The Beekeeper's Ball: Bella Vista Chronicles Book 2 (9 page)

“That’s the plan. I, uh, I sing a little, too, and play guitar.”

Isabel led the way back into the kitchen. “I’d love to hear you one of these days. I’m sure we can work something out. Where do you live, Jamie?”

There was a beat of hesitation. Two beats.

It took only that long for Isabel to connect the dots—the crammed car, the rumpled clothes, the exhausted, unwashed look of her. The girl was homeless.

“I haven’t actually found a place yet.” Jamie put her glass in the sink and washed her hands, slowly and luxuriously, as though savoring the warm water and lavender soap.

“Yes,” Isabel said, not allowing herself to pick apart the decision. Her gut was telling her what to do. “You have.”

* * *

Mac sat straight up in bed, chased by a nightmare. “We had a deal,” he heard himself saying, “a deal, motherf—” He stopped talking to the nightmare and slammed himself back down on the pillow. He was drenched in sweat, the cold clammy residue of panic.

His head was foggy with images he wished he couldn’t see. People often said they envied him, having a job that gave him the freedom to travel the world, taking pictures and writing articles and books, taking pictures of things most people would never get to see. But freedom had its price. In pursuit of a story, sometimes he was forced to look into the face of hell, to see and hear things that made nightmares seem like fairy tales—like watching his wife murdered in cold blood.

He took another breath, reminding himself to concentrate on the here and now—a sunny room in a beautiful house, rich smells emanating from somewhere downstairs, the sound of...singing?

Yeah, someone was singing. And making breakfast. He was definitely not in hell anymore. He tugged on a pair of shorts and brushed his teeth, then grabbed his cane and wandered down to the kitchen to find the source of the singing.

The kid on the barstool, strumming a guitar, was a ringer for a younger, more tattooed Alanis, with a raspy, soulful voice and an unhurried touch on the strings of a battered acoustic guitar. Magnus was seated in a flood of morning sunlight at the end of the kitchen bar. Nearby, Isabel was creating something with grilled bread and a pan of eggs poaching in tomato sauce. It smelled incredible.

“This could turn me into a morning person,” Mac said, walking across the kitchen. The saltillo tile floor felt cool and smooth under his bare feet. “I’m Cormac O’Neill. Mac.”

The girl put aside the guitar. Despite the hair and the tats, she had a timid look about her. “Jamie Westfall,” she said.

He recognized the name. “The beekeeper.”

“I thought Mac was you when he first showed up,” Isabel said, placing a slice of grilled bread in a shallow dish, and serving up the eggs and tomatoes. She had an artless, graceful way in the kitchen. Mac could watch her all day, a woman in her element. “The name Jamie threw me off,” she explained to the girl. “One egg or two?”

“Two,” Mac spoke right up.

Isabel shot him a look. “Ladies first.”

“None for me,” Jamie said apologetically. “Maybe a piece of toast with honey. I...don’t have much of an appetite in the morning.”

“I’ll have hers,” Mac volunteered.

“It smells delicious, Isabel,” said Magnus.

“Can I help?” Mac asked.

Isabel’s look softened. “Set the table?”

“Sure.” He found the silverware and a supply of napkins.

“Jamie has agreed to stay at Bella Vista and work here,” Magnus said. “We officially have our own beekeeper.”

“Jamie’s going to oversee the honey production, too,” Isabel said. “She thinks we’ll have plenty for the cooking school, and a surplus for Tess’s shop.”

“An on-site beekeeper and resident musician,” Mac said. “I like it here more every day.”

“Bella Vista has always housed its workers,” Magnus continued as if he’d sensed the question Mac didn’t ask. “
Los piscadores
are vital to the orchard’s success, and we make sure the housing for guest workers is top-notch.”

Jamie offered him a bashful smile. “I appreciate it. I love my little cottage.”

“It’s yours for as long as you care to stay,” Magnus said. He tucked a napkin under his chin. “Isabel, thank you for this delicious breakfast. Eat up, Mr. O’Neill. We have a lot of matters to discuss today.”

* * *

“I’ve enjoyed our rambles so far,” Magnus said, leading the way through a long section of the orchard. “It appears I have more to say than I originally thought.”

