Death By A HoneyBee by Abigail Keam Read Free Book Online Page A

  You see, I loved Richard Pidgeon and never stopped.”
          Talk about being hit over the head.   I was stunned.   How could this beautiful, accomplished woman love a piece of manure like Richard Pidgeon?  
          “I can see by your face that you didn’t expect this.   When I met Richard in college, he was handsome, witty and lots of fun.   We fell in love, got married and moved to Lexington.   Everything was fine.   I even overlooked his little obsessions about routine and cleanliness.”           
           “What do you mean by ‘his little obsessions’?”        
          “At first, I thought it was just his prissy nature. It wasn’t terribly noticeable, just odd things here and there. The yard had to be just right.   He wouldn’t wear shirts that weren’t starched . . . things like that. We had a good first five years together.   Then the car accident happened.   It was on a Saturday night, and we were going to the Holiday Inn to hear
    JD Crowe.   A drunk hit us, pretty badly. Totaled the car.   Richard was in severe pain for a long time.”      
         Agnes glanced down at her perfect manicure.   “It was then that his compulsiveness began to surface.   He was restless, impatient with any imperfection whether it be at work or just having his handkerchiefs not being ironed to his specifications.   People began to annoy him more and more.
           “We both thought it was his pain medication, so we had the doctor fiddle with the dosage.   That didn’t work.   Richard was becoming as concerned as I was, but couldn’t seem to control his moods.   He became more and more explosive. Finally, we resorted to seeing a therapist.   Richard was diagnosed with OCD.”
           “Obsessive compulsive disorder,” I stated.
           “Yes.” Agnes nodded.   “At that time, there were few medications for his problem and what was available made him sick.   We tried talk therapy but it did little good.   The therapist felt that Richard had a genetic predisposition to OCD, and the car accident had made it worse.   It could have been from either a chemical change in his brain or chronic fear the accident had instilled in him.   It didn’t matter.   For three years we went from one treatment to the next.   Nothing worked, and we were running out of options as Richard became more controlling and abusive.”
          “By abusive, do you mean violent?”
          “He slapped me twice.   On the third slap, I took a fire poker to his head.”
           I handed Agnes the newspaper article about her arrest from what was then the Lexington Herald , which I had copied at the library.   She read the copy with detachment.
           Agnes cleared her throat.   “This is wrong.   I didn’t try to stab him.   I hit him with a poker.   The charges were dropped. Richard came to jail to collect me, but I wouldn’t go with him.   My mind was already made up.   I told Richard I was going to divorce him.   As much as I loved him, I loved myself more.   I told him that we would eventually ruin each other.   He would hit me again one day and, on that day, I would kill him.   It was best that we part.”    
          “How did he take it?”
          “Hard, very hard.”   She glared at me with barely concealed contempt.   “I know what Richard had become, but deep down he was a decent man, a good man.   He didn’t ask for what happened to him.   It was something out of his control.   At one time Richard was a young man full of promise.   If that drunk hadn’t hit us, maybe Richard would never have become an irritable, selfish man.   Who are you to judge him?”
          I didn’t want to cause Agnes Bledsoe any more pain, so I mumbled a thank you and left with my hat in my hand, so to speak.   I sat in my van near Gratz Park scribbling notes about our conversation on my legal pad.   I tried to