A moment of forgetfulness saved Estelle’s life. That, and a penchant for margaritas.
She lived in a small cabin built by her husband on a gated gravel road that curved up the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Hector was six months dead, but alive he had been a gifted craftsman, in great demand among locals and summer tourists alike. The locals hired him for skilled carpentry, for bookshelves and cedar chests, baby cradles and rocking chairs. The tourists hired him to lay bridges across streams, assemble benches in picturesque spots, and build enormous structures they called, without irony, “cabins.” They then labeled Hector’s creations with kitschy wooden signs: NINA’S NOOK, MIKE’S MEDITATION, KAREN’S KABIN, BAILEY’S BLESSING.
Thinking of it, Estelle rolled her eyes.
No one saw her. She lived alone, the nearest house a quarter of a mile away, well hidden by pines and the contour of the land. And besides, she was in the bath.
It was an inviolable part of her new-widow routine. Each day she rose before dawn and briskly set about tending their five acres, cleaning their cabin—theirs truly was a cabin—and replenishing her stock of Authentic Handmade Mexican Jewelry. She worked hard, because Hector would have frowned to see her bow before the black depression that stalked her day by day. She worked hard because sweat staved off despair.
But at five o’clock, Estelle mourned. She mixed a pitcher of margaritas, stripped off her clothes, and slid into a warm unscented bath, where she remained throughout the long mountain dusk, until night fell and she could prepare a small supper, conclude the day’s chores, and tumble into night’s oblivion. It was, she thought, as good a routine as any for salving a broken heart.
Especially the margaritas.
Above her head, the curtains on the window fluttered in a breeze replete with the distinctive scent of the New Mexico mountains—pine, dust, sunbaked ancient rock. From the amplified iPhone charging dock on the windowsill, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” blasted on repeat, a grim whimsy, the soaring and dipping violins evoking the honeybee’s clumsy cousin. And Estelle after five o’clock, bumbling through her evenings half drunk.
The bath, the breeze, the margaritas, the music. And beneath the music, unheard but always humming in her bones, ran the hypnotic buzz of Hector’s bees.
Hector. His teeth flashing white when he laughed, his hands firm and sure with hammer and chisel, saw and lathe. His body, broken and bleeding in the creek at the bottom of a rocky 30-foot drop.
Estelle flinched. The water in the tub eddied around her body, much as the water in the creek had eddied around his.
Thus ran her thoughts. Once, she might have lain in the bath studying her smooth legs, the slight rise of her belly, the swell of her breasts, trying to see herself through Hector’s eyes. Now she was forty-five years old, too young to be a widow, perhaps too old to attract another man or to want him if she did. She wanted only Hector, and he was gone. Murdered.
The sheriff and the neighbors disagreed. They avoided her eyes when they ran into her at the postal boxes down at the base of the mountain; they mumbled greetings, their faces averted in embarrassment. They blamed Hector. They blamed Blue Canyon Road.
It was a bad road, one lane that curved, rose, fell. Trees bent over it, underbrush crawled into it, giant boulders marked its every zig and zag. People drove too quickly, took blind turns fast because they took them every day. But there were safety precautions. Locals and summer people alike knew to keep their windows rolled down, their radios off; to tap their horns before descending Red Flag Hill; and, if walking, to step off the road at the faintest distant growl of an engine.
As Hector must have done; as Hector always did.
Yet he died. And the driver did not stop.
Outside the window, the mood of the bees shifted. Even through the haze of warm water, the depths of her grief, the music, Estelle felt their gentle drone sharpen.
Sliding deeper into the water, she closed her eyes.
Bees didn’t like strong odors, so she bathed without scent. They didn’t like dark colors, so her wardrobe leaned to light. They loved flowers, so for them Hector and Estelle had planted lavender, raspberries, fireweed. And then there were the rain barrels—bees preferred slightly stagnant water—and the 8-foot-tall fence, painstakingly built with metal posts set in concrete, 12 inches apart, lined with half-inch 19-gauge chicken wire. The fence discouraged bears, raccoons, skunks, anything that might threaten the hives, and Estelle had planted vines on it, green tendrils dripping with pale blossoms that opened at dusk.
