Stolen Honey

by Nancy Means Wright

  “Oh, Donna!” she cried aloud, grateful to her daughter for her foresight. Though she should have realized: Donna was always reminding her mother to copy her documents twice; Donna kept a second CAPTIVE copy in her room.

  “Donna home?” It was Mert, emerging from the basket room. He was wearing an orange DAIVNLAND T-shirt that Russell had given him. The name Abenaki meant “People of the Dawn-land” or, simply, “Easterners,” referring to their proximity to the rising sun. Each new day, Mert would say, the sun cast its first rays on the land of the Abenaki before continuing its journey west. It was Alert’s habit to take a dawn walk just to see the sun rise.

  “I got some nice new sweetgrass. Found it down the mountain a ways when I was walking this morning. I thought I’d show Donna. She might try a basket now, you see. Since she found them copper beads. Wrote that paper.”

  “She might,” Gwen agreed, smiling at Mert’s old theme song. “But no, that was just me saying her name aloud. It was something Donna did that was helpful. But you can ask her when she gets home.”

  “I’ll get it started, then. That’s the hard part, getting started. Then she can take over. Sweetgrass is nice for a young woman.” Mert shakingly poured himself a glass of grape juice, nodded at Gwen, and padded back into his room.

  Now it was Leroy at the door, ready to go to Cabot. He was wearing a new blue shirt and boots—Camille’s “estate” wasn’t settled yet, but he was borrowing against it on his charge card. He wanted to stop by at a friend’s house in Cabot. But first she wanted to get the disk copy to Ruth. She wanted it out of the house.

  “We’ll check the Laframboise hives first, then stop at the Willmarths’,” she told Leroy.

  “Out of the way, i’n’ it?” said Leroy, slouching in the doorway, hands on his lean hips. He wore his jeans low: A north wind could blow them down. The thought amused her. “If you’re going to Cabot?” he added. Leroy had been haunting the kitchen since Donna’s return. And still the girl wouldn’t glance in his direction.

  “A little. But there’s a shortcut to 116 from the Willmarths’. I’ve something I have to leave there. Anyway, it won’t hurt to take another look at those hives, see how the new queens are doing.”

  Leroy looked nettled; he pursed his lips. “Can we get going, then?”

  She didn’t care for the cross way he’d spoken. “We can,” she told him, “when I’m good and ready.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ruth had read halfway through the file Emily had printed out for her and still hadn’t found any real clues to a killer. She wanted to finish reading the printout before milking. There was some vague sense of time being important, as though something might explode if she didn’t get those names, and soon. “Superstitious ass,” she chided herself, and reached for a doughnut.

  It was a fascinating paper, really, a significant one—such a tragedy that Camille hadn’t lived to complete it. Those poems of Annette’s! Camille had only printed four as far as she’d read, but they were powerful, passionate.

  “There are bars everywhere

  on windows walls doors

  they hold in my bones

  they crush my heart.”

  The lines made her feel as though someone had punched her in the stomach. She wished now she’d begged a copy of Annette’s poems from Pauline. If she had to go back there, she’d do just that—despite Pauline’s warning that the poems were not for strangers’ eyes.

  The phone rang in the middle of her reading about Annette’s bartering her reproductive eggs for freedom. She reached for the receiver, still reading. “What did I have to lose,” Annette had written at the age of, what—forty-three? “I’d had enough of men and their hungry penises. But I didn’t like what they did to Nicole. That wasn’t right. She was a good girl. She was 26, that bastard husband hardly there but she had the boy. And they did it to him. A four year old kid. A smart kid—beat me at dominoes when he was 3. How’d they justify that?”

  Camille had added in parentheses: “(The boy taken from Nicole & put in foster home—must find out where, what’s happened to him since. I’ll look up Lafreniere. According to Annette, the boy’s abusive father ‘too proud’ to be associated with a Godineaux. Too irresponsible, she means. She obviously loathes the fellow.)”

  “Ruthie,” Colm was shouting into the receiver. “Will you talk to me? I know you’re there, I can hear you breathing.”

  “Lafreniere,” she said, feeling the excitement down to her toes. “Do you know any Lafrenieres in Vermont? Though he might have left the state, we have to realize that.”

