The Buzz Kill Read online

  That was Alice’s signal to leave. Even though eleven o’clock was a good hour away, the thought of the café bulging with customers made her feel claustrophobic.

  “I’ll let you know how the new recipes turn out,” Alice said as she was leaving. “And I’ll have some more of the fresh honeycomb later in the week.”

  Sally waved goodbye, and Alice breathed a sigh of relief as she walked out onto the footpath. There were no further obligations to anybody today, so she could go home and relax with her dog, Chester.

  The thought of checking on the bees in the red zone recurred to her, but after Sally’s gentle ribbing Alice second-guessed herself. Maybe she should leave them alone to settle in by themselves. Perhaps that way, they’d produce better honey.

  In fact, Alice now wondered if she should treat it as an experiment, then quickly closed down that line of thought. If she found out the bees prospered without her input, it would leave her bereft.

  No, that was just asking for trouble. Better to leave well enough alone.

  When Alice pulled her cycle into the long, gravel road that led up to her property, she gave a wave to Doug. He was in the front pasture, trimming back the unruly branches on the manuka there.

  The truck, the same one he’d brought over at four in the morning to load up with beehives, sat at a right angle to the clump of overgrown bushes. Even though he’d only worked halfway down the row, the back was already full of the cut-offs, their scent smooth and floral in the mid-morning air.

  “Hey, Chester,” Alice called out as she parked her bike at the side of the house and started up the front steps. The dog sat on his favorite spot on the long, wooden verandah. A yard from the front door where the sun would fall across his aging body for the longest part of the day.

  Although she’d called out, Chester barely lifted his head in acknowledgment. Once, when he was a puppy, he would’ve heard her approach from the moment her front wheel hit the gravel and run full-tilt down the driveway to greet her. Even a few years ago, he would have ambled along to nose at her leg as she propped her cycle against the house.

  He had a check-up with the vet booked for the next day. Nothing to worry about, Alice kept insisting to herself. She bent down to stroke his head and ended up kneeling on the porch, sniffing at the fur near his collar as she pressed her face against the dog’s side. The same gesture she’d been doing for twelve long years.

  The veterinarian should find nothing wrong with him but the slower movements of old age. So what if Chester lacked the enthusiasm of his younger years? They were both getting older and more set in their ways.

  The dog stared at her with a quizzical look, and his stumpy tail whirled in a circle—Chester’s version of a wag. As Alice was fond of saying, he was part-terrier, but mostly mutt.

  If she bothered to research, chances were there’d be some newfangled fancy crossbreed name for him nowadays. Maybe a terrierdoodle or a labraderrier, or some equally strange portmanteau. But mutt was what they called cross-breeds when Alice was young, so that’s what she called him now.

  Certainly, Chester had never minded the tag, as long as she spoke it with affection.

  Once inside, Alice rinsed her hands under the tap before cutting up some soft dog roll and placing it into Chester’s bowl. She took it outside to him rather than forcing him to move inside when it was quite obvious he’d rather laze away the day.

  Until a few years ago, his food of choice was hard dog biscuits, and he chewed them with great enthusiasm. Then, all at once, he began leaving most of them in the bowl. It wasn’t until Alice inspected his teeth she realized what was going on.

  Chester couldn’t handle the hardness. Most of his teeth remained and didn’t seem to cause any discomfort, but they didn’t sit as firmly in his gums as they once had and weren’t up to chewing something as dry as a rock any longer. Soft food was now the standard order of the day, and Alice tried not to mourn the change in her heart.

  “Don’t be silly,” she told herself when her thoughts of Chester turned maudlin. “The dog is right there in front of you, happy to be loved. Let tomorrow wait until tomorrow.”

  And if tomorrow were kind, the vet would give Chester a friendly pat when he finished up his examination, and they could travel home together with a clean bill of health.

  He’s just old and lazy. Like you’re getting.

