Stolen Honey

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Like I said when you walked in looking for that other Pauline,” said the bartender, “I don’t know nothing about her. She’s another side of the family—the bad side. My mom won’t have nothing to do with that side—I’m named after my mom’s sister Pauline. We’re the respectable ones, Mom says. Mom’s a beautician. She likes my great-grandmother, though, she’s named after her. Annette Godineaux—with an ‘x.’ Fuchs was Mom’s name. She dropped the Fuchs after she divorced my father— and took back the Godineaux, but dropped off the ‘x.’ Foolish, I’d say, but what the hell.”

  Colm was nudging her; Ruth almost choked on her beer. See? the nudge said. You got mad and now you’re sorry. She elbowed him back. “Where is she now? This centenarian Annette?”

  “Andover,” said the woman. “Northwest of here somewhere. I never been there, but like I said, Mom goes up maybe once a year. You want I should call Mom for you? I mean, what do you want to see her for? You relatives, too?”

  Ruth explained their mission, saying nothing about the murdered Camille but mentioning Joey. Pauline softened. “Oh, yeah, oh, golly, it’s nice you doing that. It’s nice knowing about the family. I gotta go meet that Annette ’fore she kicks off. I mean, she’s a hundred and one, actually. She had another birthday, Mom took her an African violet.”

  “The question is,” Colm whispered after the bartender had gone off to phone her mother, “has this old woman any memory left? What about Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, plain old dementia?”

  “Not everyone gets those things. I want to see her anyway. She might have old letters, who knows? Family records. Anything to give us names: Nicole’s father, Pauline’s. Joey’s father.”

  “Mom’s at the beauty shop,” Pauline announced when she came back. “She wants to see you in person before she gives out any address. And Annette’s phone’s unlisted, you see. Mom’s afraid someone will spread the bad news around. About the wrong side of the family, I mean. Mom’s got her reputation to keep.”

  She gave the address of the beauty shop. “But you better hurry,” she added as Ruth reached for her wallet to pay for the drinks. She wasn’t going to wait for Colm this time. “Mom goes bowling after work. She never talks to anyone when she’s bowling.”

  * * * *

  Gwen had held back from calling Donna at the college—she’d promised herself not to interfere, the girl was eighteen now. Still, she reasoned, she and Russell were paying for all this. Even with the Native American scholarship there were books, meals, clothes, a dozen other expenses. Donna owed it to them to let her know when she couldn’t perform her home duties. And today she’d shirked them. Thursday was Donna’s afternoon to do the grocery shopping; She didn’t have a late class and Gwen was in over her head with work. Gwen had convinced Russell to go back to Saratoga for his reenactment. He hadn’t wanted to leave, with the grave site still empty, but what could he do, she’d said, hanging around? So reluctantly, with plenty of bluster, he went. Olen and his colleagues were questioning college staff, neighbors, the local hoods—taking fingerprints. She and Russell would have to have faith in the law. Or so Olen would say.

  But now she was desperate. She had to go to Enosburg Falls to see to the hives there, it was a good hour and a half north. There was no milk in the house, nothing for supper. Mert couldn’t walk the four miles back from town with heavy grocery bags in his arms. He’d already had one heart attack.

  So she called Emily’s dorm. It did seem odd, she thought now, that if Donna had had something exciting to tell her, she hadn’t called. Ruth had said she would. Of course, she reasoned, more exciting things were probably going on at the college—a concert, a play, a dorm party—who knew? Gwen was more lenient than Russell; she didn’t begrudge her daughter’s having fun—especially now, with the stress of the two deaths, and then the grave robbery.

  But Emily wasn’t in her room. And the girls weren’t at the Willmarths’ when she called there. Ruth, according to the hired man who answered the barn phone, was in New Hampshire with Colm Hanna and wouldn’t be back until milking time—”if then,” Tim grunted. So she had to trust that Donna was still on campus with Emily, and Gwen didn’t have time to track her down. Anyhow, she’d surely be home for supper. Mystery! would be on, her favorite TV program, she wouldn’t want to miss that.

