The Bee Balm Murders (23 page)

“You’re giving up your position as president of your own company? The company you founded? That’s not right.”

“That doesn’t sound fair to me, either,” said Ginny. “Umberto told me what a great project you have.” She blushed suddenly.

“Casper and I switched the project itself legally to Fiber United, the new company.”

“What happens to the Ditch Witch machine?” Victoria asked.

“Since Dorothy owns the title, the new company will lease it from her, provided the terms are favorable. The old company, Universal Fiber Optics, will be responsible for payments on the drill.”

“Wow,” said Ginny.

“What’s left of the old company?” Victoria asked.

“The name, the payments on the Ditch Witch drill, and whatever remains of the money Casper and I invested.”

“Then you’ll lose your investment?”

“We won’t lose it unless Dorothy and Finney botch the job. The town contracts still held by Universal Fiber Optics should keep them solvent. I’m still vice president, of course, so I’ll have some say.” Orion grinned suddenly.

Ginny sat forward on the couch. “Umberto told me that Ms. Roche is donating a luncheon for fifty people to the Outstretched Palm auction. That’s good of her.”

“She also intends to drive the Ditch Witch drilling unit from the Yacht Club to her place on North Water Street.”

“Wow!” said Ginny. “That will draw a huge crowd.”

“I’m sure it will,” said Orion.

C
HAPTER
30

On Saturday morning, Victoria boiled the dried navy beans that had soaked all night and put them in the aged bean pot with an onion, salt pork, and molasses and set the bean pot in the oven on low heat.

After that, she went out to the garden to cut a bouquet of black-eyed Susans. While she was snipping carefully, avoiding the bees that were now hovering around the bright yellow flowers, Sean pulled off New Lane in his red pickup truck and parked in the west pasture. He beckoned to someone in the passenger seat. A boy.

The boy scrambled out of the truck and came slowly toward Victoria, his head down, his feet, clad in unlaced, red high-top sneakers, dragging. He was eight or nine years old, and Victoria recognized him as one of the Whitfield boys who lived down Tiah’s Cove Road.

She waited to see what this was all about.

“Orion around?” Sean asked.

The boy jammed his hands in his pockets. He was a skinny freckle-faced kid with sandy-red hair. His jeans were worn through at the knees and Victoria noticed a scab on his right knee.

She set her bouquet on the nearby picnic table. “I believe Orion’s in the kitchen,” she said. “Would you like me to get him?”

“We’ll talk to him there. C’mon, Sandy. March.” Sean started toward the house with Sandy tagging reluctantly behind. Before he’d gone more than a few paces, Sean turned to Victoria. “You, too, Mrs. T. You need to hear what Sandy has to say.”

Victoria looked at the boy. His face, still aimed at his feet, was hidden by his mop of tangled hair. She seemed to recall that he was the youngest of four or five children, all boys. She gathered up her bouquet, pulled off a few wilted leaves, and dropped them on the ground.

Sandy was lagging farther and farther behind. Sean reached out a long arm, grabbed his T-shirt, and pushed the boy ahead of him at a pace faster than Sandy seemed to want. The boy said nothing.

The three marched from the flower border, where Victoria had been cutting the black-eyed Susans, past the great wisteria vine, its trunk the size of a man’s thigh. The three crossed the driveway, badly rutted from spring rains. Victoria reminded herself to ask David Merry to smooth out the drive with his Bobcat. They marched past the crab apple tree, across the lawn, and up the stone steps that led to the entry.

No one had said a word. Victoria wondered what on earth this boy, this child, could have done to provoke the usually impassive beekeeper.

Orion was heating water for his tea when Victoria, Sean, and the boy entered the kitchen. He looked up from the teakettle with his usual pleasant expression. “Morning, Sean. What’s up?”

“Sandy, here, has something to tell you.”

Victoria said, “Shall we go into the cookroom?”

“Let me fix my tea,” said Orion. “Anyone else?”

“I don’t think so,” said Sean. He led the way down the step into the cookroom and, still holding the back of Sandy’s shirt, stood behind one of the caned chairs. To Sandy, he said, “You stand there, kid, until Mrs. Trumbull is seated.”

Victoria parked herself in her chair with her back to the window, Orion sat to her left, and Sean released his hold on Sandy’s shirt and pushed him roughly into the seat to Orion’s left.

