Charlaine Harris

A Fool and his Honey

Chapter One

The day everything went rotten was the day the woodman went crazy in my backyard.

My mother and her husband, John Queensland, were just leaving when Darius Quattermain rattled up my driveway, his battered blue pickup pulling a trailer full of split oak. Mother (Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland) had taken a moment from her busy day to bring me a dress she'd bought for me in Florida, where she'd been attending a convention for real estate brokers who'd sold over a million dollars worth of property in a year. John, who's retired, had come out with Mother just because he likes being with her. As Darius was getting out of his truck, Mother was hugging me and saying, "John isn't feeling so well, Aurora, so we're going back to town." She always made it sound as though Martin and I lived on the frontier, instead of just a mile out of Lawrence ton. In fact, since there are fields all around our property, on clear days I could see the roof of her house, sitting on the edge of Lawrenceton's nicest suburb.

I looked at John, concerned, and saw that he did indeed look puny. John golfs, and normally he looks like a hale and hearty sixty-four-year-old. Actually, John's a handsome man... and a good one. But at that moment he looked old, and embarrassed, as men so often are by illness. "You better go home and lie down," I said, concerned. "Call me if you need me, after Mother goes back to work?"

"Sure will, honey," John said heavily, and eased into the front passenger seat of Mother's Lincoln.

Mother gave my cheek a little brush with her lips, I thanked her again for the dress, and then while they maneuvered through turning around to head down our long driveway, I strolled over to Darius, who was pulling on heavy gloves. I didn't suspect it, but a perfectly ordinary day—getting Martin off to work, going to my own job at the library, coming home with nothing more than a little housework planned—was about to go spectacularly wrong. It began slowly.

"Where you want me to unload this wood, Miz Bartell?" Darius Quattermain asked. "This area under the stairs, I think," I told him. We were standing by the garage, which is connected to the house by a covered walkway. On the side facing the house, there's a stairway going up to the little apartment over the garage. "You not afraid of bugs getting into your siding there?" Darius asked dubiously.

I shrugged. "Martin picked the spot, and if he doesn't like it, he can move it." Darius gave me a strange look, almost as if he'd never seen me before, which at the time I wrote off as conservative disapproval of my attitude toward my husband.

But he got down to work. After a brief conference, I'd given him the green light to pull the trailer as close as possible, and he began unloading rapidly in the chilly air. The sky was gray, and rain was supposed to start tonight. The wind began to pick up, blowing my long tangle of brown hair into my eyes. I shivered, and stuck my hands in the pockets of my heavy red sweater. As I turned to go inside, I looked over at the roses I'd planted at the corner of the concrete porch at the back of the house, outside my kitchen. They needed pruning, and I was trying to remember if I was supposed to do it now or wait until February, when a piece of wood flew by my head.

"Mr. Quattermain?" I said, whirling around. "You okay?" Darius Quattermain, deacon of Antioch Holiness Church, began to sing "She'll Be Comin‘ Round the Mountain" in a manic bellow. He also kept up with his task, with one big difference. Instead of stacking the wood neatly under the stairs, Darius pitched split pieces of oak in all directions. "Whoa!" I said loudly. Even to my own ears, I sounded panicky instead of authoritative. When the next piece of firewood missed my shoulder by only a foot or so, I retreated into the house, locking the door behind me. After a minute, I risked a peek out the window. Darius showed no signs of calming down, and there was still a lot of wood on the back of his pickup. I was thinking of it as ammunition now, instead of fuel.

I dialed the sheriff's department, since our house is outside the city limits. "SPACOLEC," said Doris Post. "SPACOLEC" stands for Sparling County Law Enforcement Complex. It sounded like Doris was chewing a mouthful of gum. I figured she must be trying to quit smoking again. "Doris, this is Aurora Teagarden."

"Oh, hi, hon. How you doing?"

"Just fine, thank you, hope you're well. Ah—I have a situation here."

"Is that right? What's happening?"

"You know Darius Quattermain?"

"The black man who delivers wood? Got six kids? Wife works at Food Fantastic?" "Right." I peered out the window, hoping that somehow the situation would have changed for the normal. Nope. "He's gone crazy." "Whereabouts?"

"In my side yard. He seemed just fine when he got here, but all of a sudden he started singing and chunking wood."

"He's still there?"

"Yes, he is. As a matter of fact..." I stared out the window in appalled fascination. "Um, Doris, he's taking his clothes off now. And still singing. And chunking."

"You locked in that house, Roe?"

"Yes, and I've set the security system." Guiltily, I reached over and punched in the code. "I don't think he means to hurt anyone, Doris. He just can't help himself. It's like he took drugs, or had a seizure, or something. So whoever comes out here, if they could take it real easy?" "I'll tell them what you said," Doris told me. She didn't sound bored or lackadaisical anymore. "You move away from the windows, Roe. A car's on the way."

"Thanks, Doris."

I hung up and hid behind a curtain, so I could check on Darius from time to time. I needn't have bothered to hide. I could have been on the surface of the moon for all Darius cared. He was one big brown goose pimple in the chilly breeze as he danced around buck naked, telling the sky that we would have the wedding supper when she came.

I wondered what Darius would do when he ran out of verses. I didn't have to wait long. He switched to "Turkey in the Straw." Darius was having a flashback to elementary school music class, I decided. He scampered around to his own music with an impressive light-footedness for a staid middle-aged man.

I decided to call my husband.

"There's a naked man in the backyard," I said softly, because Darius had stopped singing and was hunting an imaginary deer.

"Anyone I know?" Martin's voice was cautious. He wasn't certain how seriously to take this.

"Darius Quattermain. The woodman."

"I assume you've called the sheriff?"

"The car's here now." The official car had just pulled up my driveway. I nodded approvingly. The siren wasn't on and the lights stopped flashing as I watched. "Jimmy Henske and Levon Suit," I told Martin.

"Jimmy Henske, huh? Maybe I'd better come home." And the phone was replaced firmly in its cradle. Martin has no high opinion of the sheriffs department in Sparling County, and Jimmy Henske, who is maybe twenty-five, gawky and diffident, has never inspired my husband with his competence. But Jimmy's a nice guy, and Levon Suit (who went to high school with me) is a very controlled deputy who is not only innately more intelligent than Jimmy, but five years more experienced. I remembered that Levon had dated one of Darius's daughters when we were juniors.

I watched, fascinated, as Levon slowly approached Darius. I was a little surprised the deputy would brave walking right up to him—but then, it was completely obvious Darius wasn't carrying a weapon. It appeared that Darius had killed the deer and resumed singing and dancing in celebration. In fact, he was so glad to see Levon that he grabbed Levon's hands and capered off, and for a delirious minute or two Levon trotted right along with him. With a patience that made me proud, the two deputies coaxed Darius into their car. Jimmy hurried back to pick up Darius's clothes, which he tossed in the front seat.