Stolen Honey (18 page)

He dropped into the chair beside her. “Why, they can’t do that,” he said.

“They did, Mert. Somebody did. Somebody who knew where that grave was, who wanted to show their disrespect.”

“Call Russell. Russell will know what to do.”

“I tried, and no one answered.”

“Then call that fella Olen. He’ll know what to do.”

He’d be right over, Olen shouted, sounding outraged. And he was. His fury calmed her own anger as they stared into the empty grave. “How dare they!” he cried. “You didn’t hear anything in the night?”

She shook her head. “Did you, Mert?”

“I took a sleeping pill,” he said. “Some nights I get the wakes. Then I go walking. Then I can’t get up in the morning. Then when I get up I get the shakes.” He glanced at Olen, who’d wanted the marijuana plants pulled up, but Olen was still staring into the empty grave site.

“Leroy,” Olen said, as though he’d just discovered him in the act.

Seeing Olen’s tight lips Gwen said, “Leroy knows how sacred that grave is to us. He wouldn’t harm it.”

Olen scowled. “Maybe not. But he might have heard something. Seen something. It took a powerful lot of digging.” He walked around the site, picked up handfuls of dirt to examine under his nose as though he might find fingerprints.

“Leroy’s not here, it’s his day off,” she said. She thought of Harvey Ball, who coveted her land, but she was afraid Olen would march up there and Harvey would give him an earful about the shiny man. The shiny man, whom Harvey had insisted was Russell. So she kept quiet.

“I’m sorry about this, Gwen. But let me work on it. Don’t tell your husband. He might, well, do something crazy.”

She nodded. Olen was right. Russell called this dead girl his “princess.” He would go crazy if he knew. Olen put a hand on her arm, squeezed. She heard Mert cough and she drew away. She must keep calm. She told Olen about Jack Sweeney, the ethnobotanist. “He’s going to vouch for me in court next week. He agrees with me about those bruises. They
can
be the result of the nightshade. And I’m planning to pull it all up, Olen, honestly I am. Oh, and Olen—did I tell you about Camille’s message? It was just before she was killed.”

He shook his head, looked attentive. He waited.

“She wanted to tell me something about Shep Noble. How he was somehow connected to the project she was working on. I can’t imagine what it was. But maybe you can find out. If so, it would suggest that his death was a murder, not just an accident, wouldn’t it? And here I am trying to prove it an accident? Should I try to postpone the court proceedings?”

Olen stuck a tongue in his cheek; his hands squeezed slowly together. Finally he said, “No, don’t cancel. It might have nothing to do with that death. The boy was in her class, Donna said? Some connection there, maybe. I’ll look into it. You have to go through with the court case, Gwen. To prove your innocence. The state’s attorney called it, right?” He waved his arms at the dug grave. “Now, don’t walk here, Gwen, till I can get somebody else up to look at it. How old you say those bones were?”

“Maybe ten thousand years.”

Mert grinned. “She was an oldie, all right. A good old girl.”

“We’ll get her back,” Olen said, “don’t you worry. They can’t go digging up graves. It’s not right. It’s against the law. I won’t allow it!” He sounded, she thought, as if he were the law personified. His hands were trembling again with his anger.

“Maybe
you
should try a little marijuana. To relax,” she said slyly. “I can fix it up for you.”

Now she’d gone too far. Olen thrust his hands in his pockets and strode off with a curt nod.

* * * *

“They’ve gone too far this time, whoever it is,” Ruth told Colm when he phoned to tell about the latest mischief on the mountain. The idea of digging up a grave horrified her; she knew how the Abenaki people revered their ancestors. For one thing, their buried dead proved their Vermont identity—that they had lived here and not just wandered through. “They deserve recognition by the state,” she cried hotly, “and they’re not getting it. Gwen told me that.”

“Write a letter to the governor,” he said.

“I will!” She took a sip of coffee. It was too hot, it burned the roof of her mouth, making her madder than ever at the state of affairs in Vermont. “And have you seen these signs that are springing up all over the county?
TAKE BACK VERMONT. VERMONT FOR VERMONTERS.
They say it’s mostly because of the civil union legislation. I mean, I could agree with them if it meant ‘Go Back to Small Farms,’ ‘Go Back to Independent Stores’ everywhere. I can’t find a damn thing I want in those huge warehouses, and nobody to wait on me. But don’t go back at the expense of human rights! Even some of my farmer friends are posting the signs on their barn doors. What do I say to them? What do I tell them?”

