Stolen Honey (12 page)

She felt rough sturdy arms grab her elbows, pull her about. “It’s all right, all right,” Olen soothed. “We’ll get you out of this, Gwen. We’re working on it. No one on the force thinks
you
did it. Or Donna. My feeling now—it’s all a tragic accident. Like you said, the bruises came from the nightshade. Who’d ever think a boy could die like that from nightshade?” He coughed, looking troubled. “If you’d just pull up the nightshade, other stuff that’s compromising...” He handed her a clean white handkerchief. She blew into it.

“I tol’ you, Olen. I can’t. My father-in-law.” She heard him groan. She was naughty, she was an irate child. Was she being unreasonable? Was she really a witch for growing healing plants? Why, in her ancestor’s day she might have been hanged! She had to think things through, straighten out her priorities.

She pulled away. She had to get to work, she told Olen. Work was therapy.

“You’re taking him with you?” He pointed through the open screen to where Leroy was piling mended hives into the pickup. “Did you know he was arrested once for stealing a car? And there’s more. Oh, yes, we’ve got a file on him. I wish you wouldn’t keep him here. It worries me. For Donna’s sake—think of Donna. Think of your boy.”

Now she was feeling stubborn. “I need Leroy. He knows bees. I haven’t time to train anyone else. You’ll have to accept that, Olen. Now, if you want a cup of coffee, there’s some left in the pot. I have to go. Donna’s in her room if you have any questions. Mert has a visitor. Donna’s professor,” she explained when he raised an eyebrow. “She’s writing some kind of paper on French-Canadians.”

“Oh? Well, I just came to look at the site again, where Noble died. To see if there’s anything else there—a thread, a fiber we missed. By the way, the tests showed Noble had more than marijuana and alcohol in his blood. He had Ritalin—that stuff they give kids these days to calm them down? Mix it with alcohol and anything can happen. Did happen—goddam irresponsible kid!”

“He’s dead,” she reminded him, blowing her nose again.

He sighed. “Anyway, thanks, I could use a cup of coffee. Then I’ll be off. But remember what I said,” he called after her as she flung on a red plaid wool shirt over her jeans and gathered up her bee apparel. “About those plants. It’s not just me you have to worry about. It’s the others. The chief wants it all pulled up.”

She didn’t answer. Leroy was already in the pickup, waiting; he was wearing a Red Sox cap; his face appeared frozen shut under the bill, which was pulled down practically over his dark eyes. She knew he didn’t want Olen coming around.

But Olen’s words worried her. How much did she know about Leroy? Had he really stolen a car? She wondered if her father had known that.

“Where to?” the boy muttered. Seeing her frown, he glanced away.

“Shoreham. I want to check the hives on the Pomainville farm.”

She revved up the truck. She didn’t look at Leroy. But she could feel him scowling at the police car that was still parked in front of the house. She started to put out a hand, to tell him not to worry, that she would protect him. But she pulled the hand back. There was something about his anger that frightened her.

* * * *

Olen Ashley watched Gwen pull out of the driveway with Leroy in back. It worried him, yes, it did, having that fellow on the property. He hadn’t wanted to tell Gwen about Leroy’s past— Hanna had asked him not to. But she was so stubborn. So vulnerable. If anything happened to her, well, he couldn’t take that. He couldn’t live without Gwen. Not that he’d ever push himself on her—he’d never do that! Never! She had her husband, though they weren’t suited at all. He’d never understood that marriage. He was still with Jennie when Gwen first brought Russell around. Russell was handsome, athletic—a runner. But he was Indian. Indians ... well, they had a different way of looking at the world. They had no concept of the law. They were always protesting this or that, felt they had a right to the land just because it happened they’d gotten here first.

Olen pulled up a couple of deep breaths, poured himself a mug of coffee. He was comfortable here in this kitchen. Though less so since Donald Woodleaf’s death. With Don alive, he’d been able to drop in more often. Don liked to talk, Don was an American Revolution buff like himself. He and Olen were brother Masons, shared the secrets, the hand grips. When Don was almost struck that time by a falling tree, Olen had saved him. “May my body be cut in two,” Olen whispered, remembering, “my entrails burned, ashes scattered—should I fail a brother in need.” Would a brother Mason ever have to do that for him?

