Moving Is Murder (8 page)

Silence. I put the vacuum down and trotted up the steps. It was quiet inside the house, too. An article I had read about SIDS at one of my prenatal appointments leapt into my mind. Could she really be asleep? Of course, she was fine, but I’d just check on her. I tiptoed down the hall and struggled to open Livvy’s door as stealthily as a spy breaking into a foreign embassy. Peeking in the crack in the door, I saw Livvy, her blanket twisted in a knot beside her, her hands loose and relaxed. I watched her little chest rise and fall and let out my breath, silently. And Mitch said I worried too much. Ha!

I went back to the van and worked my way around to the driver’s seat, throwing away the trash, then vacuuming. I was thinking about what I would have for lunch when I pulled a cup from under the gas pedal. It was wedged, so I gave it a good jerk. I glanced in it as I turned to toss it in the trash can. I dropped it on the ground like it burned me, jerking my hand backward.

After a second, I poked it with my toe. When nothing happened I grabbed one of the sticks that littered our driveway under the pine tree. I gently slid the stick into the squished opening and angled the cup until it stood up. Then I peeked in, still ready to dive for cover. I wasn’t wrong. I’d seen it right in that first glance. Black and yellow smears and a few wings circled the inside. At the bottom of the cup there were a few fairly intact bees or maybe wasps. Stinging things, anyway.

I stood there the hand-vac dangling in my hand, looking from the cup to the van. The cup was a generic, medium-size cup with the red and white Coca-Cola lettering. It didn’t have a lid on it and I didn’t see one inside the van. The cup had been wedged under the gas pedal. How long had it been there? How did it get there in the first place? The back of my neck felt prickly. This had to be a bizarre coincidence. Slowly I put the vac down and rubbed my forehead. Thoughts were skittering through my mind that I didn’t even want to examine. What I was thinking was impossible. I squatted down to look at the cup again.

I felt a presence beside me and turned. A brown and black dog stood beside me, his face only inches from mine. I could see each sharp white tooth in detail as warm doggy breath engulfed me.

“What’s up?”

I jerked around. Mitch, still in his flight suit and carrying his gym bag, stood behind me. I hadn’t even heard him drive up. The dog trotted back to him, paused with his head under Mitch’s hand. I took an uneven breath to calm down.

“Isn’t he great?” Mitch rubbed the dog’s ears. “Sit, Rex.” The dog obeyed. His brown eyes fixed on Mitch adoringly.

“Where …” my voice trailed off. “That’s Joe’s dog.”

“Yeah, Tommy was watching him for Joe, but Tommy had to go TDY, so I volunteered to keep him. I figured he could sleep in the garage. Rex, that is.”

Tommy was gone on a trip, or Temporary Duty, as the Air Force referred to it. I’d never understood why the acronym for Temporary Duty was TDY instead of TD, but there’s a lot of things I don’t understand about the Air Force. What mattered now was Tommy was gone and Mitch had Rex. “Mitch,” I paused, unsure which objection to voice first. “We don’t know what that dog would do around Livvy. It might be dangerous. And does it shed?” I stood up to gain a better bargaining position.

“Oh, he’ll be fine. Joe says he’s great around kids.” Rex’s gaze bounced back and forth between us, like he knew he was being talked about.

“What kids has he been around?”

“Look, it’s just for a few days. I thought he might get lonely, but if it will make you feel better he can stay over at Joe’s house and we can go over and feed him and take him for walks. We’re already going to be over there getting the mail.”

Mitch wanted a dog. I’d held out. We moved so much that we never knew if we’d have a place to put a pet. But beyond that little difficulty, we disagreed on what kind of dog we would get, if we got one. Mitch wanted a big dog; I wanted a cute, little dog. A cuddly dog I could handle. Ever since a German shepherd chased me home from school when I was eight I’d kept my distance from large dogs. Rex eyed me with his solemn brown eyes.

“Okay,” I said reluctantly. “You take care of the dog.
I’ll take care of the plants and the mail. Are you done for the day?”

“Yeah. I decided to skip my workout since Livvy was so fussy. How is she?”

I listened for a moment. “Still sleeping.” I pointed to the cup on the driveway beside Mitch’s foot. “I found that in the van. Wedged under the gas pedal. Look inside.” He peered in and then let out a low whistle. “We’d better call the Security Police.”

