Stolen Honey (9 page)

The girls were coming out of the barn with a new calf. It had a huge black head and long spindly black and white legs. It had been born the day before, Donna told her mother; “Isn’t it sweet?” She had her arm around it. It was one of those moments. Gwen nodded but couldn’t speak. Donna released the calf and went back toward the pickup, where Leroy was stacking the broken hives in the back. He looked hard at Donna, his face pinkening. When the girl frowned, he turned a deeper color and sucked on his lower lip with his teeth. One upper tooth was black, as though he’d been struck by someone or something. Gwen saw Ruth watching.

“He has a crush on her, Ruth. Though at this point I think it’s more of a love-hate kind of thing. And I know what you’re thinking. He was there that night, like I told you. Olen’s planning to question Leroy about it. I’ll back up anything Leroy says, I will! He’s been a good worker; my father hired him—I guess I’m sentimental about that.”

At least there had been no more talk lately about finding another job. Leroy had been quiet, maybe too quiet. “Brooding” was the word that came to mind.

“An obsessive love can take over the brain,” Ruth said. “I’ve seen it happen. Not long ago Emily had an emotional affair. It turned out badly.”

Gwen nodded her sympathy—that boy’s death had been in the papers. “Well, we’re off to Glenna Flint’s,” she said, motioning Donna into the pickup. The girl sat in the passenger seat, leaving the back for Leroy, who glared at her, and climbed in beside the smoker. “Glenna called to complain about a swarm in her mailbox. She says they won’t let her get at her Social Security check.”

“I should be so lucky,” said Ruth, waving them off, “to have a check in my box.”

* * * *

Ruth looked after the departing pickup and felt uneasy. She didn’t like the way Leroy had looked at Donna. She knew what an obsessive love like his could do. It could warp one’s sense of right and wrong, it could blind. Until nothing mattered beyond the desired object, and then anyone who came between it and self had to be eliminated.

She would ask Colm to check on Leroy, to see if he had a police record. It was just a hunch. But one couldn’t rule him out as the Noble boy’s killer. Personally, Ruth couldn’t accept the accident theory. Someone had moved that motorcycle. Someone had dragged the boy into the nightshade. The boy wasn’t stupid—after all, according to Donna, he knew he was asthmatic. But no asthmatic would lie face down in any unknown plant, would he? And Donna had warned him.

No, someone had killed the boy. If not Leroy, then who? They had asked for her help. She had to try and do something. But what?

* * * *

Gwen was humming as she drove into the beeyard. She’d dealt with Glenna’s swarm, then dropped Donna at the library, Leroy in town—he’d hitch a ride back, he said. It had been a pleasant visit at Ruth’s, in spite of the damage to the hives. An animal was the culprit, she really thought so. Things would get better. She had to keep her optimism.

For one thing, she was sick of this yellow crime scene tape, she wanted it down. Taking a scissors out of her bee kit, she stepped resolutely to the edge of the woods and cut. Snap! and the woods opened up, like a door to a magic kingdom. Her kingdom.

She hadn’t been in here for days. It smelled of spruce and moss and fresh leaves. She threw back her head and breathed in the fragrance. Something caught her eye then—something hanging in an oak tree. At first she thought the police had hung it there. But as she drew closer, she saw that—oh!—it was a dummy, a dummy of a woman in a bee veil, crudely drawn. On the dummy’s belly, in red paint, were the words
HANG THE WITCH.

She quickly cut the obscene thing down and stumbled through the underbrush to the trash barrel. She threw it in and lit a match. Breathless, she watched it burn. Was it her imagination, or did it have a sickly odor, like old blood?

She sank to the ground and sobbed into her smoky hands.

* * * *

When Camille arrived at the Woodleaf Apiaries, she was surprised to see a souped-up sports car pull in behind her. It was her student Tilden Ball; she saw the narrow face behind the wheel. The car made a terrible racket; it reminded her a little of Tilden, to tell the truth, full of excuses for late work, full of bullshit in a paper on which he was an “authority” but which never came up to standard.

“I saw your car,” he said, unfolding his tall, gangly body from behind the wheel. (How, she wondered, did he know her car?) “I followed you up the mountain. I went to your office to see you about my paper, but you weren’t there.” He sounded put-upon, accusatory’. He stared at her as if to ask what she was doing up here anyway.

