Mind Your Own Beeswax (24 page)

“More than okay. You remember where to find the key to the kennel?”

“Yup.”

With that, I rushed back to the store to get my truck, drove north of town, taking the Rustic Road up the hill, passed Holy Hill, turned into Hunter’s driveway, and released Ben from his kennel out back.

Ben jumped into my passenger seat without any coaxing at all, and we were off.

My plan better work or I was in
so
much trouble.

The drive back to my house seemed to take forever.

“Smell this,” I said to Ben, showing him the latest pee stain on my bedroom floor. I’d dabbed it up but hadn’t had time to give the wood floor a scrubbing, a good thing considering the circumstances. Hopefully, tracking dog Ben would get a scent from it. “And smell this,” I held out a bath towel I’d used to dry Dinky after she’d been rained on.

Ben sniffed and sniffed, then gave me a knowing, confident gaze that meant he was ready to get down to business. Or at least, that’s how I interpreted it.

“Ready?”

As soon as I opened the door, Ben went to work in my yard. He’d automatically assumed that was his starting point and I’d failed to mention where I’d done the actual dog losing. For all I knew, he understood everything I said.

“Not here, Ben,” I said to him. He kept going in circles.

“What’s going on over there?” P. P. Patti yelled from her backyard.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Since you’re home from work, I better take over for Holly and start protecting you like I promised. But come over here and help me first. I have slivers in my fingers from some rotting wood I carried and it’s going to get all infected and wouldn’t you know it, they’re in my right hand, which is my strongest. I’m useless with my left. Why does everything always happen to me?”

“I have Ben to protect me today. He’s a police attack dog. Ben can take down the biggest, baddest villain. I won’t have to worry about Johnny Jay for the rest of the day. And I’m in a real hurry. Or I’d help.”

“You can make time.”

“I really, really can’t. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Well, then what should I do about these slivers?”

“Go to the store. Holly will get them out.”

“Okay then. Well, you let me know when you need me.”

“Right.”

“Ben, let’s go.” I had his leash in one hand, which I snapped on him, and the towel in the other. We hurried to the store. Or rather I did. Ben, on his harness and leash, kept up without breathing any harder. I snuck into the back of the store where I’d last seen Dinky and we started the sniffing process over again.

Ben led me directly to the Dumpster, which must have been Dinky’s first stop just as I had predicted, then across the street, through a few backyards and along the river. Once we were out of the residential area, I set him free. Sometimes he sniffed like he was looking for Dinky’s scent floating in the air. Other times his nose was to the ground. Once he stopped and
really
took his time smelling around, alert and excited, and I would have bet a buck Dinky had left her pee mark in the vicinity. Amazing, since she usually reserved that for inside my home or store.

Then we turned toward The Lost Mile with Ben zigzagging along. It didn’t take long for my brain to catch up with Ben’s. He was leading me to Norm’s house.

Of course Dinky had headed home. How dense could one woman be? Although I really didn’t think the dog had it in her. Even the two blocks to my house should have been a tremendous strain on her pea brain.

Ben beat me there and immediately started barking.

Sure enough, Dinky was stretched out on Norm’s moss-covered, rotting porch, cool and calm as can be, patiently waiting for her owner to return.

Good thing he wasn’t home or I’d have some explaining to do.

“Bad dog,” I said to Dinky, who didn’t care in the least.

“Good Ben.” The K-9 cop’s tail wagged.

I glanced at the house and thought about my options, a no-brainer really when entrenched as deeply as I was in the current drama. Norm’s door sprang open when I turned the knob, not like last time when the house had been locked up. That might mean Norm wouldn’t be gone long. I’d have to hurry.

And I really hoped the unlocked door meant the alarm wasn’t activated. At least if it was, Johnny Jay wouldn’t be the one responding and I had a perfectly good reason to be there. Or I’d come up with one, if necessary.

In Dinky and I went. “Stay, Ben,” I said, knowing he’d remain close by for as long as I asked him to. Dinky was another story. Totally untrained and wild. I wasn’t giving her the opportunity to escape my clutches again by leaving her outside. She probably wouldn’t run off, but I wasn’t taking any more chances.

I lost her the minute we got inside, when she scampered around a corner and disappeared. So I gave up and made my way to the spare room to get another look at the lantern collection and poster board.

This time, I read each of the articles. Except for the one about the campers, all were based completely on superstition rather than any actual facts. Wild noises not attributable to local animals, unexplained lights and movement at night, a “creepy sensation” as one person put it in an interview.

Had Hetty helped Norm create the bizarre wall hanging? Had she known about his adventures as Lantern Man? Probably. The mean Witch would have loved the very idea of tormenting kids in the dark as much as she enjoyed hauling them through the woods by their ears. She might even have encouraged Norm the first time.

I really could see her forcing him into it.

I finished reading the last article. If Norm arrived, I decided to give him the same excuse as last time, the concerned neighbor spiel. I took a few minutes to study some pictures hanging on the wall. There was a younger version of Norm, wearing a Boy Scout troop leader uniform, framed in several different photographs, each with the same Boy Scout troop.

Hetty hated kids and Norm had been a Boy Scout leader! Talk about opposites! So why would he attack campers in the woods? What a contradiction. Although, appearances weren’t everything. Just take a look at Johnny Jay.

I thought of comments made by my customers and how some of them thought Norm was a killer. I wasn’t completely in that camp, but it was a good thing that I had Ben with me anyway. Just in case they were right and I was wrong.

I decided to stick around. By the time Norm pulled into his driveway, I was sitting on the porch steps, throwing a ball for Ben and Dinky to chase.

