Telling the Bees (16 page)

Miss Perez had claimed on the witness stand that she was not a violent person but that she could not in all good conscience say the same of her companion. While this might be considered damaging testimony on the face of it, she also claimed to love this young man and to believe he was a good person at heart—that it was the drugs he took that made him unpredictable and violent. She swore that neither of them had gone to the Straussman house intending to harm anyone.

“If I’d even thought Armando would have gone crazy like that, I swear to God I never would have brung him with me in the first place,” she claimed most sincerely it seemed to me as I sat in the courtroom listening to her testimony. It both saddened and surprised me to learn that the germ of the idea to break into the Straussmans’ house came from this young woman and not from her young man, who appeared, at least on the surface, the more hardened criminal of the two.

She explained how, living in one of the small, deteriorating Spanish-style bungalows that dotted our neighborhood at that time, she had often seen the two Bee Ladies working for hours in their small vegetable garden or around and about the handful of beehives that were located to the rear of their property. She said she noticed that they usually spent the entire morning working out of doors and that they seldom finished their chores before midafternoon. More significant, she observed the Bee Ladies selling honey and candles from their front porch every Thursday afternoon, and she noticed that they never left the house the following day. It was Mr. Garcia, she said, who speculated that the proceeds of the Bee Ladies’ sales were likely kept at the house and not deposited in a bank account.

“And so this is why you decided to rob them?” Mr. Billings prodded.

“Yes,” the young woman said softly, casting her eyes downward. I followed her eyes to her hands, which were coppery smooth and clasped as if in prayer. “Armando said it would be easy. They’re like all the old people round here. They live alone, they have money, and they always do the same thing at the same time.”

As I sat in the courtroom listening to this young woman’s account of the events leading up to Claire’s and Hilda’s deaths, I found myself unwillingly impressed by the minute level of observation she had accorded to the Straussman sisters’ daily habits in preparation for her craven act.

“Then the skinny old lady got stung, and she came back to the house to put something on it,” Miss Perez told Mr. Billings, attempting to explain how it was that despite their careful planning Claire had diverged from her routine just as she and Mr. Garcia were attempting to pry the Straussmans’ back door open.

“Elsewise, none of this other stuff would have happened,” she said. This other stuff being, of course, Claire’s and Hilda’s brutal murders.

This was Claire who had died. In my head and in my heart I understood this. But as I listened to Miss Perez continue her story, I found myself almost feeling sorry for her for all she’d gone through because of Mr. Garcia. He seemed a very frightening man, and she seemed so small, so fragile. In her physical delicacy, and the confident manner in which she articulated herself, she reminded me of Claire. But that was as far as the resemblance went. I found it hard to imagine Claire being cowed by any man.

“Go on,” Mr. Billings urged.

Miss Perez explained that when they were surprised by Claire’s sudden approach, she had yanked Mr. Garcia’s arm back from the door and told him to put the credit card back in his pocket.

“The old lady was holding her hand like it hurt,” Miss Perez testified, “so I asked her if she was okay.”

“And what did Miss Straussman say?”

“She said something like, ‘Of course I’m okay, it’s just a bee sting,’” Miss Perez replied. “She seemed kinda mad. She said she just needed to put something on it and was looking at us like she was trying to figure out what we were doing on her back porch, so I made up this story about how it was my mom’s birthday and that she loved handmade things. I said I’d seen her and the other lady selling honey and stuff on their porch the night before and I was hoping they still had some stuff left.”

“What happened next?”

“I told her that we’d knocked on their front door but nobody answered, so we came round back to see if anybody was home,” Miss Perez testified.

“And what about Mr. Garcia?” Mr. Billings prodded. She said he went along with her story at first.

According to Miss Perez’s account, Claire’s initial suspicion had ultimately been allayed by the young couple’s apparent interest in her wares. Claire told them she needed to put some bluing on the bee sting she’d just suffered but that if they cared to wait in the kitchen she’d take care of the sting and then go fetch a sampling of honey and candles from which they could choose a gift.

Miss Perez said that the other Bee Lady, who had grown concerned by the first one’s extended absence, arrived just as they sat down at the kitchen table.

“The skinny Bee Lady explained what was going on and the big Bee Lady said she’d go get the stuff. Everything was still going fine except they were old, you know? And really slow. I could see Armando starting to get . . .”

“Impatient?” Mr. Billings prodded.

“Yeah,” Miss Perez agreed. “All of a sudden, he just snapped.”

“How so?”

“Armando could just go off for no reason,” she said. Mr. Garcia, for the first time in the trial, straightened up in his chair, and Miss Perez took a deep, shuddering breath. Of course in retrospect her story seems quite contrived, ludicrous even, but as she sat there on the witness stand, her thick dark hair tied up in a girlish ponytail and her hands folded sweetly on her lap, the young woman exuded a surprising blend of sincerity and vulnerability that I am sure worked to her advantage with both the judge and jury. I believe this reaction could be attributed above all to her eyes, which were so large and unexpectedly turquoise that they positively overwhelmed her coppery face. As much as I tried to resist, I could not help feeling growing surges of sympathy for her.