“Then you think this means …” I didn’t want to say it. If I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be real.

“Someone wanted Cass to die. And made sure she did.”

A
nd you found this in the driver’s seat after you drove the van home?” Nott looked at the cup now encased in a sealed plastic baggie on the desk between us. “After you vacuumed it. After you ran it through the car wash.”

“Well, yes. I didn’t notice it right away.”

“Didn’t notice it.” Nott’s dark eyes bored into mine. So far he had repeated everything back to me. Shouldn’t he be taking notes?

Nott leaned back, studied the ceiling tiles for a moment. Then he stood. “Be back in a moment, ma’am.” He took the baggie with him, casually swinging it back and forth, like it contained a ham sandwich and he was on his way to lunch.

What was I doing? Nott obviously thought I was crazy to bring in a cup of squished insects and claim they
were a murder weapon. I rummaged through my bag until I found a Hershey Kiss. I popped it in my mouth. Who would kill someone with bees? You’d have to know how to handle them, that’s for sure. Not something I’d want to mess with. A memory teased at the edge of my thoughts. Something about bees? No. Honey? I crushed the foil wrapper. Abby brought me honey the day Cass died. It was from Jeff’s mom.

Oh, no. I closed my eyes and leaned back. Jeff’s parents had a hobby that, to me, was slightly bizarre. They were beekeepers. Jeff couldn’t be involved in this, could he? He didn’t have a hive, but he knew how to get bees and handle them.

And Cass had threatened him. Then he’d gone outside. What had I done?

I watched Nott return without the baggie. He escorted me out of the large room with scattered desks into a private office with a faux cherry–finished desk and a window overlooking an empty parking lot. Colonel Witson sat behind his desk, turning the plastic bag around in his hands. “Nice of you to bring this in, all bagged up and everything. You must watch a lot of TV.” Witson grinned and tossed the bag on his desk.

I felt my face heating up. I’d been trying to help, but Witson made me feel like I was some kind of bungling police groupie, a big joke.

“I thought you might need it. It might help,” I said tersely.

“Was this”—he looked at a file on his desk—“Cassandra Vincent a friend of yours?”

“Not really. I’d just met her a few days before.” I wished I had changed out of my shorts and T-shirt into something dressier. I felt a distinct disadvantage here.

Witson picked up the baggie. “And now you think
someone placed this in her car so she’d be stung and die?” His smile was wide.

“Look, I don’t know. That’s why I brought it to you. It sounds too crazy to be true to me, too. But I thought you would want to know.”

“Yes, we do always appreciate any help we can get. Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Avery. We’ll look into it.” He closed the file and stood up to shake hands with me.

I tossed a load of tiny clothes in the washing machine. How could someone who weighs twelve pounds generate three loads of laundry? Upstairs, I heard the gentle splash of water and the murmurs of Mitch’s onesided conversation with Livvy as he bathed her. I closed the washing machine lid and looked at the cabinets without seeing them. The supper dishes were done and I’d started the laundry more to keep busy than anything else. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything tonight. Despite Colonel Witson’s apparent lack of interest, two Security Police officers arrived at our house shortly after I returned from the base. They left with the van and my hand vacuum, so Witson was more interested than he let on. Although I didn’t like his attitude, he seemed to be following up on what I had found.

I felt a surge of anger and shook my head at myself. My time-delayed anger, which I experienced over and over again, didn’t do me any good. I wished I’d spoken up and defended myself instead of being embarrassed.

I couldn’t do anything about that now, but I could do a little research. I climbed the stairs from our basement garage/laundry room. In our bedroom, I punched
on the computer. It was too big for the secretary desk that my dad had made, so the computer was squished into our already crowded bedroom on a tiny pressboard desk. While the computer whirred through its warm-up routine, I plucked a chocolate Kiss out of the dish on the desk. Chocolate helps you think, I’d told Mitch. It was logical to have Hershey Kisses beside the computer. I logged on to the Internet and searched for information on bees.

Even though Witson had the van at the base, there was no guarantee he would do anything. Cass had died an awful, untimely death and whoever planned it was getting away with it.

