= Death by Yellow Jackets
  A Janice Mills Story
  by Megan Powell

A soggy hornets' nest lay on the patio in the center of an evaporating puddle. A garden hose, the apparent cause of the nest's destruction and a woman's death, lay a few feet away.

The victim was also sprawled on the ground. I didn't go to med school, but I can recognize the symptoms of anaphylactic shock. Her skin was swollen and red, and had also taken on the waxiness of death.

We shouldn't have been there, "we" being my partner Greg and I. We're homicide detectives, not the bod squad. But we'd had the misfortune to announce our intention to grab a bite to eat only a couple of blocks away, and had thus been drafted into investigating a homicide that didn't appear to have a human perpetrator.

A throaty howl emerged from inside. Greg and I had pulled rank on the guys in the ambulance so we'd have the relative peace and quiet of the deceased's company. Well, I'd pulled rank; Greg's too nice.

"What do you think?" I asked him, and he shrugged.

"She might be telling the truth. He might've done it."

"She" was the sister of the deceased; "he" was the boyfriend. The boyfriend had made the call after discovering the body. The sister had walked in while he was on the phone and accused him of murder. It was impossible for the dispatcher to ignore the ruckus in the background, so he'd requested police backup for the ambulance. Unfortunately for Greg and me and a shitload of commuters, most of the uniformed cops were busy with a bank robbery that had gone amiss to the tune of an overturned tractor-trailer. So far as I'd heard, nobody had gotten killed, but the traffic situation was a mess.

I knelt beside the body, and fought the urge to look over my shoulder. I'm used to bodies being surrounded by crowds, and at least one idiot reminding me to wear gloves. But it was just me, Greg and Gloria Reynolds.

She'd been in her mid or late twenties. Maybe pretty -- it was tough to tell because of the swelling. She was practically bald, at least on her head; there was plenty of hair on her legs and probably under her arms. Birkenstocks, of course, but no piercings that I could see. No visible tattoo proclaiming her "Granola," but there might as well have been. She'd probably at least been vegetarian, maybe vegan.

"Bet I can guess what's in her music collection," I said, and Greg grinned and shook his head. It's been a while since I've been able to hustle him like that.

"Me, too. College girlfriend," he clarified, and I made a mental note. Puzzling out Greg's romantic life is a hobby of mine: what's his type, what turns him off, does he even have a romantic life. Not that I'm in any position to criticize a lack thereof.

One of the guys from the ambulance came out and gave us a plaintive look. Behind him, Brenda Reynolds shouted something about "that slut Sofia." I guess she thought she had the boyfriend's motive figured out.

"Uh, could you guys maybe come talk to them?" the poor kid asked. He probably spent most of his day dealing with corpses. Live people are much louder.

"Yeah, we're all done here," Greg said. "You can take her."

The kid shouted to his partner, who made it outside in record time. "I want a goddamn autopsy!" Brenda Reynolds shouted after him. Her voice was getting hoarse, but showed no signs of failing.

The sister and the boyfriend stood in the small, cluttered living room. If Gloria's hair had been as nice as her sister's, it was a shame she'd shaved it. Brenda was wearing jeans and a Stanford sweatshirt she'd probably gotten as an undergraduate a few years ago. The boyfriend was also in his late twenties, casually dressed for a sunny Saturday afternoon. He looked a little scruffy, either because he was cultivating a scruffy look or because he just hadn't bothered to shave or find a hairbrush this morning.

Greg and I turned away for a moment and did a quick rock-paper-scissors. He grimaced when rock broke scissors; I can still psych him out.

"Ms. Reynolds," he said to the screecher, too honorable for his own good. "I'm Detective Harvey, and this is my partner Detective Mills. Can I talk to you upstairs?"

Lip quivering, Brenda Reynolds gave both of us a suspicious look, briefly turned a murderous gaze upon the boyfriend, and then looked back to Greg and nodded. He's good with the hysterical ones.

"Have a seat," I said to the boyfriend. "Mr.--"

"Adams. Jerry Adams." He looked nervous, but I didn't hold that against him. Finding your girlfriend dead can be upsetting. Factor in the screecher, and he actually seemed more composed than he should. Hm. That I might hold against him.

"You found the body?" I said, and he nodded.

"I came over, thought maybe we could get lunch or something...."

Lunch. I really shouldn't hold our interrupted meal against him, either. This was wasted time, in all likelihood, much as I'd have loved to justify the excursion by uncovering a crime.

"You've been dating how long?"

"About four years. We met in college."

"And I take it Brenda Reynolds thinks you were cheating on her sister."

Eyes downcast, face red; if I'd been a man, he might have bragged. "It was just the one time."

I've never decided which is more ridiculous: the guys who say it was "just the one time" and really believe it shouldn't matter, or the women who decide that "just the one time" needs to become the center of their existence.

"But we were working through it," Jerry said, and I nodded sympathetically. "We were talking about getting a place of our own next year."

I glanced around the house. "Does Gloria have any roommates?"

Jerry shook his head. "She's housesitting. Some professor on sabbatical."

"What subject?"

A shrug. "Anthropology. Gloria only had her once; she was an art major."

Most of the clutter was explained: tribal masks, a box of photos, filthy dishrags. Anthropology junk or art supplies. The Save the Whales poster went with Gloria's lack of hair. "What type? Painting?"

"Sculpture. She never did anything two dimensional--" His voice broke, and I looked away while he composed himself.