  Chester ate half the bowl of food before losing interest and retaking his position as lord of the porch. With a last smile at him, Alice turned and walked out to the fields to talk to Doug.

  “I think you might have to come back tomorrow to finish it off,” Alice said by way of greeting. “Your truck looks like it’s about to topple over.”

  “Nah.” Doug wiped the sweat from his hairline away with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “It don’t weigh nothing much at all. It just needs me to jump in there and squash it down some.”

  “Let me know when you’re about to do that.” Alice gave him a shy smile. “I’d love to get some photos. Doug at the annual pressing of the manuka.”

  He laughed but shook his head. “You’ll either have to keep watch or miss out. How are your girls doing in the red zone? Did they settle in okay?”

  After Doug had dropped her and the hives off that morning—along with her bicycle and its baskets of goodies for the café—he’d gone straight to work. Alice could keep the details of the appalling interview to herself if she wanted, but instead gave a giggle and shared the whole story.

  She didn’t mind so much that people laughed at her when she was in control of them doing it. If mockery came out of the blue, it was a different story.

  “You really called him that?” Doug asked when his first paroxysm of laughter abated. “Killer?”

  “Murderer and killer, I believe were the terms I used.” Alice laughed along with Doug, finding his good humor infectious even if the memory of the incident still rankled. “And he deserved it, too!”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  Doug broke off a small twig with a bright red manuka flower decorating the tip and handed it to Alice. She gave him a smile of gratitude.

  “What I don’t understand is why they’d send out a reporter who didn’t like bees to cover your story in the first place.” He shook his head ruefully. “The world today makes less and less sense to me.”

  Alice had one up on Doug on that account. The world had never made the slightest bit of sense to her, at least not the bit with the humans in it. Give her a meadow and a beehive, or even a field with dogs running freely, and she coped just fine.

  “There should be a message on your machine,” Doug said, snapping his fingers. “I heard it ringing when I pulled up, but my ears weren’t good enough to catch what they said.”

  “Oh.” Alice looked back at her house as though he’d informed her it was teeming with spiders. Although she had the phone for emergencies, as a means of communication it was her least favorite device.

  “I’ll let you get back to it.” Alice’s voice was full of reluctance, making Doug laugh again.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing too drastic. And I’ll be here with my snippers and a saw if you need any help.”

  Chapter Three

  On the short return walk to the house, Alice tried to think of why someone would be calling. If it were anybody ringing to make fun of her first and only TV appearance, she’d pull the plug out and leave it dangling down the wall.

  The red blink of the message light may as well have been a warning sign. Danger, danger, it flashed in three-second bursts. With a sense of foreboding, Alice pressed down the button on the machine, then winced as it squealed for a second before playing the message back.

  “Hi, Ms. Townsend. It’s principal Alex Dunbar from the Tashmore Primary School here. We’ve got a swarm of bees that have settled into one of the trees in our playground and the society recommended you’d be the closest apiarist who could help. I’d sure be grateful if you could come in, even though it’s Sunday. It’d be terrible f
or the little ones to interfere with the bees, or vice versa, when school’s back in tomorrow.”

  The man left a series of instructions for getting to the school, though Alice was reasonably sure she knew the one it was. He also gave a phone number, but she hoped that was just for emergencies. She’d rather poke her eyes out than engage in a phone conversation with a real person on the other end.

  The trip to the primary school didn’t take long, and if Alice had surprised the principal by coming straight out instead of phoning ahead, he hid it well.

  “The tree is down the back, one of the poplars that fence in the playground.” Mr. Dunbar pointed to the one and Alice’s keen eyes could make out the displacement caused by the crawling bees.

  “Do you need any help?” he asked as she set off. He appeared concerned Alice was on her own.

  “I’ll be fine. Depending on how mobile the swarm is, it’ll just take a couple of hours to clear them. It’s a fairly easy job when the sun’s out. Lucky you found them when you did.”

