Stolen Honey

by Nancy Means Wright

  Then why did she marry Pete, a good ole boy?

  To make babies with, she guessed. Pete had good genes. He was low-key, where she was apt to be high-strung; calm in a crisis, while she sometimes lost it. Outgoing, while she tended to be introspective. You needed those opposites to make babies. She’d never regret hers! She supposed these inverse attractions went back thousands of years.

  Her teacup empty, she called her son-in-law to see if he’d testify, and Jack was intrigued.

  Though he’d have to study up on nightshade, he hadn’t come across much about that plant before. “I’ll call the lady back,” he promised, “then do a little research. I oughta learn more about it anyway. First thing you know, Sharon’ll be growing the stuff.”

  “No doubt,” Ruth said, and hung up.

  * * * *

  Colm Hanna arrived promptly at seven. He was an on-time kind of guy; Ruth liked that about him. She tended to be on the late side herself. Of course, one couldn’t always count on cows making one available for appointments. But tonight the milking had gone smoothly. While they cleaned up the milking apparatus, she’d quizzed Joey about his father—with no results. “He left,” Joey said, perhaps quoting Mabel Petit, “he just gone. Poof!” He flapped his arms like a bird. The mother had taken off with another man when Joey was four, Tim told her privately, and the grandmother was ill at that point; she couldn’t care for the boy.

  Where was that mother now? That grandmother—if she was still alive? Ruth made a mental note to find out. Still, she told Colm, “It would help to know what we’re looking for. What answers to what questions.”

  He shook his head. His interviews had yielded little beyond “one hell of a headache. That guy up in Ripton—a good ole mountain man if I’ve ever seen one. You should see that gun rack. How does he get a license for all those guns?”

  “How do thirteen-year-olds?” she asked, reminding him of the latest high school rampage out West. It made her so afraid for Vic. For children in schools everywhere, for teachers and students.

  Colm went on with his “day of woe,” as he called it. “I got nothing out of the man. When I mentioned Camille’s death, he just said he ‘wasn’t surprised, the way she was poking her nose in other people’s closets’ was how he put it. I asked him what she was trying to find out, and he shrugged. Took one of the guns off the wall, said he was going hunting. I said it wasn’t hunting season. He just grinned. He has a whole Green Mountain National Forest outside his door. Why should he wait?”

  “He had no alibi for the night Camille was killed?”

  “Said he was right there at home watching TV. His wife could verify. She looked at me like a scared rabbit and nodded. I know damn well he was lying.”

  “When he left the house to go ‘hunting’—you didn’t ask her again? She might have been mum in his presence.”

  “How could I? He wouldn’t leave till I left. He ushered me out at the point of a .22.”

  She laughed at the picture Colm must have made: the rabbit running from the hunter. She poured him a glass of Otter Creek Ale and warmed up some leftover turkey and broccoli.

  “The guy I liked even less,” he said, “was that administrator down at the reformatory. He was definitely hiding something. He wouldn’t say why she’d come to see him, just said she was writing some kind of paper. Well, I knew that anyway. He said he’d heard about that eugenics project, ‘but it was all in the past, wasn’t it?’”

  “This woman Annette she was writing about, she was probably there in that prison, don’t you think? That’s all I know from Camille, it was something about Annette that interested her. And her offspring—I recall the names Nicole, Pauline. What happened to all of them? We have to find out.”

  “I asked about Annette like you said—you could see he knew something. I asked if there were records we could see. Flashed my badge to put the fear of Jesus in him.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. Colm was not your typical cop. He was too laid back. He couldn’t spook a cow.

  Colm was insulted. “Well, I did unnerve him, damn it. He jumped up out of his chair, said he had things to do. Said there were no records on her anymore. They’d had a fire, he said, all those papers got burnt.”

  “I’ll bet. Send somebody else down there to get to the truth of it, would you? If they’re burnt, he probably did it himself.”

  “I’ll send Olen Ashley. He’s a stickler about that kind of stuff. He’s been a madman lately, holds the record down at the station for traffic tickets, sniffing out bad checks.”

  She asked about the college student Tilden Ball—”the one who’s failing two courses? Did you talk to him?”

