“We might as well do me,” said Hazel. “She’ll probably creep out the front door and drive to town.” She took her position in the garden and stood turned one-quarter away from Greenlund. She’d decided against having her picture taken in uniform, as the Port Dundas Police Department already had an official photo for the station house, and it had been a while since a good likeness of her had been taken. If these turned out, she thought, each of her daughters could have one, and even her ex-husband, Andrew, might like one for his house. (She imagined it pinned to the wall, sharing space with screwdrivers and hammers, over his workbench in the basement. She merited that much.) Greenlund was waving her a step back and telling her to relax her shoulders. Hazel had dressed in a black blouse and forest-green cotton skirt that hung down to her shins. She was wearing her best shoes as well: a pair of black Italian flats she’d bought from Bally three years ago, on sale for $120. That these were her best shoes spoke volumes about her, and Hazel knew it. Not merely that she was frugal, but that she could never have seen herself in $500 shoes, no matter the occasion. She could never have carried it off. But this was one of the things about growing old successfully: you came to learn your own personal price points. She could spend more on trousers than tops, for instance (her legs were long for her height), but no matter what she spent, she could not wear bracelets, and every kind of hat but her OPS cap made her look like she’d taken the wrong advice from someone.

This ensemble (total cost: $385) was just right. It had the kind of elegance she could plausibly display, and she was comfortable in it. Greenlund had her turn this way and that, coming close and then backing away, firing off pictures. “These are going to be heirlooms!” he exclaimed and then took two quick pictures of Hazel’s skeptical smile.

They were still playing with angles when Emily appeared at the back door, holding the phone at her side. She hadn’t changed her clothes. “It’s Melanie from the station house.”

Hazel took the phone. “What is it?” she said to her secretary (whose actual title was executive assistant).

“Have you heard about Henry Wiest?”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead. He had a heart attack on the reserve.”

“Jesus. What time did this happen?”

“Midnight or thereabouts.”

“In Queesik Bay?”

“Right. Cathy Wiest phoned Jack Deacon. Someone on the band police called her at home and told her they had her husband in the hospital on the reserve. They didn’t tell her he was in the morgue until she got there. She agreed to let them do the autopsy.”

“Why didn’t she call anyone up here?”

“Isn’t Deacon her uncle?”

“Maybe. But … god! Dead?” Both her mother and the photographer swivelled their attention to her. “And what was he doing in Queesik Bay?”

“Skip, I don’t know!” said Cartwright. “Maybe he was going to the casino. But they found him in the parking lot of one of the smoke shops on the 26.”

Hazel stood with the phone to her ear, shaking her head.

“You there?” said Cartwright.

“I’m here.”

“Funeral’s Thursday. I expect the whole town will be at the service.”

“I bet,” said Hazel. “Okay, Melanie. Thanks for telling me.”

Hazel hung up and stared at the phone in her hand. “Henry Wiest is dead,” she said, like it was a question. “Had a heart attack. At a smoke shop on Queesik Bay Road.”

“Oh, poor Cathy,” said her mother. Henry and Cathy had been married for fifteen years and everyone in the two Kehoes – Glenn and River – as well as in Port Dundas knew who they were. They were almost a famous couple, known by name to just about everyone who lived in those towns, and many more besides.

Hazel was retreating into the house. “We’ll have do this another day,” she said to Greenlund.

“I understand completely,” he said. “I wonder if my wife knows.” He put the lens cap on his camera and took out his phone.

The autopsy done on the reserve gave the cause of death as cardiac infarction brought on by extreme anaphylaxis. He’d been stung by a bee. That made it the second fatal sting of the summer. There had been news in May of a new strain in Ontario and Quebec and it’d been spotted for the first time in Westmuir in July. Every week now the papers had another story of kids stung on a camping trip or someone having a bad reaction to a sting in a village garden. All the local paramedic teams had tripled their stock of EpiPens and there were editorials on how to deal with the invaders and avoid their stings, from wearing shoes outdoors at all times to defensive soda drinking (“Keep the opening on your pop can covered at all times! Bees love sweet things and will crawl inside your sugary drink only to, possibly, sting you inside the mouth! Ouch!”).

The one death had occurred in Fort Leonard, in the middle of July – a camper on a portage had been stung repeatedly while carrying his canoe – and Wiest was the second. It was impossible to know if you might have an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting. The problem with anaphylaxis was that you could receive six bee stings in your life (or eat a dozen peanuts, or wear latex gloves twenty times) before the deadly reaction kicked in. And, sometimes, a series of mild anaphylactic reactions would lead to a fatal one.

Henry Wiest owned the hardware store in Kehoe Glenn – called, simply, Wiest’s – and at one time or another most people in a fifty-kilometre radius had called on him for some reason. The family-owned hardware store in Port Dundas had closed in 2001 when the Canadian Tire had moved into town from the highway and expanded, and Wiest’s reputation for driving out to fix a lock or get a chipmunk out of a wall was, by that point, legend. There were plenty of contractors and electricians, roofers and excavators in the region, but small jobs tended to flow Henry’s way: he was reliable, friendly, and cheap, and he never did anything that wasn’t necessary.

His wife, Cathy, owned Kehoe Glenn’s best-loved café, The Frog Pond, which apart from having an excellent breakfast and lunch menu also boasted the best coconut cream pie in all of Westmuir County. Both husband and wife were the kind of local celebrities only small towns have: he could fix anything; she made amazing pies. Between the two of them, a childless couple, they made a fine living, but they lived in almost obsessive modesty. Sometimes people had gossiped that Henry Wiest had more than $5 million in savings. Yet they had occupied that pretty house on Church Road since 1986, the year they were married, and it was no bigger a house than two people needed. Henry drove the company pickup on business and otherwise drove a used Camry. Cathy drove a new one. Her Camrys eventually became his used Camrys and then they’d buy her a new one. Every five years, when the warranties ran out.

In the afternoon, people were going to pay their respects. Hazel went home first to change into civilian clothes and then continued on to Kehoe Glenn. The Wiest house was set back a ways, against a ravine, and there was a beautifully kept garden in the front. The smaller second storey of the house sloped down asymmetrically over the garage. Huge orange day lilies nodded against the front of the house below a big bay window, and blue delphinium, echinacea, and foxglove stood tall in their beds leading away from the house in serpentine patterns. Soft tufts of lamb’s ear lined the edge of the bed. Hazel went up the walk, her attention drawn to the riot of colour and scent, and felt especially sad that Henry’s widow had to cope with his death in the context of such rude and splendid life.

The house was already full of people – friends, relations, townsfolk – and Cathy’s employees had brought over a groaning board’s worth of food from the café. In a cynical part of herself, Hazel wondered how many of those who’d come to give their condolences hadn’t just come for the food.