“Most people do,” Mac said. “Memories are like a series of locked doors, and once you manage to get one open, it leads to another, and then another and so on. The hard part is finding the key to that first lock and getting through it.”

“You’re rather wise for a young man,” Magnus said.

“I’ve done my share of dumb things.” He felt a twinge, thinking about his next assignment after this one. He had made a promise to explore and investigate his worst mistake, and there was no getting out of it.

“As we all must, I suppose,” said Magnus. “How else does one learn wisdom?” He pointed out a row of painted shotgun-style cottages set shoulder to shoulder down one side of the orchard. A couple of them had cars parked behind them and laundry pegged out on clotheslines. “The guest worker housing is down there. When I first came here, there was no electricity or indoor plumbing. These days, they’re quite comfortable.”

“Isabel gave me a bit of history about her father.”

“Did she now?” Magnus picked up his pace, his cane thumping on the ground. “I wish she’d had a chance to know Erik. He was my heart, right up until the moment he shattered it. I miss my son every day, but then I see glimpses of him in his two daughters. It’s a sadness, yet this has only made me look deeper to find the joy.” He paused to watch a bird circling the meadow. “Some days, it’s hard to find.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“He came to Eva and me after we had given up the dream of having a child,” Magnus said. “I gather Isabel explained that Erik was adopted.”

“She did.”

“His birth mother, Annelise Winther, is a wonderful woman, her generosity beyond comprehension. Our arrangement was...unorthodox, to say the least.”

Mac would like the old man to say
more,
but he didn’t push. Often, the most important part of a conversation was the waiting.

Magnus flexed his hand on the head of the cane, the fingertips gripping its rounded head. It was a working man’s hand, strong and rough, now spotted with a patina of age. “Sometimes I wonder if losing Erik was a punishment. And then, of course, I must dismiss this thought. Things happen as they are meant to happen. There is no grand plan, just flawed human beings bumbling through life.”

He turned abruptly and led the way along a gravel track to a humble-looking stone and timber building with several bays and rolling doors. Flowering vines climbed up the crumbling stone walls. Inside, the sweetish smell of motor oil and old rubber hung in the air. The sunlight through the windows illuminated several work bays and an impressive array of equipment and vehicles. Somewhere, a radio was playing classic rock, and swallows nested in the high rafters. There were a couple of cluttered desks, a long wall and bench of tools that could make a grown man cry.

“Fantastic. It’s every guy’s dream to have a place like this,” Mac commented.

“I knew you’d like my machine shop. In my younger days, I would be banished here for my nightly pipe.”

“These days, it’s called a man cave.”

“It was once a barn, which accounts for the height of the rafters. My foreman runs the place. We don’t do as much work here as we used to. When I came here right after the war, the nearest mechanic was in Petaluma. We learned to fix everything on our own or do without. Back in Denmark, I developed an aptitude for mechanical things.”

Mac made a mental note to ask about that later.

“I’ve been accused of hoarding by my late wife, and lately by my granddaughters,” Magnus said. “The habit is hard to break. During the war, I had little more than a knapsack filled with a few keepsakes and scavenged possessions. Once I settled here, I found it hard to let anything go. The habit has served me well enough. I’ve always got the right tool for the job.”

Mac spent a long time poking through the dusty, oily wonders in the shop. There were tree shakers, catchalls and trailers, tractors and mowers in different sizes, conveyer carts and bin carriers, parts and supplies old and new.

Then, in an out-of-the-way, cluttered corner that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in a long time, he spotted a big shape shrouded in a dusty padded canvas tarp. “What’s that back there?”

Magnus hesitated. He removed his glasses and polished the lenses on his shirttail, then put them back on. “Something I haven’t thought about in decades. If you can make your way back to that corner, you’re welcome to take a look.”

Mac cleared a path between the crammed shelves and repairs-in-progress. A wall calendar from 1984 gave him a clue that Magnus hadn’t exaggerated about the decades. He lifted a corner of the tarp, folding it back to reveal an ancient scooter. “This is a Vespa,” he said, intrigued.

“Indeed, it is. The scooter belonged to Francesca—my son Erik’s wife.”

“Isabel’s mother, right?”

“Yes. Francesca was the loveliest girl you can imagine.”