  He consulted his notes. “Tilden Ball. Yeah. He was doing chores for his father that night, he says—though I haven’t verified it. An odd kid. He needs a friend, I’d say, but he won’t open up to people. He seemed relieved Camille wouldn’t have to read his paper.”

  “Would he kill because of it?”

  “Hard to say. But sometimes it’s the quiet ones who hold things in.”

  “Mmm. What about Camille’s will? You were going to check on that.”

  “I did, didn’t I tell you?”

  “Nope. What about it, then?”

  “She died intestate, according to the lawyer. Hell, she was a young woman, never got around to a will. So it all goes to some aunt—I forget the name. But the aunt’s in an institution. And oh, guess who’s her legal guardian?”

  “Don’t make me guess, Colm, just tell me.”

  “Leroy Boulanger.”

  “Whoa. The plot thickens.”

  “He’ll get the money, I suppose—whatever there is.”

  “Not a lot, I’ll bet. A young teacher, without tenure? Though she might have something put away from her parents. Interesting. You think he’d kill for a little inheritance? Talk to him, would you, Colm? Remind him we know about that stolen car.”

  “Why don’t you talk to him, Ruthie? Seems to me you’re pretty flahool, handing out all these jobs.”

  “I have the cows, Colm, remember that.”

  “I have Dad’s dead bodies. My real estate.”

  “You can handle it. More broccoli?”

  “Jeez, Ruth, you know I don’t like the stuff. It’s like eating shrubs.”

  “You should eat broccoli. Broccoli loves you. Grown in my own garden, too.”

  “Do you love me, too, Ruthie? I’ll eat the whole damn dish if you’ll tell me that.”

  She smiled, an enigmatic cat; she could feel her tail starting to swish—and helped herself to more broccoli. “Delicious,” she said, smiling at him through leafy teeth.

  * * * *

  When Gwen went out back behind the barn to check hives— and pay her respects to the grave site by leaving a gift of tobacco—she was confronted with a mound of dirt. For a moment she couldn’t understand what it was. But when she looked beyond and saw, she lost her footing in a wave of panic and fell on her knees.

  The grave had been dug up! She hauled herself to the far side and looked down in. The hole was empty. The low white fence Russell had erected around it was in pieces. A few shells and birdstones were still there, the dirt the color of red ocher paint. But the skeleton was gone. Gone, too, the ancient copper beads some caring mother had put into the grave to adorn her girl-child for the hereafter. Gwen sat back on her haunches, staring, until she felt dizzy, ready to fall in herself, head first.

  Was this one more punishment for the nightshade death? But digging up a grave! It was the worst kind of sacrilege. As if that young Indian girl were some old heap of bones, no more important than a dog or horse—and less so than the mammoth bone some archaeologist had recently dug up in the area.

  Outraged, she struggled up off her knees and ran back, panting, to the house to phone Russell. The number he’d given her rang and rang, and she gave up. She heard her father-in-law’s hesitant footsteps, felt his hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his questioning face and blurted out the news of the t
heft.

  He dropped into the chair beside her. “Why, they can’t do that,” he said.

  “They did, Mert. Somebody did. Somebody who knew where that grave was, who wanted to show their disrespect.”

  “Call Russell. Russell will know what to do.”

  “I tried, and no one answered.”

  “Then call that fella Olen. He’ll know what to do.”

  He’d be right over, Olen shouted, sounding outraged. And he was. His fury calmed her own anger as they stared into the empty grave. “How dare they!” he cried. “You didn’t hear anything in the night?”

  She shook her head. “Did you, Mert?”

  “I took a sleeping pill,” he said. “Some nights I get the wakes. Then I go walking. Then I can’t get up in the morning. Then when I get up I get the shakes.” He glanced at Olen, who’d wanted the marijuana plants pulled up, but Olen was still staring into the empty grave site.

  “Leroy,” Olen said, as though he’d just discovered him in the act.

  Seeing Olen’s tight lips Gwen said, “Leroy knows how sacred that grave is to us. He wouldn’t harm it.”

