A Beeline to Murder (5 page)

“Good point.” Kat leaned back and laced her fingers together at the back of her neck. A stumped expression crossed her face.

Abby closed her eyes and mentally reviewed the facts for the umpteenth time, noting the holes. Finally, she looked over at Kat. “I know it’s not my official business, Kat, but I admit to being fascinated . . . and deadly curious, so to speak.”

Kat smiled and shook her head. “And that’s just like you to say something like that.”

“I find this case puzzling,” said Abby. “We can speculate all we want, but we’re short on facts. So, to fill in the blanks, let’s take a look at the photos I snapped of the scene. Then, tomorrow, you and your partner can continue with your knock and talk with people in the neighborhood, and you can find out the names of all Jean-Louis’s former lovers, friends, and enemies. Let’s determine who saw him on the last day and night so we can keep working the timeline, and then let’s find out what the coroner’s investigation turned up.”

While Kat cleared the kitchen table, Abby loaded the file of digital images onto Kat’s laptop. Then Kat sat down and methodically clicked through the images. When she got to one particular photo, Kat zoomed in and pointed to the abrasion marks around the chef’s neck. She clicked to the next picture, a close-up of the chef’s forearm tattoo, which looked like the number ninety-six.

She and Abby both leaned in for a closer look.

“Do you think it’s some kind of baking symbol?” Abby asked.

“We have a file of gang tattoos, but when we can’t identify them, we take pictures of them to the guys who actually do the inking.”

“Tattoo artists?” Abby asked.

“Some call themselves ink masters.”

“Wait a minute,” said Abby. “We’re looking at this upside down. It’s actually more like sixty-nine, but with the numerals on their sides. I’ve seen that symbol before.” Her brow furrowed. “Yes, I think, in the horoscope column of the
Weekly.
Isn’t it the symbol of the crab’s claws? Cancer. People born in the last week of June and the first three weeks of July are Cancers, aren’t they?”

Kat smiled. “Well, that would fit with the chef’s birthday of July eighteenth.”

They stared at the next image—a photo of the chef in the kitchen, surrounded by his employees that apparently had been taken at some earlier time.

“You said the chef barked at you some time ago and then apologized, explaining that he had been upset with Etienne. I wonder which one of the faces in that photograph is Etienne’s.”

Abby peered intently. “Hmm, good question.” She stopped on the next image to explain. “I snapped this photo of a photo because it hung on the wall behind the cash register, and I wondered if any of the people, once identified, could help in the investigation. Clearly, that’s Jean-Louis there front and center. It’s hard to make out the young man with the shaved head. The other two guys in suits look out of place. Why not see if Tallulah can identify the men in this photo?”

“Sure,” Kat said, bobbing her head.

“You know,” Abby mused, “the chef’s business partner could give you access to personnel records.”

“Otto is already doing database cross-checking of the people the chef knew and worked with.”

“Good.” Abby studied the image on the screen, as if doing so could somehow reveal more than what her eyes could actually see. Her intuitive sense was both a blessing and a curse, one that had surely been passed from her grandmother Rose after skipping a generation. Rose could be briskly walking hand in hand with Abby, late to church, only to change direction to avoid crossing paths with someone she sensed bore an ill temper.

When Abby was only four years old, she had rightly discerned that the messenger knocking on her grandmother’s door was bringing devastating news. Rose’s husband, Mac, Abby’s grandfather, had been thrown from the horse he’d been riding to inspect the farm fences. Grandma Rose had warned him not to get on that horse, but Mac had laughed off her worry as just a woman’s prattling. In the accident he had injured his back in two places and had broken several bones. The vet had had to put down the mare. It took nearly a year for Mac to mend, and after he did recover, he never saddled up again without first checking with his wife.

Kat said, “Whatever else went on, those ligature marks make it pretty clear Jean-Louis passed away from asphyxiation by hanging.”

“It’s so late. Should we still have that nightcap?”

Kat tilted her head toward the door. “I’m up for it if you are.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll have one glass of wine and then head home. First thing tomorrow, I’ve got to pick up a truckload of compost.”

“Again?”

“Yep. I’m going to put in some plants just for the bees.”