“Write a letter,” he said again.

“Oh, you’re so goddamn sanguine, Colm. And I will, I will. Tonight. Today I’m on my way to Argennes to that foster care agency. To see if I can find out who Joey’s father and grandparents are—if they’re still alive. Where that will lead us, I’ve no idea. I feel like a mole creeping about underground.”

“That’s not a good analogy, Ruthie. You’re at a loss, but creeping underground is what moles do. They’re blind from birth. The underground’s their home.”

“Oh, stop being a smart-ass.” She waved him away, spilling her coffee. She hung up the phone and sponged the liquid—it had dripped into her boots. She could smell the manure on them. She’d have to take a shower before she went to see any foster lady, who was sure to be impeccably dressed, coiffed, and perfumed.

* * * *

Evangeline Balinsky, though, was a surprise. She was short, plump, and frumpy in a shapeless blue checked cotton jumper that couldn’t hide the balloon of her belly. Under the jumper she wore heavy lisle stockings that might have been her grandmother’s, and blue Adidas sneakers. On her head was a purple wreath with a jingle bell on top.

“It’s to cheer up the children,” Evangeline said. “I’m just back from visiting a new foster mom. She took in one of our quieter ones, a five-year-old who hasn’t spoken a word since her dad went to jail and the mother left her with an aunt, who brought her to us.”

“Poor child,” Ruth murmured.

“Well, then,” Evangeline said, with a lift of her head and a jangle of her wreath bell. “Down to business. What exactly brings you here?”

Ruth explained about Camille and her own blind mission. “And my daughter can’t find the disk Camille gave her. There might be something on that disk that would give us a key to her death. Someone who might be hurt if his past were revealed. At least, that’s my theory.” She gave a short laugh. “I don’t know why I say
his.
It could be a
her.”

She looked at her own hands, hard and blue-veined from working in the fields.
She
could strangle a person, couldn’t she? She hoped she’d never be forced to do such a thing, but she
could.
If someone tried to hurt a child or a grandchild .. .

Evangeline saw her flexing her fingers. “We’re all capable of violence, aren’t we? I recall pummeling a child once—not my own, no, I never married; it was one of the foster boys. A fourteen-year-old who wasn’t going to conform, no, ma’am, he was going his own way. And the foster mother was kind and loving. The boy would have had so much if he’d opened up. But one day he attacked her with a knife. She managed to run in the bedroom, bolt the door, call me. She was bleeding terribly when I got there. The boy went after me then, and I grabbed him around the neck. I never realized how vulnerable a neck can be....” She touched her own neck. “All these thin cords and muscles. I had to stop myself before I killed him, I was that angry.” Her bell rattled with the memory.

“Did he change? Did the foster mother ever forgive him?”

“He ran away. We never found him. Lord knows where he is—Canada, maybe. There are miles of unwatched border.”

“His name wouldn’t have been Godineaux?”

“No, it was Wasson. Nick Wasson. You looking for a Godineaux?”

Ruth told her about Joey, her search for a father and grandparents. “I thought you’d have records here in your office.” Again she felt so vague, so confused. What would she ask these people if she found them?

Evangeline pulled out a huge green drawer, selected a file, her bell jingling all the while. Ruth wondered if she wore it to bed. A jingling bell would be company for a single woman. She might try it herself. But Evangeline was frowning as she stared at the folder, her folds of chin almost touching the page.

“The mother’s name was Pauline,” she said. “And so was the grandmother a Godineaux, name of Nicole. It was the grandmother brought the boy in, as I recall. The mother was in prison for something or other. Forging a check, shoplifting—I don’t know. There was no money to bail her out. She got six months, but it wasn’t the first time.” She frowned. Here was a woman with a conscience. Ruth liked her.

“Annette,” Ruth said, recalling the title on the disk she’d kept for those few hours. “Was there an Annette in that family?”

Evangeline puzzled awhile longer, flipped a page. “I don’t see an Annette. But there could have been. It could have been the boy’s great-grandmother. We don’t keep a whole family tree of these people.”

“Of course not. But this Pauline—or Nicole—do you have an address? And what about the father? Any information on him?”

Evangeline’s chins swung; her bell sounded with the sweep of her head. “He was a no-good, that’s all I know. Pauline was never married to him. He fathered young Joey and took off. By then Pauline was in her mid-forties.”

“Any other children?”

