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worries than an employee drinking on the job and an ex-husband living next door to me. It didn’t take long for the news of Manny’s death to spread, for people to find out that I’d been at the scene and saw some of what happened. My presence in his beeyard and the manner and place where Manny died didn’t help matters one bit.
    It only took one excited town gossip named P. P. Patti Dwyre to put what I feared the most into words. P. P. Patti, short for Pity-Party Patti, lived next door to me (on the opposite side of Clay) and spent most of her time trying to convince people to feel sorry for her, making sure everyone knew just how crappy her life was. Her life wasn’t one bit worse than anyone else’s. She just complained more.
    “Raccoons got into my attic,” P. P. Patti whined to me, handing over a cloth grocery bag. I rang up her items and began placing them in the bag. “It’s probably going to cost a gazillion dollars to repair the damage, and I just don’t know where the money will come from or where to find anyone to help with the handy work.”
    “Put a notice on the board.” I waved to the bulletin board next to the entryway where customers sold their litters of puppies and kittens, or looked for work, or offered to deliver topsoil and mulch in the summer months or plow snow in the winter.
    Patti’s head swung in the general direction, but I could tell she had other things on her mind.
    “I heard,” she said in front of everyone inside the store, “that Manny was murdered by killer bees.”
    That’s all it took.
    “Was Manny really stung to death by bees?” Stanley asked the group in general.
    “We won’t know anything for sure until the medical examiner finishes up,” I said.
    I counted on a favorable verdict, so I kept quiet, mainly because it was easiest. But looking back, I should have made it clear that there was no way honeybees could’ve been involved in Manny’s death. Yellow jackets were the most likely culprits, having the ability to sting multiple times. Yellow jackets were loners, not traveling as a group, but if one got angry and stung, it released a chemical that alerted other yellow jackets. Then they would arrive on the scene and join in the attack.
    Whether venom killed Manny or something else caused his death, only Jackson would be able to say conclusively after performing his medical examiner’s miracles.
    I felt so bad for Grace that my heart ached.
    I heard a truck’s backup alarm and spotted Ray Goodwin’s delivery truck sliding in to park in the back of the store. Trent came out to unload produce. He carried in boxes filled with vegetables while Ray ticked things off on a supply sheet. I joined him.
    “I need a signature,” Ray said, handing me the clipboard. “Awful about Manny and those bees.”
    “His bees didn’t kill him.” I signed off on the order, thinking I’d be saying that a lot in the upcoming days.
    “Sure looked like they did,” he said. “I’m the one who found him right after I stopped at Kenny’s Bees.”
    I glanced up from the clipboard. Hunter had already told me that Ray found Manny, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. “Kenny Langley’s?”
    Although I knew of the Langley family through my grandmother, I’d officially met Kenny just once, in the spring, when he and Manny sat down to negotiate sales territories. I didn’t like him from the start, because he’d treated me with an exaggerated indifference. Plus, he’d called me “the girl.”
    I’d been working in the honey house right next to where he and Manny had had their little chat. So I knew what the old-fashioned handshake entailed. Manny would take Waukesha County, Kenny would stay in Washington County—a logical solution, since they each lived and worked in his own territory. It was a truce that seemed to satisfy both of them. As the two fastest-growing producers in both counties, they didn’t seem at all concerned about the little guys who operated hobby