Mac was silent, checking out the scooter from stem to stern. Judging by the shape, the placement of the headlamp and some other details, it was a model from the fifties. “This is cool. I worked at a Piaggio shop in New York when I was in school, so I know a bit about them. Do you know where it came from?”

“She had it shipped from Italy. She was born and raised in a little hill town there, and when she met Erik, she came to America to marry him—against her family’s wishes.”

“Why against their wishes?”

He shrugged. “They must have been old-fashioned, very traditional Catholics. Erik’s mother—my Eva—was a Jew. Francesca spoke very little of the break with her family. She never received letters or calls from anyone, so we didn’t pry. But she did say the scooter had belonged to her father. That would account for it being so old. It ran quite well, though, and Francesca kept it in good repair. She used to drive it to the farmer’s market and come home with the wicker panniers filled with produce.”

An appealing mental picture popped into Mac’s head—a young woman with bare suntanned legs and long hair, puttering into town on the scooter. In his mind’s eye, the woman looked just like Isabel.

“And you’ve kept it all this time,” he said to Magnus.

“I always intended to keep it running, and to eventually give it to Isabel. Eva wouldn’t allow it, though. She claimed it was too dangerous.”

In light of what had happened to Erik, that was understandable, Mac thought.

“Eva and I never would have survived the loss of Erik and then his wife, two days after his death, if it hadn’t been for Isabel. She became our reason for living.” Magnus touched the handlebar of the scooter, pressing the button, which of course made no sound. “These days, I find myself wondering if I protected Isabel from too much.”

Mac reflected on his rough-and-tumble childhood with his brothers, being moved all over the globe as their parents’ assignments changed. He’d enjoyed a decided lack of supervision, which sometimes led to trouble.

“I brought her up as best I could,” Magnus said. “I gave her love, but did I teach her to live? No, she will have to discover how to do that on her own. She has found a measure of happiness here at Bella Vista. But she is not at home in the world. I was too preoccupied with protecting her from it.”

Mac brushed the dust off the leather seat of the scooter. “I’m sure you did a great job,” he said. “The rest is up to her. It’s never too late to make a change.”

* * *

As evening gathered in a lavish orange sweep across the orchard, Mac spread his handwritten and typed notes on one of the long tables in the central courtyard. It was impossible to stay inside in weather like this. He wasn’t used to the almost unreal perfection of the climate here, the palpable sweetness of the air, the utter quiet disturbed only by the songbirds and sighing breezes. He was more accustomed to the grit and smog of cities, the hot air filled with the sounds of chugging engines, honking horns, shouts and sirens. Even the rural areas he’d seen lacked the special silence of Bella Vista. The places he’d visited, many of them in developing nations, were filled with the grind of generators, the sounds of squabbling families and barking dogs—day and night.

In the initial stages of any project, he always reminded himself to approach the story with a beginner’s mind. Despite the insistence of English teachers through the ages, he never came up with a theme first. Who the hell knew what the theme was until you did the work? Instead, he organized his thoughts around a timeline, knowing that if he did the hard, honest work of getting the narrative down, word by word, the real story would emerge.

He was already seeing glimmers and flashes of Magnus Johansen’s theme—endurance and commitment, a habit of holding on to things, like that scooter, which was a classic diamond in the rough if Mac had ever seen one. The more he talked with the old man, the closer he would come to the essence of all that had transpired.

“This is the contractor’s work table,” said Isabel, crossing the patio toward him. Charlie, the German shepherd, trotted at her side, and the two cats slipped along in her shadow.

“Uh-huh,” said Mac. “Everyone’s gone for the day. I didn’t figure they’d mind.”

She pursed her lips in that way she had, making annoyance look sexy. “If you need more space to work, there’s a foreman’s office down there.” She gestured at a distant building down by the main road.

“I don’t. I just like being outside. Look where you live. Jesus, it’s a piece of heaven.” The wildflowers in the surrounding fields had closed their petals for the night, and an owl swooped across the meadow, already on the hunt.

“You think so?”

“Hell, yeah. You’ve got apple orchards and fresh air, a doting grandfather, a smart dog and two unusual cats that follow you around. Oh, and honeybees, let’s not forget that. If you suddenly burst into song, then I’ll know I’m watching a Disney movie.”