Death By A HoneyBee (33 page)

    
“Done.
 
Your haggling is wearin’ me out. I know that you are going to have Matt go over the contract like a fly on an overripe melon, but it’s a fair deal and helps us both get what we want.
 
The check is attached to the title.
 
Sign it and cash the check.
 
Easy money.”
                                                                                        
  
     
I sat back in my chair and thought about the high price of this so-called easy money. “Will you get a quilt square for the barn?”

    
“Yes, if that will make you cash that check.
 
I will take care of it.”
   

    
“I want something pretty and in soft colors, maybe a pinwheel square.”
 

    
“I’ve got something else to talk to you about,” said Shaneika, ignoring my rambling.

    
“Yeah?”
  

    
“I got an official copy of Richard’s death certificate – not just a duplicate.”

   
 
I didn’t react.

    
“Also, as soon as the body was released, Tellie had it cremated.
 
No one knows where she put the ashes.
 
It is over for good.”

    
Again, I didn’t respond.

    
“And Tellie and Taffy have left town.”
 
Shaneika examined me closely.

    
“They have?
 
Maybe they’ve gone on vacation.”

    
“Tellie resigned from her job.
 
The phone, the water, and electricity have been turned off.
 
They’ve left no forwarding address. They are gone.
 
Looks like maybe you might have been right about them.
 
Do you want me to pursue this?”

    
“Nope.
 
Leave it be.”

    
“It looks like Taffy is going to miss her court date.”

    
“I don’t care anymore.
 
In fact, I dropped the charges against Taffy this afternoon. Just make sure that a restraining order is in place on both her and Nancy forever.”

    
“No can do.
 
You can only take out an EPO if you are a domestic couple.”

    
“Don’t we have any stalking laws?”
    

    
“Inadequate.”

     
I just shook my head in disbelief while pulling a paper out of my pocket.
 
“Make a copy of this, send it to me, but put the original in your safe.”
 
I was hoping that the prepaid Visa cards that I made Tellie purchase for me wouldn’t spill out of my bra.
 

     
Shaneika quickly read the handwritten document.
 
She looked at me in amazement.
 
“This gives you ownership of all Richard’s equipment and his bees – signed by Tellie today.
 
Plus she also gave you the ownership papers to her new Prius. You want to tell me about this?”
  

    
“Nope.”

    
“You already knew they were leaving town.”

    
“No reason the bees should suffer.
 
This weekend, Matt and I will go get them and bring them here.
 
On your way out, there is a CD on the dining room table.
 
Put that in your safe as well.
 
Don’t listen to it.”
 

    
“What was said and who said it?”

    
Faking sleep, I began snoring softly.
 

   
 
“Well, it looks like crime does pay if you can blackmail,” said Shaneika.
 
“Knowing you is going to be interesting, Josiah.
 
Don’t bother showing me out, even though I know you are not asleep.
 
I also expect a key to this house.
 
I don’t want to be piddling in the fields like some poor migrant worker.”
 

     
Around midnight, my daughter called.
 
“Are you going to sell to Shaneika?”
  
                      
 

     
“Hello to you too.”

   
 
“Well?”

   
 
“I need the money.
 
The house needs some serious maintenance.
 
I will pay you back too.”
 

   
 
“I didn’t pay Miss Todd one red cent.
 
She owed me.”

   
 
“That’s what she said when we first met.
 
Want to tell me why?”

   
 
My daughter chuckled softly.
 
I took that as a no.
 
“I guess things are looking up all the way around.
 
The case has been closed,” she said.
   

     
“With minimal damage to us both.
 
And I’ve got some good news.
 
I got a part-time teaching gig at Transylvania in the art department and I am going to sell the Stephen Powell and others from my collection.”

   
 
“But you love your art collection.”

   
 
“It’s gotta go. I am tired of being broke; besides, there are new hip young artists in town I can buy on the cheap.
 
Plus the house will be on tour twice a month.
 
The bees, the teaching and the touring will get me back on my feet financially.
 
I hate being poor.”

