Lacy held a hand over her eyes to block the glare from above us. “What do you think those are?”
The slatted edifices were too small to be playhouses. A slight hum emanated from the one nearest me and, as I moved closer to inspect it, being sure to dodge three-pronged poison ivy, a bee escaped and landed on my forearm.
My heart began to pound as it had when I’d been young and watched Pooh Bear sing about being a storm cloud as he floated toward the bees. I closed my eyes and recalled my trip with Momma to the Sweet Hive, the apiary where she’d taken me when I was ten in an attempt to face my fears.
It’s okay to go slow, but it’s not okay to not go at all, Momma had said as I’d hesitated to even get out of the car, much less put on the white beekeeping suit while bees swarmed around me. That day had required extraordinary patience and stalwart fortitude from my mother as we both donned the gear—me, glacially, since I had to stop periodically to shoot her frantic looks and beg to go back to the car.
You are stronger, smarter, and braver than this hive, she’d said over and over, the words baptizing me as we’d finally followed the beekeeper out to his modern apiary, all white lines and curated glass, and watched him blow puffs of smoke at the entrance to the hive.
While Momma and I had waited for the bees to calm enough not to sting us, I’d closed my eyes, felt the fabric against my skin, listened to the sounds. At ten years old, I couldn’t express the vulnerability I’d felt even though the white costume mostly protected me from the bees’ stingers. I couldn’t begin to understand that Momma hadn’t been teaching me to be unafraid of bees nearly as much as she’d been teaching me to be unafraidof life. In the end, Momma had been right: Living through and in spite of the fear was the best way forward.
Back in the here and now, I breathed in the scent of honeysuckles, opened my eyes, and watched the bee flit away without stinging me. I knew what I was looking at.
This was an apiary, though a simple one, possibly dating back to the original house. These structures housed the bees, quite a small hive based on the low hum nearby. There were eight houses, but the sounds were only coming from the box closest to me.
“I knew that Mr. Finch liked to make his own honey, but I had no idea…” I remembered the book I’d seen in Mr. Finch’s whiskey cabinet,Backyard Apiaries. “Must be his hobby… or must’ve been. But I can’t imagine Glenda Finch letting him out of her sight long enough to come back here.” She’d been panicked after not seeing him for a couple of hours.
“So you think this is where he was? Before he died?” Lacy asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “But in our welcome packet, there were specialty bottles of honey. I saw one of them in the Finches’ apartment too. Maybe he was trying to contribute something personal, something he’d made with his own two hands, to the contestants.”
The idea made sense. Frederick Finch had been a beloved member of the pageant community, and this place, this show, was his baby in many ways.
“What do you think is back there?” Lacy asked, pointing to a shed just past the apiary, where ivy hung over a one-room structure that looked as if it might have been a smokehouse at one time. Now, it appeared more like a ramshackle shed with its slanted roof and a few missing exterior slats.
“Let’s find out,” I said, starting in that direction.
The hinges screeched as the door to the shed swung open, sending a thin stream of light into the windowless space. The hair stood on the back of my neck. Instinctively, we both pulled out our phones and switched on the flashlights, lighting up the space in small bursts.
Lacy pulled at a string above us and a yellow bulb glowed half-heartedly. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I studied the paltry contents of the room. I knew what I’d been hoping to find: clear-cut evidence that Mr. Finch had been here and that someone other than my aunt had been involved. But there was no blood-soaked chair with a rope hanging over the side. There were no weapons or torture devices thrown about. There wasn’t even a good place to sit.
I closed my eyes and reminded myself to use all of my senses as I attempted to picture Mr. Finch in this space. I sniffed. A hint of smoke lingered in the air, which meant the apiary had been recently harvested for honey.
I opened my eyes, and they landed on a white suit with a plastic mask folded in the corner. Beside it was a tarnished silver bucket with a funneled lid, and behind these objects ran three shelves filled with jars of honey labeled with a purple cartoon bee. The first two shelves held jars just like the one I’d received on arrival, but the jars on the third shelf featured a white-petaled flower with scarlet marks: an exact match to the one in Mr. Finch’s cabinet.
I picked up a jar from the bottom shelf and held it in my hand. I ran through the flowers Momma had taught me grew around this area. Swamp roses, of course. Black-eyed Susans. Queen Anne’s lace. That white flower with the pinprick dots wasn’t any of those. I thought through the list several times, adding to it as I went: azaleas, rhododendron, dogwood, sourwood, black gum.
Then it came to me: This was a sketch of a mountain laurel, a cup-like white flower with a rim of scarlet drops. Dots of darkness. I remembered the lesson Momma had taught me about mountain laurels on one of our hikes, how she’d told me to think of the dark spots as blood, a warning to steer clear. If I’d even touched the flower, I had to wash my hands before eating or drinking.
I side-eyed Lacy. “This label, it’s different than the others. I think that flower is a mountain laurel.” I opened the jar and sniffed at the contents. It had the tell-tale scent of grape-flavored candy, the same thing I’d smelled in the Finch apartment when I’d lifted the honey jar to my nose.
“What’s wrong with mountain laurel?”
“Poisonous,” I said, screwing the lid back on and setting it on the shelf. My eyes traveled down to a boxed kit on the ground. I shone my light on the words that read,Toxicity Test. Thin strips of litmus paper had fallen to the floor like petals from a flower. “There’s our proof,” I said, taking a photo of the kit, the test strips, and the honey jars to show the sheriff later. “One time a beekeeper told me he had to test the honey around these parts, to make sure it wasn’t toxic. Too many mountain laurels had invaded the area, and the pollen carried poison. The honey was usually fine but, occasionally, he’d get a bad batch.” I pointed to the bottom shelf. “Like those.”
Someone had been tending the hive, and that same person had been testing the bees’ wares, seeing if any of the collected honey had too much mountain laurel pollen, the element that would make a batch poisonous.
The four jars on the bottom shelf—the ones with the white flower—must’ve contained the right amount to tip the oozy liquid into the danger zone for human consumption, and one of those jars had been placed in Mr. Finch’s liquor cabinet. But by Mr. Finch himself? Or someone else?
That’s when I saw a small metal case lying on the ground, one of those that holds a few pills at a time. It was empty, but an inscription had been etched into the corner.
To my favorite Dr. B!
Love,
Savilla
TWENTY-FOUR
