Death By A HoneyBee (17 page)

    
“Are you sure?”
     

    
“Yes.”

    
“Why?”

    
“Richard would have told me.”

    
“Were you jealous of Tellie?”
 
I continued pounding.
 
I might never get another chance to discover the truth.

  
  
“Of Tellie, no.
 
That she had a life with Richard – of that I was jealous.”

    
“So, if you had been born a masochist, you would have stayed with him?”

    
“Yes. Some women are very much into being submissive.
 
You need to ask Tellie about that lifestyle. I am just not put together that way.”

    
“So it was Tellie’s fault that she got hit?”

    
“If she is a masochist, then yes.
 
She got what she wanted and needed.”

    
“You are sitting there and actually telling me that women who are beaten by men are all masochists and want it.
 
Do you know how weird you sound?”

    
“Do you know how stupid you are?
 
I didn’t ask to fall in love with a man whose habits I loathed.
 
If you are one of those people who think a person can control whom they fall in love with, then you are stupid indeed.
 
The heart has a will of its own.
 
Besides there was more to Richard than what you saw.
 
He was smart, funny and a good listener.
 
Yes, he had faults, but you have no idea how hard he fought against his brutish nature. Sometimes he won.
 
Sometimes he lost.
 
I blame myself for it.
 
If he hadn’t been in that wreck, those traits might never have surfaced.
 
And how in the hell am I to know what Tellie did or didn’t like in their marriage?
 
You don’t know what went on between them.
 
Maybe she loved the challenge.”

    
“You should have moved on.”
   

    
“Like you did?” sneered Agnes.
 
“I did some checking of my own.
 
Rumors around town say that you were having an affair with a Zac Efron look-alike gigolo and that’s the reason your husband left you.
 
He took up with a woman young enough to be his daughter and gave all his money to his little pregnant girlfriend.”

 
   
I had been getting rather tired of Agnes’ sanctimony, and now she had hit a hot button.
 
“That brings me to what you told the police about needing to see Richard because you were making him your heir.
 
What was that about?
 
Why not just put his name on the will?
 
You didn’t need to talk with him to do that.
 
What did you really talk to him about?”

     
Agnes sighed and lit a cigarette.
 
She blew the smoke in my direction.
 
“I wish you would just disappear.
 
I really dislike you butting into my life.”

 
    
“Tell me what I want to know and I’m just a memory.”
 
I snapped my fingers.
 
“Gone, just like that.”

 
    
“I have cancer.”

 
    
I could hardly control my guffaw.
 
“Christ Almighty, you’re playing the cancer card.”

     
Agnes tugged at her beautiful lustrous ink-black hair until it came off in a mass.
 
In place of the wig were gray tufts of hair and wide patches of baldness.

     
“Removal of both my breasts, radiation, chemo, new age crap – you name it, I’ve tried it.”

  
  
I should have been contrite.
 
I should have been embarrassed.
 
I should have been sympathetic.
 
But I wasn’t.

     
“Who is your heir now?”
  

     
“Taffy.”

    
We had stopped at a red light.
 
“Wow,” I said. “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.”
 
I opened the car door and stepped out into the rain.
 
Slamming the door shut, I began the walk back to my van, never looking back.
 
I hoped I’d never have to see Agnes Bledsoe again.
 
Talk about a bloodsucker.

15

     
I was checking on my bees in the early morning to make sure their water troughs were full.
 
Like cows or horses, honeybees must be fed, watered and treated for diseases.
 

     
Today my job was making sure they had enough honey to make it through the winter.
 
I checked by pushing with my knee on the back of the hive.
 
If the hive easily tilted forward, the hive had too little honey.
 
If it stood steadfast, then the hive was fine.
 
Only two of the hives needed help.
 
I would give them emergency food tomorrow.
  

    
Since it was now nearly time for lunch, I made several sandwiches of thick roast beef with homemade potato salad.
 
Putting everything in a handmade basket along with a big pitcher of martinis and a soda for me, I drove to see Larry Bingham, my bee mentor.
 
He was the person who had helped me install my first package of honeybees.
 
Without him, I never could have survived the travails of beekeeping.
 
