by Farris, John
"Honeybees?"
Hap gave Doremus a vexed look. "Didn't know there was any other kind. Anyway, he had about half a million of the bastards in his barn, and they jumped him."
"Just like that?"
"I suppose he got careless handling them." The waitress came with their coffee. "One of those jelly doughnuts too, Dolores," Hap said.
"Had he worked around bees long?"
"Elsa told me Andy'd kept bees as long as she can remember, and they were married thirty-eight years. She's the one found him, and she's got a heart condition. Last night it was touch and go, believe me, but I think Elsa will be all right. Tough old German." He looked down glumly at his steaming coffee. "And being dead is right hard to take. I admired him, but there's more to it than that. Mind listening?"
"Not at all, Hap."
The sheriff explained in a rambling way about the telephone calls Helen Connelly had received from the boy who called himself Michael, sketched the family history of the Youngs and concluded with the glimpse Elsa had had of "Michael himself."
When he was finished Doremus smoked a miniature cigar halfway before saying, "Are you satisfied that bee venom caused Britton's death?"
"From the looks of him I'd be real surprised if it was anything else, but the body's going up to Jeff this afternoon for an autopsy. More coffee?"
"No thanks, Hap. That boy Mrs. Britton saw: could he have been a neighbor?"
"She didn't know him. I mean he wasn't anybody living; he was Michael Young as far as Elsa's concerned."
"And the boy who talked to Helen Connelly's daughter predicted Britton's death?"
"I haven't been able to get that straight," Hap admitted. "I went over to Helen Connelly's early this morning to find out what Peggy remembered about the phone call, but she's so upset over Andy she won't talk to anybody. Andy more or less took the place of a father, since she never knew her own father."
"Mrs. Connelly a widow?"
"Her husband was Ed Connelly. Good friend of mine. He was a game warden. Died one spring during a flash flood on the Black Fork. I was wondering, Doremus . . . I really would like to know about the conversation Peggy had with this boy. You've got a knack with the kids which I don't have. If you could spare the time. . . ."
"I've been out of police work awhile, Hap."
"I know. But this ain't exactly police work."
"Well . . . I'll be glad to help you out if I can, Hap. But this little girl—Peggy?—might not want to talk to me either."
They drove in Hap's unmarked car to the Connellys'. Helen was still at the Britton farm, but Craig and Amy met them on the front porch.
"Doremus used to be with the Chicago police," Hap said after introducing him.
Craig looked a great deal more interested than he had upon shaking hands with Doremus. "Oh, really? What department?"
"I was a detective."
"Homicide," Hap added.
Craig smiled in a complimentary way. "What brings you to The Shades, Mr. Brightlaw? Vacationing?"
"No, I've lived here a couple of years now. Down by Harmony Lake."
"Doremus and I was having some coffee this afternoon and I told him about Andy Britton's death—"
Amy said, "Do you still think it was an accident, Sheriff?"
"I have to think so, until something happens to change my mind, Amy."
"I should think"—Amy met Doremus's blandly inquiring eyes and looked down—"I should think you'd be interested in what Elsa saw last night."
"I'm interested in that boy, but I don't have a clue as to who he might be. I'm also interested in the phone calls, which is why I brought Doremus along. He might be able to talk to Peg."
"Well, I doubt it," Craig told the sheriff. "I've been trying all morning to coax her down from that tree house."
"Tree house," Doremus repeated. "Where is it?"
"Out in the back yard, in the tulip tree next to the garage. I'll show you—"
"Oh, I'll find it," Doremus said, and sauntered off, hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.
Amy looked at Craig, who grinned. "Makes himself right at home," Craig said, as soon as Doremus was beyond hearing.
"I've seen him before, down in the village," Amy mused. "So he used to be a detective. Sort of thin, but still he's very nice looking. I wonder if Helen will be back in time to meet him."
Doremus reached the tulip tree and walked leisurely around the trunk, looking up at the tree house; leaves crackled under his feet.