“So what happened next?” Mr. Billings softly urged. Miss Perez explained that it was hard to tell what had set Mr. Garcia off that morning, but she said that he was always especially unpredictable when he combined alcohol and narcotics, which apparently he had done before leaving their bungalow. She said she only found out afterward that his supply of drugs had run low and that he had been both more intoxicated and more desperate for money than she’d realized at the time. Whatever the cause, Mr. Garcia apparently soon grew tired of Miss Perez’s patient game of cat and mouse. Pulling from beneath his shirt a gun that she swore on the witness stand she hadn’t known he possessed, Mr. Garcia ordered the two women inside the parlor.

“You know, Armando acts crazy sometimes, but I don’t think he meant to kill the old ladies,” Miss Perez said. “He was always threatening to kill me, you know? But he just slapped me round sometimes. He never even used his fists.”

Miss Perez said that it was the big Bee Lady who agreed to show him how to work the catch on the false door in the sunroom wall where they kept all their valuables. Afterward Mr. Garcia had marched Hilda back into the parlor and tied her up with some duct tape he’d found on a shelf in their pantry and then he’d ordered Miss Perez to do the same with the skinny Bee Lady. This was after Miss Perez said she’d stuffed all the jars of coins they found in the cubbyhole into several canvas shopping bags they found in the pantry along with the duct tape. They also took a metal strongbox they found behind the jars. She said the last thing Mr. Garcia did was to take off the bandanna he was wearing on his head and hand it to her.

Following Mr. Garcia’s orders, Miss Perez explained how she’d torn it in two and stuffed a strip in each woman’s mouth and then covered both of their mouths with more duct tape. A few stray hairs found on the strips were what eventually tied Mr. Garcia forensically to the murders.

Miss Perez testified that she honestly believed Mr. Garcia when he told her not to worry. That the two ladies would work themselves loose in a little while and by that time he and she would be long gone. She said Mr. Garcia had family in Rosarito that they decided to go stay with “just until things died down.”

Unfortunately, it appeared the pair misjudged Claire’s and Hilda’s physical condition as badly as they had the women’s meager savings. Both women had died before they were able to free themselves from their bonds. And the pair’s larcenous efforts had netted them precisely two hundred and seventy-three dollars in small bills and coins in all the jars they found stashed in the cubbyhole and the strongbox. Miss Perez said that she and Mr. Garcia had gone to his cousin’s house in Rosarito directly after the robbery and that they didn’t even know the Bee Ladies had died until they returned to California several weeks later. But by that time it seemed the police had stopped poking around the neighborhood and so they figured they were in the clear, she said.

I suppose I should have felt satisfied. On the strength of Miss Perez’s testimony, Mr. Garcia was convicted of two counts each of first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and armed robbery. He received a mandatory sentence of twenty-five years to life. For her cooperation in his prosecution, Miss Perez had already plead guilty to the lesser crimes of manslaughter and robbery and had received a maximum term of twelve years in prison. But when I heard the guilty verdict, my heart sank even lower than I thought it already could. In the eyes of the law, justice had been done, but all I could think as I trudged out of the courtroom was that the dearest friends I had had in my life had died for less than three hundred dollars, a box of diaries, and a few worthless baubles.

Twenty-four

C
HILLED BROOD:
Immature bees that have died from cold or lack of proper care.

I
n the innocence of my youth, I believed in the absolute nature of truth, and, like Aristotle, I saw philosophy as the science that considers truth. But under the burden of mounting years and the bitter experience of Claire’s untimely death, I began to wonder if perhaps the learned French essayist Michel de Montaigne was closer to the mark in his supposition that philosophy was doubt. This much I now know: Though my revelation to Detective Grayson as to David Gilbert’s origins had dredged up many painful memories, I had taken some small comfort in the fact that the information I had provided had led at least indirectly to the eventual conviction of the Straussman sisters’ murderers. I had assumed that this legal determination would ultimately bring me peace over, if not full absolution from, the part I had played in the whole sordid affair. But I was wrong. While my loyal honeybees continued to provide me with a measure of joy and companionship, my evenings grew progressively colder and darker, and I found myself turning ever more inward to a place where even my beloved books, though they helped me pass the time, provided little in the way of true solace. Truth, I was forced to conclude, is an elusive science at best, and philosophy is the cold comfort we take in our doubt.

Such were my thoughts on a cool summer evening nearly a dozen years after the so-called book had been closed, for all intents and purposes, on Claire’s and Hilda’s tragic deaths. I was sitting on my front porch swing rereading an unexpected letter I’d received just that afternoon from Detective Grayson.

I remembered the tired smile that had crept across the good detective’s face as he gripped my hand warmly at the conclusion of the formal sentencing hearing for the murderers.

“Well, Mr. Honig,” he’d said by way of farewell, “I bet you feel a whole lot better now that this case is finally closed.”

Case closed
. Within the limits of his professional vernacular, they were, I suppose, the two most precise and comforting words he could use to put to rest what must surely have been the very last in a distressingly long and twisted line of inquiries into the darkest reaches of human psychology. I wondered that he had managed to retain even a shred of his own humanity in the process.

