Five
Clouds rolled in overnight. The early-morning air smelled of gathering rain when I sat down at my backyard patio table with a hot cup of coffee—and fresh pain over Manny.
I’d been too tired and distraught last night to gloat over how the old family house was finally totally mine. Of course, I’d lived in it most of my life, first as a child, then with Clay, but the deed had never been in only my name.
Now it was mine.
My house.
It belonged to me. I loved the sound of that.
The lot was narrow, but what it didn’t have in width, it made up for in depth, going all the way back to the Oconomowoc River. I’d repainted the house from faded gray to sunshine yellow, given the wraparound front porch a splash of the same color, and added bright white trim. I added three colorful Adirondacks to the porch, the same kind as at the store. The beehives were in the backyard, closer to the river than to the house, placed strategically in a protected spot near my vegetable garden.
On the other side of my garden, an old coop still stood where we had raised chickens when I was growing up. I’d been seriously considering getting back into raising a few chickens of my own for the benefit of fresh, organic eggs.
The weeping willows, which hung over the riverbed, had inspired the town founders to name the short street in front of my home Willow Street. Nature enthusiasts could turn off Main Street, drive past my house and Clay’s, and launch their canoes and kayaks from the end of the street.
Besides my ex to the west, cedars flanked the east side of my property, giving me some relief from Pity-Party Patti’s gossip antennas, although her two-story home rose above my privacy hedge, and if she really wanted to spy, she could. Not that there was anything worth watching at my house.
Being sandwiched between my ex-husband and the town gossip wasn’t the best of situations, but I wouldn’t give up my place for anything in the world because in spite of my undesirable neighbors, I owned a tiny slice of paradise.
The river formed the northern boundary, and a hedge of vibernum along the front walkway gave the front porch a little privacy. I’d planted flowers and herbs everywhere. All the bee’s favorites, especially:
? Purple coneflowers—these lavender beauties are a member of the sunflower family, which bees love
? Phlox—the tall garden variety, mine are white and pink
? Yarrow—its leaves can be eaten like spinach, although I haven’t tried it
? Butterfly weed—an orange species of milkweed, which all nectar-loving creatures are attracted to
? Lavender—for potpourris and dried bouquets
? Coreopsis—a cheerful yellow flower that blooms all summer, which is what I like about it
When my busy worker bees weren’t helping themselves to my varieties, they were across the street, gathering pollen to mix with mine from Moraine Gardens, a perennial nursery that specialized in native Wisconsin plants.
I decided to take my kayak out on the river, since it was Saturday and the twins didn’t expect me in at the store until sometime in the afternoon. Kayaking was like meditation to me. The river and nature, the sounds and smells, calmed me like nothing else could. And after what had happened to Manny, I needed peace and quiet.
Except my kayak wasn’t on the grassy spot beside the river where I always kept it. This wasn’t the first time someone had “borrowed” it.
Clay answered his door after I banged on it several times. His physical presence in the doorway provided his alibi, proving him innocent of this particular watercraft theft. Damn. I’d really hoped the thieves weren’t those kids again.
Clay wore silk pajamas and had bed creases in his face. A diamond stud glistened from his left ear, something new since the divorce hearing two days ago. His dishwater blond hair had sleep spikes in it.
“Have you seen my kayak?” I said, refusing to lower my gaze to his bare feet, which beckoned from my peripheral view. His gorgeous feet had caused me to overlook his fatal flaws in the past. “It’s missing again.”
“Too bad, but I haven’t seen it. You can search my body if you want, honey.” He opened the door wider, spread his arms, and grinned wolfishly.
“Don’t call me honey,” I said. “And where’s Faye? Did she take it?” I didn’t bother masking the disgust in my voice.
“She isn’t . . . uh . . . available,” Clay said. “And she didn’t take your kayak. Faye, uh . . . is . . .” His eyes shifted toward the bedroom. “Uh . . . indisposed.”
“Never mind,” I said, turning and stalking away back toward my house.
I showered, dressed in shorts and a halter top, slipped on purple flip-flops from my vast flip-flop collection, breakfasted on toast spread with peanut butter and honey, and drove out to Grace’s in my pickup truck. I had purchased the used truck right after Clay and I moved into town. It was over a decade old, a rusty blue with a few dings and more than one hundred thousand miles. But she never let me down.
Grace’s sister-in-law, Betty, answered the door, talking to me through the screen. I noticed again how enormous she looked and wondered if she was having twins.
“Grace is at the funeral home with her brother,” she said, without a trace of friendliness. “Making arrangements. She won’t be back until later.”
“When’s the funeral?” I asked, unintentionally matching her tone.
“Tuesday,” Betty said.
“What about the autopsy?”
“There isn’t going to be one.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe my ears. I was counting on an autopsy to clear the bees’ good name. “How is that possible? Doesn’t Grace want to know why Manny died?”
“She already knows. The bees killed him. Cut and dry.” Over her enormous stomach, Betty chopped one hand into the other for effect. “Besides, the medical examiner didn’t order one, and Grace didn’t want it. She just wants a traditional burial without a lot of fuss. The M.E. said it wasn’t a suspicious death, so he approved her request.”
“I think it’s pretty suspicious.” That comment came right out of my big mouth without any thought at all. What I meant to say was that I thought yellow jackets were the bad guys, but apparently Betty took my comment the wrong way.