  “Yeah.” Mr. Dunbar gave a rueful smile. “Lucky me. Coming into work on a Sunday.”

  Alice tried to find a polite laugh, but it sounded shrill even to her ears. She turned back to the job at hand, abandoning the pleasantries. She didn’t need them, and if she stayed much longer, it would just make everyone uncomfortable.

  “I’ll just suit up, then I’ll get right on it.” Alice paused for a second, in the middle of unloading the tools from her bicycle. “You don’t need to stay here if you run out of work. I can let myself out through the gate, and I won’t need access to the buildings.”

  The man seemed taken aback, and Alice frowned as she shook out her suit before stepping into the white protective gear. Was that the wrong thing to say? She’d only been trying to be thoughtful.

  “I’ve got a few hours to go before I’m dismissed,” Mr. Dunbar joked. “But thanks for letting me know.”

  Alice set to work. Swarming bees were popular at this time of year as large colonies would split apart, with one venturing off into the great unknown to set up a new hive. Each year, Alice would place new boxes out to attract any swarming bees. Even if she didn’t end up with newcomers, the frames often filled with members from her existing stock, searching for new pastures and tricked into staying.

  She set out a white sheet with a nuc box on top. It was small enough to transport by bicycle and, on examination of the swarm, there wouldn’t be any chance of overfilling. From the low numbers, Alice guessed this was a secondary swarm from an already depleted colony. The fat queen wobbled and bobbled about in the center of the bee activity, her fat red abdomen showing in peeks and flashes.

  Standing back, Alice sprayed a sugar syrup solution over the swarm. The thin liquid meant the bees became too heavy to fly away. When she shook them loose from the branch they’d gathered upon, they had no choice but to drop to the ground, onto her waiting sheet.

  This was the bit she didn’t enjoy. Alice was always scared if she shook the branch too hard, she’d fling the bees too far and they might become injured. She took every dead worker as a personal recrimination of her clumsiness. Even though she logically knew her numbers were good—among the best—each death was still a loss to grieve.

  The honeybees fell and, after a while spent recovering and testing out the limits of their sugar-soaked wings, they crawled about in search of shelter. The dark entryway to the nuc box was their closest refuge, and once the first bee found it, the waggle and shake of its body transferred the location along the lines. Each bee surged toward the box, intent on getting their queen to safety.

  Alice sat back, watching the progress with fascination. When she closed her eyes, she could tell the bees level of agitation just from the vibrating hum emerging from their wings. As the box grew fuller, the buzzing intensified. A hundred voices grew to a thousand, gossiping and reassuring each other they were safe.

  “Is it okay for me to come this close?” Principal Dunbar called out from ten yards away. His cheerful voice was filled with a tinge of the same wonder Alice felt every time she watched this display.

  “If it wasn’t, it’s too late anyway,” she pointed out. Sound logic prompted her words, but the man laughed as though she’d made a joke.

  “They’re incredible wee creatures, aren’t they? If not for the Health and Safety concerns, I’d be tempted to leave them in place so the children could learn about them.”

  Alice poked a stick at the ground, loosening a clod of dirt. “Chances are, they’d move on with the dusk or the dawn, anyway. This won’t be their final resting place, just a pit stop on the way to their destination.”

  The man continued to stand there, staring as the last of the swarm found their way into the box. Alice cleared her throat as she got to her feet. “Unless you have some protective gear, you might want to step back for this next bit. They can get a bit agitated.”

  “Are you going to use the smoker thing on them?”

  Alice shook her head and gathered up the leading edges of the sheet. “No. When they’re swarming, the bees get into a different state, so the smoke agitates them, instead of calming them down. Once they’ve adapted to the hive and got their bearings, the colony will go back to normal.”

  Mr. Dunbar stood there for a moment longer, then nodded his head as Alice continued to concentrate on her work. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Thanks again for helping out. I didn’t mean to ruin your Sunday too.”