  “I have to leave,” she told Mert. He was labeling baskets, getting them ready for her to take Monday to Dakin’s Farm Center, where he would sell them wholesale. “I can’t wait any longer. I’ll bring home some Chinese. Tell Donna when she comes to make a salad. At least there’s lettuce in the fridge, if nothing else.”

  * * * *

  “Will I pass inspection?” Colm joked, smoothing his hair as they walked into the Permanent Solution—a place that might harbor a host of centenarians, he joked.

  “Or a crematory,” Ruth added, thinking of World War II, although it didn’t seem likely, what with the pink exterior of the building, and inside, a large woman with a puffy blond hairdo, paying her bill.

  “I’d leave you a tip, but you are the owner, right?” the customer reminded the proprietress, a busty, big-hipped, sixtyish woman in a pink plastic apron with a head of dyed jet-black hair permed and teased into an elaborate bee’s nest.

  The proprietress gave a forced smile and accepted the woman’s check. “Thank you,” she said, glancing at Ruth and then Colm. Ruth felt herself redden as though she bore a degree of guilt for insinuating herself into someone else’s life. Colm coughed discreetly beside her.

  The woman lit a cigarette, inhaled, blew out the smoke. “She’ll never see you,” she told Colm. “She won’t let a man come near her. She’s been done in by too many.”

  “In what way?” Ruth ventured, but the hairdresser only turned her head away.

  “You’ll have to ask her. If you’re lucky, she’ll tell you a story or two. You,” she told Ruth. “Not you,” nodding at Colm.

  “Jeez,” said Colm, and Ruth had to smile.

  “So what’s this all about? Why do you want to see old Annette?” The younger Annette stuck her hands on her wide hips, the cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth, and peered suspiciously at Ruth, who gave the usual spiel about Joey and his relatives. Ruth kept her eyes focused on the woman, her demeanor cool. She didn’t want the woman to see how important it suddenly was to her. It was as though that centenarian held the key to a young college teacher’s death.

  Finally the woman sighed, stubbed out the cigarette. “All right, then. If it’s only for that. But just you, not him, I told you. She’s my relative, my father’s mother. I don’t want nothing upsetting her. Don’t ask too many questions, okay? She gets tired easy.”

  Ruth promised. “I only want to know who Joey’s father is, his grandfather—you know, the male line in the family? Names. I’m not going to dig up Annette’s past. I just want to, well, help Joey.” She flushed with the lie. But it wasn’t exactly a lie, was it? She wanted to help Joey as well, and Tim, who was himself interested in Joey’s background.

  “Can you tell us who Nicole’s husband was? None of the Godineaux women took on their husband’s name, it seems.”

  The beautician gave a high-pitched giggle. “How could they? They wasn’t married, except for Nicole—and she kept her own name. I was. Twenty-two years to a man named Fuchs. Well, I bit the bullet and took his name. Then he ups and takes off with another woman and I get back my maiden name. Who wants to keep the name Fuchs when you don’t have the man to go with it?”

  “I can understand,” said Ruth, not wanting to go into her own life, although the invitation was out. Probably all of Auburn knew the story of this Annette Godineau’s marriage to a man named Fuchs.

  The woman lit a second cigarette, inhaled, then blew out a lungful. Colm coughed loudly. “Okay, then. She lives up on a mountain road in Andover. It’s Annette’s trailer, she owns the land. When she dies—well, we’ll see who gets the place.”

  The hairdresser patted her beehive—did she think she was the r
ightful heir? She dabbed on red lipstick and said she had to “get on the road. I gotta bowling league, I’m already late. Now, you be careful with Annette, she’s no spring chicken.” She squinted meaningfully at Ruth, stubbed out the second cigarette in a porcelain sink.

  Ruth was just climbing into the Horizon, choking back a laugh, when the woman came running out. “Say, you’re not thinking of going there tonight?”

  “Well,” said Ruth, “as long as we’re in New Hampshire. I’ve work tomorrow morning. I’m a farmer.”

  The woman’s face was huge and pink in the passenger window. “You’ll have to drive back tomorrow, then. It’s after six now. Annette’s in bed by six-thirty.” She heaved her bulk into a canary-yellow VW.

  “A nice motel?” offered Colm, turning the ignition key. “You can see her first thing in the morning while I have coffee in the local diner—if there is a local diner. What about it, Ruthie?” There was a coy smile on his lips.

