The Buzz Kill Read online

Betsy gave her a shy smile. “Are you sure it won’t put you out?”

  “I’m sure.” Alice shrugged. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to do it. It’s no trouble.”

  Betsy thanked her again, and Alice led her out of the station and to her car. This wasn’t the turn of events she’d been expecting but everything seemed to have worked out okay. They’d locked Russell’s murderer up, and her bees wouldn’t have to share their space with a bevy of police officers, scouring their hives for evidence.

  Apart from the sad fact that someone had murdered a man, life appeared to be falling back into place.

  “I’m so glad everything worked out with the police,” Alice said as she turned off the main road into the Thomson’s subdivision. “I hate to think of you being cooped up in a cell on top of everything else you’ve suffered.”

  “It was dreadful,” Betsy agreed. “I just want to get home and take a long hot shower. It’s odd, but I don’t feel like myself unless I’ve had the chance to soak under the hot water.”

  Alice couldn’t stand showers, or baths, or swimming pools, or puddles for that matter. The sensation of water on her skin ignited a tingle of nerves that felt decidedly unpleasant. She had to make deals with herself to get clean each morning. No breakfast until the shower was over, that sort of thing.

  Still, she gave a half-hearted mumble of agreement. People didn’t like it when she contradicted them, even if Alice felt like she should have just as much right to her opinion as they had to their own.

  “You know what I don’t understand,” Alice said as they grew closer to Betsy’s house. Now the case was over, she wouldn’t have the chance to ask the burning question again. If she didn’t boldly do it now, it would remain forever unsaid.

  “No, what?”

  “How did Russell ingest the poison anyway? Surely, he would know better than to take food offered by a woman who harassed him at work? That seems like such a strange situation.”

  “It wasn’t something Darlene offered him,” Betsy said, then bit down on her bottom lip.

  Alice waited for her to continue and when she didn’t, prompted, “What was it then?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Betsy said in an angry tone, “but that awful woman must have poisoned the sugar cookies I baked up especially for the picnic.”

  “Goodness,” Alice exclaimed. “If she did that, it’s a lucky thing you stormed off. Otherwise, you might have ended up ill as well.”

  Betsy gave a shrill laugh. “Oh, I was never in any danger of that. I suffer from celiac disease, so I can’t tolerate flour in my diet. Almost all my baking was done exclusively for Russell’s benefit.” She gave another harsh bark of laughter. “Not that he appreciated it.”

  “I’m sorry.” Alice frowned, deep in thought. “How on earth did she manage to get the poison in the cookies though? Surely, you never invited Darlene into your house.”

  “She didn’t need to be,” Betsy said in a short tone. “I always cooled my baking on the windowsill in the kitchen. That terrible woman probably just walked up the driveway, bold as brass, and couldn’t believe her luck.”

  Alice nodded, thinking what a brazen act that was—to poison someone’s food in broad daylight. “It’s strange, though, isn’t it? I mean, poisoning something only Russell would eat. I could understand if she thought you’d both end up ingesting it, but it does seem odd for her to kill the man she loved.”

  “She didn’t love my husband,” Betsy yelled. “Darlene meant nothing to him.”

  The shouts caught Alice by surprise, and her hands wobbled on the wheel, causing the vehicle to cross the center line. Quickly getting it back under control, Alice’s heart pounded in her chest. Whether from upsetting Betsy so severely, or nearly killing them both, she couldn’t tell.

  “Let me out,” Betsy said, opening the door before Alice could pull the car to a stop. “I’ll walk the rest of the way. I can’t believe how awful you’ve been. If I’d have known you would ask all these questions, I’d have walked all the way home from the station!”

  She struggled out of the passenger side door, breathing in great gasps. As soon as she was clear, Betsy slammed the door and strode off.