The confrontation between Cass and Jeff worried me. That scene combined with Jeff’s knowledge of bees really worried me. I chewed the inside of my lip. Did I want to do this? I scooted the chair closer to the computer. The truth had to be better than not knowing.

After pointing and clicking my way around a few sites, I found several color pictures on a university education site and realized I had seen wasps, not bees. Wasps! I felt a little better. But if you know how to handle bees, you’d probably know how to handle wasps, too. I scanned the text. Yellow jackets are fairly aggressive wasps, especially if their nest is disturbed. If the hive is crushed it will provoke a fierce response, with wasps stinging repeatedly, instead of only once, as in the case of bees.

I scrolled down and clicked on the heading “Allergic Reactions.” It described the symptoms of a reaction. If the reaction was severe, death could occur within half an hour, but sometimes within five minutes.

I bookmarked the sight and continued exploring the other hits. The emergency room on-base had closed
last year. That info was part of Mitch’s in-processing brief and he’d told me, so I’d know in case I ever had to get Livvy help when we were on the base. The nearest hospital was at least fifteen to twenty minutes away. I shivered, thinking of Cass. Even if she had been stung in the parking lot with people around, she might not have reached a hospital in time to help her. Whoever had placed the wasps in her car must have known it would be difficult for her to get to a hospital or emergency room.

But where was her EpiPen? Had it been in the car and she was too overwhelmed to find it and use it? I’d ask Joe when he called again. I wondered if the police would call him and ask about the wasps and the EpiPen.

I left the computer and went outside. Mitch joined me in the backyard a few minutes later. He carried Livvy. He’d dressed her in her pajamas dotted with violets. She grinned and gurgled at me. I kissed her fuzzy head and inhaled the scent of baby powder and lotion. “Are you feeling better?” I asked her.

She punched out her legs in a kick for an answer.

“What are you doing out here?” Mitch asked.

“See that?” I pointed to our trash cans in the alcove behind the shed. Two wasps dipped and dove around the cans and then disappeared under the rim of the lid. “Yellow jackets. The same thing I found in the van.” I described the information I’d read online. “If we’ve got two in our yard, they must be pretty common. Anyone could attract them and then put them in the van.”

“Yeah, but how would you do it? Wasps aren’t the most cooperative things around,” Mitch said as we watched one wasp emerge and fly to our neighbor’s yard.

“A site online sells traps for bees. Apparently some people want to catch them. Or a bowl of water with
sugar or rotting fruit attracts them. They’re less active at night when it’s cooler. They can even be refrigerated. And smoke calms them down, too.”

Of course, if you grew up with beekeepers for parents you’d already know this stuff. I didn’t say my thoughts aloud. Jeff and Mitch went way back. My worries could be coincidences.

I hoped they were coincidences. “The murderer could have trapped the wasps, cooled them down, and then moved them to Cass’s van at the last minute. It would take a little time for them to warm up, but when they did …”

“She’d be on the road to the back gate, which is usually deserted.” Mitch finished the thought for me.

“Whoever did it picked the base because it was farther from medical care,” I said.

“And I suppose, if you weren’t allergic, a sting or two wouldn’t bother you,” Mitch said. His words stirred a memory, but it flitted away before I could pin it down.

“Let’s go inside.” I felt cold even though the night was still warm.

I logged off the computer. Mitch placed Livvy in the middle of the bed and propped himself up beside her with his head resting on his arm. I settled on the bed on the other side of Livvy.

“Look, she’s finding her hands,” I said. Livvy stared intently at her right hand. She pulled it closer and closer to her face until she bumped herself in the nose and we laughed.

He looked at me over Livvy’s flailing arms. His eyes turned troubled as he put his finger out for Livvy to grab and said, “It was probably someone from the squadron.”

I thought back to the day of the barbeque. “There
was a one hundred percent ID check at the gate that day. It is possible that someone could have gotten on base with a visitor’s pass or as a passenger in a friend’s car, but I’m sure the Security Police will check it out.”

Mitch said, “It’s much more likely that it was someone from the squadron.”

I sat cross-legged, Indian style, on the bed and rubbed my arms. I just couldn’t seem to warm up. I was chilled from the thought that someone we know, maybe someone we had talked to that day, had purposefully put an end to Cass’s life. “What kind of people are you working with up there?” I asked.