The bees were not ungrateful. They provided ample supplies of golden honey, which Hector and Estelle sold in the square in Santa Fe, along with the jewelry. The bees were their children, Hector’s passion. When Hector died, she had told the bees the bad news and hung their hives with black.
Above her head, a single bee drifted in through the window, drifted back out again.
Hector had loved to articulate the moods of the bees. They’re finding the weather too warm, he’d say when they were lined up at the entrances to their hives, fanning madly with their tiny wings. They’re having a street party meant they were bearding, hanging off the front of the hives in squirming, buzzing curtains. They’re calling the children home—that was Estelle’s favorite—when the bees fanned hard, their little bottoms sticking up in the air to expose their Nasonov glands, releasing pheromones in a lemony scent that acted like a trail of breadcrumbs for their wandering progeny.
Tonight, the bees were angry.
So was she.
The musical bumblebee bumbled in its flight, violins swooping and bobbing from the phone on the windowsill. Eyes still closed, Estelle reached for her margarita, but her hand found only cold porcelain.
She opened her eyes.
She had erred. Her towel lay within easy reach, draped discreetly over her security blanket—Hector’s .357 Magnum—but the frosted glass and full pitcher sat on the vanity cabinet, on the other side of the sink.
Estelle got to her feet, water streaming down her legs. She didn’t lean or stretch. Better two extra steps and some water on the floor than a slip and a fall. She was alone in the world. If she knocked herself out, she might lie there all night. On the cold tiles, as the temperature dropped, there at 8,000 feet above sea level. With the window open and the front door unlocked. Unconscious, wet, exposed, she could die before morning. And she wasn’t ready yet to die. Not with Hector’s killer still unidentified, still free.
So she stepped out of the tub onto the small worn mat. She was reaching for the margarita, already tasting it on her tongue, salt and lime, already feeling the loosening warmth of tequila trickling through her veins, when a loud pop made her jump and turn.
From the window, a hand withdrew. In the water, the music died in a spray of blue sparks, an angry hissing sizzle. Then, with an echoing bang, the transformer halfway up the mountain blew.
The shock held her motionless for one heartbeat, two. Someone had knocked her phone setup into the tub. Who, she didn’t know. She had caught but a glimpse, the curtains blocking her view. And she couldn’t look out the window—that would require she step into water still swimming with the death spasms of her ruined phone.
So she ran. Opening the bathroom door, she raced for the front of the house, for the exterior door, trailing streams of water as she went, tracking wet footprints across the wooden planks. The bathroom window was inside the fenced-in hive area; the intruder would exit through the apiary gate. She had to get there first.
Snatching her shotgun off its hooks, she shoved open the front door.
The evening air hit her wet body, raising goosebumps. Racking the shotgun, Estelle stepped out onto the raised wooden porch and turned left, toward the apiary gate. It moved gently, swinging shut.
Estelle strode down the three steps, shotgun raised and ready. Her heart pounded in her ears. Hector’s killer had come for her; that was proof. He had been stolen, not lost through random accident or indifferent hap. His death was deliberate, done with design.
Now she would know who. Now she would get her revenge.
The ground, rough with pinecones and rocks, bruised her bare feet. She strode forward nonetheless, head high, surveying the gloaming, listening. Waiting for the woods to tell her their secrets. The woods always knew when someone passed—ferns waved at passersby, birds startled into flight, frogs fell reverentially silent. Small creatures scurried into the undergrowth, fled up the pale trunks of aspens, set evergreen branches swaying.
Nothing.
Estelle scanned again, noted still no sign of human passage. A squirrel ran along a high branch; she drew a bead on it, briefly and pointlessly, thinking there was no use in going further—too many trees, too many directions the intruder could have gone. Too many boulders to hide behind, too many rises and falls.