  Her house was just a hundred yards further up the road, so Alice waited until she saw Betsy make it safely into her house. Only then did she restart the car and turn it around, heading back home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “How rude!” Doug said as Alice told him the story. He’d waved hello to her as she pulled into the driveway, then came over to see what the matter was as she burst into tears. She’d explained in fits and starts, still shaking from the shock.

  “Do you think so?” Doug’s words were comforting, but Alice could still hear the voice of her friend Sally in her ear, telling her not to bother the poor woman. If only she’d taken her advice, Alice would have spent a lovely day at home today, instead.

  “Of course, I do.” Doug shook his head and whistled. “To yell at you like that when you were only doing her a favor. I don’t care what questions you asked—if she didn’t want to answer, then she only had to keep her mouth shut.”

  Alice wrinkled her nose, still unsure if she believed Doug was being honest. Because he was her friend, he could sometimes get very defensive of the way other people treated her. Still, the expression of disgust on his face was real enough, so Alice took him at face value.

  “I thought so too, but I suppose I overstepped the mark. It’s not a polite thing to question a widow, especially not when the police kept her overnight.”

  “Hardly your fault,” Doug bristled. “My mom always said it doesn’t cost you anything to be kind or polite, but people dole it out like it was gold.”

  Alice’s eyes lit up with delight at that one. She loved the collection of old sayings that sometimes came out of Doug’s mouth. The ones that caught her ear were stored away for her to ponder on gray days.

  “At least it’s all over with now,” Alice continued. “The police will leave the section alone, so the bees can settle in, and I’m sure the red zone will produce a lovely crop of summer fruit for the public to choose from.”

  “They’ll be in heaven,” Doug agreed. “Much like those new ones are with their home. I don’t know where they were before they turned up at the school, but every time I see them, the little creatures have their leg pockets stock full of pollen.”

  “Oh, good.” Alice was delighted, then felt a small peck of guilt she hadn’t been to check on them herself. The murder had caught up so much of her attention, she wasn't a great landlord to her new tenants at all. At least it was all behind her now.

  “I might try out a gluten-free recipe for the café,” Alice mused, thinking back to Alice’s disorder. “I’m sure that will be a popular one, especially if I make it with almond flour so it keeps.”

  “Food allergies are all the rage these days,” Doug agreed. “I remember a kid at my school got into an awful state one day when someone shoved a PB and J in his face. Nowadays, I hear the teachers all have those injectable thingamy bobbies. What do you call them? Epipens.”

  “The world certainly keeps changing,” Alice said, chewing her lip as she thought of the anger on Betsy’s face. She should make her a gift of the cake, rather than take it into Sally. It would go some way toward an apology, even if Doug were sure it was Betsy that was in the wrong.

  With a quick pat on Chester’s head, Alice headed inside to get baking.

  The recipe Alice settled on needed a few tweaks, due to seasonal variation. Although her berry bushes would soon be burgeoning with fruit, for the time being, she had nothing fresh.

  Instead of the six ounces of raspberries the recipe called for, she substituted with the last of the previous years blueberries, still lurking in her freezer. Once she checked them over for burn marks, they seemed in good enough condition to do the trick.

  Alice also substituted the orange for a lemon. She didn’t like the taste of oranges, being forced to swallo
w glasses of the pithy juice as a child had forever tainted it with bitterness in her mind. The sharp tang of fresh lemon from the bush outside her window though? That worked out far better.

  With the fruit substitutions made, Alice worked quickly to bring the rest of the ingredients together. Two cups of almond flour formed the base—guaranteed gluten-free. She wasn’t as sure about the makeup of her baking powder, so just doubled the baking soda to one full teaspoon and added a half teaspoon of cream of tartar as the acid.

  Although her spice cupboard needed a spring top-up, Alice found a half teaspoon each of cardamom, ginger, and fine-ground sea salt to add to the mix.

  In a separate bowl, Alice beat together four eggs fresh from her backyard hens, Clucky and Nesting. Then she added the spotlight ingredient to any of her baking—the honey produced by the hard work of her bees.