"Hey!" he said, after a while, then took off his sunglasses, wiped the lenses on his flannel shirt and listened. He searched his pockets for a stick of cinnamon gum, unwrapped it, chewed thoughtfully and studied the ladder nailed to the tree. Then he began to climb, carefully, the rungs of the ladder creaking under him.
The entrance to the tree house was child-sized, barely wide enough for Doremus to squeeze his shoulders through. He stopped climbing and put his weight on his elbows and looked around, seeing Peggy sitting in one sunlit corner with hostility in her eyes. He paid almost no attention to her but continued to admire the tree house.
"This is all right," he said, squinting. "A little small. When I build my tree house I'll want the roof higher. Ought to be enough room for my dog, too. He spends so much time in trees I think he should have a roof over his head. What do you think?"
Peggy was silent for a half minute, and then she said in a neutral voice, "Dogs can't climb trees."
"Some dogs can't climb some trees."
Peggy considered this, and then explained the absence of a dog in her tree house by saying, "My dog was run over."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
Peggy looked out the window beside her head. "He wasn't a good dog," she said, with a heavy heart. "He bit."
"Dogs don't always mean to bite."
"He bit though. Does your dog bite?"
"He's too old."
"I've got . . . an old cat."
"I never had a cat."
"And she's . . . a bad cat. She scratches."
"Cats don't always mean to scratch," Doremus said. "Bees don't always mean to sting either."
"Yes . . . they do," Peggy said, tears running down her cheeks. "I hate bees!"
"Sometimes, Peggy—once in a great while—men who work around bees, like the doctor, get stung, and sometimes they die. Nobody knows for sure why it happens."
Peggy sobbed. "Michael made it happen!" She wanted to go ahead and cry, but the presence of Doremus inhibited her, so she wiped furiously at her eyes, her mouth a thin white line.
"Did he tell you he'd make it happen, Peggy? Did he say the bees were going to sting Dr. Britton?"
"He said . . . bad things were going to happen. He said A-Andy was going to . . . get hurt. It's Michael's fault, he did it! I hate Michael!"
"Do you know him very well?" Doremus asked calmly, not pressing Peggy but giving her enough to think about to keep her from turning away in a brooding silence.
"I know a boy named Michael Landers—Aron's big brother. Do you know Mike?"
"Yes. He's twelve."
"That's right, he is. But that wasn't who you talked to yesterday."
"No. It was Michael Young."
"Did he tell you that himself?"
"He said . . . his name was Michael, and he said he talked to my mother. I knew who he was."
"But you never talked to him before."
"I saw him once. On the playground. He ran away."
"He didn't talk to you then?" asked Doremus. "He just . . . ran away."
"I'd like to see him sometime myself," Doremus said. "Would you tell him that if you ever talk to him again?"
"I don't . . . ever want to talk to him again," Peggy said, shaking her head.
"He's just a little boy, Peggy. And he can't hurt anybody, not really. And maybe he didn't mean to scare you. It's not much fun when you're all by yourself."
"Is he all by himself?"
"Whoever he is, I think he's awfully lonely."
"Do you think he's dead?"
"No, I don't, Peggy."
Peggy was affected by his certainty. "Mother showed me his picture," she said, but she seemed tired of the subject of Michael. Her eyes were dry again. "Are you going to build a tree house?" she asked Doremus.
"I've been seriously thinking about it."
"Where do you live?"
"At Harmony Lake. Know where that is?"
Peggy nodded. "Craig and Amy took me swimming there this summer."
"You probably saw my house. My name's Doremus. Do-re-mus."
"Do-re-mus," Peggy pronounced, meticulously.
"Would your mother give me a drink of water if I ask her?"
"Yes. But she might not be there. She went to—"
"That's OK, I'll just help myself if you won't show me."
"Oh, I'll show you," Peggy said promptly. She got up and came over to the opening in the floor of the tree house. "You have to be careful going down," she cautioned. "I fell once. Mother wouldn't let me come up here for a week."
When they were both on the ground they walked together to the back porch. "There's Mother," Peggy said delightedly, breaking into a run, and Helen Connelly came outside, wearing a neat black wool dress, unadorned.