Or the intruder might still be in her apiary. Perhaps the swinging gate had been a misdirection.
Carefully, aware of her body gleaming pale and noticeable in the deepening twilight, Estelle backtracked and approached the gate. It fastened with a simple drop bar, and she held the gun steady with her left hand, letting go with her right just long enough to open the latch.
Using her hip, she nudged the gate open. It gave a faint creak, a quiet noise but one that would have warned her as she lay in her bath, had the sound not been masked by “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
Who knew she played that music every evening, who knew she bathed with the iPhone on the sill of the open window so the bees could hear the music, too? Anyone regularly passing by, that was who. Anyone on foot, anyone driving—as people ought—with their windows down to catch the mountain breeze, to listen for other traffic. To stay alert for pedestrians.
Through the vine-draped fence she could hear the angry buzz of Hector’s bees. They were Italian bees originally, unaggressive and tractable, but with each generation their genetics shifted as queens mated with local rabble. “Africanized” was not a yes/no proposition, but a spectrum, and Hector’s bees had grown, over the years, a little hot. This wasn’t all bad; it increased their resistance to the mites decimating other bee populations. But hot bees liked their privacy and their routines. They didn’t like strangers, especially at night.
Estelle was no stranger, but it wasn’t wise to assume such bees would always observe social courtesies. If the intruder still lurked in the apiary and Estelle caught and confronted him, the bees might well attack. And she was naked.
She backed up, glanced around.
There. The clothesline.
She set the shotgun on the ground within quick reach. The clothesline was easy to undo because Hector had tied it in a slipknot, or maybe it was a running knot, she didn’t know. As she pulled it free another piece of her heart crumbled, at this undoing of the work of Hector’s hands. But there was no help for it; she had to catch his killer.
Winding the rope through the bars of the gate, she wished she had let him teach her better knots. Hers wouldn’t trap the intruder, if he still lurked inside, but at least it would slow his escape if he went by the gate rather than over the high fence.
Snatching up the shotgun, she hurried back up the steps and into the cabin, going straight to the landline phone, dialing a number. While it rang, she stretched the cord as far as it would go, toward the living room window. She couldn’t quite see the apiary gate, but she could almost see it. If anyone passed through, she’d at least catch a glimpse.
In her ear, a voice grunted an unintelligible greeting.
“Abe,” she said.
“Yeah.” He didn’t ask who it was; they’d known each other twenty years, ever since a newly wedded Hector and Estelle had moved to Blue Canyon Road.
“Look out your kitchen window,” she said. “The gate across the road. Is it closed?”
There was a pause. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell if it’s locked?” If the intruder had come from outside that gate, Estelle doubted he would bother shutting it, much less take time to thread the padlock back through the chain and lock it. Why slow his escape? If the gate were shut and locked, Estelle bet it was because the intruder hadn’t come through it. Hadn’t needed to, because he lived in Blue Canyon. They were ten miles from the main road, twenty-four miles from town. No one entered or left Blue Canyon on foot, except perhaps to hike across to the Tecolote, and that canyon was also gated.
“Yeah,” Abe said.
“Yeah, you can tell, or yeah, the gate’s locked?”
“Both.”
Okay. That was good. “Abe?”
“Yeah.”
“Call the sheriff. Tell him someone just tried to kill me. And keep an eye on that gate.”
Stentorian breathing, the rasp of it sudden and frightened. She could picture the old man clutching his chest, faded eyes fixed on some unseen horizon.
“Take your pill,” she said hurriedly. “I have to go. Will you call?”
He sucked in a gust of air. “Course,” he said. “Be careful, girlie.”
Even if the sheriff jumped straight into his cruiser, he wouldn’t reach her for another thirty minutes, minimum. And he might not jump straight into his cruiser. He might chalk the whole thing up as a foiled burglary, reported by a woman he already had pegged as borderline paranoid. He had Friday-night emergencies, a limited staff. Estelle would be lucky to see the sheriff before midnight.
