Thirty-six
“What have you girls been up to?” Grams asked from her position at the kitchen sink where she washed finger-ling potatoes I’d dug up from my garden.
“Nothing much,” Holly said. “Just working hard.”
“Or hardly working,” Mom chimed in.
I’d had a nice big glass of wine to prepare myself for the ordeal. I could have used an entire bottle.
“How about a beverage?” Grams asked, wiping her hands on a towel. By beverage she meant, in her genteel manner, an alcoholic beverage.
“No thanks,” Holly said.
“That’s my girl,” Mom said. “Booze ages a woman.”
“I’ll help myself,” I said, pouring a generous glass of wine.
“See,” Mom pointed out, casting me a look of disappointment.
That firstborn daughter thing was really getting to me. She wanted to control me or break me, or whatever mean people do. I planned on resisting until the bitter end. How could Grams stand to live with her?
The inquisition began immediately and continued through the meal prep as Grams fixed the potatoes, Holly and I whipped up an enormous garden salad, and Mom fried chicken. Here’s the gist of the conversation, all pointed directly at me:
? That Carrie Ann, how anybody would trust her with a cash register full of money was beyond my mother.
? Speaking of the store, were we focusing on safety in numbers and doing as she told us to do or did she have to get more involved in the daily running of the store to protect us?
? How was the family going to recover from my sordid divorce and now rumors of my brazen affair with a married dead man, which happened to be the talk of the town? That poor woman, Grace. I should find my own man, not one already taken.
? Why was I seeing Hunter when he used to be such a drunk and those kind don’t change their stripes. (That comment also proved that everybody in town but me knew about Hunter’s former problem with alcohol.)
? Which brought us to that “nice boy,” Dennis Martin, who’d had a crush on me since grade school and was still available and would make a perfect marital partner.
“He’s gay,” I said, drinking faster.
“You aren’t taking any pills, are you?” Grams said. “We don’t want a repeat of last time after the funeral.”
“I was perfectly fine.”
“That man slept over at your house,” Mom said.
“He did not. Hunter escorted me home and left. Your sources are wrong.”
“Now, Helen,” Grams said. “You’re being awful hard on Story. She a successful businesswoman and she’ll get her personal life in order soon. She’s just going through a transition, that’s all. Aren’t you, Sweetie?”
“And that dead woman’s earring,” Mom continued, not hearing anything but her own voice. “How did it get in your office?”
“I’m giving you a pill,” Grams said to Mom. “You’re getting worked up.”
“I’m fine,” Mom said, turning the chicken in the skillet. I wished she’d take the offered medication.
Why I’d arrived early to take all this abuse, before the dinner was on the table, was a mystery. It seemed an eternity but finally the meal was ready, and we took our positions, each of us having established a permanent seating arrangement as family members seem to do.
We squared off at Grams’s table, Mom sitting directly across from me.
“Is it true?” Mom asked after Grams got a nice picture of her “three favorite people.”
“Can’t we have pleasant talk while we eat?” Grams asked, taking her seat.
“Is what true?” I said, wondering which one of the many accusations she’d hurtled at me she was referring to.
“Is it true that Manny Chapman was visiting you from the river so nobody would see him? I’d like you to tell me what’s going on. Is it true?”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Holly said, finally speaking up and sort of coming to my defense.
I was reaching for a piece of chicken when it dawned on me—an epiphany. I’d been so dense until this very moment.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Yes, that’s absolutely right.”
Unfortunately, I said that out loud when I meant to just think it.
Somebody gasped. Holly, maybe.
I dropped the piece of chicken back into the serving bowl, jumped up from the table, and flew out the door.
“Now look what you did,” Grams said behind me, thinking I’d left because of my mother.
She was only partly right.
I wore my bee veil and gloves when I went in with the smoker. During one of my usual visits to my hives, I would typically just make sure the queen in each was doing well and that the workers were carrying on as usual. But this wasn’t going to be a routine inspection.