"Hi, honey," Helen said, bending to kiss her daughter. She looked then at Doremus with a noncommittal smile. He observed that she was quite a bit older than she had looked from a distance. There were sun crinkles and stripes at the throat, but her hair was a rich sun-glossy brown and she had the good legs of a particularly well-favored girl of twenty.
"He wants a drink of water," Peggy said.
"Good morning, Mrs. Connelly. I'm Doremus Brightlaw."
"How do you do, Mr. Brightlaw. Would you like to come in? The others are in the kitchen."
After Peggy had had a glass of milk, Helen coaxed her upstairs to take a bath and returned to find Doremus discussing the meaning of the "Michael" telephone calls with Craig.
Doremus said, "Mrs. Britton saw a young boy resembling the Michael Young she knew, and Peggy saw a boy she believes is Michael. But both of these occurrences might be unrelated to the calls, which in turn are not necessarily related to the death of Dr. Britton."
"How can you say that?" Amy responded indignantly. "Yesterday that boy as much as promised Andy would be killed, and less than an hour later he turns up at the barn where Andy had been stung to death by bees!"
"So far," Hap said, "there's only Elsa's testimony that a boy was there, and she was—well, she was almost hysterical; no telling what she actually saw. Probably some kid taking a shortcut home through the barn lot."
"I believe Elsa," Amy said more quietly. "It may have been an apparition, but she saw Michael."
Craig shook his head wearily. "Ghosts again."
Helen held out a small photograph to Doremus. "I thought you might be interested in seeing this, Mr. Brightlaw. It's a school picture of Michael Young, taken just a couple of months before he died."
Doremus accepted the photo and studied it closely, then passed it on to Hap. Amy and Craig looked over his shoulder.
Craig's expression was bleak. Amy glanced at him sympathetically, seeming a little sorry for her talk about apparitions.
"He looks a lot like the middle Boyer kid," Hap murmured. "A little thinner, maybe."
"There's something about that age," said Craig. "Several of our kids . . ." He shrugged.
"Are the Greenleaf boys under constant supervision?" Doremus asked.
"No, we'd be defeating our purpose. But if that had been a Greenleaf boy Elsa saw last night, I'd know it. He would have had something like a twenty-mile hike, round trip, which means he would have missed an eight-thirty room check."
"Unless, of course, he hitched a ride with somebody."
"Well, that's a possibility," Craig said politely, and Doremus smiled.
Hap rose from the kitchen table. "Helen, I'd like to keep this picture for a while if you don't mind. Show it around."
"Will Elsa have to see it?" Amy asked.
"I'm afraid so."
"Oh, Hap," Helen said glumly.
"Doremus, care to ride along with me to the Britton place?" Hap said, and Doremus surprised him by assenting.
Helen accompanied the two men to the front door, where she said, "Mr. Brightlaw, I appreciate the tact with which you handled Peggy."
Doremus seemed mildly embarrassed. "Peggy's not hard to talk to, Mrs. Connelly. I like her."
Helen said, with a hint of depression in her gray eyes, "Are you going to help us? Hap told me you were a detective at one time."
"That's right. I don't know if there's anything I can do though."
"Michael's going to call again, I'm sure of that."
"If he does," said Hap, "I want you to get in touch with me no matter what hour of the day or night." He frowned. "Wish you'd called me the first time."
When they were in the sheriff's car and on the way to the Britton farm, Hap said to Doremus "That's a mighty lot of woman back there."
"Does she do well with that antique shop?"
"Not bad, considering the location. The Weldons do better, and so does Wilhelmina Carley, but they'll sell any kind of trash." Hap scratched his stomach and grinned. "Yeah, I tried to get started with Helen back two—three years ago. Nothing came of it, but then I'm just an old Shades County boy and she's got a lot of background." He slanted a look at Doremus.
"Like to hear about her sometime," Doremus said pleasantly as he smoked his cigar, but he was staring out the window and he seemed to be somewhat bored. He had nothing more to say until they reached the farm. There Hap pointed out the barn in which Dr. Britton had been stung to death, and Doremus perked up.