“Don’t go stirring up things,” she said. “This family doesn’t need any more trouble from the likes of you.”
“There’s no need to get nasty.” Jeez, Betty was a mean mom-to-be!
Betty clamped her lips into a thin line. We glared at each other through the screen door.
I gave in first, since I was dealing with a grieving family member. “I guess it’s Grace’s call. If you don’t mind, I’ll check on the bees and get a few cases of honey from the honey house.”
Betty didn’t look pleased. She sighed a big sigh, whether from frustration or her enormous pregnant body, I wasn’t sure. “Help yourself to the honey, but say good-bye to the bees. Somebody from the bee association is coming tonight to get them.”
“What?” I said, stunned by this news. “Why wouldn’t Grace have talked to me first? Who’s taking them?”
Betty shrugged. “Darn if I know. But good riddance.”
“Listen, when is Grace coming back? Precisely.” I tried to hide my outrage, but it was dripping from my mouth like rabies foam. First, no autopsy; now the bees were being taken away? This was too much to bear. It would mean the end of Queen Bee Honey.
“I said she will be back later. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.” Betty’s eyes narrowed. If I was getting mad, so was she.
I faked a smile. “Sorry, everybody’s on edge after what happened.”
“Not me,” Betty said.
She watched from the doorway while I went into the beeyard. Honeybees flew in and out of the hive openings like aircrafts arriving and departing from a finely tuned airport. Guard bees made sure the incoming flights belonged there, ready to turn away any intruders if they smelled different from the hive’s members. Beehives might all look the same to us, but the bees knew the difference.
Honeybees circled my head, curious and harmless.
I closed my eyes and pretended that everything was as it had been before Manny died. I listened to the buzzing, smelling the freshness of the day and its accompanying promise of rain. When I opened my eyes, my loss felt even more pronounced.
Knowing this could be my last time ever in Manny’s beeyard hit me like a ton of bricks. After dark, when the bees were all inside their hives for the night, someone was going to take them away. Manny wouldn’t have wanted just anybody to take the bees. He would have wanted me to have them.
He’d rarely attended bee association meetings because the meetings were mostly social gatherings, beekeepers talking shop, and that wasn’t Manny’s way. Although he knew most of the members, he wasn’t overly friendly with any of them, though if they needed advice, he was right there for them.
I had to talk to Grace before it was too late. What was she thinking to let an outsider have Manny’s bees? Would she even give me a chance to buy some of the equipment, or was that going, too? I felt so helpless.
I approached the honey house. The weathered, graying wood gave it a rustic look, but if it had been mine, I’d have painted it bright yellow with white trim. Yellow was absolutely my favorite color. I slipped a key into the padlock, letting myself in. The smell of honey was strong. I looked around the room at the extracting equipment, then at a stack of frames in the corner. I saw familiar rows of empty honey jars and lids on a tabletop and cases of filled jars everywhere.
Manny and I had packaged some of the honey right from the hives to sell as comb honey, delicious when spread on bread. The rest went into a special machine that spun around and extracted the honey from the combs for bottling. In bee lingo the process is called spinning honey.
After loading two cases of bottled honey into my truck, I selected several honeybee reference books to take with me, ones that I’d purchased myself. Then I decided at the last minute to also take our bee journal.
Well, okay, it wasn’t exactly “our” journal. It had really belonged to Manny, but some of the entries were mine, so I felt a certain ownership. Manny had kept detailed information on his progress against mites and diseases that might come in handy with my two remaining hives. He had also been a great experimenter, testing ways to increase production of different components like royal jelly and propolis.
Honey production wasn’t the only source of income for a beekeeper. Royal jelly was the stuff nurse bees fed to larvae to produce queens. Besides its anti-aging benefits, which made it a favorite ingredient in skin creams, royal jelly had anti-cancer properties, a hot commodity, health-wise. Then there was the propolis, a special glue bees made from trees to seal their homes from extreme temperatures. Scientists, including backyard scientists like Manny, were finding out that it had powerful antibiotic components, and serious beekeepers were keeping track of their results, studying the market.
And he was scientific about his research into colony collapse disorder, something that was threatening honeybees all across the country. Whatever he had been doing seemed to be working, because he had strong hives. Some beekeepers were reporting unexplained hive losses, entire hives dying at the same time. Not Manny.
I planned to read through the journal, make copies of some of the pages, then return it to Grace, if she cared enough to want it back.
Except the journal wasn’t on the table or in the drawer where Manny usually kept it. And it didn’t show up in my search.
Giving up, I locked the honey house, took one last long look at it and at the activity in the beeyard, and drove away. As I left, my thoughts turned criminal. What if I came back after dark but before the association folks came, and loaded as many hives into my truck as possible? Then Grace would think the association had taken them, right? By the time she found out, I’d have them safely hidden away. Besides, what would she care? They would be gone and, as Betty said, good riddance. Right? After that, I’d buy the entire honey house from her, equipment and all, and have the house moved as one big piece on a gigantic truck, the kind you see with the “Wide Load” flags on the side.
There was room for a honey house in my large backyard, I thought. I’d just have to do some measuring.
Me and my pipe dreams.
But it’s all about having a positive attitude.