Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,50

you heard any more about Clay?” she asked and for once she didn’t sound angry or disgusted.

“Only that he’s in jail and not talking.”

She nodded. “And the town meeting? It was postponed?”

“Yes. I could almost feel the hostility in the room. No one wants to listen to the facts.”

“Mob mentality. They can be like a pack of wild dogs.” Her voice was gentle when she said, “You know you’re killing me, right? I’ve spent my life living up to the standards of this community. Appearances are important with my generation. Yours doesn’t seem to care what people say or think.”

In the soft light from the lantern, I could see her eyes tearing up. This was tons worse than being yelled at. Now I felt bad for coming back to Moraine two years ago and dropping my personal problems and Clay’s bad behavior into Mom’s perfect world.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ve really tried to measure up.”

Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I loved Moraine and wanted to be accepted, but circumstances kept dragging me into the limelight and not in a good way.

“Lie low for a while,” Mom said. “Tend your store, get into a routine. Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“I promise.”

Well, what else could I say? She wanted to hear it. And I promised with total sincerity.

“Whether your honeybees are dangerous or not is beside the point,” she went on. “They’ve caused too much division among our residents. Promise me you’ll get rid of them.”

I was silent for a minute.

“Promise me?”

“Okay, I promise.”

And I said it with the exact same sincerity.

Nineteen

I’d found five G. Smiths in the phone directory, and I decided to call every one of them. Four were women. The last one turned out to be male, but his name was Gary, not Gerald, and he knew nothing about bees.

If Gerald Smith didn’t exist, and I had a bad feeling that he didn’t, where were Manny’s honeybees and the hives? Had Grace lied to me about the name because she didn’t want me to know where Manny’s bees went? Or had someone lied to Grace? I’d have to try to find the right moment to broach the subject of the missing bees after the funeral tomorrow.

Putting that problem aside for the light of day, I went to work making good on my promise to Mom as soon as I was sure it was dark enough to cover my tracks.

September nights are cool in Wisconsin, perfect weather to move bees, although rain would have been even better for keeping the colonies snug inside their hives. I’d helped Manny move these two hives from his place to mine. I could do this alone.

I’d thought long and hard about where to stash the hives. Most homeowners don’t mind a few bees wandering into their yards as long as the busy workers didn’t disrupt their lives. But two entire hives, with thousands of workers in each, tended to make people nervous.

Stanley Peck’s place was an option. He had plenty of farmland and he seemed to have some bee knowledge based on the information he imparted to the mob about my bees and the distances they could fly. And he’d defended me against Lori. But I didn’t entirely trust him. He’d been part of her original group, and I hadn’t forgotten that.

Holly’s lake home was another possibility. But she had one of those totally pristine yards with everything in place, manicured, pruned, etc. My two box hives would stand out like warts on a baby’s bottom.

That left only one place. Grams’s house. The location was perfect—only a mile and a half from my house, so the bees would still be within their home flying area. I certainly couldn’t let her or Mom know what I was up to because then Mom would launch into one of her long-winded lectures intended to force me to toe her line, which happened to be covered with barbed wire. She’d made me promise to get rid of my bees because of politics, but she hadn’t approved of them from the very beginning. Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure she had ever approved of anything I’d ever done, past or present. Or future. That first-daughter syndrome again. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get her approval without any success.

How a sweet woman like Grams could have a cranky daughter like Mom amazed me.

Yes, Grams’s house was the answer. It would be easy to slip in undercover with the hives, without