Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) (12 page)

“Who knows,”
Elena said, unfolding her napkin. “He was a grumpy old man that was hard to
deal with. We got called out there about once a week. Something was always
wrong with that guy.”

“I’ve been
hearing that from several people,” I said. “Seems like there wasn’t anybody in
town who hadn’t had a run-in with him.”

“Including you.”
Leo pointed at me.

“Including me.”

“So everybody at
that funeral will be crying for joy,” Elena said.

“I didn’t even
know this man, but it sure seems like all of you are being a little callous
about his death,” said Mark.

Birdie came back
and started taking our orders. After we had all listed off our choices, Birdie
leaned over to Mark. “Before you go, I’m going to give you a bag of my pecan
pralines. I made them myself. It’s on the house, for you.”

“That’s very
kind of you.” He leaned up to her and whispered, “but the camera adds ten
pounds, you know.”

She nodded
knowingly as if she dealt with that problem daily. Birdie gave him a thumbs-up
as she backed away.

“You have a
fan,” Elena said.

The bell jingled
on the diner’s door, and in stepped Nancy Olin and her daughter, Prissy,
holding a stack of bridal magazines. Upon seeing us, Prissy straightened her
shoulders and twisted her mouth in a sour expression.

“Who is that?”
Leo whispered in my ear.

“That is Prissy
Olin,” I said.

“Why does she
look angry at us?” Elena said.

“Probably
because I dared to have a wedding on the same day she is having hers.”

Nancy Olin waved
her hand in the air toward Birdie. Birdie rolled her eyes at us and hurried to
their table.

Before Birdie
could put any menus down, Nancy pushed them back and started ordering. “We’ll
have two spinach salads and two glasses of water with lemons on the side,
please.” Birdie scrambled to get her order pad out of her apron and write down
the salads.

“Mama, I’m
hungry. Don’t order me a salad,” Prissy said as she put down her menu. “I’ll
have a cheeseburger.” Birdie scratched out the salad and started scribbling
cheeseburger.

“No, you won’t.
You have to fit into that wedding gown, young lady,” said Nancy. “She’ll have a
salad.” Birdie scratched out the cheeseburger and started writing salad.

“Mother! I’ll
eat whatever I want. Lavonne can let it out.”

Birdie ripped
the page out of her order book and wadded it up. After putting it in her
pocket, she stood there waiting for the final decision. Nancy Olin touched her
temple and closed her eyes, looking like she might have a headache coming on.
She looked up at Birdie. “Bring her the cheeseburger.” Birdie turned to go to
the kitchen. Nancy Olin placed her hand on her arm before she could go a step.

“Aren’t you
going to write that down?”

“Somehow, I
think I have it memorized,” Birdie said.

As Birdie left,
Nancy let out a sigh. “Honestly, Prissy, sometimes I wonder if I haven’t been
too lenient with you. If something upsets your plans, nothing is beyond you to
get what you want.”

“Just remember
that, Mama, and we’ll always have this loving bond to share,” said Prissy as
she savagely ripped open a tiny packet of crackers.

During the next
week, my life resumed a bit of normality. The rain continued off and on while
Leo and Tyler headed back to Dallas and Zach and I returned to school and work.
I concentrated on writing a series of columns on homemade lotions. In this
article, I was trying to make a simple hand lotion out of glycerin and
rosewater, two ingredients I picked up down at the drug store.

After learning
of Lenny Stokes’s death, Mr. Andre said he would call in our flowers at Baskets
of Bluebonnets. I decided to call them to get an idea of the price. Hopefully
they wouldn’t cost too much more than Lenny had quoted.

“The
Livingston/Fitzpatrick wedding, you said? Let me check,” said the florist.

I heard a
scuffling of papers in the background and then a clear curse word.

“Miss
Livingston? I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but your sales order got
stuck to another. I told Jimmy not to eat at the register. We peeled it off the
Olin invoice.”

“Oh, well you
have it now. That’s all that matters. You scared me there for a minute. I can’t
imagine not having flowers for my own wedding,” I said. There was an
uncomfortable pause on the other end as the florist cleared his throat.

