"Well, he's a bug expert. Maybe he wears Deet instead of Mennen Skin Bracer."
"Let me look Wurmlinger up."
"Feel free. He and Chiun were busy arguing about bees."
Smith input the name "Wurmlinger," and up came a series of newspaper and magazine articles on Wurmlinger and his works.
"Helwig X. Wurmlinger is chief apiculturalist at the USDA's Bee Research Laboratory at Beltsville, Maryland. He specializes in pests, particularly the African killer bee. He has done significant work in the field of insect genetics. The man has a reputation for eccentricity," Smith reported.
"You ask me, he looks like he crawled out from under a rotten log."
"Excuse me?"
"Buggy. He's definitely buggy."
"He maintains a private laboratory in Maryland. You say he is still there in Los Angeles?"
"Yeah, they called him in over those restaurant poisonings."
"While he is preoccupied, go look at his lab."
"Why?"
"Because," said Harold W. Smith, "he is telling you that a stingless bee is responsible for a new string of stinging deaths. Wurmlinger is one of the nation's leading apiculturists. He cannot easily be wrong. Perhaps he is deliberately misleading you."
"You mean he's involved in this?"
"It is possible."
"What's possible?"
"That Dr. Wurmlinger is some new kind of serial killer."
"A serial killer who kills with bees?"
"We know that bee stings are implicated in every death in the present chain of deaths, although in the case of Doyal T. Rand, it's far less straightforward."
"And we don't know that a bee didn't do him," Remo said.
"No bee could devour a man's brains and eyes."
Smith gave Remo the address of Dr. Wurmlinger's laboratory near Washington, D.C.
"Be careful," Smith admonished. "You and Chiun are not immune to bee stings."
"I'll bee seeing you," said Remo.
When the line went dead, Smith took another look at the report out of Sacramento. The publisher of the Sacramento Bee, Lyndon D'Arcy, had been found dead at his desk. There was no obvious cause of death, but a bee had been discovered flying around his office. Once the door had been opened, the bee had flown out.
There was no description of the suspect bee.
Smith wondered if it might have been a bumblebee and set about looking into it.
As he worked, he wondered if perhaps he shouldn't have sent Remo and Chiun to Sacramento, especially since they were already in California. Too late now.
WHEN REMO FOUND the Master of Sinanju, Chiun was arguing with Wurmlinger over something clutched tightly in his old-ivory-and-bone fist.
"I demand you surrender that to me," Wurmlinger was saying in an agitated voice.
Chiun presented his back to the tall entomologist. "I found it. It is mine."
"You have no right, no authority to keep it. I am here in an official capacity, at the behest of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office."
"Finders keepers," intoned Chiun.
"What is it now?" asked Remo.
Hearing this, Chiun moved to Remo's side. "Tell this elongated cretin that he has no right to what is not his."
"Okay. What's going on here?" Remo demanded.
Wurmlinger pointed a shaking-with-rage forefinger in the old Korean's direction. "He has confiscated evidence in a crime," he spluttered.
"What did you find, Little Father?"
"Look."
And the Master of Sinanju opened his antique ivory claw. Nestled in the withered palm was a tiny-veined bee's wing.
Remo studied it a moment. "That come off the killer bee?"
"The correct term is 'Bravo bee,'" Wurmlinger interrupted. " 'Killer bee' is press invention. And I demand the right to examine that artifact," he said tightly, his long, bony mandibles clicking with each enunciated syllable.
"If Chiun found it, it's his," Remo countered.
"Are either of you qualified to judge insect parts?"
"Maybe yes. Maybe no. But like he says-finders keepers. Come on, Little Father. Let's go."
Chiun preceded Remo out the door of the deceased Dr. Nozoki's office.
"Where are you going?" Wurmlinger called after them, his fists shaking at his sides.
"None of your beeswax," said Remo. "You stay here and tell the next coroner in line what happened here."
"You cannot leave me alone with these deceased persons. You are both witnesses."