For a heartbeat she stood still, indecisive. She wanted to get dressed and check the apiary—but no. Phone calls first. Because if the intruder had escaped before she’d tied the apiary gate closed, she had only a tiny window of time to narrow down who he might be.
The mountains had no cell reception, none for five miles of winding gravel road, none for another fifteen miles of paved—across the wide meadows, through the cut in the rocks, past the HITCHHIKERS MAY BE ESCAPING CONVICTS road sign, all the way to the New Mexico Correctional Facility. Only there did reception kick in.
So if someone answered his landline, then he was home, not creeping through the woods having recently attempted cold-blooded murder.
His second cold-blooded murder.
The two closest cabins, Estelle figured, were a wash. Her attacker would have had time to get home already, if he lived in one of them.
She dialed the next farthest cabin.
“Hello?”
Linda. Before Estelle could ask for her husband, to rule Tim out as well, she heard his familiar voice reprimanding their unruly Labrador in the background.
Without a word, she hung up.
Already it had grown too dark to see the numbers on the phone. She took a few precious seconds to light the emergency candles that always stood on the end table, her hands trembling, the flame wavering and smoking before the wicks caught. How many calls could she make before the relevant window of time closed? The farthest house from her own was Harry Garcia’s, way back almost to the Santa Fe National Forest. Estelle could walk it in twenty minutes, run it in less. Between Harry’s house and her own lay, what, ten or twelve other houses?
She needed a pencil. She should document as much as she could, for the next—she chose a random number—six minutes. Then she would check the apiary.
A noise made her pause.
A squeak, a creak. Had she imagined it?
No. It came again.
It could be a raccoon, a possum, any number of woodland creatures. Or simply the wind. Or it could be a killer letting himself out the apiary gate, climbing the three creaky wooden steps to her porch.
She picked up the shotgun.
Around her, candlelight flickered warm and mellow, hateful. It called up memories of Hector’s face in the dancing light, Hector’s hands as they trimmed the kerosene lamp, Hector building a fire in the wood-burning stove. It reminded her she was alone.
It lit her clearly, as on a stage, for the dark form that might be standing outside her window.
And she was naked.
She hadn’t cared before, in that initial burst of adrenaline. Racing outside with her gun in pursuit of Hector’s killer. Now it felt different. Now she was a woman boxed in, alone and lit by flickering candlelight, the windows blinking light back at her so she couldn’t see who stood upon her porch, watching her like a movie, like a fish in a bowl.
Dashing into her bedroom, she jerked on jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, the closest things to hand. As she fumbled a button closed, a loud knock made her heart lurch. A knock at the front door—rat-a-tat-tat—insistent, aggressive.
For an instant she considering hunkering down, hiding. Hoping he would go away. But there was no point; her cabin wasn’t a fortress. Better to deal with this head on, with dignity, on her own terms.
Though not the terms she originally had set.
Cautiously Estelle edged toward the living room, raising the gun. The cuff of her flannel shirt hung loose, impeding her trigger finger. She shook it back, eased forward another few feet.
Even the best laid plans go astray, and Estelle hadn’t so much planned as hoped, announcing her daily spell of vulnerability with bumblebee music, buying copious amounts of tequila from the gossipiest storekeeper, in hope—not expectation, merely hope—that Hector’s killer would show himself. He would come to drown her, to make it look as if she’d fallen and hit her head, perhaps slipped beneath the surface in a drunken haze. Another accident. Another needless death. Hector and Estelle, so careless. But when he burst into the bathroom believing he was the predator, she the weakened prey, Estelle would rise up out of the water and raise the .357 from beneath the crumpled bath towel and blow him to kingdom come, where he would never meet Hector—residing with the angels—but would burn in hell for all eternity, contemplating his depravity.
