I'd read the item in the "Intelligencer" social section incorrectly. It had been the first time I'd made this mistake, which led to the other mistakes. I made my living by playing the local newspapers on the Internet, figuring out where the rich suburbs were and something about the people living there, and watching for coming wedding announcements and evidence that there'd be empty houses stuffed with new wedding gifts as couples honeymooned far away. The Internet was a real blessing for this; it let me quickly pull together a long hit list of possibilities for any given area. A long list was necessary because all of the needed elements—absent owners, an unguarded house, and a big-pay stash—didn't come together that often.
And I needed a big-pay stash every couple of weeks, because I was high maintenance. I had a big appetite for fucking guys—a different guy each time—and they didn't come cheap.
I thought I'd hit pay dirt this time. Several months earlier I'd seen in the "Bucks County Intelligencer" what looked like several good prospects in a gentleman farmer county south of Philadelphia, an area that was just dripping in cash. I could usually count on snobby places like this putting in announcements in their local papers at every step of the wedding ritual, and the "Intelligencer" hadn't disappointed me. I found engagement announcements that pinned down nearly a dozen weddings set for the time frame I was going to be in the Mid-Atlantic region. And using other articles in the on-line paper's business and social sections, I was able to pare these down to four possibilities for a big payoff. The engagement announcements for three of those had been kind enough to let me know not only that the blissful couple already had a house to settle in, but also that they'd be honeymooning outside the States right after their wedding. Just a little more research and I'd picked out the wealthiest of these and had my target in sight, filed away my research, and went about my current business in the winter wedding wonderland of Aspen, Colorado.
* * *
I parked my pickup truck in the dark shadow of some trees half a block away from the entrance into a tree-lined street of hulky gray-stone mansions, with DuPont green shutters. They were set comfortably apart from each other and the winding avenue, and I walked up to the house without anyone getting their feathers ruffled. I'd arrived the previous night and was staying at a motel in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware, just over the Pennsylvania line. If the caper was sniffed out before I managed to get out of the area altogether, I thought they'd be looking for me in Philadelphia rather than down there.
Although I was here in search of an empty house, as I stealthily approached, my thoughts went to what I had unexpectedly found here the previous day, the day of the wedding, when I had cased the house. I always like to get a sense of the layout of the target in daylight before I hit the house—and I'd found through experience that the second night was the best opportunity. On the day of the wedding, they usually thought well enough of the possibilities to station someone in the house during the ceremony and reception, and by the time everyone had recovered from the party, someone often came back to house sit. The night after the wedding, statistically, was always the best opportunity.
As I approached the house that night my thoughts went ahead to the pleasantries of spending the money I planned to start earning. Which led me to thoughts of the honey man. The warm June night was ideal for some action, and I was humming to myself and remembering his hair-rimmed left nipple and the way he had run his right hand around and across it as we had talked about the bees nesting on the house's wall. That memory, and my hand stroking over my dick through my pants, had me growing happily.
The previous day I had arrived early at the big stone house so typical of this area of Pennsylvania, and getting no answer after ringing the bell at the front door, had gone around to the side gate. I always approached the house in my casings openly and with a story I could tell if I unexpectedly found someone home. When I got to the side gate, I saw a head bobbing in the pool and called out, and the swimmer moved to the edge of the pool and lifted himself up out of the water.
"Ooohhheeeee." I whistled silently. The man was a real honey. I lifted the clipboard with the fake papers on it, ready to launch into my spiel about notification of delayed delivery on a wedding gift, when he made all of that unnecessary.
"So, are you the guy here about the bee hive Marion and Jim need to get rid of?"
"Ummm," I answered, not being quick on the uptake.
"I certainly hope you are," the honey man said. "Because I can't really stay waiting for this to be taken care of longer than tomorrow night. I need to be in Boston." All the time he was saying this, he was looking me up and down real carefully. I knew that look. He was interested. And I must say, he looked quite interesting to me too. Honey blond, honey lips, and a great swimmer's body.
"Sure, let me see the hive," I said.
He led me around to the side of the house, and sure enough, there was this large hive hanging off the side of the building slightly above head level, with a swarm of bees madly buzzing around it. I was about to say the wrong thing, when the honey man saved me again.
"It's a pity we can't just knock the hive off," he said. "But, with them being protected in this state, Marion and Jim had been looking all over for a bee keeper who would know how to move the hive away altogether. They're afraid the bees will get into the walls and then into the house."
"Yes, you have to handle them very carefully," I said wisely, giving the honey man the most welcome smile I could muster—and looking him up and down in that little Speedo of his so that he knew I was interested in more than the bees. "I have just what we need back in my truck. I got the address wrong; I'll have to go back down the street for it. But if you'll go back in the house, I'll get my equipment and have that hive away from here and going to a better place in no time."
"Oh good," he said. "And then come on into the house afterward." And the look he gave me told me I was as good as home as far as he and his type of honey was concerned.
I went back for the truck, and when I'd returned, I parked in the shadows near the side of the house, where there weren't any windows overlooking what I was doing. Then I took a baseball bat out of the back of the truck. I had the hive down and half way into the bushes at the side with one big swing. I retreated to the truck and waited for the bees to exhaust their anger, and then I came back and batted the hive deep into the undergrowth.
After being done with the bees, I went and rang the front doorbell again.
"All taken care of?" the honey man asked with his honey-mouthed smile when he answered the door. I'd thought he might have changed out of his Speedo while I was playing bee keeper. And he had, but he'd only changed into a towel wrapped around his waist.