Twenty-five
When I was in high school, I wasn’t the nicest person on the planet. Looking back, I realize that now and I’m not proud of everything I did. I was popular enough to be nominated for prom queen, but I didn’t have enough real compassion for those less fortunate on the popularity scale. And I suppose I deserved to suffer for past actions, for every time I hurt someone else. What goes around, comes around, as the saying goes. And I should feel some of the same pain I’d dished out.
But why on earth would Patti Dwyre have said such a thing? Had she found out that I referred to her as Pity-Party Patti? Was this retaliation? I certainly wasn’t the only one who called her that. She’d earned it all on her own. I couldn’t even remember who’d started it.
Had it been me?
What if my mother and Grams had heard about this so-called affair? While I had given up on a meaningful relationship with my mother, deep down I didn’t want her to think worse of me than she already did.
So I asked Holly if she knew about the latest gossip while we freshened up the vegetable bins. “There’s a rumor flying around,” I said, restacking vine-ripened tomatoes so they looked their very plumpest, “that I had an, ah, er . . . intimate relationship with Manny Chapman.”
“I heard that,” Holly said, not looking up from the garlic bulbs.
“From P. P. Patti?”
“From Mom. That’s one of the reasons she wanted me to stick around here. Grams agreed.”
“Oh, gawd. Mom knows?”
“Yup.”
“So you’re here to comfort me in my grief at the loss of my lover?”
Holly started cleaning up husks and silk lying around the corn bin from customers shucking their own corncobs. Something about peeling the husks away and exposing all those juicy yellow kernels appealed to our shoppers. Corn on the cob was one of our top sellers this time of year.
“Mom wants me to protect you from yourself, and Grams wants me to protect you from Grace.”
“Grace wouldn’t even have a right to be mad. She was sneaking around with Clay.”
I told my sister about confronting Clay and how weakly he’d defended himself and Grace against my claim.
Holly shook her head. “Is it something in Moraine’s drinking water that’s making everybody so horny?”
“This is turning into a soap opera. You have to believe me. I was not having an affair with Manny,” I said.
“Right,” said my sister.
If your own family doesn’t believe you, who will?
“Grace, open up,” I called, peering through the screen door. I could see a pot boiling on the stove, steam rising from it. “I know you’re in there.”
I tried the door. It was unlocked. I opened it and called again. “I’m coming in.”
“Stay right where you are on the porch,” Grace said from someplace in the back. “I’ll be right there.”
Grace left me outside for a while before she appeared. She looked tired. It was only the first day after Manny’s funeral. Life in Moraine had become complicated for both of us.
“I need to talk to you, Grace. About several things.”
She didn’t invite me in, just leaned against the porch and folded her arms. I started with the easy stuff first, since I’m a confrontational wimp.
“I tried to look up Gerald Smith so I could talk to him about the bees. He isn’t a member of the beekeepers association and I can’t find him in the phone book. Do you have his number?”
“No,” Grace said, her lips in a thin line.
“Do you have any kind of contact information at all?”
“No.”
“Did you see him when he picked up the bees? What does he look like? Did you see his truck?”
“No. Don’t know. No.”
Jeez. She was making this hard for me.
“Come on, Grace. You must know something.”
“The bees are gone. That’s all I care about.”
“So this guy came after dark, loaded them up, and drove off? And you didn’t see a thing?”
“That’s right. Are we done?”
“Does Stanley have them?”
“Stanley Peck? Why would you think that?”
I sighed, disappointed. This was going worse than I expected.
“I heard about the robbery. Did they catch whoever did it?”
“No. The camera was old anyway. And they didn’t get much money.”
I wanted to ask her about the dead yellow jackets in the honey house and the pieces of nest and the bee blower out of place like someone had borrowed it and didn’t put it away properly, but even if she’d known anything about those things, she obviously wasn’t in a chatty mood.
“Will you consider selling the honey house to me?” I asked instead. “I’d like to keep raising bees, keep the honey business going.”
“No,” she said, and all hope of salvaging some of what was left of Manny and my honey-producing business faded.
Maybe I should have started with the hard stuff first. By now my palms were sweating. “The things they are saying about Manny and me? They aren’t true. We were friends and that was the extent of it. I’m sorry you had to hear such awful lies.”
I couldn’t help thinking that Grace owed me something, too. An apology back would be nice, since she’d been with Clay and that fact was real, not just made-up gossip like the story about me. My ex had even confirmed it in his pathetic way.
“I didn’t hear any lies,” she said.
We did one of those stare-downs that I usually reserve for the police chief.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I said.
“No. I don’t.”
“I said what I came to say.” I backed off the porch, forgetting about my sore feet until I felt the pain, but didn’t take my eyes off of her because the hairs on the back of my arms were standing up and I was getting a weird impulse to get the hell out of there. I’ve always been slow to think the worst of people, mainly because I want to believe that people are basically good. But recent events should have turned on my caution lights.
If Grace had killer instincts, what would stop her from attacking me? I had arrived without a protection plan in mind. “My sister knows I came out to talk to you,” I stammered. “Carrie Ann knows, too. That I’m here. I better get back to The Wild Clover.”
Grace didn’t move. She watched me walk back to my truck, scoot in, and leave for what I assumed would be the last time.
On the way back, I was more convinced than ever that Grace had killed Manny. She had the means and opportunity—she could’ve turned on the bee blower, released the yellow jackets she had trapped in their nest, then run to the house and locked the door, leaving Manny to die an agonizing, venomous death. Why? Because she thought she would spend the rest of her life with that snake Clay, that’s why. And when she saw him with Faye she went buzz-erk with rage and killed the girlfriend. Getting rid of me, the ex-wife, and thus a potential threat to her future would have been easy if her plan to frame me had worked out. Unfortunately for her, things went wrong, and Johnny Jay had arrested Clay instead.
How did she feel now?
And all along I thought Grace was a meek and mild woman with a simple case of low self-esteem.
I’d underestimated her.