“Well, here’s
the thing. We didn’t realize we had your wedding order, and since the time that
it was called in, we’ve become fully booked. Between Prissy’s wedding and the
holiday, every floral designer we have is busy. Ma’am, you do know what day of
the year that is? Valentine’s Day is every florist’s Black Friday. I appreciate
your business and all, but I’m not going to sugar coat it – our store is crazy
that day. There won’t be a daisy to be had. Do you have someone in your wedding
party who can arrange flowers?”

“Well, we were
going to go with Lenny Stokes and … he’s no longer available.” I didn’t want to
go through explaining Lenny’s death on the phone and hoped the man would think
he had at least scraped a little business from him.

“Don’t tell me
Lenny has so much business he can’t handle it,” he said. “Without him, we’d
never get through the slow months. I think he’s personally riled up half the
county. The man has absolutely no sales skills. Shoot, he doesn’t even have
people skills. So what happened with him, or do I even need to ask?”

“He died,” I
said quietly.

I heard a
coughing noise on the other end as if the florist at Bluebonnets had taken a
drink of coffee between rants on Lenny Stokes.

“He died? What
did he die of? That old coot’s too mean to die.”

“Bees. He was
stung to death.”

“I’ll be. Hold
on a minute.” He yelled the news of Lenny’s tragic death across the shop. I
thought I heard the faint echo of clapping. The florist then returned to the
phone. “Well, it’s a shame,” he said. “Some of our best customers have been
people Lenny burned.”

“Do you know a
lot about bees,” I asked, “I mean, working around flowers and all?”

“A little. I
know you got to have them to get any blooms.”

“How about
attacking people?”

“They only
attack when they’re threatened,” said the florist. “Lenny must have done
something really stupid like swat at one.”

“You’d think
anyone with as many years of experience as Lenny would have been smarter than
that,” I said.

“Who knows? They
probably stung him out of spite.”

“About the
flowers,” I continued, “you really can’t help me?”

“No, I’m afraid
not,” he said, “and now that I know Lenny’s out of the picture, I had better
start stocking up for the wedding season. Have you thought about having someone
bring the flowers in from one of the cities?”

I guess I could
have Leo bring them from Dallas, but there was still a chance they would be
wilted during the hours it would take to get to Pecan Bayou.

“You might want
to see if Lenny’s wife could fill your order,” he continued. “I mean, they
still have a greenhouse full of flowers, right? Oh, and it would probably help
if there was some sort of floor plan of the venue sketched out for the flower
placement.”

“Martha might be
a whole lot easier to deal with than her husband ever was,” I admitted. “I
guess I’ll give her a call.”

“It’s so weird
how he died. That has to be every florists’ nightmare,” said the florist.
“Well, that and running out of green floral foam. Something must have triggered
the bees’ internal alarms.”

I just hoped and
prayed it didn’t have anything to do with the calamine lotion.

******

As I ended the
call, I jumped back as the phone rang in my hand.

“Yo, Betsy.”
Rocky Whitson was on the other end.

“Hi, Rocky. I
just finished up my article. I was making a few calls and was about to email it
to you.”

“That’s fine. Is
it another one of those homemade lotion things?”

I wasn’t sure if
I liked the way he was describing my work.

“Yes,” I said,
“this time it’s for a moisturizing lotion. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was
just sitting here thinkin’.” I could imagine Rocky leaning back in his old
squeaky chair, chewing on his already-battered Ticonderoga.

“About?”

“About Lenny
Stokes. He had a jar of homemade cream out there on the porch rail. Would that
be something concocted from your recipe?”

“How did you
know about that?” I said.

“I’ve got my
sources.”

“No, you don’t.
You were nosing around out there.”

“Maybe,” said
Rocky. “My point is, if Lenny Stokes spread your homemade goo all over himself
and then got attacked by killer bees, you might just have a problem, missy.”

I had to give it
to Rocky – he was the first to put it together besides me. If he could pick up
on this potential problem, then it wouldn’t be long before others did too.

