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.“Patti, you saw Grace go into Clay’s house.”“That’s right.”“And you told people that she was having an affair with him.”Patti squirmed.Not much, but I saw it in her eyes.The left/right thing she did when she felt cornered.“No,” she said.“I didn’t say anything of the kind.”“See?” Grace said.“Patti, you tell Grace the truth or I swear, I’ll never speak to you again.”What I wanted to say was I would kill her with my bare hands in front of witnesses.“You don’t mean that!” Patti said.“And I am telling the truth.”“Oh, yes, I do mean it.And you won’t be welcome in The Wild Clover.Come on, Grace needs to know.Tell her.”Patti crossed her arms and set her jaw.“You watched her through your telescope,” I prompted.That made Grace sit up and take notice.“You have a telescope?” she asked Patti.“For bird watching,” Patti said.And peeping-Patti-ing, I thought, but didn’t say.Instead I said, “Clay can tell you all about how she spies on him with her stupid telescope.”Grace pushed her chair back to get up.I gripped her arm.“Please don’t go yet.” I tried not to sound pleading, but I think I failed.Grace sat back down, though.“Now then,” I said, trying a different tactic.“Grace heard a rumor about Manny and me.Could we at least clear that up?”“Okay,” Patti said, still wary.“Please tell Grace it isn’t true.”“But it is.”I glared at Patti.My efforts to put things right had taken a left turn and were going south.“You can’t really believe that!” I said.“I believe my eyes,” Patti said.“They never lie.”“You are totally making that up.Manny and I were never together in a romantic way.”Patti gave me a glare back.“Then why did he come up from the river and sneak up to your house?”My mouth dropped open.Grace got up and left, slamming the door to the storage room when she left.I went for Patti but fell over Grace’s chair, landing in the center of the circle of chairs.Patti yelled for help when I sprang back up.Perhaps she saw the murderous look in my eyes because she hit me with her purse, which must have been loaded with thousands of heavy coins.I sat back down, but only for a second.I staggered to my feet and grabbed the front of her top, hearing a rip.My sister rushed in and wrestled me down.Then I remembered what Stu had told me about Manny taking his canoe out on the river.By then Patti had disappeared, running for her life.Thirty-four“I believe you,” I said to Patti when she finally answered her phone.“Please don’t hang up.”“That apology you gave me the other day about future apologies is worn out.I’m calling the police chief if you don’t stay away from me.Assault is a serious offense.”“You’re the one who struck first with that loaded purse of yours.” I held an ice pack on my head, hoping to keep the swelling down.“You tried to kill me,” Patti said.“Oh, yeah, right.”“I’m hanging up.”“No, wait.Please.I really do believe you.”“I said before that all my observations are based on facts.I have concrete facts on you and Manny.”She had said that she always had facts to back up her claims now that I thought back on our custard stop, but I’d missed it at the time.“If Manny came to my house, it’s news to me,” I said.“As far as I know, Manny hadn’t been to my house since last spring when he helped me introduce my bees to the hives.”“I saw him.That’s all I know.”“When?”“About five or six days before those bees stung him to death.I was having my raccoon problem then.I probably told you how they destroyed my house and how much money they cost.I’d just set the trap, and gone back inside.”“Five or six days before he died,” I repeated.That fit what Stu had said about Manny asking to borrow the canoe.It also gave the false rumor about us plenty of time to have reached Grace before her Thursday visit to Clay.“What exactly did you see? Tell me.”“It was almost dark.Good thing I was at the window at that same moment or I would have missed it completely.I saw Manny paddle up to your backyard, pull the canoe to shore, and walk toward your house, staying in the shadows.I couldn’t see much after that, but believe you me, I tried.”“You could be mistaken, if it was that dark.”“You have that light out by the river.I saw him clear as day until he walked out of its beam of light.It was Manny Chapman and he was definitely sneaking around.”“Was I home?”“You sure were and you know it.I saw you through your window, then you moved into a different room where my view was obstructed.”“You saw him go to my door?”“I didn’t have to.I’m not dumb, you know.And I don’t lie.”Now that Patti mentioned the whole lying thing, I realized that I hadn’t really ever caught her in any outright lies.Mostly she just stretched the truth until it transformed into a completely different shape than it’d started out.“I can’t believe this,” I said.“I’ve got to go.” With that, she hung up.Even P.P.Patti didn’t want to be my friend anymore.But I had bigger problems to solve, because Patti might actually have had some basis for thinking that Manny and I were carrying on behind Grace’s back.Flimsy, though, if what she said was based on real observations versus creative fiction.But Stu had pretty much corroborated it, saying that Manny had taken off in his canoe around the same time, heading downstream.That would have taken him right past my house.So why didn’t I know anything about it? Why would Manny come over without ever announcing himself?This was too weird.“How’s the head?” Holly asked, coming into the back room.She pulled the ice pack away and fingered my head knot.“Ouch,” I said.“Don’t touch.”“She really clocked you.”“You should have restrained Patti, not me.She was the menace.”“You looked more likely to do major damage.Now tell me the story.”My younger sister clucked over me like a mother hen while taking in the facts as I laid them out.When I finished, neither of us had a clue what was going on.“Anybody minding the store?” Someone called from the front.Holly said, “BBL (Be Back Later),” and bounced away to take care of customers, leaving me with my dark thoughts.What a confusing mess! And it all came back to the same small circle—Manny, Grace, Clay, Faye, and me.One of us was in jail and two of us were dead.And how did Stanley Peck fit in to the equation? An entire apiary was missing, and Stanley was studying up on bees with library books.Then of course there was big-mouthed Patti and all the trouble she’d caused.Grace would never have thought anything bad about Manny and me if P.P.Patti hadn’t spread it around.Was she up to more than just destroying reputations?If Grace didn’t kill her husband to be with Clay, might she have killed him because she thought he was having an affair with me?That had possibilities, but how did that explain Faye’s murder? Nothing was adding up.Process of elimination.That was the only way.I’d start with Stanley, since he was much more approachable than Grace or Patti were at the moment.When Stanley came into the market in the early afternoon, I said to him, “I’d like to get started in chickens.” I knew that Stanley raised a few himself.He looked surprised.“Don’t you have your hands full as it is?”“I’m busy, but how much work could a few chickens take? I have that little shed out back where we had chickens when I was a kid [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]