  She hesitated; she’d had two drinks at the Auburn lounge. She thought of Vic, home from school already, needing her help with homework; the morning chores he might skimp on without her.

  “We can take two rooms, if that’s what you want.” His voice was soft and pleading. She turned to look at him; the eyes behind the dark prescription glasses were half shut.

  “How can I, Colm? Sharon’s coming over at five, but I can’t ask her to spend the night—not with two children—can I?”

  “You can,” he reassured her. “She’ll understand. Look, Branbury’s two and a half hours from here. She’ll have to put the kids down anyway. Unless Jack—”

  “Jack’s away at Cornell today with his mentor. He’s starting a doctorate—as if they’re not in enough debt already.”

  “Huh. Well, then, it’s decided.”

  “But the milking, all the prep, and Elizabeth down with milk fever.”

  “We’ll make two calls. One to Sharon, one to Tim. You can pay him overtime. I’ll take care of the motel. You do the overtime. We’ll be back by noon, sure thing.”

  “If the old lady complies. It may turn out to be another dead end.”

  “At a hundred and one? You may be right.”

  “Enough. Look—there’s an outdoor phone at that gas station. Pull over.”

  “Of course, we’ll be taking two rooms,” she told Sharon, reddening as she spoke, as if she were the teenager, faced with her mother’s frown.

  “You’re such a prude, Mother. Sleep with him, for God’s sake. You know you want to. Take a night off motherhood. You’ve earned it.”

  “Honestly, Sharon.” Her face was on fire now. She could only babble something about Vic’s bedtime, clean sheets in the upstairs closet, towels on the outdoor line.

  “Live it up, Mother,” Sharon crooned into the mouthpiece. “I’ll speak to Tim for you. I’ll help him with the morning chores. So will Robbie—he loves to bottle-feed those little calves. He may be the one to take over the farm.”

  “I should live long enough to train my grandson,” she said, laughing.

  Still her face was scarlet when she stumbled back to the car;

  she was feeling the drinks. Colm was grinning at her. “Sharon approves, right?” he said, and in an unaccustomed burst of chivalry he ran around to open the car door for her. He looked almost handsome in the last sheen of sun, his hair curled a little at the nape of his neck, his eyes glinting Irish blue. “Madame?” he said, and tucked in a fold of her denim skirt. Why was she suddenly conscious of her scuffed boots?

  She smiled and impulsively grabbed his hand. For a mad moment she was her young self, on a date with a dark-haired boy— on a night when anything might happen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Gwen got home from Enosburg Falls and Donna still wasn’t home and had left no message, Gwen was fully alarmed. She called the dairy farm, but Sharon Willmarth answered to say that her mother would be away overnight. Did Gwen hear a smile in her voice? So she called Emily again and this time the girl came to the phone.

  “But she decided to go home—after we found out about Tilden Ball,” Emily told her, and went on with a wild story about a girl named Jill who had the copper beads that Tilden had given her.

  “Tilden? But she didn’t come home,” Gwen cried, panicked now. “We haven’t seen her since yesterday morning!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Brownie said—he was at the supper table, spooning up a dish of chocolate ice cream, “I heard her bike go past yesterday afternoon. I knew it was her—it’s got that funny clanking sound since she fell off that time.”

  “Go where? What time?” Gwen demanded, the phone dangling in her hand, Emily’s voice faintly calling, “Ms. Woodleaf? Are you there, Ms. Woodleaf?”

  “I dunno, I was throwing a ball, I wasn’t looking. But it sounded like she was riding up the road, you know, up toward the forest.”

  “Up toward the Balls’ you mean,” Gwen shouted at Brownie.

  “She was mad as hops,” Emily said on her dormitory phone. “She wanted to get that skeleton girl back. But she promised my mother she’d let you and the police take care of it.”

  “Your mother knew—and she didn’t tell me?”

  “Well, she wanted to let Donna tell you.”

  Gwen remembered now. This was the “exciting” news that Donna had to tell. But she hadn’t told. She hadn’t told because she wanted to find the princess for herself; she would have gone straight up to find Tilden Ball. And when she did, when she accused him of digging up the grave, stealing the bones, why, then .. . She clutched the phone in two shaky hands. Even then she could hardly hang on to it.