The ambulance guys came back in, and I gave them permission to flee. "I want an autopsy!" Brenda yelled from upstairs.

"She's taking this hard," I observed. "She didn't know her sister was allergic?"

"She knew. Gloria had all sorts of allergies."

In that case, knocking down a hornets' nest seemed terminally stupid on Gloria's part. "Did Gloria pretend otherwise?"

Jerry shook his head. Tears seemed imminent. "She just didn't let it run her life. She was careful."

Careful. Upsetting yellow jackets wasn't my idea of careful, especially armed with a garden hose rather than pesticide. Of course, maybe Gloria had been thinking about long-term safety. A few minutes of risk, compared to the daily presence of the nest....

I stood up and wandered into the kitchen. I poured Jerry a glass of water, which I wouldn't have done if I thought I was in the middle of a crime scene. While I was in there, I opened the refrigerator. Based on the eggs and milk, I gathered Gloria had not been vegan, though I didn't see any meat. I poked around the cabinets, more because I'm nosy than because I expected to find anything. But there were two surprising things.

The first was a first aid kit, complete with antihistamines and epinephrine. The first aid kit itself wasn't surprising, but its location was. It was jammed in a cabinet above the refrigerator, accessible only by standing on a chair or counter. This was not the location where a sensible person would store potentially life-saving drugs.

The second surprising thing was a can of hairspray. It was sitting in an easily-reachable cabinet, nestled between plant fertilizer and a first aid kit-sized empty space. I shook the can, and judged it about half-full. This wasn't girly hairspray, this was a big blue can of AquaNet, industrial strength stuff.

I brought Jerry his water, and wondered if aerosol spray cans still used chlorofluorocarbons. Of course, Gloria had attempted to murder a nestful of yellow jackets, despite her love for whales. I gnawed my lip while Jerry drank. Gloria's feelings about the environment weren't the only things failing to add up.

"Did Gloria ever use charcoal?" I asked. "Maybe sketches before she started sculpting?"

He shook his head. "It was a tactile thing."

I nodded. Aside from holding hair in place -- which obviously hadn't been a concern for Gloria -- I know of two other uses for hair spray. An artist friend always swore by it as a way to keep her charcoal sketches from smudging. But if Gloria hadn't sketched....

Greg and the screecher came downstairs. She seemed a little calmer, at least for a few seconds. "What did you do?" she demanded. "Feed her peanuts? Spread honey on her so the bees would sting her?"

It's always pissed me off when people call yellow jackets bees. The species are nothing alike, aside from being small and striped and winged and stingered. I'm a bit of a stickler for accuracy. But I tried not to hold the screecher's ignorance against her.

"As I said, we can examine the contents of Gloria's stomach," Greg said in his soothing good-cop voice. "The medical examiner will determine the cause of her reaction."

"She didn't die out there. She couldn't have died out there. She was careful. She always took her medication, she always took her bug spray...."

And that was it. The other use for hairspray. It clogs up insects' spiracles so they suffocate, and sticks to their wings so they can't attack you when they're dying.

I glanced over at Jerry. He looked a little confused, and more nervous. I'm suspicious by nature, but it seemed that he'd gotten more nervous about the time Greg said "medical examiner."

"Where did she keep the bug spray?"

"In the kitchen," Brenda said. "And it's not really bug spray--"

"What about her medication?" I asked. "Where's that?"

"Same place," Brenda shrugged, at about the same time Jerry started mumbling who the hell knew where she kept anything in this dump.

I looked at Greg, and he nodded. He hadn't seen the kitchen, but Jerry's mannerisms were screaming "guilty" more eloquently than Brenda ever could. Greg's got too much faith in human nature, but he's learning.

"Okay, I think it would be best if you both came to the station with us," he said. "Since it is a suspicious death, and an accusation's been leveled--"

I let him handle the ecstatic sister and apprehensive boyfriend, though I kept a close eye on Jerry. I didn't think he'd bolt, but you never know. I pulled out my cell phone and told the M.E. we would in fact be needing an autopsy, and then I called for the lab boys. I wanted prints off that first aid kit, the location of which Jerry had claimed not to know.

I wondered when he'd hidden it. Had he come in while Gloria was dealing with the yellow jackets and unchivalrously hidden her supplies, then waited until the insects solved his girlfriend problems? Or was Brenda right, and had this murder been a little more premeditated? A bad reaction to tainted food and no medication on hand, leaving Jerry to take her body outside and enrage the yellow jackets?

I asked the lab boys to take prints off the garden hose, too. I very much doubted Jerry had helped out around the house, so if he'd ever touched the hose it had doubtless been for the purpose of setting up the scene on the patio. Jerry looked like the sort who'd crack and confess before the lab results came back.

He might have gotten away with it. If the screecher hadn't insisted we take a closer look and notice what was out of place, it might have been ruled death by yellow jackets. It might still technically be death by yellow jackets, but the yellow jackets had a co-conspirator. He shouldn't have messed with the crime scene unless he was damn sure he could put everything back in its proper place.

Hell, he shouldn't have killed her in the first place. Why can't people just break up any more?

MEGAN POWELL's short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including KINSHIPS, ROGUE WORLDS, GATEWAY S-F, THE MURDER HOLE, IDEOMANCER and THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN ARKHAM. She's also active as a small press editor and publisher, and maintains a homepage at www.meganpowell.net.

Copyright (c) 2002 Megan Powell

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