  Olen scowled. “Maybe not. But he might have heard something. Seen something. It took a powerful lot of digging.” He walked around the site, picked up handfuls of dirt to examine under his nose as though he might find fingerprints.

  “Leroy’s not here, it’s his day off,” she said. She thought of Harvey Ball, who coveted her land, but she was afraid Olen would march up there and Harvey would give him an earful about the shiny man. The shiny man, whom Harvey had insisted was Russell. So she kept quiet.

  “I’m sorry about this, Gwen. But let me work on it. Don’t tell your husband. He might, well, do something crazy.”

  She nodded. Olen was right. Russell called this dead girl his “princess.” He would go crazy if he knew. Olen put a hand on her arm, squeezed. She heard Mert cough and she drew away. She must keep calm. She told Olen about Jack Sweeney, the ethnobotanist. “He’s going to vouch for me in court next week. He agrees with me about those bruises. They can be the result of the nightshade. And I’m planning to pull it all up, Olen, honestly I am. Oh, and Olen—did I tell you about Camille’s message? It was just before she was killed.”

  He shook his head, looked attentive. He waited.

  “She wanted to tell me something about Shep Noble. How he was somehow connected to the project she was working on. I can’t imagine what it was. But maybe you can find out. If so, it would suggest that his death was a murder, not just an accident, wouldn’t it? And here I am trying to prove it an accident? Should I try to postpone the court proceedings?”

  Olen stuck a tongue in his cheek; his hands squeezed slowly together. Finally he said, “No, don’t cancel. It might have nothing to do with that death. The boy was in her class, Donna said? Some connection there, maybe. I’ll look into it. You have to go through with the court case, Gwen. To prove your innocence. The state’s attorney called it, right?” He waved his arms at the dug grave. “Now, don’t walk here, Gwen, till I can get somebody else up to look at it. How old you say those bones were?”

  “Maybe ten thousand years.”

  Mert grinned. “She was an oldie, all right. A good old girl.”

  “We’ll get her back,” Olen said, “don’t you worry. They can’t go digging up graves. It’s not right. It’s against the law. I won’t allow it!” He sounded, she thought, as if he were the law personified. His hands were trembling again with his anger.

  “Maybe you should try a little marijuana. To relax,” she said slyly. “I can fix it up for you.”

  Now she’d gone too far. Olen thrust his hands in his pockets and strode off with a curt nod.

  * * * *

  “They’ve gone too far this time, whoever it is,” Ruth told Colm when he phoned to tell about the latest mischief on the mountain. The idea of digging up a grave horrified her; she knew how the Abenaki people revered their ancestors. For one thing, their buried dead proved their Vermont identity—that they had lived here and not just wandered through. “They deserve recognition by the state,” she cried hotly, “and they’re not getting it. Gwen told me that.”

  “Write a letter to the governor,” he said.

  “I will!” She took a sip of coffee. It was too hot, it burned the roof of her mouth, making her madder than ever at the state of affairs in Vermont. “And have you seen these signs that are springing up all over the county? TAKE BACK VERMONT. VERMONT FOR VERMONTERS. They say it’s mostly because of the civil union legislation. I mean, I could agree with them if it meant ‘Go Back to Small Farms,’ ‘Go Back to Independent Stores’ everywhere. I can’t find a damn thing I want in those huge warehouses, and nobody to wait on me. But don’t go back at the expense of human rights! Even some of my farmer friends are posting the signs on their barn doors. What do I say to them? What do I tell them?”

  “Write a letter,” he said again.

  “Oh, you’re so goddamn sanguine, Colm. And I will, I will. Tonight. Today I’m on my way to Argennes to that foster care agency. To see if I can find out who Joey’s father and grandparents are—if they’re still alive. Where that will lead us, I’ve no idea. I feel like a mole creeping about underground.”

  “That’s not a good analogy, Ruthie. You’re at a loss, but creeping underground is what moles do. They’re blind from birth. The underground’s their home.”

  “Oh, stop being a smart-ass.” She waved him away, spilling her coffee. She hung up the phone and sponged the liquid—it had dripped into her boots. She could smell the manure on them. She’d have to take a shower before she went to see any foster lady, who was sure to be impeccably dressed, coiffed, and perfumed.

