Free Telling the Bees by Peggy Hesketh Page B

table, more to allow myself a moment to clear my head than out of actual fatigue. The detective settled into the seat next to me.
    “Do you know how to get in touch with this woman?” he said, tapping the photograph.
    “No, I’m afraid not,” I said. Margaret had seemed so old when I’d met her in 1963, but decades had passed since then, and what I saw now was a mature woman, to be sure, but one with a youthful, almost defiant tilt to her hip as she posed beneath the shade of the Straussmans’ front porch.
    “I’m not even sure she’s still alive,” I said. “It’s been so long since I saw her last.”
    “Do you remember her name then? Or whether she had any children?”
    “I’m sorry, Detective Grayson,” I said, regretting even as I said it, the number of times I’d already had to apologize for my ignorance in the short span of time I’d known him. “I believe her name was Margaret. I think she was Claire and Hilda’s cousin. I only met her once when she came out to California for Mr. Straussman’s funeral, and that was . . . oh my goodness . . . thirty years ago at least. I remember her only because she was the sole family member to attend the funeral outside of Claire and Hilda, Mrs. Straussman having passed nearly ten years earlier. Margaret stayed on at the Straussmans’ house for a few days after the funeral, but the only time I spoke to her was when my father and I stopped by after the services to pay our respects. We brought a jar of eucalyptus honey from our special cache. I remember that Claire told Margaret that she bet she had never tasted anything this good back in Detroit, and Margaret had agreed. That is how I know where she was from, but that is all I know.”
    “I see,” said the detective, making it plain from the tone of his voice that he did not see at all and was not likely to let the matter of the Straussmans’ tangled relations go until he did.
    The last of the pictures on the table that Detective Grayson asked me to examine were simple snapshots of Hilda and Claire, posed together at various odd places and stages in their lives.
    There was one of Claire and Hilda at the seashore. They weren’t much older than toddlers. They were wearing billowy shorts and tiny sun tops, smiling and scooping sand into piles, while ocean waves crashed behind them. Their father must have taken this snapshot. I believe he used to take them to the beach on the Red Car, the electric trolley line that used to run from Anaheim to Huntington Beach. I don’t believe Mrs. Straussman ever went in much for beach excursions, even before she lost her health.
    There were a few other snapshots that the detective and I examined at some length. I can’t say I fully understood his interest in this fishing expedition, as he called it, but mine was surely kindled by the fond memories they recalled. My favorite image of the lot had been taken in one of those old-fashioned amusement park photo booths. In their adolescence, Claire and her sister used to take the Red Car by themselves out to what was known as the Fun Zone, a small seaside attraction near Newport Beach. Claire often urged me to accompany them, but I always found some reason to decline.
    “Come on, you silly goose!” Claire would wheedle. “You can see for miles from on top of the Ferris wheel.”
    Though I have lived my entire life within five miles of the Pacific Ocean, as the crow flies, I have yet to see it firsthand. Looking back now, I think I might have enjoyed the view. That and the pure scent of the sea, which Claire used to say was even saltier up close than what I am able to perceive on the ocean breeze that carries inland most evenings.
    Another photograph showed Claire and Hilda well into their middle years, their arms looped at the elbows and standing in front of their father’s old humpbacked Buick, which must have been half again as old as they were. I’m guessing they inherited the car from their father when he died, and