Twenty-four

My plan worked. Between Honest Abe and Walt Whitman, most of the tourists crossed the street into the village to listen to the speeches and mingle with the reenactors. Those who didn’t listen to the two great men speak walked through the houses and other buildings in the village. My first-person interpreters had never been so inundated with visitors in their careers, but they handled it beautifully.

I had to admit Ashland took charge of the situation and made it seem like this was the plan for the day all along. In addition to Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, she convinced some of the reenactor children to play an early version of baseball on the far edge of the village near Shepley’s garden. As long as no one hit a baseball through one of the original wavy glass windows on any of the buildings, all would be well.

Shepley was the only person in the village not pleased with the turn of events. Dozens of visitors walked through his flowers and raised beds admiring his work. All the while the gardener stood at the entrance, a pitchfork in his hand, looking like a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and an avenging scarecrow.

Wisely, the visitors gave him a wide berth when they entered and exited the garden.

“Shepley, can we talk?” I asked.

“What are all these people doing over here? You told me that most of the folks would stay on that side of the road. Then all of the sudden it was like Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. They just kept coming.”

I adjusted my radio on my hip. “There was an incident during the reenactment.”

He snorted. “An incident? You seem to be having a lot of those, Ms. Director. One of the reenactors kicked the bucket, I already heard.”

I winced. If Shepley knew that Wesley died, then most of the visitors must have known too. Hopefully, they’d just assume it was heat stroke. One known murder on the grounds was more than enough.

“Do you want to talk about the dead guy? Because I don’t know anything about that. I bet you regret this Civil War thing now. Problems happen when someone gets too big for her britches.”

“I don’t want to talk to you about the reenactment. I spoke with Benji a little while ago.”

The hard lines on the gardener’s face softened. Benji was the one person on the Farm he didn’t gripe about. It may be because she, like Shepley, would rather play in the dirt than interact with other people.

“She said that you got the bees out her brick pit for her on Thursday.”

He yanked his pitchfork out of the ground. “They weren’t bees.”

“I saw her foot; she was stung.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t stung by a bee. She was stung by a wasp. A mud dauber. Bees wouldn’t bury themselves that deep into the mud where she wouldn’t see them until she stomped them.”

“Why was everyone calling them bees?”

He jabbed the pitchfork into the grass a few inches from its original spot. “City slickers don’t know the difference. Honey bees are valuable. Mud daubers are pests.”

“How did you get rid of them?”

“I used the smoker to relax them and scraped away their mud tubers. They were at the south corner of the brick pit. I shot it with some insecticide for good measure after the second smoking. I hate to use the stuff, but it’s really the only way to deter them.”

I grimaced. I hated to think of Benji stomping on insecticide for eight hours a day. That couldn’t be good for her. As much as Benji would dislike it, maybe I needed to rethink having brickmaking as a Barton Farm craft.

“The medical examiner said he died of bee stings. I saw the tech collect the dead bees.”

“I know. It’s like I suspected from the start. Those are my bees.”

“From the hives? How did they get in the brick pit if only mud daubers were going in there?”

He yanked the pitchfork out of the earth again. “Someone put them there.”

“How can you be sure the bees were from your hive?”

“I can show you.” He started across the green to Barton House.

Because of his back, Shepley’s pace was slow, giving me plenty of time to take in the scene around me. Walt Whitman stood on the church steps and recited the famous poem about war he’d written in 1861 at the very beginning of the Civil War.

“Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!” he said. A crowd of roughly seventy visitors, including some children and teenagers, stood at foot of the church steps and listened.

Lieutenants and privates, both North and South, chatted with visitors in the middle of the green, showing off their carbines and revolvers. Laura stood on the front porch of Barton House, helping a girl spin wool on the spinning wheel. All would be perfect and just what I wanted for the Farm, but for the murder in the way.

I followed Shepley around the side of the house. Laura saw us. She mouthed, “What is going on?”

I shook my head.

Behind Barton House, there was another flower garden cultivated and cared for by Shepley and the three beehives at the very back of the yard. Shepley had asked for the hives last spring. Cynthia, in her generosity, donated the money from the Cherry Foundation for the construction and for the bees. After the initial cost, the hive became self-sustainable because we sold the honey in the gift shop. The visitors loved it. Many times the shop had more demand for honey than what was available.

