Stolen Honey (23 page)

The roots squealed as they pulled up the nightshade. “I’m sorry, sorry,” Gwen kept saying, and still the roots complained. Who could blame them?

“We’re all like the nightshade,” Ruth said. “We do harm to others, and then we do good. We’re so ambivalent.”

“You’ve got it,” said Gwen, scooping up the roots and leaves and stuffing them into a plastic bag. She would use the roots one last time for the atropine.

Afterward the two women walked through the woods looking for healing plants. Ruth had brought along a camera; she photographed a dozen she wanted to learn to recognize on her own land. Gwen showed her lady’s slipper, with its variegated leaves and crimson “lip”—picked so often, she said, that it was virtually extinct. She pointed out feverfew—or corn marigold—it had daisylike flower heads with yellow centers. They were helpful, she explained, in curing headaches. “And over there, that woolly plant with the fernlike leaves: it’s yarrow. I use it to help stop bleeding.”

Ruth was starting late with this knowledge, but she’d learn a little and pass it on to her children. Although Sharon was already something of a healer. She was always bringing castor oil or peanut oil to Ruth to “make the warts disappear” or “cure the muscles” where Ruth had injured herself sprawling headlong on the ice outside the barn this past winter. After that tumble, Ruth ruined an upholstered chair with the castor oil Sharon had lathered on her aching knee.

Gwen sent Ruth off with a half dozen plastic baggies of dried herbs and a cutting of aloe plant—”for healing cuts.” She offered a marijuana cutting from her jar, but Ruth reminded her that she had her hemp.

“Enough is enough,” she said, and impulsively hugged Gwen as she left. She looked back at the woods one more time as she left. It looked so serene, so bucolic. Who would think a young man had died there?

* * * *

Donna had left a message on Emily Willmarth’s voice mail to meet her at the high school at three o’clock. She had a mission, she said. She might need help. “Try to borrow your mother’s pickup. It’s a matter of life and death,” she’d added. And it literally was: her family’s life and then the girl skeleton.

“I don’t know where she lives,” Donna said, explaining the mission when Emily arrived. “I don’t even know her last name. That’s why we’re here, you see, so we can find out where she got those beads.”

Emily was psyched. “I didn’t have anything better to do— except work in the barn. I’m meeting a guy tonight for a movie. I don’t want to smell like a cow.”

“Did your mother give you a hassle about the truck?”

“Nah. I made a bargain with her. She’s getting a whole morning out of me tomorrow. Though if it’s a late night, it won’t be any fun getting up.”

Donna knew about making bargains with parents. She’d had her fill of bees in high school. In college, though, she’d wanted to make her own kind of honey. But since Shep Noble’s death the guy situation hadn’t worked out. Even with the death declared an accident, she felt herself under suspicion. Though everyone suspected everyone else, it seemed. Classes were quiet, no one wanted to speak up except for the usual swaggering males. With two college-related deaths, students and faculty alike were anxious, on edge; the campus was a ghost town after dark.

Donna just wanted to lead a normal life. For one thing, she wanted to get the “princess” back for her father. Get him back to work, out of the house. Out of her hair! Every minute he wanted to know where she was going, who she was seeing. He was obsessed with that skeleton. He was drinking too much, swearing, and then laughing like a crazy man, like he was some kind of manic-depressive.

“This guy I’m seeing tonight will probably turn out to be one more jerk,” Emily said. “I can’t seem to win this year. I’ve had it with Boze. All he wants now is to get inside my pants. I’m not ready for that. Not with Boze.”

Donna put a warning hand on Emily’s sleeve. The students were swarming out of the school now, climbing into buses and cars, milling about with friends. “Look for frizzy green hair— orange lipstick. You can’t miss her. You look to the right, I’ll take the left.”

The strategy was to follow the girl, or the bus she rode on, or the car she drove home in. It wouldn’t be easy, Donna knew, but she had to nail her down.

“Over there, a girl with greenish hair,” Emily cried, pointing. But it was the wrong shade of green, Donna informed her, and the girl was skinny and flat-breasted.

“Jill has big boobs. Falsies, maybe.” Donna had small breasts, but she rather liked them that way. They didn’t attract the wrong guys.

One by one the buses pulled out until there was only one left. Donna slumped back in her seat. Jill had probably stayed home that day. Tomorrow Donna had an afternoon class; she couldn’t afford to wait outside the high school. She groaned softly and Emily put a hand on her arm. “I know it’s been hard for you. But there’s some good news. We’ve got a new professor for soc class. She’s coming down from the university to teach it. She’s reading our papers.”