  * * * *

  Evangeline Balinsky, though, was a surprise. She was short, plump, and frumpy in a shapeless blue checked cotton jumper that couldn’t hide the balloon of her belly. Under the jumper she wore heavy lisle stockings that might have been her grandmother’s, and blue Adidas sneakers. On her head was a purple wreath with a jingle bell on top.

  “It’s to cheer up the children,” Evangeline said. “I’m just back from visiting a new foster mom. She took in one of our quieter ones, a five-year-old who hasn’t spoken a word since her dad went to jail and the mother left her with an aunt, who brought her to us.”

  “Poor child,” Ruth murmured.

  “Well, then,” Evangeline said, with a lift of her head and a jangle of her wreath bell. “Down to business. What exactly brings you here?”

  Ruth explained about Camille and her own blind mission. “And my daughter can’t find the disk Camille gave her. There might be something on that disk that would give us a key to her death. Someone who might be hurt if his past were revealed. At least, that’s my theory.” She gave a short laugh. “I don’t know why I say his. It could be a her.”

  She looked at her own hands, hard and blue-veined from working in the fields. She could strangle a person, couldn’t she? She hoped she’d never be forced to do such a thing, but she could. If someone tried to hurt a child or a grandchild .. .

  Evangeline saw her flexing her fingers. “We’re all capable of violence, aren’t we? I recall pummeling a child once—not my own, no, I never married; it was one of the foster boys. A fourteen-year-old who wasn’t going to conform, no, ma’am, he was going his own way. And the foster mother was kind and loving. The boy would have had so much if he’d opened up. But one day he attacked her with a knife. She managed to run in the bedroom, bolt the door, call me. She was bleeding terribly when I got there. The boy went after me then, and I grabbed him around the neck. I never realized how vulnerable a neck can be....” She touched her own neck. “All these thin cords and muscles. I had to stop myself before I killed him, I was that angry.” Her bell rattled with the memory.

  “Did he change? Did the foster mother ever forgive him?”

  “He ran away. We never found him. Lord knows where he is—Canada, maybe. There are miles of unwatched border.”

  “Hi
s name wouldn’t have been Godineaux?”

  “No, it was Wasson. Nick Wasson. You looking for a Godineaux?”

  Ruth told her about Joey, her search for a father and grandparents. “I thought you’d have records here in your office.” Again she felt so vague, so confused. What would she ask these people if she found them?

  Evangeline pulled out a huge green drawer, selected a file, her bell jingling all the while. Ruth wondered if she wore it to bed. A jingling bell would be company for a single woman. She might try it herself. But Evangeline was frowning as she stared at the folder, her folds of chin almost touching the page.

  “The mother’s name was Pauline,” she said. “And so was the grandmother a Godineaux, name of Nicole. It was the grandmother brought the boy in, as I recall. The mother was in prison for something or other. Forging a check, shoplifting—I don’t know. There was no money to bail her out. She got six months, but it wasn’t the first time.” She frowned. Here was a woman with a conscience. Ruth liked her.

  “Annette,” Ruth said, recalling the title on the disk she’d kept for those few hours. “Was there an Annette in that family?”

  Evangeline puzzled awhile longer, flipped a page. “I don’t see an Annette. But there could have been. It could have been the boy’s great-grandmother. We don’t keep a whole family tree of these people.”

  “Of course not. But this Pauline—or Nicole—do you have an address? And what about the father? Any information on him?”

  Evangeline’s chins swung; her bell sounded with the sweep of her head. “He was a no-good, that’s all I know. Pauline was never married to him. He fathered young Joey and took off. By then Pauline was in her mid-forties.”

  “Any other children?”

  “Oh, yes. One other besides Joey. Or was. Where, I don’t know.”

  Pauline hadn’t been sterilized, then. Ruth explained about the eugenics project, but Evangeline already knew; she grimaced. “Obviously not. But maybe Nicole was. There’s no evidence of children after 1943. Nicole was let out of the reformatory in that year, along with her mother—whom we might assume was this Annette you speak of. Could be they were both sterilized. Where they went after that—who knows? The next we have on them was when Nicole came in with young Joey.”