The bees had been a success for the Farm, but that didn’t mean I wanted to get up close and personal with them. I might not be allergic like Maxwell was, but I didn’t want to get stung. Behind the garden shed, a large plastic crate held all the instruments of beekeeping; gloves, suits, hats with masks, serrated knives to cut the honeycomb, and a handheld smoker.

Shepley pulled out a hat from the crate and handed it to me.

My hand was suspended in the air. “Can’t I watch you from here?”

“No.” He scowled. “I’m not doing anything that will upset my bees more than they already are. Holding the honeycomb up out of the hives so that you can see it would do that. You either put on the hat and suit or forget about it.”

I took the suit and hat from his hand.

The beekeeper suit was a white cotton onesie. I stepped into it, slipped my arms into the sleeves, and zipped it all the way up to my throat. The sleeves went well beyond my wrists and the legs were way too long. If a bee happened to make it into my suit, I was a goner; it could sting me a dozen times before I could rip the suit off. I told myself not to think about that. I donned my hat and allowed the netting to fall over my face. A thin gray film now separated me from the rest of the world.

Shepley donned his matching outfit quickly and picked up the smoker. “Let’s go.”

The hives were on the edge of the trees, close enough to see but far enough away that visitors didn’t pester the bees, and in turn, the bees didn’t sting the visitors.

Shepley shuffled toward the beehives. I took a deep breath and followed. We were within six feet, and I could already see bees flying by me in my peripheral vision. “Bees are good,” I reminded myself. “Panicking will only agitate them, and then they will sting you.”

“Calm down,” Shepley said. “You’re making me nervous, and if I’m nervous, my bees are nervous.”

“Okay,” I squeaked.

He lifted the lid off of one of the hives. Bees swirled around him, but they didn’t appear to be particularly upset. He pumped smoke onto the corner of the honeycomb, and pointed down.

When I didn’t move, Shepley glared at me. I shuffled over to him. One of the honeybees landed on my arm and just as quickly flew away.

“I thought you were tougher than this,” he said.

“I am. Just not when it comes to stings or needles. I hate needles.” My phobia probably came from being a child of a diabetic and watching my father give himself insulin shots in his stomach and testing his blood each day. Dad never shielded me from the realities of his disease. For that I was glad, so I knew what to do if he needed me. At times when he wasn’t feeling well enough to administer the shot himself, I was able to do it for him. However, there was a big difference between being able to give a shot to someone else and being able to take a shot yourself.

Shepley pulled one of the screens out of the hive. There was a piece missing near the corner, about the size of a silver dollar. It was far enough inside that someone would have to remove the screen to see it, so if Shepley just did a cursory check on his beehive, he would have missed it completely.

He pointed. “See, here you can make out the serrated edge of the knife as it cut through the honeycomb.”

“That’s the honeycomb, but how did the bees get into the brick pit? Just by you picking up that piece, I can see most of them are trying to get out of your way.”

Five or six bees stubbornly clung to the screen as he pulled it all the way out of the hive. “If Maxwell was really as allergic as he claimed, one sting from one of these sleepy guys would have done the job.”

And Maxwell had multiple stings on the bottom of his feet.

Was I standing next to the killer? No, it didn’t make sense. Shepley wouldn’t have spent all this time telling me how he killed Maxwell when he could easily kept it hidden in his hive and no one would be the wiser. “Thank you for showing me this.”

He slid the screen back in place and nodded. “Whoever did this was careful to avoid the queen. I hate to lose any of them, but if the queen is okay, the colony will be okay. Had the queen been killed, the entire hive would have been in chaos, and in their confusion, other bees might have even abandoned the hive altogether. Bees without a hive spells disaster.” He replaced the lid on the hive. “The worker bees will fix the hole in no time. I can already tell they’ve made progress since yesterday.”

He walked back to the shed, where we removed our beekeeping suits. “I think I need to learn more about the circumstances of Maxwell death,” I said, more to myself than to Shepley.

“Finding out who offed Maxwell Cherry isn’t going to save the Farm.” He dropped his beekeeping hat into the crate.