  “Ruthie, I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about. Will you come back to earth? Anyway, you’re talking with your mouth full. Better watch those doughnuts, you’ll get fat. Well, look, I’m calling because I’ve read the document. I mean, Olen made a printout—seems he’d promised Gwen. But Ruthie, Tilden Ball’s our man—I really think so now. He’s got motive, he’s got means. We’ve got proof he was in her apartment. Not on the key—we still have to determine whose prints those are—but on the gum wrapper and on the window, where he must have raised it, climbed in. Not too bright, huh?”

  “The document is what I’m talking about. Emily printed it out for me—Donna made a copy, but please, don’t tell Olen that. And right near the end—I just came to it—is the name Lafreniere. Someone Camille was looking for. Someone who might have a motive to kill.”

  “Near the end where?” His voice sounded ingratiating, the tone you’d take with a stubborn child. She was piqued.

  “It’s the next-to-last page, Colm. And on the last page Camille made a list of people she wants to look up. Annette’s on it. And Andre—he’s Annette’s son. Oh—here it is again. Noel Lafreniere, Nicole’s husband. The name we’ve been looking for!”

  “That name’s not on my printout. Mine ends with Annette’s getting her tubes tied, or however they did it.”

  “What? There’s nothing about the sterilization of the little boy—? A four-year-old, Colm, and they neutered him! How could a four-year-old give permission for that?”

  “Maybe something wrong with the printer here,” Colm excused. “It’s always fouling up. Anyway, I never got that last page you got.”

  “Or”—she felt chilled—”Olen didn’t want you to see it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want me to see it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe—maybe because he wanted to be the one to track down this Lafreniere—if he’s the killer. Olen could be running for some police office, who knows? Then he’d be the big cheese. Get all the credit.”

  Now Colm was laughing. She wanted to hit him. “If you won’t be serious, I’m going to hang up,” she said.

  “Okay. Well, you may be right on that,” he allowed. “Olen’s been acting nuts lately. Brought in four more speeding tickets last night. The guys think he wants the top job here. Roy’s talking retirement, you know.”

  “Roy Fallon’s always talking retirement.”

  “This time I think he means it. He’s been taking more time off. Giving Ashley jurisdiction over us. Olen’s a good cop, but he’s too gung ho for me. I don’t want to kill myself chasing some speeder just so I can bring back a couple more bucks for the till.”

  “Okay, then,” she said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, then, you’d better hustle. Get to this Lafreniere—the son, I mean, not the old father—before Olen gets there. So you can get the credit, my dear.”

  “Do you really mean that?” he said. His voice sounded tender.

  “Mean what?”

  “Calling me ‘dear’?”

  “Did I? A Freudian slip, then.” She laughed.

  “Anyway,” he said, laughing himself, “you should be on the force, not me. And Ruthie ...” He cleared his throat, ready to make a pronouncement. “Like I told you, I’m convinced Tilden Ball’s our man. Those prints put him in the right place at the right time.”

  “What does that prove?” She was f
eeling perverse. “He might have just dropped that gum when he went in for a conference. Opened the window for her.”

  “That’s what he claims, sure; says he picked up the gum wrapper, then dropped it again. Likely story! But the woman who lives in the other part of the house says she saw him going in there when Camille was out. Through a window, she says—she’s sure he’s the one she saw. It’s all adding up, Ruthie. He was failing the course, for chrissake. Not exactly motivation for most students, but for a sick kid like Ball? ‘I did it all for Dad,’ he keeps saying. ‘Dad wanted ’em off their land.’ Jeez!”

  “Sad,” she said.

  “ ‘Sad’ isn’t the word for it. Look, Ruthie, you can go after this Lafreniere, but don’t count on me. I don’t have time for it.”

  “All right, then, if you’re so sure you have the right killer, I’ll find Lafreniere myself.”

  “Ruthie, honey, can we slow down a minute? This is your lover you’re talking to. Things aren’t the same between us now, they never will be again.”

  “They won’t?”

  “Sweetheart,” he said, and breathed heavily into the phone. She had to smile at his sentimentality. She had to be practical, didn’t she? She had thirty-plus cows to milk. Young calves to feed. Tim was waiting for her. She’d put an awful load on him lately.