“But she doesn’t know us! She doesn’t know the story behind our papers. She won’t be able to judge.”

“She’ll judge just as well. She’ll judge the paper on its own merits and not on us as students. Besides, she’s nice. I saw her office door open and went in. She was interested in farming, she said, her grandfather farmed. She said she was looking forward to our papers. To getting to know us, even though it’s practically the end of the year.”

Was she interested in Native Americans? Donna wondered. Was the woman’s grandmother an Abenaki? Most likely not. Indians made up only one percent of the country’s population. And Abenaki, less than one percent in Vermont. What would this teacher care about some long-ago English girl who’d opted to stay with the natives? She balled her fists, squeezed her eyes shut.

She opened them wide again when Emily cried, “Is that her?”

Donna saw a green-haired girl burst through the door with two other girls, one of them in a blue and white cheerleading outfit. They were running to catch the last bus, which was already starting to pull out. “Hey, wait!” the girls cried, and, giggling, caught up with it. The driver swung open the door and they climbed in.

“Follow the bus,” Donna cried, and Emily moved out behind it. “But not too close,” she warned. “It’ll make a lot of stops. I don’t want Jill to see us. Maybe I won’t even talk to her this trip—I mean, if there’s a lot of people around her house.”

The bus made eleven stops before it turned onto a side road and flashed its red lights in front of a gray trailer set back in a small woods. There was a pot of geraniums on a wooden step and a huge TV aerial poking out through the roof. There was no car in front, no sign of life inside. The girls watched from a turnout a few yards down the road as Jill climbed off the bus, a maroon book pack on her back. She was wearing the beads; they looked incongruous with her green T-shirt and white shorts. Shorts, and it couldn’t be more than fifty-five degrees outside.

“Wait here,” Donna said.

“Don’t you want me to come with you?”

“I want you at the wheel so we can make a quick getaway if we have to. But if I need you, I’ll whistle. I don’t think anyone’s home, but you never know.”

“Could be an old grandmother.”

Emily was right. Donna marched boldly up to the door and, before Jill, with a shocked face, could shut it on her, pushed her way in. An elderly woman was asleep and snoring in a tattered armchair, a
Good Housekeeping
magazine upside down in her spread lap. A TV actress cried, “I can’t go on like this any longer!”

“What are you doing here? You’ve got nerve! Now go away.” Jill pushed Donna to the door and Donna shoved back. Jill staggered a little, and then regained her ground. “Don’t you push me,” she cried. “Nobody does that. Nobody pushes me around.” She grabbed a metal ashtray from a table and flourished it.

“I’ll go if you tell me who gave you those beads. You stole them off a dead girl. She was buried up in our land.”

Jill was obdurate. “I never stole nothing. Somebody gave them to me, I told you. We made a bargain.” She still had the ashtray in her right hand. The TV actress was screaming at a hairy man in a red T-shirt. Donna felt a little dizzy. But she wasn’t going to leave without the beads, without knowing who gave them to Jill. She lunged at the girl, knocked the ashtray out of her hand, shoved her back against a chair. She felt the sharp nails on her neck. “Now you tell me who gave you those beads or I’ll call the police. You’re wearing stolen goods. The cops could put you in jail for that.”

“Don’t you call no cops! Don’t you tell about these beads. Here. Take ’em. I don’t like ’em nohow. They’re old. They don’t do nothing for me.” She yanked them off her neck and the thin strap broke, the beads clattering on the floor. “So pick ’em up. Go on. Pick ’m up you want ’em so bad.” She dove head first into the chair and curled up in a ball. Donna crawled about the room to collect them.

“They’s one under that table,” the grandmother said, awake now. “I don’t want ’em stuck in the vacuum. I told her them beads was secondhand. Cheap. I didn’t like the looks of that boy nohow. He wanted too much for ’em.”

“Like what?” asked Donna, reaching an arm under the TV stand, retrieving a small copper bead.

“Like her. He wanted her. She’d sell herself for a cheap set of beads! She’s a bad ’un, that ’un. Her mother was alive, she’d keep an eye on her. I can’t do nothing with her. Too old. Too sick. It ain’t right, I brought up five of my own, don’t need a sleep-around grandgirl.”

