Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

  Exhausted, I'd fallen into bed fully clothed the night before, so it was no surprise I was up like a shot at 4 A.M. the next morning, raring to go. It was far too early to leave for Halcyon, and, as dedicated as she was, I didn't see Mrs. Cox opening the library for me at this hour, so I took my coffee and oatmeal downstairs and turned on the computer.

  If I'd had any special gift in my last career, it had been finding things. Obscure documentaries, forgotten films, foreign gems. My biggest coup had been finding a reclusive film producer hiding out in a yurt in New Mexico. He was living an ascetic lifestyle while holding the rights to his seventies' cult classics which were now, unbeknownst to him, worth two million dollars to an interested party. He still has the yurt, but now it's sitting next to his Taliesin-style home in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  All of my once state-of-the-art equipment was now available smaller, cheaper, and faster, but for my purposes the old setup would do. People searches had changed, too, since I left the old job; it was a helluva lot easier than it used to be. Disturbingly easy. People you hated in high school could find you in minutes. How disturbing was that?

  I silently apologized to the woman whose privacy I was about to invade, but this was business. Meeting Dorothy Peacock, even electronically, would help me restore her garden. At least, that was how I rationalized poking around in her past.

  "You look lovely today. You've got some letters." It was Hugh Grant with my wake-up call. I didn't need another mortgage, cheap prescription drugs, or the dozen press releases from companies I no longer cared about. And I wasn't interested in the few e-mails I suspected were from my stalker, Jon Chappell. Delete all. If anything's important, they'll send it again; otherwise it was relegated to Spam Heaven.

  I googled Dorothy. No, not a school in British Columbia, not a porcelain doll named Dorothy from the Peacock company, no, no—. I scrolled down through the obviously incorrect matches.

  "Hello, I think we have a winner."

  The New En gland Women's Hall of Fame. Who knew? Dorothy Charlotte Peacock, b.1911(?)–d.2008. And they keep current.

  A small picture loaded: Dorothy, in her twenties or thirties. She looked lovely, head thrown back a bit, like the lady in the moon, even had the necklace. Dark hair, dark lipstick. Then the copy appeared.

  Dorothy Charlotte Peacock was born on December 6, 1911(?) in Springfield, CT, to Walter and Sarah Peacock. Attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, CT, where she studied Latin, French, German, algebra, trigonometry, geometry, chemistry, history, geography, music, and natural philosophy. In 1928, she entered Wellesley College. Upon her graduation, she embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe, eventually settling in Italy to study art history at Florence's Villa Merced. In 1933, she was joined by her younger sister, Renata (née Rose).

  The sisters were forced to return from Florence in 1934 when their parents were tragically killed in a fire aboard the cruise liner Morro Castle. Dorothy became principal heir to the family fortune and the guardian of Renata and younger brother, William, age five.

  After her return, Dorothy emerged as a significant patron of many of New En gland's rising artists of the time, hosting salons, exhibiting their works, and sponsoring numerous study trips abroad. At times, her home, Halcyon, was used as an art studio, and Dorothy herself gave drawing lessons to William and other talented local children.

  In addition to Miss Peacock's cultural pursuits, she was a vocal and generous supporter of various feminist and community organizations—among them the Maternal Health Center, Connecticut's first birth control clinic, and the Farmington Lodge Society, founded by Miss Sarah Porter, of Miss Porter's School fame, which brought "tired and overworked" girls to Farmington for their summer vacations.

  Although their home was unscathed, the hurricane of 1938 destroyed the famous Peacock gardens and toppled the giant "Olivia" elm that had graced its entrance. The two sisters spent many years redesigning the gardens, introducing an Italian influence, which reflected on their happy days in that country. With the help of landscape designer and herbalist Beatrix Shippington, the garden regained its place as one of Connecticut's most notable.

  In the years that followed, Dorothy's activities were severely curtailed by the declining health of her sister, to whom she was devoted. Together they made numerous trips to specialists all over the country, but Renata's health was poor for the rest of her life.

