Telling the Bees

by Peggy Hesketh

  Even in retrospect, there is no way now to measure the relative depth of pain suffered by any and all who were touched by the tragic life and death of Claire Straussman, including Claire herself. I am only more certain than ever that Goethe knew whereof he spoke when he wrote that nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

  Shortly after our visit, Detective Grayson was able to locate the boy through his military records. Of course he was hardly a boy by this time. He was still in the military, however, and he had been serving in the Middle East when Claire and Hilda were killed, an alibi that was easily corroborated by his superiors. In fact, he was serving overseas when the detective reached him by telephone and informed him of Claire’s and Hilda’s tragic deaths. Though he was hardly overcome by grief, David Gilbert did express some small regret over the manner of their demise.

  “I always figured they’d just dry up and blow away some day,” he had said, according to Detective Grayson. In the course of their brief conversation, David Gilbert also told the detective that he and his wife had split up six years earlier and that she had taken their daughter back to Texas to be near their extended family.

  “Apparently the split was pretty nasty,” the detective told me when I inquired after David Gilbert’s wife and daughter. “The wife had a restraining order put out on him before she and the girl moved back to Texas.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” I said. Evidently David Gilbert had become no less reticent in expressing his anger than his forebears had been. I had somehow hoped that his early exit from the family fold might have spared him this curse. But it appeared this was the least of his problems.

  “Does this mean he no longer speaks to his wife or child?” I inquired. The thought of living out most of my adult life estranged from those nearest and dearest to me saddened me in ways I couldn’t begin to express.

  “You could say that,” the detective replied. “David Gilbert told me his wife died in a car accident a little over two years after the divorce.”

  “But what happened to the child?”

  “Well, according to him, his daughter’s grandparents took custody of the girl and brought her back to Mexico to live with them.”

  I couldn’t help wondering aloud whether such an unconventional guardianship would have been sanctioned by the courts.

  “Surely David Gilbert must have contested this situation,” I said.

  “Well, Mr. Honig, even he admitted there were problems in the home long before the breakup.”

  I don’t know why Detective Grayson’s tone softened, but I was grateful that he took the time to explain to me that while David Gilbert clearly hadn’t been pleased with the custody arrangement, there was little he felt he could do about it. Because he was stationed out of the country at the time, and based on some particularly damaging testimony regarding a domestic disturbance call that had come out during the divorce proceedings, the grandparents were granted full and permanent custody of the girl after her mother’s death.

  “Like I said, it was a pretty messy situation all round,” Detective Grayson said.

  I was reminded of the last time that I’d seen them all together: David Gilbert, his wife, and their young daughter. Despite the contentious circumstances of their visit with Claire and Hilda, the three of them had seemed happy enough. In fact, they had shown all the signs of loving mates and doting parents. It was Claire who had drawn David Gilbert’s considerable ire—and justifiably so, I might add—as in the heat of her own anger she had been most insulting to them.

  What had struck me then was that David Gilbert had exhibited a physical restraint rare among the Straussman clan in the face of all he’d endured that day. Indeed, the more Claire railed against him, the calmer he’d become, although in hindsight I suppose that what I took for composure may have been much closer to the sear of an ember that burns from within, more likely to flare up unexpectedly than to die out altogether.

  However, David Gilbert eventually inquired about whether any formal burial arrangements had been made for Claire and Hilda, and Detective Grayson had informed him they would have been disposed of rather unceremoniously by the state once the collection of evidence and other such investigative formalities had been completed, had I not offered to pay for a decent Christian burial for the two of them. Though he was under no legal obligation to do so, David Gilbert insisted on reimbursing me for the modest costs I had incurred. That is, in fact, how I came to learn of his whereabouts, as Detective Grayson had been kind enough to contact me to relay his offer. When I tried to decline, the detective assured me that David Gilbert had both the financial wherewithal, and the ethical inclination to “set things straight,” as he put it, and so eventually I relented.

  David Gilbert did not, however, ask me or Detective Grayson where Claire and Hilda had been laid to rest. I assume he never went to visit them either, as I know for certain that I have never seen any flowers placed on their graves other than those that I have brought from my own garden.

  Twenty-one

  AFTERSWARM: A small swarm, usually led by a virgin queen, which may leave the hive after the prime swarm has departed.

  Claire’s and Hilda’s murders likely would have remained unsolved until this day had it not been for the chance discovery of Claire’s diary among an odd cache of keepsakes found in the possession of a pair of young burglary suspects nearly a year after the bees had led me to the Straussman sisters’ lifeless bodies.

  I had not thought Claire to be the sentimental type and so I was surprised to learn that any personal items such as diaries and vacation souvenirs existed in the first place, just as I was in the dark about the secret cubbyhole in which the Straussmans had kept their valuables.