“But I thought that’s what you did last year, when I helped you plant all that rosemary and lavender.”

“Yes, but bees need year-round food sources, so I keep thinking of new flowers, blooming trees, and bulbs that the bees will love and that will impart good flavor to the honey they produce. I get the dark amber honey that tastes earthy and comes from the pollen of the early blooming eucalyptus and the long flowering stems of lavender, but not until late summer. I’m already thinking ahead to next spring.” Abby’s voice bubbled with perkiness, as it always did whenever she talked about her bees. “Kat, just imagine the palest golden honey, harvested in early spring, that tastes exquisitely like the earliest woodland wildflowers.”

Kat regarded her longtime friend with a bemused expression. “A truckload of compost sounds like a lot.”

“The farmette soil is clay, like concrete. It might take a couple of truck-bed loads, along with some gypsum, to get the soil amended correctly. Then I’m going to plant a couple of fast-growing eucalyptus trees. I’ve been coveting the ones with the green-gray leaves and the creamy white flowers that bloom from spring through summer, like those on that land adjacent to mine. Although, back there, other varieties of eucalyptus have pink, wispy blossoms that bloom in late September. Oh, the bees will love that flower, and Chef Jean-Louis will love—” The words caught in Abby’s throat. She bit her lower lip and heaved an audible sigh upon realizing the chef was gone . . . truly gone.

“He would surely have loved your spring honey, girlfriend. I guess now you can sell it to other pastry shops.”

Abby looked at her darkly and girded herself with resolve. “No. I can’t do that. I promised Jean-Louis that I wouldn’t.” She thought for a moment before revealing to Kat, “You know, I haven’t yet told the bees that Jean-Louis is gone.”

Kat raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re sounding kooky.”

“No, listen. The chef actually came out to the farmette to inspect the bees. He wasn’t afraid. He just walked to the hives and stood there, watching and listening, as if he was tuning in to the bees and allowing the bees to sense him. He tasted the honey, loved it, and told me he wanted regular deliveries.”

“Hmm,” Kat murmured, shaking her head, as if she wasn’t fully comprehending but was thinking that perhaps it didn’t matter. “I’d still love a swig of red, if you don’t mind. What say we make it a quick one?”

 

Abby found the crowd at the Black Witch Bar unusually animated for a work night. As she and Kat pushed past people to a table at the back, Abby overheard some at the bar wildly speculating.

“Do you think it was murder? Or did the chef kill himself because of depression over a lover’s spat?”

“Did his business partner do him in?”

“Is the killer on the loose in Las Flores?”

The chef’s demise had become heady leavening for local whispers. Gossip had increased in volume like a loaf of yeasted dough resting in the sun. The chatter annoyed Abby, and she tried not to listen to the conversations around the room by checking her watch against the clock on the back wall, next to the bathrooms. Both timepieces affirmed what her body was already telling her: 11:30 p.m., well past her usual time for bed. Houdini would be sounding his cock-a-doodle-doo long before dawn.

The din of the bar had gotten so loud that Abby dreaded the thought of even trying to talk. Three bikers in leather club jackets and jeans, one with a Hells Angels insignia, began a game of darts in the alcove at the end of the bar. Elsewhere, tall bistro tables and wooden booths—gouged, carved, and burned with initials, hearts, peace symbols, and other graffiti—served as conversation pits for the rough crowd of locals who had drifted in and anyone else seeking companionship in a social setting that included alcohol.

On the large flat-screen TV mounted on the wall opposite the bar, a perfectly coiffed blonde with large lips painted hot pink and wearing an indigo suit, a white blouse, and a fuchsia scarf, offered a sound bite to the local television crew about her plan for fiscal change and jailhouse reform when she was elected mayor. Abby leaned toward Kat.

“Isn’t that the councilwoman in the mayor’s race?”

“Sure is. Her name’s Eva Lennahan. Already acting like she’s governor. Her detractors say she has a huge ego and is politically driven. But others love her for her charity work. She has quite a few supporters, and . . . guess what? Our very own Chief Bob Allen is one of them.”

“Airbrushed makeup. Perfect hair. Her own entourage,” said Abby. “She must have dough.”