  Despite the fact that Dorothy Peacock was a renowned beauty, she never married, remaining her sister's constant companion until Renata's death in 1997. There are no known survivors.

  Well heeled, well-educated, and with quite the bohemian lifestyle for a single woman in the 1930s. And my friend at the Historical Society was right: there was a brother. But all that glamour, travel, Wellesley, the Villa whatsit, and then she stays tethered to Halcyon for much of the next fifty years. Trips to medical specialists were no substitute for spending the season on the Italian Riviera.

  The Miss Porter's Web site didn't give me much except its endless athletic schedule and a recipe for an icebox cake that Jackie Kennedy supposedly liked. Wellesley's was a bit more promising—friends' names, clubs, and the mildly interesting factoid that Dorothy was the hoop-rolling winner of her senior class; that's something to put on the old résumé. Back then, it was supposed to mean she'd be the first of her graduating class to marry. Guess again. I made a note of the friends' names but doubted any of them were still alive.

  I keyed in William Peacock's name, entered a search, and went upstairs to refuel while the computer chugged away. When I returned, the screen was full of William Peacocks. Apparently, this name was right up there in popularity with John Smith and Bob Potter. Assuming Inez at the thrift shop was right again, and he was on the West Coast, Google found no fewer than thirty who were about the right age. Eighteen in California, six in Oregon, two in Washington, two in Texas, and two in Alaska.

  It was also possible that my William Peacock was deceased or had somehow eluded the Internet gods and was not accessible to just anyone with a computer and a nosy disposition. I printed out the names and addresses and made a note to run the list by Margery Stapley at SHS before bothering to contact any of the Mr. Peacocks.

  Beatrix Shippington, the landscape architect who advised her friends, had hundreds of references. Most were for her gardens but many linked her to her famous clients, including an acid-tongued New York playwright reputed to be her lover.

  I was bleary-eyed from too long at the computer, and while this background information was interesting, it wasn't helping me decide what to plant in Halcyon's many empty beds. I hit print again, and went upstairs to dress.

  I had one other client to see before returning to Halcyon, a real estate chain whose seasonal planters I looked after. Three offices, six planters. This early in the year I had to go with annuals—boring but reliable. And the company paid its bills on time. That would take two hours, tops. On my way out, I grabbed all the pages that had printed out and stuffed them in my backpack. Just as I was signing off, I heard Hugh again, but didn't bother to check my mailbox. I had pansies to plant, and Hugh would still be there when I got home.

  CHAPTER 9

  After two more days of hard labor digging up dead shrubs, I was looking forward to the weekend. I packed it in, said good-bye to the guys, and left for the train station. In a sea of sweaty, gray commuters, it was not hard to find Lucy Cavanaugh. Wearing dark aviator sunglasses and a large straw hat, her glossy ponytail swinging behind her, she might have been off to chat up her new film on the Croisette. If I didn't know her, I would have hated her on sight. I stuck my grubby hand through the moonroof to signal to Lucy, and she sashayed over in impossibly high sandals, with a train case and a collection of tiny shopping bags bouncing on either side.

  She leaned in the passenger-side window.

  "I brought my entire medicine cabinet. What ever you need, I've got."

  "Hop in first. The natives get restless at any breach of train-station etiquette."

  S
he did a brief show-and-tell of her pharmacopoeia and saved the strongest medicine for last—Belgian chocolates, which I pronounced too beautiful to eat.

  "We'll see, Miss Holier-Than-Thou Health Freak," Lucy said. "You manage to squeeze booze and coffee into your diet. How big a leap can it be to the really hard stuff?"

  A blast from somebody's horn broke up the girl talk.

  "The light was green for two seconds." Lucy turned around and gave the driver one of her best withering looks.

  "As someone told me recently, we have everything here they have in the big city."

  The car behind us passed on the right, and the driver flipped Lucy the bird. "Including assholes, apparently," she said.

  She dug through her shopping bags until she found the item she was looking for. "This you're gonna love . . . and it has zero calories."

  I was dubious.