  The recipe called for two-thirds of a cup, but Alice upped that by a few tablespoons to offset the sour tang of the zest of one large lemon. A dollop of olive oil to make the honey up to a full cup, then she stirred the wet ingredients gently into the dry before adding the partially defrosted blueberries into the mix.

  Even before the batter went into the oven, the cake smelled incredible. Alice’s mouth watered as she set the timer for forty minutes at three hundred and twenty-five degrees.

  Once the cake was in the oven, Alice grabbed her phone out of her pocket and looked up potassium cyanide. The first article she found listed its uses in the mining industry or in electroplating. Neither of those seemed very likely sources for Darlene to get enough of the poison to kill Russell.

  Another article mentioned its use in photography darkrooms, back when people still loaded their cameras with rolls of film instead of a memory card. Alice supposed professionals might still prefer the medium they’d trained with, but again Darlene didn’t seem to be a likely match.

  That left the pest control industry. As the oven dinged time-up, Alice stuffed the phone into her back pocket. She must be over-thinking things, surely. Perhaps the courier warehouse had a problem with field mice or rats. Given the rabbits she’d seen bounding through the nearby empty sections, it wasn’t a stretch to think other rodents might also take advantage of the position.

  As she pulled the cake out of the oven and smelled the heavenly aroma of almond, honey, and lemon, Alice decided that was a problem she’d leave to the police. For now, an apology should be the only thing on her mind.

  She mixed the juice of the lemon with another tablespoon of honey and brushed it over the still-warm cake, letting it soak the crumb. In half a mind to cut it into pieces, Alice wisely decided to leave it whole until she handed it over to Betsy. Otherwise, not all the slices might make it to the final destination.

  Chester’s eager brown eyes almost swayed her as she set the cooling cake into the passenger seat of her car. At the last minute, Alice gave him a piece of dog chocolate instead and stroked his side with great affection while he guzzled the treat down.

  “I thought I’d made myself clear,” Betsy said, wiping her hands dry on a tea towel as she pushed open the front door in response to Alice’s knock. “I don’t want to see you on my property ever again.”

  “Sorry, but I made you a peace offering,” Alice said, extending the almond and honey cake out to her. The tray probably wasn’t the greatest display item, being fashioned from functional metal wires, but she hoped the gesture would still go over okay.

  But Betsy wasn’t having any of it. “I have enough to deal with, wondering if that bimbo who killed my husband is getting out and coming after me, without shooing you off my property every five minutes,” she said.

  Much to Alice’s disappointment, she didn’t even glance at the cake on offer, just stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

  “Between Darlene and that bozo Clarence next door, I’ve got quite enough on my plate as it is, thank you very much. I won’t tell you again, I don’t want to see or hear from you again.”

  Betsy slammed the door in Alice’s face and she stood on the doorstep for a minute longer, absolutely stunned at the response. Her position softened slightly as she heard the woman crying on the other side, however.

  Sally would tell her she was insinuating herself into a position where she clearly wasn’t wanted. Alice backed away, returning to her car with the full cake still in hand.

  “Oh, well,” she said to herself as settled it back into the spare seat. “I’ll just have a treat for Sally and the café customers instead.”

  As she moved around the car to get in, Alice caught a flash out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see the neighbor, Clarence, with a camera pointed straight at her face.

  For a second, she hesitated, not wanting another confrontation so soon on the heels of Betsy’s curt reception. Then the camera flashed again, taking another shot, and Alice felt her anger rise, a flush of heat suffusing her cheeks.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, walking straight up to Clarence. “I didn’t give you permission to take my photograph.”

  “You’re out in public,” he answered with a smirk. “I don’t need your permission.”

  As Alice continued to glare at him, Clarence lowered the camera, giving a shrug. “I just wanted to snap a few pictures. It’s been a strange couple of days with lots of comings and goings. I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy, but I wanted a record of this time to remember later on.”

  “I don’t see why you need the pictures,” Alice said. His apology made her feel on less certain ground. Should she still be feeling angry? “Most people rely on their memories.”