“Oh, yes. One other besides Joey. Or was. Where, I don’t know.”

Pauline hadn’t been sterilized, then. Ruth explained about the eugenics project, but Evangeline already knew; she grimaced. “Obviously not. But maybe Nicole was. There’s no evidence of children after 1943. Nicole was let out of the reformatory in that year, along with her mother—whom we might assume was this Annette you speak of. Could be they were both sterilized. Where they went after that—who knows? The next we have on them was when Nicole came in with young Joey.”

“What was she like—the grandmother?”

Evangeline smiled apologetically. It was so long ago, so many clients and children, her face said. She flipped another page. “Ah. Here we are. She brought Joey here in ‘86. I take notes, you see. I’ve a terrible memory.” She squinted at the page. “Terrible handwriting, too. But here’s what I wrote; ‘Handsome woman, in her sixties, long gray braid, amber-brown complexion—might be part Native American. Seems smart enough, a survivor.’ “ She looked up. “That’s all I wrote. She was alone, no mention of a husband or live-in man. She seemed to be doing migrant work: apple picking, farm work. But she wasn’t well. I remember that now. She asked for two aspirin, her spine ached, and I gave them to her. I thought bone cancer. I don’t know why I thought that. The pesticides, maybe, on those farms.”

“You don’t know where she is now?”

Evangeline shook her head. “All I know is where she was then. In Bridport, on the Papineau farm—cleaning barns and so on. She was supposed to keep in contact with us, but we didn’t hear after ...” she peered at the chart. “After 1992. You might check the local hospital. The obits.”

“Poor woman. You’ve no mention of her husband—or Pauline’s whereabouts?”

“Nothing at all about the men. They don’t seem to enter the picture. Screw ’em and leave ’em,” she said. Then, “Sorry about my language. In this work you hear it all. End up using it yourself. But it’s mostly the women, it seems, left with the babies they can’t take care of.”

“Pauline?” Ruth reminded her.

Evangeline spread her hands. “You might check with the Brookview Reformatory down in Rutland. They should have records. Last I knew, she was behind bars.”

Ruth thought of Colm’s abortive interview with the Brookview director. Olen Ashley had checked on that so-called “fire” that burned the records prior to ’79 and said it was true. But wait. She had a thought. “What was the date Joey was brought in?”

Evangeline checked her records again. “July 1986. He was four years old.”

“Then Pauline would still be in their records. Good.” She shook Evangeline’s hand good-bye. “You’ve been a help, thanks. And our Joey—you helped him. He’s a joy.” The smile lit up Evangeline’s face. She looked like a Cheshire cat. Her bell jangled as she opened the door for Ruth and purred good-bye.

Maybe, Ruth thought, getting into her truck, a woman would soften up that irascible director. She would have to go down there, knowing it might lead to nothing.

Chapter Twelve

Gwen wasn’t home when Ruth arrived at the bee farm—a last-minute detour to sympathize with Gwen over the grave robbery. Gwen had been gone most of the day, the father-in-law said. “Up to Richford, on the Canadian border. She got hives up there. Should be home half hour or so. You want to wait? Want a soda or something? Coffee?”

Actually, she could use a little caffeine. “Coffee would be great,” she told the old man. “Then I wonder if I could walk the grounds a bit. Gwen has told me so much about her healing plants. She offered a cutting off some of them. Not that I’d take anything till she comes—I just thought I’d look. I run a dairy farm, down in the valley.”

Sure, Mert knew who she was, knew she was Emily’s mother, knew she helped folks find out who did this or that. He didn’t like this latest trick, this dug-up grave. Not a bit. “I start by grinding the beans, see? I make you a good strong mugful. You look like you could use it.”

Did she? Well, she supposed she did, all this running around, trying to find out who did what and why, and maybe when, too. She should be a journalist.

Mert was just pouring the boiling water, carefully, into a brown plastic cup, over the ground beans, when there was a crashing noise out back.

“Uh-oh, it’s Russ,” Mert said, looking out the window. A moment later, Gwen’s husband walked in, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said
ABENAKI  NATION.
He was rather slight, but well put together and quite good-looking. The two pair of silver earrings he wore looked incongruous with the T-shirt and jeans. He glanced at Ruth, a glint of malice in the yellowy irises, and for a moment she thought, yes, he could have killed that college boy. But then the eyes smiled when Mert introduced her as “Gwen’s friend. Gwen’s got bees on her farm.”