Don, of course, had been a buffer between him and Gwen. The three of them could share a coffee or a beer, laugh a little. After he died, things got awkward. Gwen always jumping up in the middle of a conversation, feeling self-conscious, even guilty, he supposed, with her husband away. He wasn’t always able to disguise his feelings. Sometimes the feelings just popped out in his face and he’d have to leave before he lost control.

Now there was this nightshade case. Someone—Leroy, he figured—had dragged that boy into the nightshade, though that hadn’t killed him. It was the boy’s asthma, the inebriation, the Ritalin in his blood that did it. Absolutely. The whole thing had been an accident, like he’d told Gwen. He would try to prove that. Get her off the hook when the court case come up. But not Leroy. Oh, no. Leroy still had questions to answer.

The voices grew louder in the next room. What did that woman want with Mert? What could the old man tell her that would help some paper she was writing? He heard snatches of the conversation—she had the louder, higher voice. Something about .a Mrs. Perkey, the word “sterilize” . . .

Finally there was the sound of a scraping chair, words of farewell. He squinted at the woman through the door, then left the house. Backing out, he almost hit her red Honda. That would never do. Olen had a perfect driving record. He was proud of that.

* * * *

There was an apple tree in blossom by the fence when Gwen and Leroy got to the Willmarth farm. Gwen took it for a sign. Things would work out. She opened the window wide to breathe in the fragrance. It was almost May, Branbury’s orchards were bursting with apple blossoms. It was a time of promise. Nothing untoward had happened for several days now. Gwen was getting back her native optimism.

Here was Ruth, driving up to the barn in the John Deere. She jumped out lightly, glanced at Gwen’s pickup. “You’re on fire, I think,” she said, and Gwen laughed and showed her the smoker.

“But I do need a good fire,” Gwen said, and showed her an infected hive they’d brought back from old Glenna Flint’s place. “It might not be foulbrood at all, but I can’t take any chances. I know you’re like me, you burn your own. Olen made me remove my barrel. But I’ll put it back when all this is over. The prices they charge to haul the stuff! It’s unconscionable.”

They loaded the hive full of dead brood onto the tractor, drove it deep into the pasture, to a damp area by a narrow stream. There, behind a grove of birch trees, Ruth kept a rusted barrel. With Leroy’s help, they rolled the hive into it. It wouldn’t fit and they had to break it up. Pieces kept falling, dead bees scattering, and they got to laughing. Even Leroy, trying to look bored with the women’s giggles, smirked now and then but finally made his way back to the truck. Ruth had three bags of trash ready for burning herself. It was a little windy, but it had rained overnight.

“One for the governor,” she said, and tossed it in.

“One for the local constable. One for Olen Ashley, and one for the garbage collector,” cried Gwen.

“One .for my ex-husband Pete and his beloved town dump,” shouted Ruth.

“One for Harvey Ball and his three little Balls,” yelled Gwen, and the women howled with laughter. It was silly, it was outrageous, but Gwen felt, somehow, renewed.

Afterward, the ride back through the cow pasture was gorgeous. The landscape was green and white with pear and maple trees in bloom, the mountains purplish with new leaves. Yellow rocket and a few early white clover were popping up, full of glad and thirsty bees. It would be a good harvest this summer. Every cow they passed had her head deep down in the lush grass.

Gwen told Ruth that bees saw the white clover as blue. “Whenever I see a white blossom, I try to imagine it blue. All the apple orchards in deep blue bloom.”

“I love it,” said Ruth. “And what about red? Do they see red?”

“Oh, no, they don’t see red at all. The red flowers are all bird-pollinated—mostly hummingbirds. So I plant white geraniums in my porch pots.”

As they approached the house, they saw a reddish glow, a column of smoke. Ruth was alarmed; she put the tractor in high gear. It was Gwen’s truck. The back of it really was on fire. Leroy was already there, slapping at it with an old car blanket, his face red and sweaty.

“I’ll grab some pails,” Ruth shouted. “There’s an outside faucet.”

In twenty minutes they had the flames out. But the back of the pickup was badly charred. “It wasn’t the smoker,” Leroy said. “Smoker was almost out when we left to burn. And I found this.” He picked up the remains of a box of kitchen matches. Someone had lit one, he claimed, and tossed it in the back. Gwen wanted to think it was the smoker, though—she didn’t want to think that someone had deliberately set fire to her truck.

But inside Ruth’s warm kitchen, where a pitcher of apple blossoms sat on the table, smelling like the most fragrant of incense, she mentally added this latest bit of malice to the growing list that had begun with the note to Donna in Emily’s dormitory room, and her mood darkened.

