Whispering Pines Mysteries, Books 4-6 by Shawn McGuire

Author:Shawn McGuire [McGuire, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brown Bag Books

Chapter Seventeen

I stepped outside of Treat Me Sweetly and pulled my walkie-talkie off my belt. I was about to call Reed and tell him about Sugar, and then remembered there were ten other active units around the village. I couldn’t let anyone else hear about this.

“Looks like we’re hoofing it back to the station,” I told Meeka. But when I started walking, she dug in her paws. “What’s the matter?” And then I realized, no biscuits. “Sorry, girl. No way am I going back in to ask Honey for some.”

Meeka was determined to get her treat, though, and dropped to the ground. Spoiled little furball.

Since nearly every shop in the village handed out treats for furry visitors, I thought one of the tables might have pet treats. It didn’t take long and I spotted a banner with paw prints all over it.

“Okay, let’s go see if we can find some.”

Meeka jumped up, tail wagging, and followed me to the table. The woman there, a local Wiccan who took in every stray animal that crossed her door, had little parchment bags filled with different flavored treats for dogs and cats.

“You’ve got something marketable here,” I complimented when Meeka devoured one biscuit and begged for another. “Meeka rarely begs. She thinks it’s beneath her.”

I tossed Meeka another biscuit, and the woman slipped another little bag to me. “It certainly can’t be a bad thing for the community’s K-9 to like them.”

“Do you need a spokesdog?” I teased.

“Possibly,” the woman said. “I am working on setting up a website to sell them.”

I wished her luck and returned to the station where I found Reed glassy-eyed at his computer.

“Still looking up bee stings and honey allergies?” I asked as I filled Meeka’s bowl from the water cooler in the corner.

“Why is research so addictive?” Reed replied. “I had answers more than an hour ago, but reading about the different ways people have died from these things is fascinating.” He paused. “That’s probably insensitive, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s scientific. What did you find out?”

“Did you know that a honey bee will die after it stings because its stinger has a tiny barb on it that gets stuck in its victim? When it tries to pull out the stinger, all its guts go with it. Even then, the venom sack keeps pumping venom through the stinger.” He held a hand up with his fingers all pinched together at the tips and opened and closed them. This was presumably meant to represent a venom sack pumping venom.

“Dr. Bundy mentioned something about probably finding stingers and sacs on the victim, but his description wasn’t quite so graphic. What did you find?”

“Tons. For someone who isn’t allergic, it would take approximately five hundred stings to die from venom toxicity. That’s for an adult. It would only require between thirty and fifty for a child.”

“That’s for a nonallergic person,” I noted. “Gin Wakefield was highly allergic.”

“Right. I read about cases of people dying from a single sting. The allergy is to the venom, which is kind of obvious, I guess.

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