He was also president of the Lexington Beekeepers Association.
 
If anyone had his ear to the ground, it was he, and I wanted information.

   
Larry was a retired FBI man who purchased 10 acres in Anderson County on which he kept hives and a garden.
 
In the late summer, he puts a vegetable stand in front of his house.
 
His customers are on the honor system, leaving money in a cigar box.
 
Larry has made twenty-four thousand dollars this year so far.

     
I found Larry in his honey house putting honey jars in boxes.
 
The Doors were blaring on the CD player.
 
He sniffed the air.
 
“What’s buzzin’, cousin?”
 
He turned and smiled when he saw the basket.
 
Walking over, he took the basket without even speaking to me.

 
   
“Hello to you too,” I said laughing.

 
   
“Good to see you, Josiah.
 
Shove your clutch down here.”
 
Larry pulled out a folding chair for me.
 
Peeking in the basket, Larry’s face flushed with pleasure.
 
He handed me the soda and shook the pitcher.
 
“This is going to hit the spot,” he declared.
 
“Bring any olives?”

     
I nodded, watching him pour a martini into a paper cup.

     
“Know what I had for lunch?”

 
   
I shook my head.

 
    
“Just a dried-out baloney sandwich, and I was lucky I got that.
 
Brenda has me on some rotten diet.
 
I had to sneak that crappy sandwich out of the house.”

     
I glanced over at the back of the house.
 
“I don’t want to get in trouble here.”

     
Larry waved at the house.
 
“Don’t get scared.
 
The missus’s gone into town.
 
She will never know that you brought food to bribe me with.”

 
    
I feigned offense.
 
“Can’t I just want to spend time with my good buddy?”

 
    
Larry loved puzzles, forties-era slang and late-sixties rock ’n’ roll.
 
Said that puzzles and riddles had always relaxed him even when it became his work, which was in intelligence during the Vietnam War.
 
I would ask him to tell me about his spook operations for the government, but he never bit.
 
Larry never engaged in war stories.
 
Classified, I guess.
 
Loving the Army, he would have made it his career, but life was going to go in a different direction.
 
Wasn’t it John Lennon who said that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans?
   

    
Larry had been on a two-day pass in Saigon when Charlie blew up the bar he was patronizing.
 
It took six months before he was released from the hospital, and then the Army just let him go without fanfare.
 
Larry thumbed his nose at the Army and joined the FBI.
 
Since then, he had made it his business to notice things.
 
He didn’t stop just because he had retired.
 
Now Larry fixed his watery blue eyes upon me.
 

    
“So, start beatin’ up with the gums.”

    
“Huh?’

    
“Spill it.”
  

    
“Okay. Okay. I fess up.
 
Larry, I might be in trouble.
 
You know that Richard Pidgeon was found on my place dead.”

 
   
Larry nodded his head while chewing.
 
“Peeped it in the trees.”
 

 
   
“Has there been much talk about that?”

     
“Talk, oh shoot-fire.
 
It’s all we yack about!” he replied, meaning the other beekeepers.

 
   
“What are the rest of the guys saying?”

 
    
“Different opinions about that.
 
Some say Richard was messing with your hives, deserved what he got.
 
Others just say that it was odd that he was on your property.
 
Paper didn’t divulge much except that he was found dead in a hive.
 
Mystery is why would the bees sting a bee charmer?
 
That’s why gums are flapping.
 
Something happened to rile up those bees against him; otherwise, Richard would never have gotten stung.
 
Bees thought Richard was a solid sender.”

     
I harrumphed.

     
Larry raised his hand to silence me.
 
“I know you two had your differences, but Richard was a good beekeeper.
 
Never saw a beeyard as clean as his.
 
He loved honeybees, and his honey was as good as can be harvested.
 
You can’t take that away from him, sister.”

 
   
I felt my face redden.

 
    
“Another thing,” Larry said, reaching for the martini pitcher.
 
“There were two cops here putting the squeeze on me about you and Richard.”

 
   
“What did you tell them?”

 
   
“I played dumb. I don’t dime to flatfoots.
 
If it had been a Special Agent, well, then it might have been different, but I’m retired now.
 
I don’t need to play anymore,” he said.