Ten

At the end of the pebbled path, where it met the pavement on Maple Grove Lane, another police officer stood guard. I hoped his steely presence would be enough of a deterrent for both the reenactors and the tourists, but I knew how curious the tourists could be. People were constantly trying to get a look behind the scenes in areas of the Farm that were supposed to be off-limits to guests. If the officer couldn’t be there all day, I would set one of my seasonals on the job.

I started across the street.

“Ma’am? You can’t go over there,” the young officer said.

I hated being ma’med, even if I was a mother. “I’m Kelsey Cambridge, director of Barton Farm. I was told there was an issue with my gardener.”

The officer had to be six-three, over a foot taller than me. I couldn’t have seemed like much of a threat. “Oh,” he said, stepping back. “I’m supposed to let you through. The chief said so.”

I nodded and marched across the street.

I slowed as I stepped onto the pebbled path on the other side of the pavement and saw all of the commotion around the brickyard. The medical examiner stood by the ambulance taking notes. Apparently he had the ability to tune out distraction while he worked, because Shepley stood the length of a volleyball court away in front Barton House yelling at Ashland.

My assistant teetered back and forth on her feet, shaking her head, but she didn’t even try to argue back.

“I have every right to check on my bees!” the gardener cried. “You can’t keep me from them because Maxwell Cherry was dumb enough to get stung.”

Barton Farm’s gardener was a small man with a slight hump on his back that was put there from years and years of bending over flowerbeds. A long gray ponytail tied back with a piece of garden twine hung down between his shoulder blades. Red suspenders over his Farm polo held up his jeans. A mysterious scar crossed his left cheek from the edge of his nose to his ear, giving him a piratelike quality. In my imagination, he was one of Captain Hook’s men and got into a sword fight with Peter Pan. Shepley was tiny but fierce. I bet Peter Pan needed extra pixie dust to escape him.

Two police officers stood nearby, and neither of them looked like they were going to come to Ashland’s rescue.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

Ashland visibly relaxed when I appeared. “Kelsey, thank you for coming. Shepley is upset—”

“Damn right, I’m upset. These Neanderthals won’t let me around the side of the house to check on my bees.”

One of the officers twitched at being called a Neanderthal, but still neither said anything. The headache that had begun to form across the street started to pulse behind my right eye.

Ashland cringed. She was way out of her depth when it came to Shepley. Don’t send a girl to do a woman’s job, I thought.

Shepley pointed at the police with a dirt-encrusted fingernail. “You have no respect for this property. If you don’t move out of my way, I’m going to push you over.”

One of the two large officers folded his arms and glared down his nose at Shepley. “I’d like to see you try.”

Shepley took a step forward as if he were ready to step up to the challenge. He was half the size of the policeman. Ashland kept rocking back and forth in her sneakers, which looked like clown shoes at the end of her spindly legs.

“Shepley,” I began.

Shepley turned his dirty fingernail on me. “This is all your fault.” His eyes were barely visible slits from squinting into the sun. Shepley would never be so weak as to wear sunglasses or sunscreen to protect his eyes and skin.

I scowled in return. Like many of the problems at the Farm, I had inherited Shepley. He was a talented gardener, perhaps the best in the county, but he was impossible to get along with. As long as he was alone with his plants, all was fine. If he had to make human contact, look out.

In front of Barton House, summer flowers bloomed in a small garden. Shepley’s main garden was on the other side of the village, and it boasted even more flowers and rows and rows of vegetables. In this smaller bed, daisies, snapdragons, and irises bopped their heavy heads in the light breeze. Dozens of bees buzzed around us. I swallowed at the image of Maxwell’s swollen feet and hoped that I would someday be able to erase it from my memory completely.

One of the officers swatted at a bee.

“What are you doing?” Shepley bellowed. “Don’t hit one of my bees. Do you know how precious honeybees are? That they are in decline?”

The officer blinked.