"OK if I poke around inside, Hap?"
"Sure, the barn's not padlocked. Need to spend a few minutes with old Elsa. There's still plenty of bees inside, so watch yourself."
"Tell me one thing, Hap. Where was the doctor when the bees attacked him?"
"Inside his workroom. You'll see it."
Doremus nodded, got out of the car and headed for the barn, pausing to stomp out his cigar on the way.
For more than a minute after entering, he stood by the door studying the layout of the apiary, and then he proceeded slowly across the tanbark in the artificial brightness to the place, marked with stakes and string, where Andrew Britton had fallen. He looked at the discarded insecticide tank, then took a pocket knife from his trousers and, hunkered down, began prying carefully with the blade in the packed-down tanbark. He exhumed one of the dead bees, held it up on the blade to the level of his eyes and squinted at it. With his other hand he reached into his shirt pocket, slipped the cellophane off the package of cigars he carried there and dropped the bee into this makeshift bag. With the bee stowed away, he went all around the staked area, occasionally squatting to pick up more bees with the knife.
When he was satisfied he straightened up, his stiffened knees popping, and walked across the barn to the row of hives there. Without hesitating, he gently opened one of the hives and peered inside at the combs and the bees clustered there. Then he moved down the row and chose another hive.
Once he had looked into five different hives he turned and went quickly to the prefab building which Dr. Britton had used as a workroom. The door in the side of the rectangular slope-roofed building was standing open. Doremus approached with care and saw the broken hive on the floor near the table, its lid completely off, and he heard the faint buzzing of what was left of the bee colony. He sniffed deeply, aware of the lingering acrid odor of insecticide that had apparently permeated the air of the barn and ultimately killed innocent as well as guilty bees. Then he stepped into the workroom, making sure the door behind him was standing wide. He was also careful to keep a good six feet away from the cracked-open nearly ruined hive, which the survivors undoubtedly were recolonizing.
He made a survey of the bottles and jars on the shelves over the worktable, then noted the jars of paint on the table itself, and what look
ed like a discarded surgeon's mask. That brought a frown. For several minutes he was motionless, thinking. Finally he squatted down and saw a bottle with a spray attachment that had rolled partway under one section of the shelves. He reached for it and read the label: Chloroform.
Automatically he held the bottle close to his nose and sniffed twice.
He was so puzzled by the contradictory odor from the amber "chloroform" bottle that he almost sprayed some of the liquid on his hand, but instinct warned him not to. He turned for another lingering look at the hive on the floor, then rose and placed the bottle on the table.
"Anything wrong with that?" Doremus was asked.
He looked around quickly. Harry Randle was standing just outside the workroom.
"Found it on the floor," Doremus said amiably. "Who are you?"
"Randle. I work for the Brittons."
"I didn't see you come in."
Harry jerked his head toward the back door, which was standing open. "You from the State Patrol?"
Doremus only smiled and left the workroom, having decided to go out by way of the back door. Randle followed him leisurely. Outside, the ground was rocky for a distance of about ten feet, then there was a slope covered with frostbitten weed, some bright hawthorn and a couple of Chinese elms growing near the trim white-painted fence beside the road.
Doremus got out another cigar, lighted it, pinched the match and dropped it into a handy pocket. "How about that back door?" he asked Randle. "Do you know if the doctor usually kept it locked?"
Harry's eyes were steady on Doremus's face. "No idea," he said with a light shrug. "I don't come down here much."
"Don't care for the bees?"
"They never bother me. You working with the sheriff, then?"
"In a way. Did you happen to see the doctor yesterday afternoon, before he died?"
Harry nodded. "We were stacking those bales of hay you saw inside. Finished about dark. I took the truck down to Claypool's. The bees must have got him right after I left."
Doremus pondered this. "Did you notice any unusual activity while you were in the barn?"
"You mean the bees? There were a few around. The doctor said that was normal. He said they wouldn't swarm unless they were . . . interfered with. Stirred up. I guess he stirred them up some way. Well, I'd better get that rake I was after." He turned back to the barn.