I stared at him.

“Everyone knows that’s why you’re spending so much time on this.”

A bee buzzed by my ear and I flinched but did not move. I handed Shepley my hat. “Thank you again for showing me.”

As I walked away, he called, “It’s not your job to save this place.”

That’s where Shepley was wrong. It was my job. As I walked through the garden I saw that most of the visitors had returned to the encampments on the other side of the road or left the Farm for the day. I glanced at my watch: just a half-hour before closing. The day was quieting to the hour when only the Farm staff and reenactors would be left. I sighed.

Laura stepped out of the Barton House. She was in full character and rolling a ball of freshly spun yarn. “What’s up?” she asked.

I burst out laughing at her use of present-day street vernacular.

She grinned. Apparently her question got the desired effect. “I saw you head to the hives with Shepley. What were you doing back there with him?”

I gave her a brief version of my suspicions.

“You need to tell the cops this. It sounds important.” She nodded to the brickyard. “Talk to the officer over there. I swear he must being trying out for British royal guard. The guy does not move. I’ve been watching him all day.”

“Oh?” I teased.

“Hey, he’s a nice-looking guy. Most of time I have to look at Shepley stooped over his eggplants. I should have the chance to enjoy a new view now and again.”

I shook my head. “Have you seen Jason?”

“Barn Boy? Nope. But I don’t usually see vampires out in the light of day.”

“He’s not a vampire.”

“You believe whatever you want. I know the truth.”

I rolled my eyes and walked to the brickyard. Unsurprisingly, Laura followed me. “Hello, Officer Sonders.”

“Ms. Cambridge.” He nodded, first at me and then to Laura.

“Hi handsome,” Laura said with a wink.

The officer turned bright red.

I suppressed a sigh. “Can I have a look at the brick pit?”

Behind him the brick pit was covered with Benji’s blue tarp.

The officer shook his head. “No one is supposed to go in there. Chief’s orders.”

“Did you find any pieces of honeycomb when the pit was searched?”

“Honeycomb?” he asked.

Laura balanced the ball of yarn in her hand.

“Yes,” I said. “From a beehive.”

He gave us a blank stare.

“Was any of this in the pit?” I held up the piece of dry honey-
comb that I’d taken from the ground near Shepley’s beehives.

“Oh. Sure. There was a piece near the deceased’s feet. The bees were making honey, I guess.”

“Bees don’t make honey in mud,” Laura said and lowered her voice so that only I could hear. “It’s a shame he’s not as smart as he is good-looking.”

“Near his feet?” I swallowed. Shepley was right. I knew Maxwell was murdered. I knew Maxwell had been given insulin to knock him out. I knew Maxwell’s killer was smart and organized, but to put a piece of honeycomb at his feet with bees was cruel. That was done by someone who wanted to make sure that Maxwell was stung multiple times. That was done by someone who wanted to make sure that Maxwell was stung dead.

Officer Sonders stepped forward. “Hey, are you all right? You look like you might be sick. I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the crime scene if you’re going to throw up.”

Laura peered at me. “She’s not going to be sick,” she assured the police officer. “I’ve seen her throw up on multiple occasions and she didn’t look like that. We went to college together,” she added as if that was explanation enough for her knowledge.

I took a deep breath. “Can you radio the chief and ask him to bring his nephew, Chase, too?”

“The chief is dealing with the death on the field.”

“Please.”

Officer Sonders frowned but unhooked his radio from his belt and radioed the chief.

I inched toward the brick pit just a few feet. With the tarp covering it, I couldn’t see the mud. A wasp buzzed by my ear. I ducked. It was probably a mud dauber.

The plot to kill Maxwell had been much more elaborate than I first thought. Whoever did it had to know the Farm intimately. The culprit knew that wasps were hiding in the brick pit, that my father was type 1 diabetic, and how to remove a piece of honeycomb from Shepley’s hives without disturbing most of the bees.

The more I thought about it, the more it looked like someone from the Farm was behind the murder. Since the only official Farm employee suspect was me, I was looking better and better as the killer. I knew that, and Chief Duffy and the lovely Detective Brandon knew that too.