was still talking. “It was all a big accident,” she said. “I was waiting for T. J. at the entrance to The Lost Mile. But Lauren came out and got into that old beater she always drove. Remember that one? It actually had bench seats.”

Another inhale. Nice. I wanted to laugh.

“And she passed out in the driver’s seat. All I wanted was to take her someplace and sober her up so we could have a talk. I never saw Wayne Jay until I hit him. But he saw me. I had to do what I did. You understand, don’t you? No one would blame me.”

Before the next inhale, which I was really trying to avoid in a helpless, feeble sort of way, I managed to get my hand on my trusty pepper spray. But it took all my willpower to blast Ali in the face. I started spraying. The mask fell away. Ali started making moaning, pained noises.

Through a nice, mellow haze, I rose on heavy legs and blasted her again.

My cell phone rang from the floor. I picked it up.

“Hi,” I said, feeling like a million bucks.

“Are you okay?” Holly said.

“Just jiffy,” I answered.

“Patti called and said she’d been compromised, whatever that means. What’s that noise in the background?”

“My pal Ali.” The nice place I’d been visiting began drifting slowly away.

“You sound weird. I got through to Hunter. He should be there soon.”

“Okey-dokey,” I said, not believing I’d actually said that. “No hurry.”

Patti burst through the door and took in the situation.

“Ali?” she said.

“She’s the murderer.” I had to resist laughing.

Patti picked up the mask and gave me a look.

“She was trying to force me to take laughing gas.”

“Looks like she succeeded,” Patti said.

She grabbed the mask from me and shoved it on Ali’s face. “We’ll get the whole confession right now.”

“Stop that,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster while still under the influence of the gas I’d inhaled. Caring was really, really hard.

Then there he was. My man, looking cute and sexy and really official.

I’m pretty sure the gas had something to do with what happened next, because Ali spewed out all the truth and nothing but the truth. Patti was right—we got the whole confession. That stuff was like truth serum. Here’s what Ali told us:

“She said she was coming back to make things right,” Ali said in a whiny voice as Hunter looked on in disbelief. Apparently, he wasn’t used to full confessions. And Patti and I hadn’t clued him in about the gas. “That could only mean she remembered that I was driving that night.”

“Or it could have meant she was coming back to make amends for what she thought she’d done,” I said. “How could you kill a dying woman?”

“I didn’t know about the cancer.” Ali had a mellow look on her face from the gas. “Not that it would have mattered.”

“Did you try to run me down?” I asked her, starting to feel clearheaded again.

Ali didn’t even hesitate before she answered. “I did. Since everybody was focusing on Johnny Jay, why not implicate him even more.”

“And what about Carrie Ann? What did you do to her?”

“I had slipped roofies in her beer and dumped her at her house. But not before giving her a makeover complete with a dirty face and leaves in her bed. Then I went to The Lost Mile wearing the wig.”

“Insane,” Patti said, scribbling in a notepad.

Right then, Johnny Jay burst in like he was saving the day. After a bunch of blustering and a few verbal shots at me, he hauled off the real killer.

Patti took off to work on her story.

Hunter and I ended up on the street outside the dental office. He still had that same expression of disbelief on his face.

“T. J. said Ali was with her sister,” I said. “Girls’ night out, he told us at the bar.”

“According to her sister, she was.”

“Ah, the bond between sisters.” I knew exactly how strong they could be.

“I’m sure she’ll be reversing her statement soon.”

“She couldn’t have known the whole story.”

Hunter wrapped an arm around my shoulder as we walked down the street. “I owe you a dinner,” he said. “You up for a steak?”

“You bet,” I said, snuggling in.

“’Sup? (
What’s Up?
)” Holly said, the next morning.

“What are you doing here so early?” I’d been rearranging the honey display at the front of the store when she arrived. Carrie Ann was checking out customers and preening in a small hand mirror she kept in her pocket, getting ready for the hot date she’d picked up while hanging around in jail.

“Not one of the inmates either,” she informed me, spiking her short yellow hair.

“Who?” Patti wanted to know.

“None of your business,” Carrie Ann said. “This one I’m keeping under wraps.”

“Around here?” I said. “Fat chance. Besides, we all know it’s Gunnar.”

Carrie Ann smiled, but more to herself than to us. Maybe being in jail had brought them back together. I hoped so. They were meant for each other.

Stanley Peck came in and stayed to chat, talking bees and listening to gossip.

Milly arrived. “Here’s a rough draft of the newsletter,” she said. “Let me know if you find any typos. And you’re going to see it anyway, so I want to tell you I did
not
figure out how to put honey in the morel mushroom recipe. Some things just don’t go together.”

“I have a few loose ends to wrap up,” Patti said. “Before Joel and I turn in our story.”

“Isn’t it a bit late?” Holly said, since we all knew how quickly today’s news became yesterday’s news.

“Nope, this is a
weekly
newspaper,” Patti reminded her, then looked down at a notebook. “I still can’t believe what that crazy woman did. What a nutcase.”

“I thought T. J. and Ali had tiffs all the time but always got back together?” Stanley Peck pointed out.

“That time was different,” I said, referring to some of the juicy tidbits I’d heard from customers. “T. J. really liked Lauren and told Ali that. You know how passionate an eighteen-year-old can be.”

Patti, still reading from her notes, said, “So she ran over Wayne Jay a second time to protect her identity and to frame Lauren. But I wonder why she picked Carrie Ann to be the murder suspect this time around.”

“I don’t understand that at all,” Carrie Ann said. “I never did anything to her.”

Patti piped up, “Ali must have thought you were an easy target.”

“I am not.”

“Well it worked, didn’t it?” Patti pointed out. “But Johnny Jay was doing such a good job of convincing everybody he was the killer, Ali put her original plan on hold and even helped out in her own little way.”

“By trying to run me down,” I added. “And make it look like Johnny did it. I feel sorry for T. J. This can’t be easy on him.”

“How’s Norm Cross doing?” Stanley asked.

“He’ll be back home in a day or two.”

Just then I saw Grams’s car pull up outside. Mom got out of the passenger side.

“I’ll be in back,” I said to Holly. “Say I’m on vacation.”

“You have to face the music eventually,” my sister said.

But I wasn’t hanging around to debate the subject with her. I flew into the back storage room and scooped up Dinky.

I made it out the back door and down the block before a squad car pulled over. Johnny Jay stepped out. “Fischer, you owe me a public apology,” he said.

I kept walking, picking up speed, feeling trapped. My mother was hunting me. Johnny Jay was stalking me on the streets.

And . . .

There was Lori Spandle standing in front of my house, with both hands on her hips.

“I’m going to get some kind of official order,” she said, “to make you clean up this place and remove those bees. And just so you know, your ex-husband is going to move back in if I can’t sell this place by the end of the month.”

Over my dead body, I could have said, but Lori might try to oblige me. That man wasn’t welcome in my hometown. Ever. I’d burn the place down first. That idea had possibilities.

Right when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Hunter showed up and proved they wouldn’t. I jumped in his SUV with Dinky in my arms and gave Ben a warm hello. Then I gave Hunter a hot hello and we blew out of town.