  "It's a watch with a heart-rate monitor. I saw it and it screamed Paula. I bought one, too. I've been addicted to it since I bought them. You can even see how many calories you burn while you're having sex."

  "That must come in handy when your mind wanders."

  On the way back to my place we caught up. Mostly gossip about former colleagues—who's changed jobs, who's sleeping with whom, who's getting fat injections.

  "Make yourself comfortable," I said, unloading bags in the hallway. "I'm gonna take a quick shower."

  "Good idea," Lucy said. "I thought it smelled a little horsey in the car."

  Fifteen minutes later, I'd changed, but my tiny deck was positively transformed. Filled with candles, pillows, and two artfully thrown pieces of Provençal fabric Lucy had bought on her last trip to Cannes, it looked like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Music was playing, the wine was breathing, and Lucy had snipped a few daffodils from my back garden and stuck them in a tall blue glass.

  "You're gonna make somebody a damn fine little wife one day."

  "I'm still trying to get you to come to Cannes with me for the next festival. Eat fatty foods, drink to wretched excess, ward off the advances of swarthy foreigners? Sound good? There'll be exercise, too. . . . You can climb up that damn hill to the old part of town two or three times a day."

  "I can do all that in Connecticut and not have to deal with the cheese and the chain-smokers. Not this year," I said. "Halcyon is a make-or-break opportunity for me. And it's gotten off to a rocky start."

  "To say the least. And I'm here for you, pumpkin." She patted my hand.

  "I'm glad to hear you say that, because I desperately need you this weekend." At this point, I thought it wise not to mention it was for manual labor. I poured her some wine and gave her all the gory details of my find.

  She voted for Dorothy Peacock as the mother. "I took care of a sick relative once. When I wasn't feeling like a martyr, I wanted to strangle her. Believe me, it's draining. The old girl probably just needed to kick back a bit, got caught unprepared, and had an unfortunate accident. Then the baby didn't make it. Muy trágico, but I think it happened a lot in the old days. High infant mortality rates back then."

  "I don't know. From what I've read about her, a rebel, sure, but not crazy enough to bury a baby in the backyard with the pachysandra."

  "All right, what do you think's going on in Cabot Cove, Jessica?"

  "There's something going on, but I'm not sure what." I sipped my wine. "I bet that woman I met could tell some tales. The mystery lady with the shawl."

  "Yeah, yeah. What about the cops? Spill."

  "Well, one of them is kind of cute. My type. Smart, funny. The tubby one."

  "And?"

  "And nothing. We've exchanged—" I paused, searching for the right word.

  "What? The secret handshake? Precious bodily fluids?"

  "No, you idiot. Meaningful glances," I said carefully. "Badinage," I said, dragging out the word for effect.

  We were laughing by then and were more than a little toasted. Lucy polished off the rest of the wine while I went in the house for another bottle.

  Inside, I realized I had the munchies, so I threw together a quick meal—cheese and crackers, tofu, and olives, and balanced them on a large painted tray.

  "Want to give me a hand in here?" I yelled.

  "Sure," she said, opening the slider. "How's the wacky neighbor? Seems quiet."

  "I'm almost afraid to say it, but he's not so bad this year. I think someone is showing him some love."

  I put the tray down, and we started to pick.

  "That's all he needed, a little nooky?" She poked through the olives for a juicy Sicilian.

  I shrugged. "Who knows? There are still loud bursts of music, but less often and for shorter periods of time."

  "So he's either making the naked pretzel or just dispatching his victims more quickly."

  My ex had said only twelve-year-old girls needed to squeal every time they jumped in a pool. Chris thought the neighbor was a perv. I simply assumed he was a jerk.

  "Let's get back to your body," Lucy said.

  "One hundred and sixteen pounds, body fat twelve percent. Higher than it used to be."

  "Has anyone suggested that you might be getting just the tiniest bit obsessive about this fitness regimen? I meant the dead body, not the annoyingly lean and toned one I'm looking at."

  I reached daintily for an olive.

  "What about sex in the big city? Don't I get to hear about that?"

  "I don't kiss and tell."

