Mind Your Own Beeswax by Hannah Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

let me ever be one of them!
    I vowed to watch myself carefully.
    “What happened to Lauren?” Patti wanted to know.
    “She went to prison,” I said. “And no one saw her again.”
    There was so much more to the story and it all came rushing back. Lauren had turned eighteen the week before and so had been tried as an adult. Her defense team pushed hard for vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence, which sounded terrible enough, but Murder One was much worse. They appealed to the jury, imploring them to consider her state of mind, which at the time had been swimming in straight vodka.
    Lauren’s life was in the hands of twelve jurors. If they came back with a charge of criminal negligence, her sentence would be light. None of us thought that would happen. And we were right.
    The jury couldn’t do that.
    Lauren had three strikes against her from the very beginning.
    Bullet point one: She couldn’t remember a thing, which wasn’t so surprising considering her condition. After striking Wayne Jay, her car skidded into a tree. She got off easier than her dead victim, only suffering a mild concussion and a bad hangover. Maybe if she had been able to recall the night, she might have been able to defend her actions. Or at least offer an explanation.
    Two: Another big factor that hadn’t helped her case was Wayne Jay’s position in the community. At the time of his death, Wayne Jay had been in the same shoes his son went on to fill after his death. Lauren’s victim had been the local police chief.
    Three, and most important: After hitting Johnny Jay’s dad, Lauren had backed up, then ran over him a second time. This was the totally incriminating evidence her attorneys couldn’t rationally explain away.
    P. P. Patti nudged me. “Wake up.” She waved a hand in front of my face. “Calling Story Fischer.”
    I blinked. “Sorry, I was lost in the past.”
    “Is there more to tell?” Patti asked.
    “That’s pretty much it.”
    “But Holly said she might be back to kill again.”
    “Ignore me,” Holly said. “I say weird things sometimes.”
    “No kidding,” Patti said, shifting her eyes to me. “Can’t you give me something I can use that’s special? Something to tie things together? I have a hunch this is the breaking story I need to get into the newspaper job as a full-time investigative reporter.” Patti grinned. “I like the sound of that—investigative reporter.”
    “I’ll have to think a little,” I said to get her off my back. P. P. Patti might get the entire historical scoop from another resident as soon as we retraced our steps and cleared the woods, but she wouldn’t get the finer details from me. I didn’t want to go there.
    “Should we go home and call for help, report what we heard?” Patti asked. “Or should we keep going on this path, in the dark, with Lantern Man running loose and who knows what else?”
    “You can go back and report the shot if you want to,” I said, fumbling with the flashlight I’d brought along until its beam lit up the ground at my feet, knowing what Chief Johnny Jay would say if I were the one doing the calling. It wouldn’t be pleasant. Or printable. “While you’re doing that, we’ll keep going.”
    “We?” Holly said.
    “You and me. In case you forgot, our original mission was to find and retrieve a swarm of honeybees. Somehow we got sidetracked.”
    I cut my eyes to Patti.
    She was hesitating, trying to make up her mind which way to go, caught between two potentially exciting possibilities: Running home to be the first to report shots fired, which could possibly have been from Rita’s missing gun. Or staying with us in case we found something more tangible, equally newsworthy, or even better. I was pretty sure this was a no-brainer for Patti. And I was right. She decided in a flash.
    “I’m staying with you two,” she said, taking up a position behind Holly as I claimed the lead. Patti had said the same thing in my backyard about