Colony Collapse Disorder was an unsolved mystery yet to be unraveled and it was always at the back of a beekeeper’s mind. When this sad event occurred, adult bees simply vanished, abandoning the queen and brood. All the workers, including scouts and nurse bees, disappeared at once, every last one of them, leaving stores of honey and certain death for those remaining behind.
My bees were in fine health, judging by the activity around the two hives. The entrances looked like busy airports. I stepped gingerly around the nails spiking up through the board, having learned my lesson last time. I’d also traded my flip flops for a sturdy pair of work boots.
After settling the honeybees in the first hive with a few puffs of smoke to keep them docile, I lifted off the cover and removed each of the honeycombs hanging inside the hive box. Slowly, cautiously, with a little more smoke here and there, I slid out each of the frames and inspected under and around before replacing them. Then I did the same thing with the next hive, careful not to harm any of my bees in the process.
Everything was as it should be.
I stood back and pondered. Manny, even as afraid of water as he’d been, had taken a canoe down the river by himself and paddled over to my house. He must have had a very good reason. The only explanation I could think of that “held water,” so to speak, was that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going. Or why.
I stared at the hive boxes. At home in my backyard, I kept the hives on concrete block bases so that they were raised off the ground, the theory being that the bees would be happier the farther their hives’ entrances were from the dampness of earth. On the night I’d moved the hives, I hadn’t bothered to also transport the heavy blocks. I’d had my hands full as it was.
Now that I studied the hives, I could see that one of them was at a slight angle. I’d assumed that was because I’d placed them on the edge of the cornfield where the ground hadn’t been tilled flat.
Crouching down, I rather awkwardly raised one side of the tilting beehive about two inches. It was too heavy to hold with one hand and still check underneath with the other. If I’d been paying better attention to my bees, I would have noticed that they were getting excited. Usually they were the gentlest honeybees you could know, but like all bees, they were protective of their queen and territory and really tuned in to threatening behavior from outsiders.
Outsiders, like me.
Instead of tuning in to them (using my “mental awareness” as Manny had reminded me to over and over), I rummaged around on the side of the field until I found a fallen tree branch thick enough to use as a lever. I worked it in under the hive. That freed my hands, but the gloves were getting in the way.
I took my gloves off, and was promptly stung on a knuckle.
Ouch! That really hurt.
Quickly, I scraped the stinger away, crouched down next to the hive again, reached under, and began feeling around. I should have blown more smoke at the hive, because now the bees were getting rowdy. Bee colonies have quite a list of enemies—wasps, ants, mice, skunks, bears, and raccoons, to name a few—and I understand why they need to have their own special swat team. But you’d think by now the bees would know me well enough to give me a break.
That wasn’t going to happen.
The next stinging attack came in the space between my right boot and my jeans. Then another, near that one. From the honeybees’ point of view, they and their queen were under full attack. And I was a rookie beekeeper who hadn’t been smart enough to anchor my jeans with elastic and was too excited to wear a bee suit. At least I’d had the sense to wear the veil so my face and neck were protected.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself to ignore the pain, not an easy thing to do.
Why was I putting myself through this torture and agony? Because Manny had been in my backyard, not in my house. He knew and loved bees, and he’d been up to something. I had to know what it was. It had to do with the bees, I was sure of it.
Another bee dove in, stinging my other hand. My throbbing fingers finally felt something other than pain: An object pressed against the hive that didn’t belong there, anchored to the bottom of the hive with tape. I felt along, peeling it away by touch while the sound of pissed-off bees grew louder and louder.
By the time I scooted away from the hive, I had lost count of the number of stings I’d endured, mostly on my hands and ankles.
And they really, really hurt.
Bee-sting therapy, also called bee-venom therapy, is supposed to relieve the symptoms of MS and arthritis, among other ailments. The treatment involves allowing bees to sting the area in question as many as ten or twenty times. The venom is supposed to jumpstart the immune system. All it did for me was jumpstart my pain sensors. By the time I drove home and stumbled through my back door, my ankles had swollen beyond belief.
But I had Manny Chapman’s missing journal clutched in my puffy fist.