  Tilden would be backed into a corner. He wouldn’t want to be found out. He was a big, rawboned fellow. Not a boy—a man. No, a boy in a man’s body. He wouldn’t hurt Donna, would he? Would he?

  She thanked Emily and hung up. She couldn’t panic, she had to keep her wits about her. “Brownie, call Olen Ashley and tell him to come straight up to the Balls’, would you? Tell him Donna’s missing. Then clean up here. I’m going up myself.”

  “Mom, I have homework.”

  “Just do as I say!” she hollered, and abashed, unused to this strident voice, he obeyed.

  “Dad’s coming home,” he said in a small voice as she started out the door. “He called this afternoon. He’ll be here anytime now.”

  “Then send him up!” she yelled back. She needed her husband. It was his child, his daughter. Russell should be here.

  Harvey Ball was incensed. There was no skeleton girl on his place, “goddam it all. Why’d I want some Indian bones for? They been up here lookin’ around, I don’t like it. I’ll sue, that’s what I’ll do. A man can’t work his farm without people coming around, accusing him of stealing a pile of bones.”

  “It was Tilden who took them. Donna has proof. She came up here to make him give back the skeleton. But she didn’t come home. She didn’t come home, Harvey!” The tears welled up in her eyes.

  “She’s at the college,” he said, looking uncomfortable with all this emotion. “Go look. You’ll find her.”

  “No, she’s not at the college. She came to see Tilden, I told you. I didn’t see his car when I drove in. When did you last see him?” She heard her voice go shrill with her impatience.

  He licked his lips. She saw how purplish his tongue looked, how red and blotched his face was from the sun. Finally he said, “Yesterday afternoon. He didn’t help with chores. He’s probably at the library. Tell you what. You go there, see for yourself. They’re both there, exams coming up. He knows he’s got to pass.”

  Maybe. Maybe, she thought, though she couldn’t believe it. Donna studying quietly in the library, skipping her chores, not letting her mother know where she was?

  “He’s gone off somewhere, Harvey, she’s with him. He doesn’t want her to tell. But we already know, you see. Emily Willmarth was with her when she found the copper beads. He’ll have to come back and face the truth.”

  She heard the siren, Olen was coming on in st
yle. Harvey’s face went pinker still. When Olen burst in with a colleague and a warrant to search the house, Harvey had to let him do it. He stood aside, arms dropped at his sides, Ralphie beside him, grasping his hand, humming to himself. Russell burst in with Brownie, flushed, wanting to know, “What in hell’s going on here?” Harvey looked like a man swept away by a nor’easter.

  After a half hour’s search they found the skeleton under Tilden’s bed, wrapped in a blanket—Gwen was surprised to see again how tiny a bundle it was: a small round skull, neck and breastbone well preserved where the beads had lain—the copper salts had acted as a preservative. She’d been somewhere between three and seven years old, a tiny princess indeed. Russell scooped her up; he was weeping. He rocked the bundle tenderly in his arms, as if it were a living child.

  Gwen remembered how he’d been at Donna’s birth, how loving, how thrilled. Brownie had been a different story, he was a boy child. Russell hardly touched him until he was on his feet and running. Gwen saw Brownie watching his father cry; he was openmouthed, it was as though he were seeing him for the first time. He wouldn’t remember how his father was when he was a child.

  This was the time to go, Gwen thought. While they had the bones, before Russell demanded restitution. Although that would come: Russell wouldn’t let the Balls get away with such a sacrilege. But they couldn’t leave. Not without Donna.

  They were downstairs, Harvey following, muttering to anyone who’d listen about how he hadn’t known, had nothing to do with the theft. It was that son of his—”a disgrace,” he owned, “a goddam disgrace. I’ll see he gets his when he comes back. I’ll deal with him,” he assured Olen Ashley, who was standing in the outer doorway with his hand on his holster. Sergeant Hammer stood behind him, in the same posture.

  “It’s not for you to do that,” Olen said. “This is a matter for the police. You have to go through proper channels. You can’t take matters in your own hands, Ball.”