  At that, Clarence laughed, though not in a mean way. “I think you’re showing your age there. We live in the selfie generation now. Everyone is taking a photograph of everything, all the time. At least, I’m a professional. I can send you a duplicate print if you give me your address.”

  Alice scratched her elbow and looked back over her shoulder at the car. “I don’t like looking at photos of myself.”

  “Still, they’re a nice keepsake, if you wanted to give them to somebody else, or put them in an album for your family to enjoy?” When she continued to hesitate, he added, “I do them properly. They’re developed in my own darkroom and I’ll only make a print if they turn out nice.”

  “You have your own darkroom?” Alice asked, surprised. Hadn’t she just been reading about that on the internet earlier? “Would I be able to see?”

  Now it was Clarence’s turn to look hesitant. “I suppose so,” he answered after a long pause. “Just don’t touch anything while I’m showing you through. Some of the chemicals I use can cause a nasty burn if you don’t handle them right.”

  Alice smiled and held up her hands. “I promise, I won’t touch anything. I’m just interested to see, since it’s an art form that seems to be dying out.”

  The sentiment lit up Clarence’s face, and as he led Alice inside, he talked about his long career in photography at a mile a minute. She understood why her overenthusiastic soliloquies could sometimes strike people the wrong way.

  “Here’s the darkroom,” Clarence said, opening the door to show her into a glorified cabinet. “It’s small, but it has everything I need to get some really lovely pictures. If I had to switch to digital, I think I’d give the entire enterprise away.”

  Alice looked around the tiny room, staring with interest at the different photographs Clarence had pinned up to his wall. There was one of Russell and Betsy having a screaming row. Another showed Darlene, looking nervously over her shoulder as she walked up the Thomson’s drive.

  Along the side wall was a long bench with deep sinks for mixing the chemicals required for the development process. Alice pulled out her phone and turned to Clarence with a smile. “Now it’s my turn. Do you mind if I take a picture of this area? It’s such an interesting space.”

  The man shook his head, beaming a smile of pleasure he could share his obvious passion for photography with someone else just as intere
sted. Alice took a few snaps with her far inferior phone camera, the last one getting the bottle of potassium cyanide front and center in the shot.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alice leaned back against the bench in the Bumbling Bumblebee Café and watched the soundless screen in the corner. The police led Clarence into the station, a deep scowl on his face giving him a striking similarity to every serial killer ever.

  “I’m so glad that’s over,” Alice said, leaning across to press her fingers against the few crumbs of cake that were left over. The taste of lemon and honey reminded her of midwinter when she’d mix them together in a hot drink to ward off potential colds. The flavor combination tasted just as good now, even though it was spring.

  “What a terrible waste of a life.” Sally gave a disapproving frown. “Imagine trying to kill a couple just to make a claim to a property you had no rights over. That’s going over the line from plain bad into evil.”

  “At least Betsy escaped his clutches,” Alice said with a nod of agreement. “Thank goodness she’s celiac and didn’t touch those cookies. Otherwise, she could just as easily have been found dead.”

  “It puts me right off having a picnic.” Sally wiped her hands on her apron and jumped up onto the bench, swinging her legs. “Only sit-down dinners in nice restaurants for me from now on.”

  “And cafes,” Alice said with a stern look. “You don’t want to do yourself out of business there.”

  “I suppose now everything will go back to normal.” Sally had a pensive expression on her face, not a look that fit in naturally with her normally sunny disposition. “I wonder if they’ll put a memorial up in the red zone property. It would be a nice touch, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.” Alice couldn’t really see the point but understood other people were far more sentimental than she was. “Perhaps I should write his name in fancy lettering along the side of the beehives.”

  She expected dismissal of the idea. Usually things that occurred in such flashes only entertained her own mind. To Alice’s surprise, though, Sally nodded. “If you put it in a nice font and a nice color, then I believe that could do the job very well.”