  The wine nearly came out of my nose. "Since when?"

  "I don't know—more meaningless, bouncing-off-the-walls sex? Who needs it?"

  "Didn't you just say a little nooky works for most people?"

  "Did I? Well, you know I'm not most people."

  Now we were giggling like twelve-year-old girls, and it barely registered when an engine started, a car sputtered and quietly crept away.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucy's face was inches from my own.

  "There's a strange woman downstairs," she whispered, leaning over me, eyes wide.

  "Some would say there are two strange women upstairs," I said, raising myself onto my elbows.

  "This one has two black eyes."

  That got my attention. I sat up.

  "Anna? żEstá aquí?"

  Anna responded in the slow, third-grade-level Spanish she knew I could understand.

  "That's Anna Peńa," I told Lucy.

  "Annapurna?"

  "Pena, you idiot. Let me get up."

  Lucy had been up for hours, plowing through a month's worth of Hollywood Reporters that she'd brought with her, while I slept off a hangover. She looked crisp and polished in a New Yorker's idea of country gear—corduroys, turtleneck tucked in, with a belt. By way of contrast, I looked and felt rumpled, like I'd been on a bender.

  "Why does she have two black eyes?"

  "She's had her eyelids tattooed."

  "Ouch."

  "Make some coffee, I'll meet you in the kitchen."

  I dressed quickly, avoiding the mirror as much as possible.

  "You've turned into a lightweight," Lucy said, pouring coffee as I stumbled into the kitchen.

  "I just don't put away three bottles of wine on a regular basis anymore."

  "My condolences. Here, drink up." She handed me a mug. "I know," she said nostalgically, "our ranks are dwindling. Everyone's so healthy these days, it's depressing."

  "Anything else depressing you?"

  She shook her head. "I'm fine," she said, but her face had darkened.

  "Bull. I know how I feel when I say I'm fine, and it's rarely fine."

  "Work. All the same people, hawking all the same stuff. I did an enormous amount of work on that kids' show and then it fell through. Kaput. So then you end up pitching another remake of some classic you hated in school or, worse, reality shows. Sometimes it all seems so stupid. Plus . . . I'm not the cutest little girl in the room anymore."

  "Sure you are," I said in true sisterly fashion. "And you definitely are this morning," I whispered, "compa
red to me and Anna. It's just preshow anxiety. You're worried you won't find the next big thing, but you always do." That cheered her up.

  "We'll go to the Paradise," I said. "I guarantee you'll feel better after you meet Babe. She's my new role model."

  Just then Anna walked in. She did, indeed, look strange. A large woman, she was partial to stretchy, pastel leggings and tiny jeweled slippers, what ever the weather. Her denim jacket was bedazzled in elaborate patterns.

  But what had startled Lucy were Anna's eyes. They were tattooed with two stripes of permanent eyeliner, one black and one green. And her eyebrows were filled in in solid chocolate brown, giving her a look of perpetual surprise. Then came the lips—bee-stung is a word that's often used—these looked more like rattlesnake bites. Until all the swelling went down, she'd look like a Maori who'd been in a fight and lost big.

  I told Lucy I needed five minutes more to regroup before we left for the diner, then took my coffee and left the pair of them to what would undoubtedly be an unusual conversation.

  Five minutes was wildly optimistic. My face was puffy. I hadn't had a good haircut in months. Roberto, astronomically priced stylist to the mid-level media types in New York, kept canceling my appointments. I should have known it was a mistake to leave a phone number with anything other than a New York area code.

  I was fanatical about working out, but all that maintenance stuff—manicures, pedicures, facials—I hadn't done any of that for ages, and it showed. Thank God for Stila. I concealed, blushed, curled, and was back in the kitchen in fifteen minutes.

  "Loaded for bear?" Lucy asked, after eyeing the paint job. "Do we happen to be stopping by the police station, or is all this for Felix, the handsome, brooding groundskeeper?"

  "Too much?"

  "No, I like it. And it beats the hell out of that American Gothic look you were sporting yesterday."