Free The Final Reveille: A Living History Museum Mystery by Amanda Flower

honeybees are? That they are in decline?”
    The officer blinked.
    Chief Duffy joined us. Still in his gray Confederate trousers and sixteen-button frock coat, he chewed on a stick. “Shepley’s right,” he told his officer. “The bees are in danger. No swatting.”
    The officer licked his lips. “I don’t want to get stung, sir, especially since these bees killed the victim.”
    Shepley’s eyes narrowed. “Are you allergic to bees?”
    The officer shook his head.
    â€œThen you have nothing worry about. That guy died because he had a bee allergy.”
    The chief removed the stick from his mouth. “You knew that Maxwell had an allergy?”
    The gardener sucked on his teeth. “Everyone working on the Farm did. The man had a hissy fit when he was buzzed yesterday afternoon. A grown man squealing in the middle of the village gets attention.”
    I hadn’t realized so many members of my staff had witnessed Maxwell’s bee dance. I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad news that more people knew about Maxwell’s allergy.
    Chief Duffy nodded at this. Not for the first time, I wished I knew what the police chief was thinking. As harmless as he appeared in his reenactor uniform, I was beginning to recognize the chief was a shrewd man.
    â€œNow, Shepley,” the New Hartford chief of police said. “We have an investigation going on into the death of one of your colleagues. To best solve the case, we can’t have people walking around the village unsupervised until we’ve processed and secured the scene. Since your bees were the perpetrators, that puts your hives off limits.”
    â€œMaxwell Cherry wasn’t my colleague,” Shepley spat. “The man was a lowlife with no respect for nature or for history. He shouldn’t even be able to walk these grounds. He spoils them with his twenty-first-century materialism.”
    The chief pointed his stick at him. “That’s quite an impassioned speech.”
    Shepley squinted at him. “I’m not going to leave my garden. I have too much to do. Do you think these plants tend themselves? I don’t care if you’d tell me the president was shot dead in my hollyhocks. I must tend to my garden.”
    Duffy removed a gold pocket watch from the pocket of his coat and checked the time. “I see we’re not making much progress here, and I, frankly, don’t have the time to argue with you. The day is warming up more by the second and we need to get the body to the morgue. So I’ll let you into your precious gardens if, and only if, one of deputies stays with you. But the bees are still off-limits.”
    Shepley sneered. “If that’s the way it has to be, then fine.” He pointed a crooked finger at the two officers in his way. “Now move.”
    The deputies parted, and Shepley swore as he stomped back onto the green toward the main garden, which was about a football field away from Barton House. Adjoining the main garden, the iron fence around Shepley’s prized medicinal garden loomed. He turned and said over his shoulder, “I’d say the bees did us a service offing Maxwell Cherry. The man didn’t even recycle,” he said, as though this was a grave observation of Maxwell’s character.
    â€œShepley, please don’t make this worse than it already is,” I called.
    He glared at me. “I won’t forget this. We were just fine until you came along and wanted to change everything. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have all these reenactors here this weekend, trampling my flowerbeds and killing people.”
    Shepley was wrong. The Farm wasn’t “just fine” before I became director. The number of guests each year was steadily falling, and the Farm would have gone under without Cynthia’s generosity. The previous director, who had been in the post for nearly thirty years, saw no reason to change