  Alice turned to him, surprised. “Hardly a ruined Sunday when I just gained a lot of new friends for free.”

  By the time Alice traveled home and got the new bees settled on the edge of her clover pasture, it was too late to think about heading back into the city to check on the progress in the red zone. She hadn’t decided whether to go in, so having the choice taken away was oddly comforting.

  Doug had done a great job on the manuka and Alice gave a satisfied nod as she sat down to eat her supper next to Chester. “Today started out terribly,” she confided to her dog, “but I think it’s all worked out rather magnificently in the end.”

  The following morning, Alice was just thinking about getting up when the phone’s high-pitched ring pierced through the silence of the house. Muttering that it better not be a telemarketer, she flung herself out of bed and jogged through to the kitchen. As much as she hated talking on the phone, listening to its ring was even worse.

  “Hello?” she answered, hopping on one foot as the other discovered a bite-sized chunk of Chester’s dog food lurking on the floor. She was trying to wipe it off with the edge of her nightdress when Sally’s tear-stained voice came down the line.

  “Have you seen the news?”

  For her ordinarily placid friend to sound so emotional was disturbing. Alice stopped hopping and stood upright, every muscle in her body tensing. “No. I’ve only just woken up.”

  “I’m sorry to get you out of bed but I thought you’d better know, and I’d rather you heard it from me.”

  The worst thing in the world occurred to Alice, and she leaned over the counter, scouring the porch until she saw the familiar thump of Chester’s tail. Phew.

  “What’s happened?” When Sally paused, seemingly to take another deep breath, Alice’s fears exploded. “What is it? Why aren’t you telling me?”

  “It’s the red zone where the beehives went in yesterday.” Sally gave another sob. “I don’t understand what happened, but the police found a man’s dead body there this morning. It’s all so awful, I don’t know what to think.”

  A dead body? Alice’s mouth opened in horror. There was no way her bees were ready for such a sight. “Who is it? Was it someone we know?” Her voice dropped lower as Alice asked the question she dreaded. “It wasn’t that awful TV presenter, was it?”

  Sally choked halfway between a laugh and another sob. “I don’t know who it is, but you’d better get down there. From the early news reports, it seems they’ve implicated your bees in his death.”

  Chapter Four
/>   Alice pulled up outside the red zone property border and stared in horror at the activity taking place on the section. Police were everywhere, crawling over the scene and minutely examining each detail. A news van had pulled up just ahead of her, and a large crew—triple the number that had interviewed her the day before—jumped out.

  After a second’s pause to take it all in, Alice bolted straight into the middle of the action. She headed for the man who appeared to be in charge, the three stripes on his shoulder signaling he was a sergeant.

  “Excuse me. Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

  The sergeant looked down at Alice, trying to make eye contact while she tried equally hard to avoid it. “You shouldn’t be here,” he barked and turned to a uniformed officer standing a short distance away. “PC Penrose, please secure the area properly. I don’t need extra feet muddying up the crime scene.”

  “The crime scene?” Alice gasped. “I heard someone had died, but I didn’t—”

  “We don’t know anything yet. Until we do—” the sergeant motioned for Alice to move back off the land.

  “But those are my bees,” she protested. “I need to check and see they’re okay. My friend said you thought they might have something to do with the death.”

  “Your bees? Ah.” The man paused in thought for a moment, then nodded. “Good. Stay here, then. I’ll just consult with someone and come back. Don’t move!”

  While the PC rolled the bright yellow tape across the entrance, in time to keep out the tangle of reporters, Alice stood in place. The surrounding confusion resolved into a pattern as she waited and watched.

  A group of men and women were conducting a search, a line of them stepping forward in unison then scouring the small patch of ground around their feet. Others were examining a trail of destruction across the section.

  Even with her untrained eyes, Alice could make out the trail she presumed the dead man had taken. Broken branches and trampled grass formed a crazily curving line from near the roadside edge of the section. Alice traced the path, then took a sharp intake of breath.