Had he been spying on her? Did he know something about her? She and her partner, Esther, had tried to be discreet. They’d lived in separate apartments, gone to movies, bars, and restaurants in Burlington or Rutland—never locally. It was easier now that Esther was gone. But God, what she wouldn’t do to have Esther back.. . .

“I live up there.” He narrowed his hazel eyes, pointed up the road. Did he think she was coming to see him? He was standing between her and the entrance to the house. “It’s the paper,” he repeated. “I don’t know what to write about this time. Dad says farming. I can’t write about that, I don’t like the subject.”

“What are you interested in?” she asked. They were standing near a hive of bees; it made her nervous, although she was fascinated by bees. “Bees?” she said, moving away, pushing past him, gaining the upper ground. “You want to understand sociology, take a close look at bees, their social structure.” The bees didn’t seem to be aware of her, though. They were buzzing about the dandelions. Dandelions were done blooming where she lived in town; she supposed things were a week late up here in the mountains.

The boy had a labored smile on his face. “I help some here with mowing and bees. Just for pocket money, you know. I can write a paper on bees?”

Ordinarily, no, she thought. But she might be able to stretch the limits of sociology to include bees. Besides, already she saw a young man standing at the corner of the barn. It would be Leroy. She hadn’t seen her cousin for six years; he’d have been a short, scrawny fourteen-year-old then. A boy could change a lot in six years. For the better, she fervently hoped, remembering how unsavory he’d been, how crude.

Leroy was standing there watching her, his hands on his narrow hipbones, thumbs stuck into the side pockets. His belt was low-slung, a gold chain hung from it, with jackknife, keys, she didn’t know what else. She waved briefly at him. She was anxious about their meeting, to tell the truth. She turned back to Tilden.

“How they hive together, form a community, how humans relate to them. Read Maeterlinck’s
The Life of a Bee.”
Camille wasn’t a botanist, but as a girl she’d been fascinated with that essay, the universal mysteries it probed.

“I’d rather write about cars,” Tilden said, “the relationship between people and their cars. That’s part of sociology, right?” He took her smile for approbation, grinned back.

When Donna came out of her house, running toward her teacher, frowning at Tilden, he backed away and jumped in his car. It screeched off down the road.

“Picking your brain?” Donna said, glaring after the car.

“Oh, just the paper, you know. He said he saw my car. I was surprised he knew it was mine.” She patted the hood other ten-year-old Honda.

“People remember red cars,” Donna said, and Camille grimaced. Red provoked. It had been Esther’s car, Esther had liked bright colors. Camille couldn’t bring herself to give it up. Well, she guessed she’d have to accept Tilden’s paper on people and cars, but she certainly wasn’t looking forward to it.

Donna said, “Come in and have a soda or tea or something. Mother’s just gone to town—you must’ve passed her. But Grandpop’s here. He makes baskets. You might like to see some of them.”

“Yes. Though it’s actually Leroy I came to see. I told you he’s my cousin? He’s my only living relative, in fact, other than his mother, who’s in a home. But I’ll drop in afterward—just for a minute. I’ve a faculty meeting.” She wasn’t looking forward to that. Not with Frazer Manning at the helm. The way he looked at her—as though he could see through to her bones.

“I’ll put on a pot of tea, then. You like herb tea? My mother makes it herself from ginseng. Or you can have lemon and honey.”

“Either would be lovely.” She waved again at Leroy, who’d remained by the barn, one spread hand on the wall as though he were holding it up—or it, him.

Leroy didn’t offer to take her back to his trailer. “’S not fit for company,” he said. “I don’t exactly have a live-in maid.”

Instead he offered a green Adirondack chair out beside the house. She was glad she’d worn a woolly sweater; there was a cool breeze on her face. She could see patches of dirty snow in the woods.

She asked about his welfare and he answered in short clipped sentences. He wasn’t about to give away any secrets. He hadn’t been to see his mother lately because, “What’s the point? She can hardly talk. She just twists around in that wheelchair like somebody wound her up wrong. I can’t hardly stand to watch her, makes me dizzy. Jesus—I ever get that disease, I’d off myself.”

Camille thought how fragile human beings were, how traumatized by disease and society. Her work on the eugenics project had only strengthened that feeling. Had Aunt Denise lived back in the time of Eleanor Perkey, she might never have had Leroy. She’d have been sterilized first.