  The evidentiary connection between these items, a routine inventory of stolen goods, and the Straussmans’ untimely deaths might not have been made at all had it not been for an offhand remark made by a fellow officer to Detective Grayson regarding a puzzling loose end to an otherwise straightforward string of burglary cases to which he had been assigned. The officer mentioned that he had recovered a rather large trove of stolen goods in a public storage unit situated near a celebrated amusement park in our area. The officer had been able to trace nearly everything he’d found in the unit back to a rash of unsolved burglaries that had taken place over the previous several months and this in turn had led to the arrest of a young man and woman living in a crime-ridden apartment complex adjacent to the parking lot on the park’s east side. Most of the contraband Detective Grayson’s colleague had recovered from the storage unit was typical of such burglaries: television sets, stereo equipment, computers, video recorders, cameras, handguns, jewelry, and other easily salable items.

  What had puzzled Detective Grayson’s colleague was a dusty military-issue strongbox dating back to World War II. Even odder was that it held nothing more valuable than a mason jar filled with old pennies and nickels, a dried-up leather bolo tie with tarnished silver clasp and tips, a faded autograph book, and a diary written by a woman named Clarinda J. Straussman. The officer said the various ink and pencil inscriptions were so faded in both books as to be barely legible.

  Detective Grayson, who was by this time less than six months from retiring, asked his colleague if he might examine the anomalous strongbox’s contents. The officer responded by fetching it directly from the evidence storage locker and depositing box and all on the detective’s desk later that same day.

  I learned all of this late one afternoon in August of 1993 when much to my surprise I opened my front door and found Detective Grayson standing on my porch. His eyes looked grayer in the dying afternoon light than I’d recalled them being.

  “Detective Grayson,” I stammered through the crack in the door. I had become much more cautious in my habits over the previous year since my neighbors had been murdered in their own home. “I thought surely you’d retired by now.”

  “No, not quite,” he replied in his usual brusque manner. “May I come in?”
/>
  “Of course,” I said, swinging my door wide open. Remembering my manners, I offered him a cup of tea, but he declined, saying he was in a bit of a hurry. He told me that there might be a new development in the Straussman murder case. He said it had something to do with the arrest of a pair of burglary suspects the previous evening and he asked if I might be able to accompany him to the police station, where he had some recovered property that he wanted me to take a look at.

  “Right now?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Let me just get my sweater,” I said. “The evening chill affects my old bones more and more these days.”

  He invited me to ride with him in the front seat of his unmarked police car as we drove the mile or so through what was left of the old part of town to the newly renovated police station, which now abutted the city’s main library.

  “It’s funny how things work out sometimes,” Detective Grayson observed rather mirthlessly, reminding me then and there of the true definition of irony as I sensed that there was nothing humorous in what the good detective wished to show me. At least, that is what I thought as he escorted me through the station’s security door and led me down a long hallway that opened into a warren of cubicles, which I assumed were the police detectives’ new quarters judging from the aroma of fresh paint emanating from the barren beige walls. Barren, that is, save for the line of portraits of previous police chiefs hung in chronological order of service.

  Detective Grayson’s cubicle, one of six in a cluster in the east corner of the room, was dominated by a large gunmetal desk and a matching institutionally functional gray metal bookcase bolted to the beige padded wall opposite the desk in case of earthquake. I noticed that the shelves were half filled with books on penal codes and other official-looking law enforcement codices.

  Detective Grayson settled himself into a rolling chair upon entering his realm and directed me with a stiff sweep of his arm to a stationary wooden chair next to his desk.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, and as I scooted the straight-backed chair closer to him he pointed to a dull metal box on his desk. It was slightly taller than a shoe box and painted a muddy greenish-brown common to military equipment. I noticed on closer inspection that it had a handle that flattened into its top by two loose metal rings and a watertight side latch. Die-stamped into the metal beneath the latch was AMMO. BOX CAL .50 M2, and on the side ACME U.S.

  “Ever see this ammo box before?” the detective inquired. Puzzled, I shook my head. He slid the box nearer to him as if to examine it closer.

  “Looks to be World War Two vintage. Still in pretty good shape,” he persisted. “Might even be worth something to a collector.”

  “I’ve never seen it before, Detective,” I said. “I am quite sure of it.”

  He responded with what seemed to me an indifferent shrug as though he rather expected my response despite his prodding. The detective then released the latch, lifted the lid, and reached into the strongbox. I noticed that GOV’T REJECT was stamped on the underside of the lid in faded black ink. Keeping his eyes on me, the detective pulled out a worn leather-bound book.

  “Do you recognize this, Mr. Honig?” he asked as he placed the book on the desk in front of me.

  Picking it up, I turned it over several times before leafing gingerly through the yellowed pages, trying not to look too closely at what was written on any one page. I shook my head and handed the book back to the detective.

  “Do you recognize it?” the detective repeated.

  “No,” I said honestly. “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “Are you sure? Could you look at it again?”

  The detective picked the book back up and fanned the pages slowly under my nose. The musty scent of aged leather and paper—and something else . . . lavender, or jasmine perhaps—assaulted my senses as a word here and there tugged at the edge of my vision. I closed my eyes. It was clear these were the confessions of someone’s very private and innermost thoughts. The detective stopped on a page midway through the diary.