“Yes, of course,” I’d replied without conviction as we stood facing each other beneath the harsh fluorescent fixtures that lit the interminable hallway outside the courtroom where the final judgment on the case had just been rendered.

The desolation of that long-ago moment resurfaced with palpable intensity as I fingered the edge of the detective’s unanticipated missive. It was the first such communication I’d received from him since he’d left the police force at the end of 1993, only a few weeks after the Straussman case had officially concluded.

Dear Mr. Honig,

How are you doing? Well, I hope. Me and the wife are doing fine ourselves. We bought a little spread just outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, just like I said we would and we’ve been living up here for the last ten years. Bet you never thought you’d be hearing from me again!! But here’s the funny thing. I’ve taken up beekeeping. Who would’ve thunk it? Ha-ha! No, really. I met a beekeeper at the local farmers’ market a while back and we got to talking. About you, in fact, and one thing led to another, and a couple years ago he helped me set up a beehive in my backyard. I’ve got three hives now, and counting.

I gotta tell you, Mr. Honig, beekeeping’s really a kick. Even the wife says she’s seen a change in me. She says she’s never seen me so relaxed.

So here’s why I’m writing. One of my hives isn’t producing like it used to. I think it might have a parasite infection. I’m pretty sure it’s not ants causing the problem. I’ve been using your old pie tin trick since I set up my first hive. My buddy up here thought the problem I’m having might be due to Tracheal Mites. He showed me this menthol trick, but maybe the weather was too cold for the crystals to vaporize. At any rate, the hive didn’t improve. So then we checked for Varroa Mites. We tried using an ether roll on a jar of bees, but we couldn’t find any mites on the glass, so we were pretty sure it wasn’t that.

So what do you think? Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Raymond Grayson

What I thought first of all, after all these years, was he’d finally seen fit to use his first name with me. That pleased me no end, as did his inclusion of a photograph of himself standing in front of one of his beehives. He had lost a great deal of weight since I’d last seen him as though he had regained a semblance of his youthful vigor. His hair was a close-cropped silver, and his face, though lined from the sun, had lost its soft jowls. He was smiling.

The letter came in the early part of August 2005, nearly a dozen years after Claire’s and Hilda’s murderers had been sent to jail and nearly two years since my new neighbors began planting rows of crosses in their front lawn. In spite of, or perhaps because of, all that had passed between us, I suppose I should not have been surprised to discover that Detective Grayson had eventually followed my advice and taken up beekeeping as an avocation. What surprised me more was the casual ease with which he had apparently put the solemn weight of his former vocation behind him.

I finished reading the letter for the third time as the ocean chill began rolling in with the evening shadows. I remember savoring the luminous quality of the twilight as I carefully refolded the pages of the missive and slipped it back into its envelope. I thought for a while as to how to respond to his inquiry. There were a few more tests I thought he might try before ruling out varroa mites entirely. I may have closed my eyes for a moment—I can’t be sure. I am sure of so little these days. When I lifted my eyes from the envelope clutched in my lap, the graying sky was smeared with streaks of gold and blue and orange, and Claire’s older brother, Harry Junior, was standing quietly at the foot of the steps in front of me.

I’d only seen that one photograph of him: the one where he was formally dressed in his short pants and button-down shirt and was sitting like a rosy cherub on the arm of the davenport in his parents’ front room, but I was sure it was him. Even without his apple-plump cheeks there to hide the finely chiseled features of the man he might have become, and his baby blond ringlets shorn and faded to dusky brown, there remained yet about him the unmistakable essence of the child that once was in the faraway gaze of his father’s steely blue eyes. If there was evil there, I couldn’t find it. Only sadness. So much sadness.

I stared at him, fearful that if I looked away he’d melt back into the gathering mist, and he stared right back at me, standing stock-still and silent, his left hand gripping the stair railing and his right foot poised on the bottom step. I knew he was waiting for me to say or do something—to invite him up on the porch, perhaps, or to go to where he stood on the stairs and offer him my hand. As I hesitated, I watched the evening shadows spread like the pitch of avocado honey across the wooden planks beneath the swing on which I sat.

“Where are our crosses?” he said, his voice softened by the down of disuse. I knew what he meant right away: his cross, his mother’s cross, his father’s, Claire’s, and Hilda’s. They were all dead, and none but the tears of Ra had been shed for any of them. And now in the very same neighborhood where each and every one of them had lived and died, a garish memorial was being assembled for all to see, to commemorate the passing of strangers whose roots to the land ran no deeper than the patchwork of tidy rose beds and Bermuda grass lawns that had taken the place of the almond, orange, and eucalyptus groves which were already old before Harry and I were born.

“I have no say over the names on the crosses,” I heard myself say.

“You have no say over anything,” Harry said to me. And as he spoke, small dark feathers spurted in downy puffs from his mouth into the cold night air, and with each puff the sound of his voice grew stronger and coarser, and the feathers sprouted wings and the wings began to beat furiously and buzz and hum and hover about Harry’s head in a great Cimmerian swarm.

“We’re not as dead as you think,” he said, his voice rising above the din. “And that’s your fault, too.”