Orion excelled at looking expressionless when he chose. He glanced now from Sandy to Sean, and back at Sandy. He stroked his mustache. He picked up his mug and sipped his tea.

“Okay, kid. Talk,” said Sean.

Victoria had only seen Sean in his role as beekeeper, steady, taciturn, professional. She had never imagined him as this angry, stone-faced man. His high cheekbones shone. His eyes glittered. His mouth was a thin, straight slash above a rock-hard cleft chin.

Sandy’s head hung down. His hands were in his lap. He was small for his age, and his sneakered feet didn’t quite reach the floor. When he moved his feet, Victoria heard the plastic tips of his shoelaces tick on the pine boards.

A crow called three notes and a second crow, some distance away, called three notes in return. Victoria was aware of her own heartbeat, of the sound of Sean’s breathing, of the light gasp of Sandy’s breath.

Silence.

“Talk, kid. You have some explaining to do to Mr. Nanopoulos.”

Sandy looked up, his eyes full of tears he clearly was trying not to shed. “I … I … I…” He stopped.

“Are you about to tell me about something you did that involves me?” Orion asked softly.

The boy nodded and looked down again.

“Why don’t you tell me what it was?”

“I…”

Silence.

“Was it something you decided to do on your own?”

The boy shook his head.

“Was it something someone suggested you do, maybe a practical joke?”

The boy nodded.

“Was it recently?”

At this, a tear, then another, and another slithered down the boy’s cheeks, and he lifted the front of his grimy T-shirt and wiped his face.

“Why don’t you tell me what you did,” said Orion. “Did it have to do with yellow jackets?”

The boy gazed at Orion, his expression bleak.

“You put that yellow jacket nest in my car, right?”

The boy nodded.

Victoria turned her chair slightly and gazed out of the window so she wouldn’t have to see either the boy’s or Orion’s pain.

“Now that we know what we’re talking about, you can explain to me how it happened. Start at the beginning. Who thought it would be fun to put that nest in my car?”

Sandy swallowed hard, then swallowed again. “A man.”

“Was it a man you know?”

“No.”

“No,
sir
,” snapped Sean.

“No, sir,” the boy repeated.

“Where did you meet this man?”

“Up to Alley’s. He bought us Klondike bars.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

The boy shook his head. He glanced at Sean. “No, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

“He left. We sat on Alley’s porch and watched the tourists.”

“Was this in the afternoon?”

“Yes.” Sandy glanced at Sean, who sat, arms folded, like a chainsawed wood figure. “Yes, sir.”

“When did you see the man again?”

“Next day. I went to Alley’s to pick up the mail and he was sitting on the porch.”

“And?”

“He talked to me some. Asked me what my name was. Where I lived. Like that.”

Orion asked quietly, “Anything else?”

Sandy shuffled his feet. “He asked what I liked to do. I told him I want to be an entomologist when I grow up.”

“You like insects?”

“Yes, sir. I have an ant farm. I collect insects and have them all labeled. My mom won’t let me kill anything, so I just have ones I find around, like under the porch light in the morning, you know?”

Orion nodded. “I know.”

“I have a beehive, too. Like, that’s how I know Mr. Sean, here. He…” Sandy glanced at Sean, then began again. “Mr. Sean gave it to me. He was teaching me about bees.”

Sean, arms folded, looked away from the boy.

“So you know how to collect a yellow jacket nest.”

The boy’s enthusiasm faded. “Yes, sir. It was on the side of the barn, up near the eaves.”

“What did this man look like?”

The boy shrugged. “He was just a man.”

“Fat? Skinny? Tall? Short?”

“He wasn’t fat.”

“Young? Old?”

“Not old.”

“C’mon, kid.” Sean turned to the boy. “Speak up.”

“He was just a man,” said Sandy to Sean.

“Did the man pay you to put the nest in my car?”

“No, sir. He said you was, were, I mean, a friend of his and he said he wanted to play a joke on you, and you’d think it was funny, and he gave me a sheet of postage stamps. Thirty-three-cent postage stamps with beetles and katydids and spiders and ants and like that. I don’t want to use the stamps because they’ve got descriptions on the back, you know?”