   
 
“Looks like you are coming out of your funk.”

 
   
“Three years is long enough for a hissy fit while watching the farm fall apart.
 
These bees are keeping me broke.”
 

   
 
“But you love them.”

   
 
I sighed.
 
“Yes, I do love my honeybees.
 
They are magical creatures in an ugly world.”

   
 
“You can’t ever tell me the truth about Mr. Pidgeon’s death.
 
Ever.
 
It would make me an accessory after the fact.”

    
“You are assuming it was murder.
 
I have changed my mind about that, and the death certificate says otherwise.”

    
“I trust your instincts, that’s all.”
                                                                                                 

    
“Daughter, Susan B. Anthony once said that woman must not depend on the protection of man but be taught to protect herself.”

    
“I doubt she meant revenge killing and I’m not going to get into a debate with you about the morality of murder,” she said stiffly.

    
“Some men are just too mean.
 
I think any person has the right to defend themselves. The decisions people make are not black and white but very strong shades of gray.
 
It’s hard to know what the right thing is sometimes.
 
As my mother use to say, “You do your best and trust in the Lord.”

     
“The question remaining is – are you going to be able to live with your decision?
 
I know something heavy went down, and you are somehow involved.
 
All things point to it.”
 

     
“Baby of mine, I’m just gonna have to find peace.
 
God knows that I tried to do the right thing – so should you.”
 
And with that, I hung up. I hated giving her the last word.
 
After all, we both knew deep in our hearts – there is the law, and then there is Kentucky justice.
 

24

     
That should have been the end of the trouble Richard Pidgeon caused me, but there seemed no end to his interference in my life.
 
He was more trouble to me dead than alive.
 

     
 
It took several weeks in the hospital again to remember the details clearly.
 
I do remember that the phone was ringing insistently.
 
I had been doing repair work on some windows, taking me some time to climb down the ladder and run inside the house to the phone.
 
Thinking the call might be from one of my two lawyers, since that was whom I talked to mostly these days, I was surprised to hear the voice of my next-door neighbor, Lady Elsmere.

     
“Daaarling,” she said in her Tallulah Bankhead voice.
 
“What took you so long to answer my call?”

    
“Working on the house,” I replied between breaths. Lady Elsmere was really June Webster from Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky, who had the good fortune of making rich men fall in love with her and then die.
 
Her first husband was a garage inventor, who in his spare time made some doohickey for

some thingamickbob and became a multi-millionaire selling his doohickey to a big corporation.
 
Unfortunately, he had the bad luck to die of a heart attack on vacation with June in Venice while celebrating their good fortune.
 

    
But as always, a star hung over June.
 
While mourning the loss of her beloved husband in Rome, she ran into an elderly English lord who thought he was the reincarnation of Lord Byron.
 
June, assuming the esteemed Lord Byron was a TV game show host, was introduced into a world of literature, art, and sin to which she took like a duck to water.
 
Noting that she was such a good companion for all his tomfoolery, the elderly lord married her and took her back to England as Lady Elsmere, where she lived for some time until he, too, died.
 
Lord Elsmere’s estate passed on to the next male in the Elsmere line, but the elderly lord left June loads of wonderful cash, just pounds and pounds of it, which she converted to the dollar when the dollar was weak.
 
She came back to Kentucky, rich as Midas and with an English title too.
  

   
 
June bought the horse farm next to me several years after I had purchased my farm.
 
Brannon refurbished her run-down ante-bellum house until it rivaled Tara.
 
After her house was restored as one of the most impressive early nineteenth-century houses in the South, June got into the horse racing business.
 
It was due to her precious Thoroughbreds that we crossed swords all the time.
 
Her farm was a desert of grass.
 
I was trying to let my farm revert back to nature and the seeds of my so-called weeds kept blowing on her property, thus fouling her perfect pastures.
 
Also, my animals occasionally had the bad manners to wander onto her property.
 

   
“What is it now?”
 
I asked sharply.
 
I was pressed for time and wanted to get her complaining over fast.