Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,32

before walking in a wide circle around the perimeter of what used to be the apiary. Nothing. Yellow jackets also liked trees, sheds, eaves, even holes in walls, so I widened my search, without any luck.

If I could find an aggressive yellow jacket nest close to the empty apiary, I might be able to convince the bee-hungry jurists to reach a unanimous decision to acquit the honeybees. I had to do it, had to know for sure, and that meant facing my fear and going right into what was once a thriving apiary.

It was a beautiful fall day, as Wisconsin Septembers usually are, when I forced myself into the beeyard. I heard birds in the trees and flying insects did wander by, including an occasional yellow jacket, but as much as I wished for it, there wasn’t enough activity to indicate a hive or nest close by. I instinctively strained to hear familiar sounds, but all I heard was emptiness.

After that, I rounded the honey house, looking up to search the eaves. I almost tripped over the bee blower, the same one I’d looked for without success when I’d needed to remove bees from Manny’s body. What was it doing back here? Manny was fussy about his equipment, almost to the point of obsessive compulsiveness. He never would have left it outside in the elements.

Then I spotted an object so small I almost missed it. A tiny shred, but I knew exactly what it was. A piece of a paper nest, the kind made by yellow jackets when they chewed wood into pulp to make their homes.

I looked up, but nothing above my head indicated that a nest had been under the eave. Still . . .

Had Manny discovered the nest and tried to destroy it? Had the wasps attacked him? But he was a professional beekeeper—he was more than smart enough to know to wait until dark, and he would never have been foolish enough to try to take a nest down with live yellow jackets inside. He would have sprayed the nest with massive doses of poison first.

What had Manny been thinking?

I put the bee blower back inside the honey house. Then I wrapped up the two dead yellow jackets and the piece of nest in a tissue and put them all in a plastic bag.

“What’s that?” Holly asked when I returned to the car.

“Nothing much.”

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

So I did. About how the entire community was about to wage war on honeybees, which I’d explained some of on the way over. About how Grace wouldn’t allow an autopsy that could have proved that wasps killed Manny, and about Grace giving away the bees that should have come to me. “I’m taking what I found to the police chief,” I finished.

Holly laughed. “AYSOS?”

“What does that mean?”

“Are you stupid or something?”

“I resent that.”

“I have to be there when you talk to the police chief. I can hear you now. ‘Hey, Johnny Jay. Look, yellow jackets really did kill Manny, not bees. And my evidence is this dead yellow jacket I found in Manny’s honey house and this little piece of nesting material.’ ”

It did sound lame. But Holly wasn’t through mocking me. “ ‘Now, Johnny Jay, I want you to go out there in the community and make an announcement and warn everybody that there will be legal consequences if they don’t leave me alone.’ ”

I didn’t know what to say because she was right.

“Story, maybe it’s best to just let it go. I know you cared about Manny a lot, but he’s gone. BON (Believe it Or Not).”

“I’ve got to find out exactly what happened.”

“No, you don’t. SS (So Sorry), but maybe Mom was right.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“She thinks you’re working too hard and getting nutty.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

We were still sitting in front of Manny’s house. “I wonder where Manny’s journal went,” I said, talking to myself more than Holly. “It must be in the house. We better get out of here before Grace comes home and catches us.”

Holly pulled out, heading for town, and that’s when the subject of Faye Tilley and Clay came up for the first time. Holly must have sensed that I wasn’t ready to talk about it earlier, because she waited for me to bring it up.

“Mom called and told me about it, but she didn’t go into any details. It must have been awful,” she said when I was done telling her about the events on the river—the storm, the