“Oh, shut up, Gran,” Jill said, unfolding herself from the chair. “I know about all your boyfriends till you got too old. You’re just jealous. No one wants you no more.”

“Don’t you say that! I took you in. You could of gone to a foster home. I give you a roof over your head. You’re ungrateful. Ungrateful little biddy.”

Jill appealed to Donna. “She goes on like that all day. You see why I dye my hair? Gotta have somethin’ in my life. Some-thin’ to make me forget... her.” She pointed at the old woman.

Emily appeared in the doorway, her face anxious. “It’s all right,” Donna told her, “I was about to leave. I’ve got the beads. I just have to know one thing more.” She turned back to Jill. “Who gave them to you? What boy? He’s the one stole our princess. He’s got her. You tell me or I’m definitely going to the police.”

“Princess!” Jill gave a sneering laugh. “It was just some old Indian skeleton, he told me. Who cares about a pile of old bones? The police won’t.”

Emily went to the phone, and Jill grabbed her wrist. “You put that down, damn it. You’re not calling no police.”

“They might want to know ’bout that hair dryer you stole at Ames,” the grandmother said, grinning.

“Shut up. Just shut up!” Jill cried, wheeling about to accost her grandmother. Hearing Emily start to dial. the girl spun back. “All right. All right, I’ll tell you. But you tell him you made me. You threatened me. He’s got something on me.”

Emily waited, the phone buzzing in her hand. Donna stared into Jill’s eyes. “Tell the truth and we’ll help you. We’ll tell the police you had nothing to do with the theft.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t have nothing to do with it! It was Tilden done it, he seen me stealing that hair dryer, said he wanted to sleep with me, he’d give me the beads. Jeez, he was a nerd. But he said he’d tell the cops about the hair dryer if I told him about him stealing those bones. Why’d he do it anyway? I asked. He had his reasons, he said.”

Jill sank back into the armchair, her feet splayed wide on the linoleum floor.

“Tilden Ball?” said Donna, “You must mean the father—Harvey Ball?”

“Tilden,” the girl said, crossing her arms hard over her chest. “Why would I go to bed with some old man? It was Tilden. He been after me a long time. Just looking at me, not saying nothing. Till that time he showed me the beads, said they was worth something. Like I could sell ’em somewhere if I wanted, and keep the money. So—I said I’d sleep with him.” There were bitter tears in the girl’s eyes. She pressed her lips together, hard, until they looked bleached, like lumpy flour.

When Donna and Emily turned to leave, she jumped up. “You keep your promise, now. Don’t you say nothing to the police about me taking that dryer! It’s a lousy one anyway—they can have it back. Don’t you tell Tilden Ball neither I told on him. Tell him you grabbed the beads off my neck, that’s all. Tell him I fought back. I did, too.”

“Sure,” Donna said, feeling the scratches flame up on her neck, “you did.” She banged the trailer door shut behind herself and Emily.

Chapter Fifteen

Ruth was at the kitchen table bent over a spread map of New Hampshire; a bottle of iodine stood on one corner to keep the ends from curling up. She’d used the iodine on Donna; the girl had gotten scratched by a high school girl—Ruth was glad Emily hadn’t gotten wholly involved in the fracas over the stolen beads. But Ruth had made Donna promise not to go after Tilden herself. “It’s a matter for the police, not you,” she’d warned, seeing the wild look in the girl’s eye. “Your parents will see to it—your mother’s policeman friend.”

Finally Donna had agreed. She would spend the night in Emily’s dorm, the roommate being away.

Ruth had been phoning the town clerks and chambers of commerce in all the New Hampshire towns that began with A, looking for a Pauline Godineaux. It could take weeks. Did she really want to do this? But Camille Wimmet had asked for her help. And Ruth
was
going to give it, no matter how long it took.

Andover, Antrim, Albany, Amherst—she wasn’t through the list and already she’d counted eight A names. It was ridiculous. The New Hampshire border itself was an hour’s drive from Branbury. How was she going to find time to do this?

She left the map on the table and got up to call Colm, with no luck. She left messages with his office secretary and his father, and then went out to prep the cows.

But she could hardly concentrate on the task, thinking of tomorrow morning’s trip. Would she go it alone? Colm had been so ambiguous, she couldn’t count on him. “Tim,” she called. The hired man was herding in the cows, his cowboy hat tipped back on his head. She tilted her head and smiled at him.