I couldn’t exactly come out and ask Norm about the things that bothered me, like why would a Boy Scout leader terrorize kids, because then he’d know I’d been snooping where I didn’t belong.

So I handed over Dinky.

“Where are her things?” Norm asked, cuddling Dinky in his massive arms. “You know, her blankie and other stuff? Did you leave them inside?”

“Um, gosh, I forgot. I’ll bring them over a little later. Just as soon as I get back from a few errands.”

“It sure is good to have my little pup home,” Norm said, looking like a great big teddy bear.

“How old is she, anyway?”

“Nine months.” Holly had been right. She was still a puppy.

Looking at Dinky, who had settled contentedly in Norm’s arms, I felt something strangely familiar tugging at my heart. The same feeling I got after spending time with Hunter and watching him take off on his bike.

“I’ll come and visit often,” I said to Dinky, realizing I actually meant what I said. Her ears changed position and she squirmed like she heard, understood, and approved.

Ben and I drove slowly away, with me watching Norm and Dinky grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror.

I found Stu Trembly’s brother, Eric, on a tractor, spraying apples in the orchard at Country Delight Farm on Creamery Road. He’d worked there as long as I could remember, starting out bailing hay as a teenager and progressing to manager of the farm. Based on an article hanging on Norm Cross’s wall, Eric had been one of The Lost Mile campers the night Lantern Man had stalked them and destroyed their camping equipment.

After describing the details of the night, Eric said, “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” Eric wasn’t exactly an easy scare, so coming from him it really must have been a terrifying experience.

“Describe the sound it made,” I asked, still trying to pin the local legend on Hetty Cross.

“I don’t know.”

“Did it sound like a banshee?”

Eric and I didn’t have an Irish bone in our bodies except on Saint Patrick’s Day, when the whole town pretended they had Irish blood. But since so many Irish immigrants had settled in the southeastern part of Wisconsin (right along with my German ancestors), we all knew what a banshee was—an Irish spirit, which sometimes appeared in human form and wailed across the countryside to foreshadow death.

“It sounded kind of like this.” Eric let out a loud lingering howl, not piercing at all.

“Could a woman make that sound?” I wanted to know.

Eric hopped off the tractor and leaned against it. “I’m not sure. Maybe.” We watched Ben nose around an apple tree and lift his leg. This was the third tree he’d marked since we arrived and, knowing the dog, it wouldn’t be his last.

“Thanks, Eric.”

“Sure. What are you up to?”

“Just fact-finding, feeding my curiosity.”

“Well, I better get back to work. Nice seeing you again.”

Halfway to my truck, I remembered something. “Hey, Eric, you were on a Boy Scout camping trip that night, right?”

“Yeah. The whole troop can vouch for what I told you just now.”

“Was your troop the only one camping?”

“No, a bunch of them were, but ours was the only one in The Lost Mile.”

“Was Norm’s troop out?”

“Probably.”

Two and two were beginning to add up to four.

I thanked Eric for his time and called out to Ben, who came running. The tractor started back up. My brain churned, the squeaky gears started turning.

I became more and more convinced I was right, in spite of Hunter’s brush-off.

Norm Cross had as much potential for filling the legendary Lantern Man shoes as I had for morphing into Wonder Woman. In other words, no chance whatsoever.

He was covering for somebody and that somebody had to be his wife, Hetty, who had been a much nastier human being than Norm ever would be. The role suited the old biddy perfectly.

The Witch had been Lantern Man.

Or rather, Lantern Woman.

Hetty had been out patrolling her woods that night, making sure intruders weren’t lurking around once the sun set in the west. Maybe she heard voices, Lauren’s and her assailant’s, and went to investigate.

Hetty spotted trespassers, all right. She had probably been thrown off by that, because no one had dared trespass on her turf for a very long time. Judging by layers of dust accumulating on those lanterns, they hadn’t been used in the recent past. She must have stumbled into a confrontation, maybe even witnessed Lauren’s death and could identify her killer, therefore leaving the murderer no choice but to kill her, too.

And I thought
I
had bad luck!

That would mean Lauren was definitely the prime target, and only one name stood out in boldface on my list of persons of interest in that case.

Johnny Jay.

He wasn’t going to be a free man long if I had any say in it, which I didn’t, but aspirations and short-term goals are always good incentives. What if he’d already been arrested by Sally Maylor and Hunter and charged with two counts of murder? I could imagine the scenario—Johnny in that very public holding cell instead of me, stripped of his dignity and position, having to use that open toilet right in front of everybody.

Johnny Jay had gone too far and would get his comeuppance, a word my mother used frequently.

If Johnny really was a killer, Hunter had better arrest him before Johnny had a chance to hunt me down.

For the first time ever, I considered buying a weapon for self-protection.

Although, thinking about it, a weapon hadn’t helped Lauren. Her gun had been taken away and used against her.

As I pulled into The Wild Clover’s parking lot, Holly came out of the store. She flung a filled garbage bag into the Dumpster. I rolled down the driver’s-side window, and she moseyed over.

“What are you up to?” she said. “And why are you chumming with Ben? That isn’t like you.”

“I love Ben. He and I are plotting an arrest, but I’ll tell you more about it later. We found Dinky. She had gone home, so I left her there with Norm.”

Holly banged her open hand against her chest in a show of relief. “Whew. I was really worried about her.”

“Not as freaked as I was.”

“BTW, Stanley Peck needs your help, something about beekeeping advice. He said he’ll be home if you get time to stop by and take a look at one of his hives.”