Plan Bee by Hannah Reed Page B

barking and determination to get into the cemetery. She’d known something was there. Although, usually she was such a scaredy-cat around trouble, she should have been running away from, not toward, the source.
    Did that imply something? Did she know the guy wasn’t a threat? Could she smell death?
    Since it wasn’t like the little troublemaker was ever going to answer my questions, I gave up. My sister was the one studying human behavior; I’d have to ask her opinion on my sudden vacillation.
    After driving around aimlessly in the dark without a plan of any sort, I had a brainstorm.
    “I know!” I said to Patti. “What we need is Hunter Wallace and his dog.” Ben, Hunter’s K-9 partner, had helped me out of a jam once when I lost Dinky. Not that I’d shared that particular fact with Hunter, since losing her had beenirresponsible on my part and I’d exposed enough flaws in front of him without adding any of the hidden ones.
    “What a brilliant idea!” Patti shouted. “Ben can guide us to the body.”
    “I need you,” I said when Hunter answered his cell phone, deciding on the spot to wait until he arrived to go into more detail.
    “I love it when you need me. Where are you?”
    “In the cemetery.”
    “Okay, that’s a little kinky.”
    “Just hurry.”
    And that’s how we ended up back in the cemetery, waiting for my boyfriend and his dog to arrive. I really hoped they would find some answers.

Seven

    Hunter Wallace carries a badge, but although he lives on the outskirts of Moraine, he doesn’t have a whole lot of jurisdiction in my town, especially concerning local issues. Hunter works for the county, which is larger and more organized, but he’s dealt with Johnny Jay before and has his number just like everybody else.
    Johnny Jay controls our small community with tight reins and loose ties to other law-enforcement agencies. Cops from surrounding towns know our police chief is difficult to work with, and they give him a wide berth, which is exactly what Johnny wants. His motto regarding his crime-fighting peers is basically “What they don’t know can’t hurt me.”
    At the same time as my main man arrived, Holly’s Jag roared up and my sister jumped out.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked her, afraid that I already knew the answer.
    “Damage control,” she said. “Mom knows.”
    Those were the words that always sent chills up and down my body. Here’s what would have happened, as it always does: Somebody from Stu’s Bar and Grill, most likely a local with a big mouth, called up one or two of his family members to tell them how Story Fischer and Johnny Jay were going at it again and did they want to bet on the outcome. One of those newly informed individuals would’ve then punched in my grandmother’s phone number and blabbed to Grams. Mom, having hearing more acute than any known species on the planet, would have overhead part of the conversation and forced the rest of the facts out of Grams.
    Mom would then have called up Holly and read her the riot act about family responsibilities and how everybody knows Story’s a loose cannon and this was on Holly’s watch, blah blah blah, thereby transferring blame to Holly and making her feel crappy.
    Anyway, Holly, Hunter, and Ben converged at the exact spot where I thought I’d found a body but now seriously doubted myself.
    “Hey, sweet thing,” Hunter said, giving me a smile as he said it. Our relationship had just advanced to the “honey, babe, sweet thing” level, and it felt good. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking at the unlikely assembly in the cemetery.
    Patti had already combed the area with a high-powered flashlight from her “I Spy” tool kit. We hadn’t found a single thing out of place, nothing to support my claim. I shared that disappointing information with my sister and Hunter, along with the story about tripping over a leg, the tarp-covered body that turned up missing, and how Johnny Jay didn’t believe me