Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,69

acres and acres of corn and soy beans and raising dairy cattle. Stanley had opted for the same course as Grams, preferring not to sell out to big developers when they’d come calling. Instead, he rented most of his land for others to do the work and kept whatever part he felt he could manage for himself, such as the house, a few outbuildings, and enough space for a vegetable garden. When his wife, Carol, was still alive, the place was spruced up, but now a certain scruffiness had settled in. The grass was a little long, the garden a little weedy, and the house could use a paint job.

After parking, we walked around, hunting for beehives.

There weren’t any. Not a single one anyplace. Believe me, I’d know if there were hives close by. I have built-in bee radar, aka bee-dar, and it doesn’t miss.

Nada. Disappointing to say the least.

“I’m going to do some breaking-and-entering, if you don’t mind waiting in the truck,” I said to Grams, who was right on my heels the whole time. I wanted to do a quick peek in case Manny’s bee journal was sitting out in the open on Stanley’s kitchen table.

“You know, it’s not breaking-and-entering if the door’s open,” Grams commented. “It’s not illegal to check up on a good friend if we’re worried that something might have happened to him.”

“Oh, look,” I said, testing Grams’s open-door theory. “It’s unlocked.”

“There you go.” Grams passed me up. “Now, if you’ll give me a hint so I know what we’re looking for? I assume we’ve exhausted our search for beehives and are now onto the subject of . . . what again?”

“Manny’s missing bee journal.” We walked in and I lowered my voice, not sure why. “He kept all his bee notes in it. It’s black, spiral-bound, about the size of a hardcover book, and as thick. Scraps of paper are stuck in the back of it with odds and ends. Newspaper clippings and so forth.”

While I described the notebook, I opened kitchen drawers searching for the junk drawer. Every house has one, right? I quickly found it, which was in fact totally filled with junk. It had everything imaginable inside it except the kitchen sink. Or Manny’s journal.

Damn.

“Stanley needs someone to help him out with his home,” Grams noted. “He isn’t much of a housekeeper.”

“Why don’t you check his bedroom dressers while I search the rest of the kitchen,” I suggested.

“Let’s trade. I’ll take the kitchen. You can do bedroom drawers. I’m too old for surprises.”

We rooted around like two snoops, which was exactly what we were. If Stanley had secrets, we hadn’t found them yet. The man seemed to be an open book, which made me even more suspicious.

“Ah-ha!” Grams said, picking up a kitchen utensil and brandishing it. “He borrowed my apple corer last month and refused to admit he still had it. ‘I gave it back,’ he said, letting me think I was losing it. Here’s the proof.”

At least something came of our efforts. Grams got her apple corer back.

“This is why you wanted to come here, rather than following him?” I said. “For your apple corer?”

“I needed it,” Grams said after we left the house and I had boosted her back up into the passenger’s seat of my truck. “I’m making apple crisp today with a ginger-snap crust.”

Grams was the official baker in our family, and this dish sounded like a real winner, but that wasn’t the point.

“You couldn’t have mentioned the apple corer earlier?” I said with a tiny whine. “We couldn’t have stopped to get it after we found out where Stanley was going?”

“We wouldn’t have had the opportunity to shake down his house. Where’s the fun in that?”

Driving back, I made a mental list of suspicious characters, or as Johnny Jay liked to phrase it in cop talk, “persons of interest.” Suddenly, everyone in town seemed to be acting strangely, like they had hidden agendas. Except my family, who always acted a little strange and really did have hidden agendas.

I distrusted Clay Lane on principal, Stanley Peck because he was sneaking around reading bee books, and Lori Spandle for being anti-bee, and trying to get Grace to sell Manny’s house.

Then there was gossipy reputation-ruining Patti Dwyre. If I tried, I could work all of these people into a powerful theory of murderous intent.

But it was Grace Chapman who had my full attention. “I’m taking you home,” I said to Grams.

“My car’s at the store,” she reminded me.