Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,88

blown more smoke at the hive, because now the bees were getting rowdy. Bee colonies have quite a list of enemies—wasps, ants, mice, skunks, bears, and raccoons, to name a few—and I understand why they need to have their own special swat team. But you’d think by now the bees would know me well enough to give me a break.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The next stinging attack came in the space between my right boot and my jeans. Then another, near that one. From the honeybees’ point of view, they and their queen were under full attack. And I was a rookie beekeeper who hadn’t been smart enough to anchor my jeans with elastic and was too excited to wear a bee suit. At least I’d had the sense to wear the veil so my face and neck were protected.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to ignore the pain, not an easy thing to do.

Why was I putting myself through this torture and agony? Because Manny had been in my backyard, not in my house. He knew and loved bees, and he’d been up to something. I had to know what it was. It had to do with the bees, I was sure of it.

Another bee dove in, stinging my other hand. My throbbing fingers finally felt something other than pain: An object pressed against the hive that didn’t belong there, anchored to the bottom of the hive with tape. I felt along, peeling it away by touch while the sound of pissed-off bees grew louder and louder.

By the time I scooted away from the hive, I had lost count of the number of stings I’d endured, mostly on my hands and ankles.

And they really, really hurt.

Bee-sting therapy, also called bee-venom therapy, is supposed to relieve the symptoms of MS and arthritis, among other ailments. The treatment involves allowing bees to sting the area in question as many as ten or twenty times. The venom is supposed to jumpstart the immune system. All it did for me was jumpstart my pain sensors. By the time I drove home and stumbled through my back door, my ankles had swollen beyond belief.

But I had Manny Chapman’s missing journal clutched in my puffy fist.

Thirty-seven

In my opinion, personal journaling is just what it implies—personal, as in private. Like the diary I had as a girl. My little tidbits scribbled down while lying in bed in the dark weren’t intended for an audience. I hate to think what would have happened if my mom had found mine. She would have had a bird’s-eye view into my mind, which was never a good thing.

Which reminded me, I wonder whatever happened to that diary . . . ? I decided not to go there. It could only cause panic, thinking Mom may have had it all this time.

Holly keeps a journal where she writes down her thoughts and experiences. She says she does it to understand herself better, to work through her emotions and analyze their significance.

I’m not really sure I care to understand my actions better. Analyzing them up and down and sideways would drive me nuts.

But Manny Chapman’s journal wasn’t a personal diary; it was an accounting of his honeybees’ daily lives. It was a jumble of notes and clippings, all in reference to the community inside his colonies.

For example:• What type of mite appeared when and what he did about it.

• Dates of harvests and hive splits.

• The times he caught swarms and the results.

• Which hives were most aggressive, which ones he considered best for raising more queens.

I’d had the exclusive privilege of accessing the journal, although I hadn’t spent more than a few minutes on an occasional page, recording an observation of my own or adding an entry at his request.

The journal was very important to him, so when it went missing, I should have been much more clued in that something was off kilter. That said, I’d been pretty distracted by two deaths—two murders—in as many days, so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

But if the journal hadn’t been stolen, if (as it appeared) Manny himself had hidden it under one of my beehives—why?

That was the sticky question.

He’d risked the river despite his water phobia to conceal the journal. And he’d never said a word to me about it being there. Did hiding it have something to do with the break-in at his home, the robbery that Johnny Jay had chalked off as a kid’s prank? Had he