That had been her plan. Such as it was.
Attempted electrocution by iPhone, attack by way of a window guarded by Hector’s bees while the front door waited invitingly unlocked—the possibility had never crossed her mind.
She felt very stupid about that.
The pounding on the door came again. Rat-a-tat-tat.
At least he had come, whoever he was. That was the important thing. She was so tired of wondering and waiting.
“Estelle!”
A man’s voice; she thought she recognized it.
“Estelle, I know you’re in there. Open up.”
Tears filled her eyes.
No. Not Harry.
A loner with some sort of military background—or maybe just a liking for army surplus stores—Harry Garcia earned a meager living doing unskilled work such as winterizing cabins and opening them up in the spring, meanwhile learning carpentry from Hector. Basically, he was Hector’s apprentice, and—she had thought—his friend.
But essentially he was Hector’s business rival, it occurred to her now. He did menial work, grunt-work, while aspiring to Hector’s better jobs. Money was at the root of most murders, wasn’t that what statistics said?
“Estelle,” Harry called again. “Open up. I need to know you’re okay.”
Sure he did.
Harry had motive to kill Hector, but what did he have against her? Estelle was no carpenter. She wielded a hammer only to hang pictures.
It didn’t matter; she didn’t have to understand his motives. He had killed Hector, and in return she’d kill him. Even if she couldn’t prove what he had done, no one would blame her—a woman alone, in the dark, moments after placing a frantic call for the sheriff.
Blinking away angry tears, she strode across her living room and flung open her front door.
On the porch, Harry Garcia took one look at her gun and raised his hands shoulder high.
He wasn’t alone. The woman beside him gave a small shriek, her eyes going wide.
Ashley Swanson looked, as usual, like an Eddie Bauer model. She was dressed in brand-new hiking pants with zippers in implausible places, and a navy jacket done up to her chin. A lavender Fitbit peeked out from one cuff. A few strands of salon-streaked hair had escaped her artfully messy bun and curled coyly, damp with perspiration, around her pretty face. She smelled of something fruity and expensive.
Beside her Harry looked particularly uncouth. The dark stubble on his cheeks went far beyond the point of fashion; his army surplus fatigues featured a rip mended with duct tape; his gray T-shirt and unbuttoned flannel shirt had worn thin to the point of disintegration; and his work boots looked like something pulled off a casualty of the Bataan death march. As always, he smelled like sweaty male. Estelle had heard women speculate that Harry might clean up well, but this was pure supposition. No such Harry had ever been spotted.
Ashley and Harry were about the same age—mid-thirties—but beyond that, a more unlikely pair Estelle could not imagine. And it wasn’t just their clashing fashion choices. Harry, a year-round resident, lived mostly off the grid and mostly off the land. Ashley and her husband were summer people, do-gooders who wanted to improve local schools, pave roads, change zoning ordinances, regulate this, deregulate that, and talk the local grocer into carrying certified-organic free-range non-GMO everything.
Maybe Ashley was slumming?
Maybe Harry was slumming.
The breeze from the apiary carried the scent of raspberries; the blossoms on the fence nodded their heads. The gate stood ajar, clothesline dangling loose.
Harry or Ashley. Harry and Ashley.
Estelle’s blood pulsed painfully in her ears.
“Do you have a license for that thing?” Ashley said, pointing at the shotgun.
“Permit,” Harry said. “And she doesn’t need one.” His hands were still raised, but he didn’t look unduly alarmed to be held at gunpoint by a damp and wild-eyed woman. He seemed to be contemplating nothing more concerning than Ashley’s ignorance of New Mexico gun laws.
“Are you two together?” Estelle said.
“What? No!” Ashley recoiled. “I’m a happily married woman.”
Estelle looked at Harry. His expression said High-maintenance city girl? Not likely.
One or the other. A killer and—unfortunately—a bystander.
Estelle shifted, covering them both with the shotgun. “Which of you just tried to electrocute me in the bath?”