  “Mr. Honig,” he said, and my eyes opened, almost against my will, and fixed on a familiar name midway down the page: Hilda.

  Hilda told me today that she wished it were her leg instead of Mother’s that had to be cut off. When I asked her why she would want to do such a thing for Mother, she said it wasn’t Mother that she wanted to do it for . . .

  I felt ill. Sick to my soul. I shook my head.

  “Please, Mr. Honig,” Detective Grayson said, handing the book back to me. “Please. This is important.”

  I closed the diary and opened it again, this time to another random entry, penned, according to the date at the head of the page, on June 14, 1934. It was only a paragraph long, and even now I can remember what it said, if not exactly word for word then certainly close enough to the gist and tone of it to render an accurate evocation.

  Albert said the strangest thing the other night. He said my name should have been Diana because I reminded him of the moon. I asked him if he’d ever listened to Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and he said he wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music. But then he said a funny thing. He asked me if I ever wondered about what went on inside the Harmony Ballroom. I said of course I did. And do you know what that silly goose did? He looked at me as if I was some sort of floozy. And then he said he just shut his window when the music got too loud. I told him he couldn’t shut the world out forever, but Lord knows he’s giving it the old college try.

  Silently recalling the full conversation as if it were yesterday, I could hear in my head the lilt of the playful taunt she had issued. “Don’t be such a silly goose, Albert. Be a gander.” And then she had laughed, lightly and without malice, amused by the cleverness of her wordplay. I sighed deeply, and thankfully Detective Grayson allowed me the privacy of my memories.

  “I thought so,” Detective Grayson said simply, anticipating the answer to his implied question.

  “Yes, it’s Claire’s,” I confirmed, closing the diary and setting it down on the desk next to the strongbox.

  “What about this?” he asked me next, placing a smaller string-bound booklet in my hands. I opened it to the first page and read:

  My Memories of My Visit to Detroit, Michigan. June 24, 1942, to November 30, 1942. To Keep my friends / Is my delight / So in this book / I pray you’ll write.

  I leafed through the pages and read a sampling of entries, penned in an array of different hands and inks. Most were short rhyming couplets that were easily committed to memory. Impersonal little ditties, really. The sort I assume young people used to sign high school yearbooks with. Someone named Gerald A., for instance, had written:

  Roses are red / Violets are blue / Your voice is entrancing / And that goes for all of you.

  I found myself growing uncomfortable, irritated even, by the recorded implication of intimacy in this unknown Gerald’s short rhyme. But I kept my voice steady as I read softly aloud from the following page:

  When you are old / And drinking tea / Lay down your cup / And think of me ~ Blanche

  Other entries, however cleverly worded, seemed to be based on more specific experiences. Soccer games, fish fries, late-night parties down by an unnamed river. There were several messages of this type scattered throughout the booklet. Many were written by the same person: Heddy Sweet.

  Her last entry read: I’m in love with a few / I’ve been in love with many / But compared to the love for you / It wasn’t worth a penny. Yours till the doorsteps . . . ~ Heddy

  I had never heard of Heddy Sweet.

  Nor could I positively identify any of the other signatures, although I suspected that the final entry signed by “Your Cousin Margie” was written by the same Margaret Louise Lennox who I had met years earlier at the Straussmans’ home on the day of Mr. Straussman’s funeral. I said as much to the detective.

  “Clearly this booklet was a keepsake from Claire’s extended visit to Detroit that we spoke of previously,” I s
aid, fingering the faded script on the page. There was an eerie prescience to Claire’s cousin’s words that brought a twinge to my throat all these many years after the fact:

  Though now you are free / From sorrow and care / There is many a hardship / In this world so beware.

  “Yes, I do believe this is Claire’s as well,” I said, closing the book gently and returning it to the detective.

  “Could you swear to it?” he pressed, and when I appeared taken aback at the prospect of swearing he added: “In a court of law, I mean. We need you to be absolutely sure.”

  “I’m as sure as I can be about items that until this very moment I had no idea existed,” I said. I told him I could confirm with reasonable certainty only that the handwriting on the title page of the autograph book matched my recollection of Claire’s script and that the dates inscribed therein corresponded with her previously unexplained absence. I told him also that the diary appeared to have been penned by Claire’s hand and, in my brief examination of its contents, some of the entries reflected my recollections of common events and conversations we’d shared.

  “Okay, Mr. Honig,” the detective said, laying the autograph book next to the diary on his desk. He reached once again into the strongbox and withdrew a black, tightly braided strip of leather tipped on both ends by tarnished silver aglets and gathered in the middle by a silver sunburst backed by silver flanges through which the leather strip was looped.

  I’m not sure I was able to completely mask the sharp intake of breath that escaped. I cleared my throat and ascribed my cough to the dust from the old books. The detective narrowed his eyes, and I acknowledged that I’d seen this distinctive western-style tie only once.

  “How so?” the detective said, his voice sharpening in much the same way it had the last time he’d upbraided me for my reticence.