Orion stroked his mustache. “You know, don’t you, what happened when I opened my car door?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy looked down again. “I almost killed you.”

“What do you think I should do about this?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy, his eyes still averted.

“You know you’ve got to take your punishment?”

“Yes, sir.” Sandy looked up briefly. “I’m awful sorry, sir. I didn’t think they’d sting you like that.”

Sean grunted.

Victoria, still gazing out the window, saw a cardinal and a blue jay picking up seeds that had fallen on the grass from the bird feeder. Bright red and lavender blue.

Orion said, “What do you think would be a fitting punishment?”

“Taking away my insects and my ant farm and my beehive.” The boy was staring at his hands, which were folded in his lap. “Sir,” he added.

“I don’t think that would be appropriate,” said Orion. “Any other ideas?”

“Take my allowance for the rest of my life.”

“No, that wouldn’t begin to do.” Orion turned to Sean. “Do you need help in cleaning out the hives and scrubbing floors in your bottling room?”

Sean turned his head toward the boy, so stiffly it seemed to squeak. “Yeah.”

Victoria turned back to the two men and the boy. No one paid any attention to her.

Orion asked, “Is Sandy responsible enough to work for you, Sean?”

A long silence. Sandy glanced from Orion to Sean, then back down to his hands.

“I’ve got one hell of a lot of dirty work I need done, real dirty work that a kid can’t mess up.”

Orion turned to Sandy. “What about that? Cleaning hives, cleaning glassware, sweeping and mopping floors? An apprentice. Whatever work Sean needs done?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sandy. “I can do that. I can.”

Orion addressed Sean. “Would two mornings a week for the next year be any help to you?”

Sean, arms still folded, said nothing.

Orion turned back to Sandy. “Look at me.”

Sandy looked up.

“That’s only part of the punishment,” said Orion.

Sandy nodded.

“You’re to write a report on the differences among bees, hornets, and wasps. Include what happens to someone who’s allergic to insects and gets stung and how you treat them. The report’s to be at least five hundred words, it’s to be in your own writing—don’t copy someone else’s words—and I want it by next Sunday. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go to the library and look up books on insects. You’re not to use your computer.”

“I don’t have a computer,” said the boy.

“List the library books you look at. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do your parents know about the practical joke?”

Sean unfolded his arms and dropped his hands to his lap. “I told them,” he said. “His old man whipped him.”

Victoria got up from the table. “I believe we can all use a glass of lemonade.”

C
HAPTER
31

Maria Rosa answered the kitchen phone. “Yes?”

“Sharon Knowles, Mrs. Vulpone. I have information.”

“Yes, please.”

“Nora Rochester, the woman your husband—”

“Yes, yes, I know.” She moved a chair closer to the phone and sat down.

“Nora Rochester is on Martha’s Vineyard and is going by the name ‘Dorothy Roche.’”

“Dorothy Roche? She’s just a girl, an actress who works for my husband.”

“Your husband’s friend is using her name then.”

Maria Rosa made a clucking sound with her tongue. “So my husband set that fake Dorothy Roche up in a love nest?”

“It looks that way.”

“Where?” Maria Rosa reached for a scratch pad and pen.

“It’s an island off the coast of…”

“Yes, yes. I know all about Martha’s Vineyard. Where is this love nest?”

“I’m not sure Martha’s Vineyard houses have numbers. She’s staying in a place in Edgartown, North Water Street.”

“That’s a high-price neighborhood.”

“The house is midway between Main Street and the Harbor View Hotel.” Sharon gave her a few details about the fake Dorothy Roche including the fact that Dorothy was donating an item to the Outstretched Palm auction that was already creating quite a buzz on the Island.

“What’s this auction for?”

“To raise money for Island charities. Celebrities donate items and wealthy people bid on them.”

“She’s a celebrity?” Maria Rosa sketched a row of daggers on her scratch pad.

“She must think she is. She’s driving a Ditch Witch drill rig from the Yacht Club to her place.”

Maria Rosa laughed. “‘Ditch Witch’? What’s a Ditch Witch drill rig?” She laughed again and added drops of blood to the points of the daggers.

“It’s a drilling machine she owns. The company she’s with uses it to install some kind of special cable.”

“Her cleaning company owns a drilling machine?”

“No, this company is installing a fiber-optic cable on the Island.”