“Well, you’re lucky to be alive,” she told Leroy. His raised eyebrow said he wasn’t sure about that. “Things aren’t going well? The job here seems interesting. Ms. Woodleaf must be a nice person to work for. You might think of becoming a beekeeper yourself one day. You’re young, this is a learning experience for you.” She took a breath, coughed delicately. His face was clouding up. He didn’t want a lecture. She was his cousin, not his mother.

“No, they’re not going well,” he said, straightening up in his chair. “I need a lawyer. The police are after me. But I can’t afford one.” He caught her eye.

“You mean for that nightshade death.”

He leaned toward her and she could smell the sweat. It was an unpleasant smell, like dirty socks. “I thought you could lend me some money. For a lawyer. I need a car—I can’t keep using the truck here. I only got a bicycle to get around. You’re in that rich college, you get a good salary, you can lend me a couple thou anyway. I’ll pay you back.” The bill of his dirty cap was almost touching her breast, his eyes brooding on her, like the sky getting ready to rain.

She got up; the conversation was taking an uncomfortable turn. “I don’t make a good salary at all,” she told him. “I don’t have tenure. That’s what I’m working on now. Trying to earn it.”

He stood up, too; he was not much taller than she, but squarely built. The red was slowly creeping up his neck, his chin;his nose was a carrot. She’d come in good faith to have a pleasant talk, to tell Leroy she was available anytime—for talk, for sympathy—and all he wanted was money.

“So I’m the black sheep. Nobody wants to be related to me. No high-and-mighty college professor.” He stood facing her, arms on his denim hips, the eyes blazing into hers. He followed her back around to the front of the house. “I’m not asking a fortune. Just a thousand. Even five hundred’ll help. I said I’d pay you back. Who else I got to ask? Mother’s on Medicaid. The old man gone off. Like that,” and he snapped his fingers. What he didn’t mention was that he was her heir—that is, if she didn’t have a child of her own, and that was unlikely. Did he know about her and Esther? Aunt Denise did. Camille had confided in her one day, and then was sorry afterward when Denise looked shocked.

She hesitated. She didn’t want him talking to Donna about her, word could spread. She turned back. She would have to placate him. “Maybe five hundred. When I get my next pay-check. I’ll let you know.” She didn’t want to ask exactly why he’d need a lawyer, what precisely he’d done. She didn’t want to know. When Donna called her into the house, she went, but reluctantly. She was suddenly worn out, devoid of small talk.

Yet she did want to meet the grandfather, break the ice, so he’d be ready to talk when she asked the tough questions. This was her mission now: the eugenics project. Everything else— family, faculty affairs, failing students, would-be lovers—had to take second place.

She accepted the cup of fragrant tea Donna proffered. She thought briefly of what she’d wanted to tell the girl’s mother about the Perkey connection. But the mother wasn’t here, and once again, as the old man padded into the room, she put the thought aside.

Chapter Seven

Gwen was making honey cakes in the kitchen when Olen Ashley drove up in an unmarked car. She was glad of that; he was here to interrogate Leroy. Leroy was fragile. She’d sensed it as they worked together in the beeyards. She’d heard the short quick breaths he took, the groans as he emptied out the dead bees. She wanted to think it was a bear or heifer that had knocked over those hives. Or an accident of some kind—she always lost bees on the apple orchards when the orchardists sprayed or, for that matter, the farmers. But there had been no aerial spraying at Willmarth’s, an organic farm.

Stop worrying, concentrate on your work, she told herself. She was making a honey cake with soybeans. You had to heat the honey, stir in a gelatin mixture until it dissolved; then beat it like crazy and roll in soybeans after it was thoroughly chilled. She was just putting the cakes into the refrigerator when Olen banged through the kitchen door. He was breathing heavily. Obviously the interview with Leroy hadn’t gone well. She wanted to lift his mood; she told him she might make a honey cake out of mountain laurel—toxic to humans. She’d send it to her neighbor Harvey Ball. “If you want to get rid of someone, here’s the way to do it,” she quipped. But Olen just looked at her and growled; he lowered his hulk onto a stool. He said, “I’m not planning to bake a honey cake with mountain laurel. And you better not say that out loud to anyone else.”

“Oh, Olen, it was just a joke. Lighten up a little. Here. Have some walnut fudge.”