Death By A HoneyBee Page 9

  “Good morning, Agnes.”

  She looked like a million bucks in her fur-trimmed suede coat, swinging a Kate Spade purse. Agnes recognized me immediately and reached for her cell phone.

  “Before you call security,” I added quickly, “you might want to know that I plan to tell the police that you omitted certain facts when you told them your story.”

  “Still drinking the blood of children?” Agnes said with quiet confidence. She unnerved me, but I was determined to have the last word with her. I had no idea why she was so hostile. A vampire – really!

  “Look, we can do this in the cold or go somewhere warm.”

  “Get in my car and be quick about it,” she commanded, looking down the tree-lined street.

  She unlocked her car, and I slid into the passenger side. It had been a long time since I had been in a luxury car that had all the bells and whistles. I sank into the creamy champagne leather seat.

  “What do you want?”

  “One thing about being an academician is that one knows how to do research,” I said reaching into my pocket, “like about your accident.” I pulled out a copy of a newspaper article and handed it to her. “It seems that you lied to me, Agnes. There was, indeed, a car accident in which you and Richard were injured, but there was no other third party. You were the drunk driver.”

  Before she could respond, I produced a copy of her divorce decree. “And it wasn’t you who wanted the divorce, it was Richard who wanted out - who told you to get lost. The only thing you told me that was true is that you loved him, which I believe you still do. It must have galled you that Richard went on with his life, married again and had a child.”

  Agnes was quiet. She started the car.

  Not knowing what she was up to, I pulled my taser from my pocket. “Don’t try anything funny,” I said.

  “You sound like a cheap detective novel,” she quipped. “Relax. We are just going around the block while talking. I don’t really want to be seen sitting here talking to you.” She settled back in the luxurious captain’s chair and pulled out into the traffic. “I told you many truths. The accident did aggravate Richard’s condition. It made him unbearable to live with. He began hitting me. One day, I hit back. Thought I had killed him. I never loved anyone but Richard, but I refused to let any man use me as a punching bag. What was there for us to do? Richard thought we should live apart before something awful happened. He loved me too. He was willing to let me go until he got better. He wanted the best for me.”

  “Yeah. He was a saint.” I rolled my eyes. “So he divorced you.”

  “The plan was that when he had conquered his condition, we would remarry, but the thing is he didn’t get better.”

  “And not only did he not come for you, but married a younger sweet thing. That must have been hard for you to take.”

  “Richard never really loved Tellie, but he wanted a child and . . . Tellie was convenient.”

  “You actually fell for that line of bull?”

  “Tellie was what he needed.”

  “You mean someone compliant.” An idea came to me. “Wait a minute! You and Richard never stopped seeing each other. You stayed in touch. You were always the real wife. Tellie was merely the woman who bore the child, cooked and cleaned for Richard, essentially a maid for him.” I pointed a finger at Agnes. “But you were the one he loved. That is why you were going to make Richard the beneficiary of your will. I bet he was always the beneficiary of your life insurance and pension as well.”

  “We had a standing date every week for the past twenty-seven years. We both got what we needed.”

  “Good Lord, you sound as though you’re proud of this.”

  “I’m not ashamed of my love for Richard nor can you make me ashamed. I made the best of the cards dealt to me.”

  “How does Tellie play into all of this?”

  “I lent him money to consult with the best doctors but no treatment ever helped him. It seemed like he was just hardwired to be a jerk but . . . other times, he was so sweet. We had been divorced for years when I told Richard I didn’t think we were going to get married again. He would be wonderful for months and then without warning, he would be a monster and then go back to being wonderful again. I couldn’t take it. Richard accepted that I loved him but I wouldn’t live with him again. But he was still relatively young. He wanted a child, a family. Finally, he met Tellie. She was very passive and seemed to like being told what to do. She was what Richard needed.”

  “Did you ever meet her?”

  “No, but I knew what she looked like.”

  “Did she know about your, uh, accommodation with Richard?”

  A shrug.

  “And your relationship with Richard was ongoing. You got the best from Richard while poor Tellie got the butt end of the stick.”

  Agnes said nothing, but concentrated on driving. It started to drizzle. She turned on the windshield wipers.

  I tried another tact. “Do you think he beat Tellie?”

  “I know that he sometimes slapped her, but not hard.”

  “He told you?”

  “Yes, he had no secrets from me.”

  “On a regular basis?”

  Another shrug. “It was none of my business what went on between them.”

  “You didn’t call the police?”

  “If Tellie wasn’t going to call, who was I to interfere?” defended Agnes.

  “He ever hit Taffy?”

  “God no!” Agnes answered disgustedly.

  “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.

  “Someone told them about the fight at the State Fair.”

  “It wasn’t me that fingered you. You might want to look Tellie’s way.”

  “Speaking of Tellie, have you seen her since this happened?”

  “She has been awful quiet. I went over to her house twice, but no one answered the door. I knew she was at home because her Suburban was in the driveway. Seems like she wants nothing to do with beekeepers.”

  “Maybe it’s you,” I teased.

  “Naw, dames love me. I had a condolence check for her from the Beekeepers Association and just put it in the mailbox.”

  “Cashed?”

  “Not yet.”

  Larry removed his Red’s ball cap and scratched his bald head. “The thing for you to do is keep active, make sure you make the next bee meeting. If anyone asks about Richard, just say it’s a mystery to you. No wisecracks. No bringing up the past. Keep it simple.”

  “So I look guilty?”

  “You look anxious. I guess the police are turning the screws. They don’t like unanswered questions. Neither do I.”

  “It’s been officially ruled as a heart attack.”

  “Tell people that, but distance yourself from his death as much as possible.”

  “Do you think I had something to do with his death?”

  “Naw, but someone sure-fire did. No bee would have stung Richard alive or dead without cause. Be careful. Watch your back, because someone gave those bees the meanies.”

  “I am just wondering. Why do you think that I had nothing to do with Richard’s death?”

  “You’re no crab apple annie. You’re too square. Dig? This was the work of a sneaky cat.”

  With that said, Brenda, Larry’s wife, pulled into the driveway. Without blinking, Larry took the basket and martini pitcher, placing them under an empty box. He fished out some breath mints and took one. “Get me on the Ameche if you need something. I’ll get the basket back to you at the next bee meeting,” he said over his shoulder while going to greet his woman. I trotted along thinking about what he had said. I guess he knew something about sneaky people.
<
br />   I ran errands and returned home to mow around the house. By dusk, I was feeling exhausted. I dressed in a ratty nightgown and climbed into bed early with Baby – not that I slept much, tossing, as my mind was restless again. I could see how people, when in a jam, panicked and ran. I was frightened. I was confused. For the first time in years, I wished Brannon were alive to tell me what to do. If things turned sour for me, I would have to start over in another town. At my age, I didn’t think I had the strength to do so.