Ashley gasped; Harry’s eyes went suddenly alert.
“You—” Estelle jabbed the gun at Ashley. “Why are you here?”
Ashley blinked. “Um, neighborly kindness? I was out for a walk and heard the power go. I thought you might want company, given your situation.”
“My situation.” Estelle kept her tone even.
Ashley’s blue eyes clouded with sympathy. “Recently bereaved,” she said in a stage whisper, as if the words were too awful to say aloud. Then, in a normal tone: “The power went out. I thought it might make you nervous.”
Estelle contemplated the younger woman. “No,” she said. “Nervous is not what it makes me.”
She switched her gaze to Harry in time to see his lips twitch with a suppressed smile.
“Talk,” she said, eyeing him coldly.
His gaze flicked away. “I was up behind your cabin, on the ridge”—he gestured with his chin—“tracking a nuisance bear. The one that’s been tearing up trash bins at the youth camp.”
He wasn’t making eye contact, but his story was credible. There had in fact been a bear poking around, and though camp sessions had ended for the year, they brought in weekend groups through October. It was a dangerous combination, hordes of city people and a bear that no longer feared humans.
“Where’s your rifle?”
“At home.” Hands still raised, he slowly turned around, showing her his back. Through his shirt she could see the bulge of a handgun.
“Lift the shirt.”
He did. “Smith & Wesson 500,” he said.
That would take down a bear, all right.
“You people.” Ashley snugged her zipper more tightly beneath her chin. “Guns don’t solve anything.”
Except rogue bears. And attempted murders. And rattlesnakes, rabid raccoons, large rats with boundary issues…
Harry turned back around, slowly, hands still up. His nose was twitching. “Estelle,” he said. “I might sneeze. Don’t get startled and shoot me.”
He sounded just like he always did. He looked just like he always did. Unkempt, but not entirely unattractive. And Hector had liked him; she knew he had.
“Grief makes people crazy,” Ashley said, her tone so earnest it set Estelle’s teeth on edge. “But you can’t go around making wild accusations. Someone might sue. And you know it was a squirrel on the line—that’s what it always is. Nobody tried to electrocute you.”
The pity in her face made Estelle want to pull the trigger.
Instead she swung the gun toward Harry. He leaned back, as if that would make a difference. Not completely nonchalant, not anymore. Probably wondering what sort of load the shotgun carried, slug or shot, though either would do the job at this range.
“If you were tracking bear on the ridge,” she said, “what brought you here?”
He answered in a carefully steady voice, as if she were a wild animal. “It was getting dark, and I’d lost his trail,” he said. “So I was heading for the road. Easier walking back that way than going cross-country.”
“Harry came around the far side of your house just as I got here,” Ashley said helpfully. “I came up the steps on this side, and he came up the steps on that side.”
Harry cleared his throat.
Ashley frowned at him. “Maybe you got to the porch a step or two ahead of me, but that’s all.”
“Actually”—Harry drew out the word—“I was here before. Well before.”
There was a glint in his eye.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Estelle went prickly with annoyance.
“What?” Ashley looked from one to the other.
Estelle stared Harry straight in the face, simply to prove she still could. “He’s a Peeping Tom.”
Harry might have blushed—hard to tell through all that stubble. “No peeping involved,” he said. “Staring openly, yeah. Guilty as charged.”
Estelle didn’t blush; calculations were running through her mind. “What exactly did you see?”
Harry raised his eyebrows, incredulous.
Estelle raised hers. Waiting.
Harry’s gaze drifted over the shotgun—still leveled at his center mass—to Estelle’s wet hair, and then to the power line stretching away from the cabin roofline.
“You came blasting out your door,” he said. “Buck naked. Dripping wet. You went to the edge of the woods, gun up, and sighted on something. I backed off, went up the hill behind your cabin. Gave you time to get back inside.” His eyes met hers. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
The apiary fence was 8 feet tall, impenetrable with vines. No one inside could have seen her draw a bead on that squirrel.