“More money than God. She’s married to a venture capitalist, you know. He keeps a low profile, but I’m guessing he’s just like the others who build McMansions and think they can do whatever they want, whether or not it’s good for the rest of us or our local environment.”

Abby was about to ask Eva’s husband’s name when the waitress hustled over to take their drink order. The old gal was wearing a low-cut top that showed a little too much of her aging boobs, which resembled wrinkled goose eggs. The cheap perfume she wore did little to mask the smell of tobacco smoke. The overpowering scent was almost more than Abby could bear in the poorly ventilated room.

“I know you ladies need a glass of something. What can I get you?” the waitress asked in a gravelly voice.

“I’ll have the house merlot,” Abby said, then leaned forward to read the woman’s name and added, “Toots.”

Kat chimed in, “Oh, make it two.”

“Coming right up,” said the overly cheerful waitress, turning away.

Abby watched as the woman balanced her tray and cruised by two other tables before scurrying back to the bar with new orders. With her thoughts drifting back to the case, Abby said, “If the cause of death is undetermined or suicide, the police department will close the case, Kat. But if it is homicide or manslaughter, I guess you’ll be working it for a while, won’t you?”

Kat nodded and said, “I love a good puzzle as much as you.” She laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table and reached for the wineglass the cocktail waitress had set before her.

“My turn next time,” said Abby.

“Ah, that’s okay. I know how tight finances are for you. I wish that farmette of yours wasn’t such a money pit,” Kat said. She clinked her glass against Abby’s. After a sip, she changed the subject. “The part I hate about this job is notifying the first of kin.”

Abby only half heard Kat’s comment; her attention had been diverted to a bar patron’s foulmouthed complaints rising over the din. She heard the man clearly say, “Why don’t you fairies beat it? No one wants you here. It’s your kind that’s ruining this town.”

Kat turned to look in the same direction. “Know him?”

“No,” Abby replied. “But I’d wager he is
not
a card-carrying member of the LGBT coalition.” She listened as the man’s rhetoric became increasingly inflammatory.

“I try to have a pleasant off-duty moment, and now I have to deal with a jerk,” Kat said, sliding off her stool. “Better find out why he’s so angry.”

They picked their way through the crowd, toward the man who stood at the bar near the front door, sipping from a beer mug. His sleeveless, faded work shirt revealed a heavily tattooed arm, shoulder to wrist. Abby soon figured out that the man’s diatribe was directed at two young men nearby who clearly were more interested in each other than they were the crusty biker spewing vitriol.

“Is there a problem?” Kat asked the biker.

Before Abby could hear his reply, she tripped. Her high heel had caught in a mesh gym bag on the floor. Trying to regain her balance, she knocked bar napkins to the floor and fell against the troublemaker, causing his beer to slosh across his mouth, coat his mustache and chin, and dribble down his leather vest. In one fluid motion, the man slid his beer mug onto the bar and drew back his tattooed arm to lodge a blow. Apparently realizing at the last possible moment that he was about to hit a woman, he dropped his fist and glared at Abby.

Abby stood her ground. For a middle-aged biker, out of shape most likely from hard living, drugs, and booze, this guy seemed as tense as a new spring on a screen door. She wobbled backward on her heel and grabbed onto the bar. Holding the bar with one hand, she used the other to disentangle her heel from the mesh. Then she locked eyes with the biker. “Sorry. My fault. I didn’t see the bag.”

Impaling her with his gaze, the biker swiped the beer from his mustache with a single downward stroke of his hand. Addressing the two gay men, he said, “Why don’t one of you get up and give a real lady a place to sit?”

“No,” Abby insisted. “Stay where you are. That’s okay.” The two young men, who looked like bankers in their dark suits and pastel shirts, huddled as still as statues, their eyes frozen on the mirror behind the bartender, where they could see the other tough guys in the room without turning around. They seemed frozen with fear, apparently too afraid even to sip their cocktails.

The bartender wiped his hands on a towel and pointed to the other end of the bar while he addressed the foulmouthed biker. “Two seats at the end, Harlan. I can serve you there just as easily as here.”

The biker shook his head in defiance. “Screw you. I ain’t going nowhere. This is where I always sit. Except this fairy is in my seat.”