Kiss of the Bees

Brandon put both hands protectively on Diana’s shoulders before he answered. “The publicity department at Diana’s New York publisher set her up to do an in-depth interview yesterday with someone named Monty Lazarus who was supposedly a stringer with several important magazines. Except it turns out he isn’t a stringer at all. He isn’t even a writer. He’s Mitch Johnson, ex-con, somebody who vowed that he’d get me one day for sending him up.”

Leggett shook his head. “It’s actually worse than that,” he said. “These are documents I’ve just now removed from Mitch Johnson’s motor home out on Coleman Road.”

Saying that, he handed Diana Walker a pair of gloves and a pair of manuscript boxes. One was packed to overflowing while the other was less than half-full.

“You might want to take a look at these, Mrs. Walker, but put on gloves before you do it. Fingerprints and all. Meantime, Brandon, there’s something I need to show you out in the car.”

Brandon Walker followed Leggett out to the driveway where the detective popped the trunk on his Ford Taurus. There, illuminated in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, lay Mitch Johnson’s awful charcoal nude of Dolores Lanita Walker.

“Where did this god-awful thing come from?” Brandon choked.

“From Mitch Johnson’s motor home,” Kendall answered. “I smuggled it out. Along with this one, too.” He took out a second sketch, one of Quentin Walker. “Neither one of these is on any of the evidence lists. I brought them here so you’d have a chance to get rid of them.”

“Thank you, Dan,” Brandon Walker said gratefully. “I’ll take care of them right away.”

With Brandon carrying Lani’s picture by the corners, holding it as though it were the rancid carcass of some long-dead thing, and with Dan Leggett lugging the sketch of Quentin, the two men walked into the backyard. There Brandon grabbed an armload of chopped firewood from his never-ending stack and threw several branches into the barbecue grill. Minutes later, the two offending pictures had been reduced to a pile of paper-thin ashes.

“That’s that,” Brandon said, dusting soot from his hands and onto his pant legs.

“There are two other pictures,” Dan Leggett said quietly.

“Of Lani and Quentin?”

“No,” Leggett said somberly. “If there are others of them, we haven’t found them yet. The two pictures I’m talking about are of someone else. They’re titled ‘Before’ and ‘After.’ ”

“They’re both of the same man,” Leggett replied. “Before and after a murder. Unless I’m sadly mistaken, the victim will turn out to be Mitch Johnson’s ex-wife’s second husband. That big-time developer who got carved up down in Nogales a few months back.”

“Larry Wraike?” Brandon Walker croaked in surprise. “But I thought a prostitute did that.”

“So did everybody else,” Leggett replied. “Me included.”

The two men went back inside. In the kitchen they found Diana sifting through a stack of papers. Her haunted eyes met Brandon’s the moment he stepped into the room.

“Fat Crack was right,” she said. “The danger did come from my book.”

“What do you mean?” Brandon asked.

“Some of this is Andrew Carlisle’s personal diary, Brandon,” she told him, holding back the single detail that some of the passages had been addressed directly to her, that even back in 1988, Carlisle had intended that someday Diana Ladd Walker would read what he had written.

“Carlisle and Mitch Johnson were cellmates for years up in Florence,” Diana continued. “It’s all here in black and white. It started the first day when I went to Florence to interview Carlisle for the book. That’s when Carlisle found out Quentin was up there, too. They targeted him that very day, Brandon. They set him up, and that’s what this whole thing is about—revenge. Andrew Carlisle was still after me and Mitch Johnson was after you. Lani was the perfect way to get to us both. And that’s not all.”

“Not all?” Brandon echoed. “How could there be more?”

“This,” Diana said. She held up what seemed to be the title page of a manuscript.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

“Do you remember when Garrison died I told you the manuscript he was working on disappeared?”

Brandon nodded.

“This is it,” Diana said. “I recognized the typeface from his old Smith-Corona the moment I saw it. It’s called A Death Before Dying. It’s supposedly a work of fiction about a college instructor—a handsome man—presumably happily married to a lovely wife. Gary didn’t have sense enough to change things very much. The husband taught freshman English; the wife was an elementary school teacher.”

“So?” Brandon asked a little impatiently. “I’ve heard you say yourself that first novels are always autobiographical.”

Diana nodded. “They are, and there was an ugly secret running just below the surface of this one. All the while the teacher thinks she’s happily married, the husband is carrying on with another professor—a male professor. Believe me, it’s a very special relationship to which the young wife proves to be an unyielding obstacle.”

“You’re saying Garrison and Carlisle had something going, something sexual?”

Diana nodded. “I think so,” she said.

“That would make sense then,” Brandon said. “It would certainly explain some of the hold Carlisle wielded over the man.”

“Some of it,” Diana agreed. “The kicker is here, though, on the very last page. The last written page because the manuscript is clearly incomplete. The last scene is mostly a dialogue between the two men. They’re sitting in a bar, talking. Planning exactly how they’re going to unload the