Twenty-four
Facts about Wisconsin’s rustic roads:
? They are part of a special state protection project aimed at preserving outstanding rural roads.
? The state has approximately one hundred of them.
? To qualify, they must be lightly traveled back roads with special natural features like rugged terrain or an abundance of native plants and wildlife.
? The town of Moraine’s economic health is due in part to its location near a rustic road that is popular with tourists.
? The speed limit cannot be higher than forty-five miles per hour and many have lower postings.
Like this one, which was thirty-five miles per hour because of the winding, hilly route.
Did I mention winding?
The road curved one way then the other and before long I had a sneaky suspicion I’d lost Stanley. Worse yet, I wasn’t sure how far back he’d slipped my loose noose, since the road had been twisting for the last mile or so. It hadn’t intersected with any other roads, so he’d either pulled off into one of the driveways along the way or he’d sped up and outrun me, which wouldn’t be hard to do. My truck was reliable, but I never said it was fast.
The first scenario, turning into a driveway, was the most likely. Only someone with a death wish would take these hills and curves at high speeds.
I turned around and retraced my route, counting seven driveways in the area where I thought I’d lost him. None of the houses were visible from the road, one of the reasons this qualified as a rustic road. But it was an incredibly annoying designation at the moment.
I tried one of the driveways, following it in. Then I tried another and another until I’d checked out every single driveway Stanley might have ducked down.
He had simply vanished.
Not letting my failure get me down, I rerouted toward Grams’s field to check on my girls and whatever boys hadn’t been kicked out of the hives.
Grams’s car was in her driveway, and I saw Mom getting out of the passenger’s side. I blew by, slouching down, hoping they wouldn’t see me. As though slinking down in my seat would help conceal my truck.
I really, really wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
Pretty sure I’d slipped under Mom’s radar, I bounced along the edge of the cornfield and parked close to the hives. All was in order. The nail bed had worked perfectly to convince the skunk to find a snack alternative, one more healthful to his paws. On routine inspection, my little workers were coming and going as though nothing had happened the night before.
I had washed my skunked clothing and beekeeping equipment in soap, water, and ammonia, but I’d forgotten to bring them along. After all, I’d had other ideas for the day, ideas that hadn’t gone exactly as I’d expected. My original plan had me visiting my bees later in the day.
No big deal, I decided. I’d seen Manny work with his bees numerous times without protective gear of any kind. No veil or hat or gloves. He had gone among his honeybees with gentle bare hands and slow movements. I could handle that, too. Besides, didn’t my bees know me by now?
After pulling a bucket of bee syrup from the bed of my truck, I opened one of the hives and poured some into a feeder. As I said, bees are hungry at this time of year when the flowers are still blooming but pollen is getting scarce. To preserve their stores of honey until they really need them the most, Manny always supplemented their diet with sugar syrup. I intended to follow his lead.
The tricky part when dealing with so many honeybees is making sure they aren’t underneath your fingers.
“Ouch!” I quickly scraped off a stinger embedded in my thumb, closed up the top of the hive, and moved on to the next one, repeating the process over again.
“Ouch, jeez, that one really hurt.” This time the target was my neck.
Did I mention that bee stings emit an odor that riles up the other bees? Once stung, my only recourse was to cover up any exposed body parts. That is, if I had anything to cover up with. Otherwise, they’ll keep it up.
In my semi-panic, I stepped sideways, forgetting about the nails. Flip flops are not the proper foot gear for walking on nails.
By the time I returned to The Wild Clover, my neck was red and throbbing, I had a pronounced limp, and I’d ruined one of my favorite pairs of flip flops.
“What happened to you?” Carrie Ann asked.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Before I could gimp to my storage room office, Holly came into the market.
“Your sister is up to something,” Carrie Ann said to Holly, talking over my head as though I didn’t exist. “She’s been overly nice to me since I arrived this morning, then she informed me of errands but wouldn’t share what they were, and finally she came back a few minutes ago all banged up.”
“I wouldn’t ask any questions if I were you,” Holly replied. “You’re better off not knowing.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Carrie Ann said.
“Story has a problem with physical coordination,” Holly continued.
“Two left feet?” Carrie Ann chuckled. “Now that you mention it, I’ve noticed that, too.”