  “Love you,” Colm said finally, and gave a despairing sigh. “I’ll be over at seven, okay? We can have some supper together? I’ll bring something from the deli.”

  “Make it eight. I have to get to the library. They keep all the phone books there.”

  “Phone books?”

  “To look up Lafrenieres. That’s a good place to start, don’t you think?”

  He groaned. “You are determined, aren’t you? Suppose he doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Quit throwing obstacles in the way. I’ll see you at eight.”

  “I can spend the night?”

  “Vic’s here, Colm, you know that. He’s still a kid.”

  “He’ll have to know, then. This is the twenty-first century. He’ll have to accept that Mom has a lover.”

  “He’s not ready yet, Colm. He’s still close to his father. He’s still in school. We’ll talk about it when you come.”

  “Tell him you’re going to Montreal this weekend,” he said. “If there’s a Lafreniere anywhere, you’ll find him in Montreal.” He chuckled and hung up.

  He might be right, she thought—that she should look in Canada. But if so, she’d go alone. She certainly wasn’t going to beg Colm’s help.

  There was more bad news in the barn when she walked in. Hester Prynn, Zelda’s offspring, who’d produced her first calf, was down with ketosis. Ruth knew the symptoms, it had been coming on slowly; she’d been too busy with everything else to prevent it. A drop in milk, body weight loss, poor appetite— signs of nervousness. A nervous cow! She could relate to that.

  “Should we call the vet?” she asked Tim, who was finishing up the milking. Then he’d get ready, he said, to plow the south meadow. The earth wasn’t quite dry enough yet for planting— the second week of May was the usual time.

  “Naw, we can deal with it. She only calved two weeks ago, right? And she’s a fat one. Eats like a hog. You ever watched her?” He attached the tubes onto an udder after Ruth disinfected the teats.

  “Not really. I’ve had my eye on Elizabeth. Ever since she got stabbed that time, she’s been skittery, off her feed.”

  Tim pushed his feed cap onto the back of his head. It said STONE BROKE FARM—he’d had it made up for a joke, after she facetiously mentioned the name. “Yep. We’ll have to watch her. Anyway, see that Hester gets more niacin.” He paused while the last four cows were milking. When he lowered his head, she saw how gray he was getting. You didn’t notice people getting old when you saw them every day. A small gesture like a hat tipped back on the head could suddenly add years to a person’s age.

  “Dug up any more lately about Joey’s relatives?” he asked casually. She knew he wanted the adoption to go through without some long-lost relative coming back to protest. The boy was almost of age, but Tim had his heart set on this adoption.

  She told him about Pauline and Annette. “Joey’s mother and great-grandmother,” she said. “But you needn’t worry. Annette’s a centenarian, Pauline isn’t interested in motherhood. Though you’ll want to meet her, maybe. You and I might take a drive back there—between milkings, of course. But look, Tim, do you know any Lafrenieres? One Noel Lafreniere—an abusive fellow, I’m afraid—is apparently Joey’s grandfather.” When Tim whistled: “Now, you needn’t worry about him—he disappeared long ago. But we’d like to find him. Or one of his heirs anyway, his son. Someone who might, just might be involved with Camille Wimmet’s death. I mean, we’ve only a hint as to why he would, but you know me, I work on instincts.”

  “Jesus. You think so? Poor Joey. The kid had ten strikes on him when he was born. His aunt a thief, his great-grandmother—”

  “A poet. An amazing woman. Joey should be proud. His grandmother was a good woman, too. She worked her butt off at Papideau’s farm. And who knows? Young Lafreniere might be a minister—or a politician.” For some reason she thought of the famous scarlet A. Emily had read Hawthorne’s novel last year in a high school English class—she’d named Zelda’s calf Hester. It was a Puritan minister who’d gotten Hester Prynn pregnant and wouldn’t—couldn’t—tell. Emily was angry with him at the time; she always took the side of the female protagonist: Hester, Jane Eyre, Ophelia—who was “psychologically abused,” she claimed, by Hamlet.

  “Hey, Joey, you ever know a guy named Lafreniere? Back in your murky past?”

  Joey was stomping into the barn with a chicken in his arms. “It almost got run over, Tim, see? Got a hurt foot.”