Harry glanced at the apiary gate, swinging gently ajar. “Ashley could have come from there. I didn’t see her until she started up the porch. I was keeping my eyes on the ground, in case you were still out here. To give you a chance to see me first and get inside.”
“I would never go in that place.” Ashley gave an exaggerated shiver. “She keeps bees in there.” Her profile, washed in the candlelight pouring from the open door, showed flaws that were unnoticeable straight on—a peevish set to her mouth, a few bumps marring her otherwise lovely complexion.
Estelle took more pleasure in that than she should have; she’d have to work on keeping her cattiness under control. Nobody liked bitter middle-aged women.
“Bees are dangerous,” Ashley said. “I can’t believe the government lets just anybody keep them any old place.”
In this case, though, Estelle would give herself a pass. Her finger, curled against the trigger, tightened slightly.
Harry looked back and forth between the two women. “Honey’s good for you,” he said. “It helps coughs, insomnia, acid reflux, sinus problems, acne, dandruff, eczema, yeast infections, herpes.”
Ashley grimaced.
“It boosts energy, memory, and sexual function. It can be used to treat hangovers, gum disease, high cholesterol. It has antioxidants.”
It was as if he’d become an idiot savant.
“It’s a good antiseptic and has antibacterial properties. It can be used to build up immunity to local allergens.”
“Bees are the local allergens,” Ashley said. “My husband’s allergic. One bee sting and he could die.”
“Did you tell Hector that?” Harry’s voice was deceptively casual.
“Of course I did.” Ashley looked at Estelle, spoke precisely. Carefully. No more, and no less. “I told him.”
A lump rose in Estelle’s throat.
Harry lowered his hands.
The shotgun, grown heavy and pointless, sagged in Estelle’s arms. Around her the wind gusted, shifting directions, rattling the leaves of the aspens and carrying away the scent of raspberries Hector would never taste. Oh, Hector, she thought. All I wanted was to know who took you away from me. Now I know, but I can’t prove it.
“Hector used to talk about honey all the time,” Harry said. It was a eulogy, a conclusion. An acknowledgment that he had tried and failed. “He sure loved those bees.”
The moon had begun its slow rise over the treetops, casting black streaking shadows, its blue-washed glow a cool contrast to the yellow flickering candlelight. A single bee hummed across Estelle’s line of sight, fighting its way out of the apiary, against the wind.
Ashley eyed it warily. “Well,” she said. “Guess I’ll head on home.”
“No.” Estelle raised the shotgun to her shoulder.
“Estelle,” Harry said.
She ignored him.
“You got stung,” she said to Ashley. “That’s why you’re zipped up. You’re hiding bee stings, but you can’t hide the ones on your face.”
The other woman shrugged. “I told you, bees are dangerous.” She smiled. “And there’s no law against zipping. Unzipping, though. Public exposure. There are rules against that.”
“Not here,” Harry said.
Two more bees joined the first. They circled around the porch, dancing their wavering airborne dance.
Estelle sighted down the barrel, drew a bead on Ashley’s forehead. “You ran Hector over, and you tried to electrocute me.”
Ashley stopped smiling. “She’s threatening me with a firearm, Harry. You’re my witness. As soon as I get home I’m calling the sheriff.”
Harry said nothing. Pointedly, he turned away.
Ashley gaped at his retreating back. “You can’t just let her shoot me!” Then, to Estelle, “You can’t shoot me. You’ll get sent to prison. Is that what Hector would want?”
Three more bees arrived.
For the first time in six months, Estelle felt a smile on her lips.
“Don’t say my husband’s name,” she said, imagining the slug’s trajectory, the efficiency with which it would wipe out every thought and memory—the sound of Hector’s body tossed and broken, the sight of his soul leaving his flesh.
“You should have used the front door,” she said. “Bees don’t like intruders in their home.”