Chief Duffy joined us. Still in his gray Confederate trousers and sixteen-button frock coat, he chewed on a stick. “Shepley’s right,” he told his officer. “The bees are in danger. No swatting.”

The officer licked his lips. “I don’t want to get stung, sir, especially since these bees killed the victim.”

Shepley’s eyes narrowed. “Are you allergic to bees?”

The officer shook his head.

“Then you have nothing worry about. That guy died because he had a bee allergy.”

The chief removed the stick from his mouth. “You knew that Maxwell had an allergy?”

The gardener sucked on his teeth. “Everyone working on the Farm did. The man had a hissy fit when he was buzzed yesterday afternoon. A grown man squealing in the middle of the village gets attention.”

I hadn’t realized so many members of my staff had witnessed Maxwell’s bee dance. I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad news that more people knew about Maxwell’s allergy.

Chief Duffy nodded at this. Not for the first time, I wished I knew what the police chief was thinking. As harmless as he appeared in his reenactor uniform, I was beginning to recognize the chief was a shrewd man.

“Now, Shepley,” the New Hartford chief of police said. “We have an investigation going on into the death of one of your colleagues. To best solve the case, we can’t have people walking around the village unsupervised until we’ve processed and secured the scene. Since your bees were the perpetrators, that puts your hives off limits.”

“Maxwell Cherry wasn’t my colleague,” Shepley spat. “The man was a lowlife with no respect for nature or for history. He shouldn’t even be able to walk these grounds. He spoils them with his twenty-first-century materialism.”

The chief pointed his stick at him. “That’s quite an impassioned speech.”

Shepley squinted at him. “I’m not going to leave my garden. I have too much to do. Do you think these plants tend themselves? I don’t care if you’d tell me the president was shot dead in my hollyhocks. I must tend to my garden.”

Duffy removed a gold pocket watch from the pocket of his coat and checked the time. “I see we’re not making much progress here, and I, frankly, don’t have the time to argue with you. The day is warming up more by the second and we need to get the body to the morgue. So I’ll let you into your precious gardens if, and only if, one of deputies stays with you. But the bees are still off-limits.”

Shepley sneered. “If that’s the way it has to be, then fine.” He pointed a crooked finger at the two officers in his way. “Now move.”

The deputies parted, and Shepley swore as he stomped back onto the green toward the main garden, which was about a football field away from Barton House. Adjoining the main garden, the iron fence around Shepley’s prized medicinal garden loomed. He turned and said over his shoulder, “I’d say the bees did us a service offing Maxwell Cherry. The man didn’t even recycle,” he said, as though this was a grave observation of Maxwell’s character.

“Shepley, please don’t make this worse than it already is,” I called.

He glared at me. “I won’t forget this. We were just fine until you came along and wanted to change everything. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have all these reenactors here this weekend, trampling my flowerbeds and killing people.”

Shepley was wrong. The Farm wasn’t “just fine” before I became director. The number of guests each year was steadily falling, and the Farm would have gone under without Cynthia’s generosity. The previous director, who had been in the post for nearly thirty years, saw no reason to change anything about Farm operations. What visitors expected thirty years ago and what they were willing to pay for in today’s world of multimedia overload did not match up. Unfortunately, not all of my employees were on board with my plans. Shepley was one of the old guard who thought it was enough to sit back and wait for the tourists to come to us.

Self-sufficiency was my ultimate goal for the Farm. I didn’t want us to dependent on Cynthia’s money. And for good reason, I realized as I thought of Maxwell’s threat. I grimaced. Maxwell was about to take the money away before he died. No wonder I looked like such an enticing suspect to the chief.

I placed my hands on my hips. “Maxwell’s death has nothing to do with the reenactment, Shepley.”

“How would you know?” he spat.

I didn’t know. It was wishful thinking on my part, but the encounter I’d witnessed yesterday between Wesley Mayes and Maxwell over Portia didn’t gel with my theory. Had the handsome reenactor been so enraged over Portia’s engagement to Maxwell that he murdered his rival?