“Since as far back as I can remember,” Holly added.
“How’s business been?” I asked, diverting them before they could start in on examples of my klutziness. I also was wondering if I should go to the emergency room with my bloody feet. When did I get my last tetanus shot?
“Still slow,” Carrie Ann said. “A few tourists came through town, antiquing in the area. Lori Spandle stopped by and pumped me for information about your bees. I didn’t tell her a thing, not that I actually know anything to tell her. Stu came for his paper. You know, the usual.”
“Holly,” I said, “can you handle the store while I have a word with Carrie Ann?”
“Sure.”
“You’re firing me, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice.” My cousin stuck her fingers in her ears and started making some la-la-la noise with her tongue.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the back, trying to walk gently. I shut the door.
“Am I at least getting severance pay?” Carrie Ann leaned against a shelf, looking defeated. “Unemployment would be good, if a severance package is too much to ask.”
What nerve. The woman, until recently, had been so part-time I wasn’t positive she actually worked for me. Now she wanted a going-away package?
“I’m not firing you,” I said.
“You aren’t?”
“Nope.”
“Then why all the drama about talking to me in private? Oh, I get it, you don’t want your sister to hear what we are talking about. Is it about her?”
I plopped into my office chair and gestured for my cousin to take a seat in a metal chair next to me. I wondered how to begin.
The direct route seemed best. “I need the truth from you and nothing but the truth.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. So . . . I’ve been getting weird vibes.”
“You and me both. That’s what comes from talking to the universe.”
“Huh?”
“Every day I talk to the universe. It’s easy. You go outside, face up to the sky, and tell God or the universe or whatever energy source you believe in what you need or want. It really works, but sometimes you get weird vibes. Is that what you mean?”
I had to admit that Carrie Ann was much more interesting sober than she was in a drunken state. Glimmers of the young woman I’d chummed with in high school were starting to peek through from the depths of a hazy sobriety.
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” I said. “I get the feeling that people around here have been talking about me behind my back. It sounds paranoid, but I’m pretty positive I’m right. Especially at the funeral yesterday.” I didn’t break eye contact with her. “Now I’m sure they’re wondering about how Clay and Faye and I fit together, since the divorce happened one day, then right away Faye was killed. Is that it? Are they curious and want to ask me questions but they don’t know how so they come up with their own theories?”
Carrie Ann looked off, but not before her eyes gave her away.
“You do know something.” I shook her arm to get her to look back at me while putting on my best pleading expression. “You have to tell me. We’re bound by blood.”
I don’t know where that came from. It just popped out. However, my Mom-like comment, laying on the guilty family responsibilities thing, worked.
“You won’t like it,” my cousin said. “You’ll wish you hadn’t asked.”
“Try me.”
“Please don’t make me be the one to tell you,” she whined. “I hate this.”
Right when I was considering intimidation tactics and torture techniques, Carrie Ann caved. “It’s about the affair you were having with Manny Chapman,” she said.
My mouth dropped open. Of all the different ideas that had gone through my head, that wasn’t one of them.
“That’s exactly how I must have looked when I first heard the rumor,” Carrie Ann said. “You were a little wild in school . . . okay, a lot wild, but I thought you had settled down. Imagine my surprise to find out something like this. At least you kept your personal business quiet, not like that slinky husband of yours who sat at Stu’s bar with one woman after another bragging about his sex drive. Sorry. That just slipped out. And I don’t blame you one bit for spending intimate time with Manny. I’m the last one to cast stones, let me tell you. I have my own secrets.”
Carrie Ann would have kept up with the nervous chatter if I hadn’t raised my right hand and held it out like a stop sign.
“That,” I said, clearing my throat, “is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“So you’re denying it? Good idea. We can pass that around and maybe it will stop all the talk. Or else it might fuel the fire. What should we do?”
“No wonder Grace and her sister-in-law treated me so cold,” I said to myself, but out loud. “They heard what was going around and believed it.”
“Should we confront the issue head on or hope it dies out? Or we could spread something new to distract them.”
“Who started such a nasty lie?” I wanted to know.
“P. P. Patti,” she said. “But don’t tell her I told. And you better get some ice on your neck. It’s swelling up like a balloon.”