“How long were you married?” Yancy asked.
“Seven years in February.” She turned her head to show him the diamond studs in her ears. They were substantial. “He bought me these for our anniversary.”
“Sweet. Do you have children?”
“Nicky has a grown daughter.” She signed the paper and handed it back to him. “This still doesn’t seem real,” she said in a raw, whispery voice.
“When’s the service?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Soon, then.”
“The funeral home says there’s not much to do. Being it’s just, you know, an arm.”
“They can fix that middle finger, no problem.”
Eve Stripling looked puzzled.
“Not that you’d have an open casket,” Yancy added. “But just in case …”
“Oh, right. Good idea.”
He got out of the car. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Inspector.”
Behind the wheel Eve Stripling appeared smaller and almost contorted. With a shudder she hunched forward, squeezing her eyes closed, and it was Yancy’s impression that she was trying very hard to cry.
Five
Miguel was no beekeeper; he made that clear. He was an exterminator of bees, a highly trained assassin.
“Tell me what you’ve got,” Yancy said.
“There’s an old wood house on Ramrod, the whole east wall. I am ripping it apart tomorrow.”
“I hope the hive is large.”
Miguel laughed, flashing a gold-tipped incisor. “The hive is a motherfucker, Andrew. You cannot believe how big.”
“But how are you going to move the damn thing?”
“Don’t worry. It is what you hire me for.”
“And the bees will follow? That’s the part I don’t understand.” Yancy had a vision of Miguel’s truck weaving down Highway 1 while enclouded by a seething swarm.
“They sleep at night,” Miguel said. “I got a system.”
“Dead bees won’t do the trick. They have to be alive.”
Miguel gave a sigh he reserved for thick-skulled gringos. “For sure, Andrew. Alive.”
“How much do you charge?”
“For such a fucked-up job? Three hundred, plus gas.”
“I can probably swing two-fifty.”
“Bullshit,” Miguel said. Then: “Okay, two-fifty.”
Yancy handed him a piece of paper with the address. Miguel glanced at it and said, “Who lives here?”
“Nobody. It’s under construction.”
“Excellent, my friend. Where you want me to put the hive?”
“The master bedroom would be lovely. It’s on the top floor, facing the Gulf.”
“No problem.” Miguel took the cash from Yancy and counted it. “Here is the thing, Andrew, because I am what you call a straight shooter. When they find that motherfucking hive, the people that own the house, I’m the one they gone to call first.”
“Well, who else?” Yancy said.
“ ’Cause I’m the top bee guy from here to the Redlands.”
“Everybody knows that, Miguel. Everybody.” Yancy envied the man’s pride in his work. “Shook is the owner’s name. When he calls, I’m thinking maybe you could be tied up for a while—let those poor honeybees have some fun.”
“I got so much fucking jobs right now, my wife she is ready to kill me.”
“All right, then. Mr. Shook can wait.” Yancy gave Miguel another twenty-dollar bill.
“You want, I’ll e-mail to you some pictures, Andrew. For proof.”
“Not necessary, amigo. I’ll know when it’s done.”
Miguel was grinning as Yancy got in his car. “You look sharp, man, all pimped out. Must be some world-class pussy waiting up on the mainland.”
“Actually,” said Yancy, “I’m going to a funeral.”
A short death notice had been posted on the Herald’s website: Nicholas Joseph Stripling, age forty-six, of Miami Beach. Survived by his loving wife, Eve, and one daughter, Caitlin Cox. Private services to be held at the Neo-Pentecostal Church of Faith, followed by interment at the St. Lazarus Gardens and Water Park in North Miami.
North Miami!
The drive took almost four hours in manic traffic, Yancy cussing humanity most of the way. He owned one dreary black suit that he’d bought years earlier for his mother’s service, and he hadn’t worn it since. Now the coat hung too loosely on his frame, Yancy having dropped so much weight since becoming a restaurant sleuth. The paradox wasn’t lost on him—he’d worked many bloody crime scenes and never once felt queasy, yet the glimpse of a desiccated rat carcass in a vat of stale muffin mix left him poleaxed with revulsion.
So far, the only good thing about the job was that nobody complained if he didn’t show up. The restaurant owners were relieved not to be inspected, and they made no inquiries to Yancy’s supervisor regarding his whereabouts.
His decision to skip work and attend Nicky Stripling’s burial was out of character for two reasons. First, Yancy had always been a punctual public employee and, second, he strenuously avoided graveyards. A morgue full of chilled stiffs was no problem, but for some reason a field of sunlit tombstones gave him the willies.
Ever since meeting Eve Stripling, Yancy had been sleeping poorly, nagged by the missing pieces of her story—a story of no evident interest to anyone but him. It was an easy matter to feed Nick Stripling’s name through the state crime computer, revealing a single arrest and conviction at the age of twenty-seven. The colorful details were in a file at the courthouse.
Young Nicky had had a minor role in a common Florida insurance scam in which fraudsters would intentionally crash cars into innocent drivers and then submit mountains of phony medical claims, which the victims’ insurance companies almost always paid off. Stripling acted as the driver and was skilled at directing each staged collision with such finesse—front bumper angled into a rear rocker panel, the impact buffered by a subtle last-second deceleration—that neither he nor any of his co-conspirators received so much as a knot on the head. Whiplash was the faked injury of choice because of its domino cascade of serial billings and easy profits. The lineup of complicit health-care providers included an alcoholic chiropractor, a senile orthopedist, an unlicensed radiologist and a battalion of nonexistent physical therapists. Nick Stripling’s take for each crash was relatively paltry, so he’d turned state’s witness at the first prodding from investigators. He ended up getting ninety days in the county jail and five years’ probation.
From such inauspicious beginnings Stripling was somehow able to retire in his forties. Yancy was curious to know the secret of the man’s prosperous turnaround.
No more than fifty hardy souls showed up for the funeral in a baking summer heat that undulated off the bright green grass. Yancy feared he might sweat through his suit. Eve Stripling wore a black dress, black heels and a veil. She sat in the shade under the canopy before a walnut coffin piled with wreaths. Yancy wondered if the mortician had prorated his embalming fee, since there was only one limb to bury.
A young blond woman, also dressed in black, sat at the opposite end of the first row. Yancy assumed she was Caitlin Cox, Nick Stripling’s daughter from a prior marriage. From her body language Yancy perceived that she wasn’t enamored with her father’s current wife. Wearing saucer-sized sunglasses, Caitlin Cox fanned herself and every so often whispered to her buzz-cut husband, who was built like a stevedore.
Yancy kept well back from the mourners and remained standing. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he noticed he wasn’t alone; two other men were maintaining a practiced distance, and their suits were charcoal gray, not black. Law enforcement of some sort, Yancy guessed. They were sweaty, too. August in the city could wilt a soul.
A generic silver-haired preacher rose and said saintly things about Nick Stripling before the coffin was lowered. Eve Stripling stood up and thanked everyone for coming. She said she’d placed in Nick’s casket a childhood Bible and his favorite speargun. To Yancy it seemed a bold hobby—spearfishing—for a mediocre swimmer, as Mrs. Stripling had described her late spouse when she came to collect his left arm.