  “Just leave him. It’ll get better on its own, I expect.”

  Ruth wanted no more chickens in the barn, but she couldn’t run off a fowl with a hurt foot. Joey stroked the fluttering chicken. If there was any violence in the family, it hadn’t come through to Joey. Ruth patted his arm. “You’re a good guy,” she said, and Joey giggled.

  “So’s him,” he said, pointing at Tim.

  “You’re givin’ me a swelled head,” said Tim. “Don’t know any Lafrenieres, but I know a family named Bruneau. Tom Bruneau. He bowls with me. And he’s complainin’ ’cause his son just changed his name to Brown. It’s ’cause he’s marryin’ this Protestant girl and he’s Catholic and her family’s not crazy ’bout that. And so the kid wants to change his name. His family’s all choked up about it.”

  “Ridiculous, the bigots. Well, look, Tim. You can finish up here as soon as I’m done graining the heifers, can’t you?” She fired the rations from a five-pound scoop. “I want to check the phone books, see how many Lafrenieres I can find. Do you think I’m nuts doing all this?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” he said, jumping back where the last cow, Oprah, was galloping out the door into a field muddy from last night’s rain. “Shit,” he said, looking at his pants, and Joey laughed.

  “Shit, shit, shit! Good stuff,” Joey crooned, and ran out after the cows to see that they went where he wanted them to go.

  * * * *

  “An A, Mother, she gave me an A!” Donna was dancing in and out of the kitchen, hugging her sociology paper to her chest. She was feeling good today for the first time since the trauma in the forest. Tilden Ball was in jail—though there was talk of bail. But he wouldn’t try anything now, she was sure of that. Why, he was under suspicion of strangling Ms. Wimmet! Had he really done that? Nights, in bed, she was certain of it—she remembered that little finger he could “kill” with. In the daytime, she wondered about Tilden’s father, who was known to be angry at any teacher who’d fail his son. Not because of the boy, of course, but because it reflected poorly on Harvey himself.

  Her mother was smiling now, too. “Remember, it was your Abenaki forebears who helped with that A. Speaking of which, there may still be relative
s alive from that union. I’m thinking we should look them up.”

  “Sure,” said Donna, who’d agree to anything today. “That’ll be another paper. And I’m definitely planning to major in sociology, no shit.”

  “No what?” said her grandfather, coming into the room. He didn’t approve of girls swearing, although Donna had heard a few hot words coming from him when his basketry wasn’t going right.

  Now he was pulling her by the elbow into his workshop. “I got some nice sweetgrass here. Smell,” he urged, thrusting the grass under her nose, and it did smell nice, he was right. She smiled at him. But today she was too excited to sit down and weave a basket. Things were going right for a change. There’d been no more hate notes or graffiti on her bike, kids were gearing up for exams; the fraternity hoopla had calmed, although the campus was still in a defense mode, with a murder unsolved.

  “Later,” she told her grandfather. “Later, I’ll try it, Grandpop, I promise. Not now.”

  She ran out into the yard. It was a gorgeous afternoon, the daffodils her mother had planted were in full bloom in the garden, an early pink tulip was out. The perfume filled her nose. There were bees in the pussy willows. She wished she could see the mountains, but the trees obscured her view. Well, if she couldn’t see the mountains, she’d ride up into them. She felt fully aware of her surroundings today, like she was entering a new world.

  Hopping on her bike, she pedaled up the road, toward the forest. This time she knew where she was going. If you’d almost drowned, get back in the pond and swim, her pragmatic father would advise.

  En route she passed the Ball farm, saw no one there. She pedaled rapidly past and up to the edge of the forest. Leaning her bike against a white pine, she walked up the trail. The evergreens gave off a pungency that filled her with purpose. Squirrels and rabbits dashed past, birds rustled through the branches. Once she saw a raccoon; its beady eyes took her measure, and it dashed off. A gray fox raced across a scant yard in front of her, and she laughed out loud.

  It was in a place like this, she thought, that her ancestor Isobel had played as a child, a place where no one told her what to do or when. No teachers, no fraternity boys, no officious neighbors. Only freedom, absolute freedom. An intimacy with the beasts of the forest. Isobel had had her choice, and the wilderness was where she’d elected to stay.