Shepley picked up his garden trowel, which was lying at the foot of a sunflower, and stomped away. One of the deputies hurried after him.

The chief sighed. “He won’t be away from his bees for too much longer. The medical examiner is almost done processing the scene. You may even be able open up this side of the grounds by late afternoon.”

“That’s good news, Chief. Thank you.” I glanced around and noticed that Ashland had disappeared at some point during my argument with Shepley. Also absent was Detective Brandon. I turned toward the crime scene and didn’t see her standing with the medical examiner and the other officers. I didn’t like not knowing where the detective was. My instincts told me to be wary of her.

Chief Duffy hiked up his trousers. “I forgot to mention this when I spoke to you earlier, but I’d advise you not to leave the township.”

I licked my lips. “Because I’m a suspect.”

He rolled the stick to the other side of his mouth. “Yep. I suppose I don’t have to really order you to stick around since you live here and all.”

“Do you have any other suspects?”

“Sure do. I never put all my eggs in one basket, even if that basket is looking really, really good for committing the crime.”

I frowned. “I have another suspect who you might not know about.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Trying to spread out the suspicion?”

“Of course.” I folded my arms.

He smiled at my honesty. I went on to tell him about the argument that I witnessed between Maxwell and Wesley.

“That does sound promising, but I know Wesley. He’s a fine reenactor. He knows his buttons. Not every reenactor can recognize the right buttons for the uniform. Wesley can.”

“I don’t think buttons should automatically release someone from suspicion of murder.”

“No, I suppose not.” He sighed as if this was a major failing of our modern society. “But he’s a good one, for a Union man. I’ve even had him in my regiment from time to time when we were low on Confederates. I can’t believe he would do such a thing. He’s tentative on the battlefield and doesn’t have the will to attack like some of my other soldiers do. But I’ll certainly talk to him. It seems that I need to pay a visit to the fiancée, Portia, too.”

I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand. “Has Cynthia been told?”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so. I sent one of my officers to her home to tell her because I couldn’t leave the scene and I didn’t want her to find out through the rumor mill. My officer used to take piano lessons from her as a child. I thought it was a good choice to have someone she knew break the news.”

“And how is she?”

He shook his head. “Officer Parker said that her maid took her straight to bed. It’s been quite a shock. The maid told Parker that Cynthia’s health has been failing in the recent months.”

I swallowed. Which is why she was preparing to turn over her foundation to Maxwell. As much as I disliked Maxwell, my heart ached for Cynthia. She was one of the most cheerful and kind people I knew. While others may hide their fortunes away in the turbulent economy, she shared it and supported local arts and community. When she did pass away, it would be a great loss to the entire town of New Hartford.

“If the village reopens this afternoon, does that mean the Blue and Gray Ball can still be held?”

The ball was planned to be held Sunday evening. The Farm had rented large white tents, which would be set up where we now stood, in the center of the village green. The tents themselves had cost me a small fortune and then there was the period decorations and food. It wasn’t easy to find a caterer who was willing to make mid-nineteenth-century fare, and the one who’d agreed wasn’t cheap. Just asking the question made my stomach turn. If the ball was cancelled, it could ruin the Farm. Tickets were $75 a pop. And we expected a hundred guests at the event, in addition to the reenactors who had paid extra for the event and the Farm staff who were invited. I guessed that there would be between 300 and 325 people attendance.

The chief dropped his chew stick on the ground. “The ball has to go on. My wife has been talking about it for weeks. It’s the first interest that she’s shown in my hobby. She bought a hoop skirt!”

I shoulders sagged with relief. “I’m glad.”

He pointed a finger at me. “I will have this case tied up by tomorrow afternoon. Because even though I like you, Kelsey, all my money is on you having done it. If I can, I’ll wait to arrest you until after the ball.”

I wondered if I should say thank you for that kindness.