“Neither do I!” Ashley jerked her head as a bee tried to land on her face. “They’re always over at our place, zooming around, looking for someone to sting.”
“They pollinate,” Estelle said. “It’s a public service. We’d have precious few crops if they didn’t. And they don’t sting if left alone.”
Ashley’s hands finally were up, her expression pleading. “They could kill my husband.”
“So you decided to kill the beekeepers.”
“I didn’t say that. You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Not me,” Estelle said, and her heart was humming and soaring. “The bees.”
“Bees can’t talk.”
Harry raised his arm, pointed.
Over the vine-draped apiary fence a stream of bees rose, forming a black boiling cloud that sparkled silver and gold in the light of the cresting moon. Hundreds of bees. Thousands of bees. A churning, buzzing, vengeful mass.
Ashley blanched. She lunged for the candlelit doorway, but Estelle slammed the door and blocked it with her body as the cloud began to descend, angry, implacable, buzzing with a thousand tiny wings.
Moving slowly, carefully, Harry pressed his back against the cabin wall.
The cloud poured onto the porch, shifting and roiling, and found its target.
Ashley shrieked. She batted at the bees, slapping them on her arms, her face, dancing and dodging. They landed on her neck, her ears, tangled in her hair.
“They know,” Estelle said, raising her voice to be heard. “They remember.”
Bees landed on Ashley’s arms and back, stinging through the fabric of her jacket, crawling under the neckline, testing the density of her boots, climbing up her shoelaces into the legs of her pants. “Help me!” she cried, flailing, frantic. “Make them stop!”
Briefly, Estelle closed her eyes. She knew what Hector would say.
“Get to the creek,” she said. “Get under the water.”
Hector had never been a vengeful man.
Ashley stumbled down the steps, making—it had to be said—a beeline for the creek. So did the bees.
Estelle watched her husband’s killer stagger down the slope and plunge into the icy water. Ashley wasn’t broken and bleeding, as Hector had been when Estelle found him in that creek; she wasn’t dead.
But she probably wished she were.
Still the bees didn’t disperse. They hovered over the water in a shifting, living cloud, their fury audible, electrifying. More bees joined them there, streaming from Estelle’s apiary, from the woods, from wild hives in the pine trees, from the paths Hector had walked and the mountains he had loved.
“They’re waiting for her to surface,” Harry said. He sounded almost reverent.
Estelle smiled. Africanized bees would wait for hours, would chase an enemy miles. These were only hybrids, but they’d keep Ashley pinned until the sheriff arrived. Already Estelle could hear the crunch of tires, the squeal of brakes at the hairpin curve that topped Red Flag Hill.
“What exactly just happened?” Harry asked. “And don’t say the bees remember.”
“But they do, in a way.” Estelle glanced at the apiary, at the blossoms pale with moonlight. “When bees sting, they release an alarm pheromone from their Koschevnikov glands. It clings to the site of the sting. It’s very persistent.”
Harry’s gaze was drifting downward.
“I smelled it on her as soon as I opened the door.” Estelle fastened another button on her hastily donned shirt. “It smells like bananas. I was being dense and didn’t realize what it was, but the bees knew. When the wind shifted, they smelled their call to arms. Harry, stop staring. I’m far too old for you.”
He grinned. “There’s a word for older women who—”
“Yeah. Disgusting.”
He laughed. “You know,” he said, “next summer you could head over to Santa Fe, join the Nearly Nude Bike Ride. Unless that’s too tame for you.”
Estelle smiled, kept buttoning. In the distance, through the trees, red and blue lights flickered.
“Estelle,” Harry said softly, and his voice had grown serious. “I’m sorry about Hector. I really am.”
“I know,” she said. “So am I.”
And she stood on her porch, a little less alone, and gazed fondly at the teeming cloud clustered over the creek. Her allies. Her detectives. Her agents of judgment and of wrath.
Hector’s bees.