“Don’t you mean,
‘we’ have a problem?” I said. “It was printed in
your
paper, after all.”

“Well, that’s
where you’re wrong,” said Rocky. “I have a disclaimer at the front of every
edition that my reporters are responsible for the accuracy of their own work.”

“Say what?
You’re kidding me, right?”

“Truth is, I’ve
fielded several calls this morning coming from nervous ladies in Martha
Stokes’s church group. Seems she told them about Lenny using the calamine on
his rash. They’re all worried that their loved ones will be chased after by a
swarm.”

“That’s crazy,”
I said. “All the lotion had in it was a few simple ingredients. I’ve used it on
Zach for mosquito bites and never had a problem.”

“Yes, but Zach
doesn’t tend to bees, now does he?”

“No.” He had a
point. “But he does play outside.” I decided it wouldn’t be such a great idea
to tell Rocky about him being attacked by mosquitoes at the ballpark. “You tell
these women that whatever happened to Lenny had nothing to do with the homemade
calamine lotion.”

“That’s what
I’ve been saying. In the meantime, you need to double-check your facts. Is
there any possibility that the combination of Lenny’s body chemistry and the
ingredients in the lotion could have combined to create something that made the
bees go ballistic?”

“His body
chemistry?” I asked.

“He was awful
sour.”

“I don’t think I
can help you too much on that, Rocky, but for you, I’ll at least check.”

“Or I can
forward all these calls to you, Miss Happy Hinter.”

“I’ll check.”

I threw together
one of my tater tot casseroles and headed over to Martha Stokes’s farm. The
rain had finally given us a reprieve for a while. The warmth of the sun was
seeping into every little brown blade of grass, promising the return of spring.
There was a dumpster now parked up near the house, and it was filled to the top
with old boxes, furniture and junk. Martha came around the corner holding a
paint roller. Fresh white paint was splattered on her work shirt. Her whole
demeanor had changed from the woman who had called me on the phone what seemed
like a long time ago.

“Oh Betsy, it’s
you,” she said, sounding relieved. “Sorry, been a little paranoid since Lenny
died. I think we had a prowler out here last night. Just lucky for me we always
keep the shotgun by the door. I came out on the porch with it pointed into the
dark, and whatever it was scurried away. Probably just some animal looking to
dig through the trash cans.” She eyed the covered dish.

“Oh,” I said. “I
brought this for you.”

“Thanks, dear.
I’ll put it in the freezer. With all the casseroles I’ve received from the
church, I won’t have to cook until summer,” she said, putting down the roller
in a paint pan.

“Looks like
you’ve been busy,” I said. The trash that had been in the yard was now picked
up, the stray shoots of grass that had been growing up in every crack around
the house had been weed-whacked, and a new coat of paint now glistened on the
boards of the old farmhouse.

“Work helps.
I’ve lived my whole life in this old house listening to Lenny, putting up with
his moods, trying to make our business work. After he died last week, it
suddenly occurred to me that I no longer had to live like that. I could live
any way I damn well pleased.”

She clasped her
hands together and giggled. “I went down to Simmons Hardware and put the paint
on the credit card and rented the dumpster. I think I can actually turn this
into a profitable business now, but the first thing I have to do is make this
place look presentable.”

Martha was a
transformed woman, and I liked the “new” her.

“I know you
probably think I’m not in enough of a state of mourning for Lenny,” she said,
“and there are moments here and there when I actually miss the old fart.”

Good to know she
was dealing with it so well. She had seemed so mousy when I ran into her in the
supermarket. Now she was nothing of the sort.

“The thing I
can’t get over is how he went,” she continued. “His whole life he sent out
stingers in one way or another. He told people off left and right. We had to
shop in Andersonville because he got into an argument over the peas being in
the wrong place at the Fiesta grocery. We stopped taking the paper after he got
into it with Miles, our rural carrier. Lenny called them at 5:01 in the
morning, every morning, if that paper wasn’t on the doorstep. He also called if
the paper was near the doorstep, but not on it. Rocky Whitson finally called
him up and told him he could do without his subscription so don’t call back.”