She saw Ruth look out the window where Leroy was sitting in the truck, guzzling a Pepsi. He hadn’t wanted to come into the kitchen. Could he have set the fire himself?

No, no, she scolded herself. Why would he set a fire and then try so valiantly to extinguish it? It made no sense. Yet the car Leroy had allegedly stolen haunted her mind. She had meant to question him about it on the way to Willmarths’, but his grim silence had stilled her tongue.

* * * *

When Camille Wimmet read Annette Godineaux’s diary entry for Friday, March 18, 1937, she understood why the young woman had faked her IQ test.

Fooled em today. When they asked me who was the president of the United States I said uh, Jimmy Stewart? and they didn’t even smile, just scratched on their pads like cats in a litter box. Well, I won’t play their game. I tell em, oh yeah, I broke into old lady Flake’s house, stole her money sock, I tell em what they wanna hear. But why did you do that when you were on parole? You’ll end right back in here. Cause I want a soft bed, good food, I tell em, which is not altogether a lie. Not after Billy, the bastard, locked me out, said he had a new woman, wouldn’t pay alimony for my kids he claimed weren’t his. Where was I to go? I won’t live with Maman. Not with that asshole boyfriend wanting nothing more than to get in bed with me nights after he’s done with her. I’m sick when I think of waking up with him on top of me. My Andre, maybe Jeannine, maybe Cosette, could be his kid, Jesus. But not Nicole. Her father would of married me if he hadn’t been saddled with that bitch of a wife. And then got run over by that tractor—thought I’d die myself to hear it. Nicole must be 20 now. My God. One day when I’m outa here, when I get a job, make some money, I’ll round up my kids outa those foster homes. We’ll live on a farm somewhere. Some other state. Maine maybe. Or upstate New Hampshire.

The eugenicist, Eleanor Perkey, was wrong, Camille discovered: There weren’t three children, but four: a boy, Andre, and three girls, Nicole, Jeannine, and Cosette. Was their surname Godineaux? And Billy—who was he? And that married farmer? Well, somewhere she’d find answers. She’d had more luck with Mert LeBlanc’s great-aunt Maxine; Camille had found her in Perkey’s report, first arraigned for vagrancy (selling her baskets, no doubt, up and down the state), and then released, then back in again and sterilized, according to Perkey (no records extant), before she was finally let go.

She wouldn’t find the answers, though, with that arrogant man down at Brookview. He was a relative, she’d just bet he was. She’d look into that. She imagined his father sleeping with one of the female inmates—this ‘Godwin’ a bastard son. He wouldn’t want that little morsel coming to light!

The horror for Camille was that they had sterilized Annette. Had she really consented? All they needed, according to the “voluntary sterilization” law passed in 1931, were two physicians to decide that the patient was feebleminded, insane, disabled, or whose welfare would otherwise “be improved” with sterilization: if male, a vasectomy; if female, a salpingectomy. Imagine the women tricked into that procedure! How else, if not tricked, would they have given their consent?

It was a mystery, as so many things were still a mystery. Like where were those offspring today? Where were the grandchildren, if she had more than one? What kind of lives were they leading now, and where?

Camille was determined to find out. This afternoon she would visit the Willmarth farm, where a foster boy named Joey Godineaux worked. After all, Annette’s offspring might well have taken the distaff name, since she’d never married. She copied the notes she’d been making on her computer and stuck the disk in her purse. She was feeling paranoid. When she’d come after class yesterday afternoon she’d found her papers shuffled about on her desk, as though someone had been in here, looking for something, had heard a noise, and run off. It was probably a student, she rationalized, looking for a paper; she’d left the office door unlocked, she’d only been gone the one class hour. She hadn’t been careful about locking up, the way she had to rush from class to class to conference to faculty meeting.

The students, too, ate up her time, like Tilden Ball, barging in here this morning, demanding a retake for a failed quiz. Well, she didn’t give retakes. He had to accept that. Though he obviously didn’t like it. She didn’t care for him, not a bit. She didn’t like the
way
he looked at her, either. He definitely knew something. Or suspected . . .

But this paper would bring her tenure, respect. She would declare herself then, proudly, the way Esther had wanted, the way she herself should have done, risking the tenure. If she had, Esther might have stayed in Vermont, not driven west on a motorcycle, prey to that homophobic trucker. Now Esther was dead. And Camille had only Esther’s cat for comfort.