Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

  Lucy seemed to be her old self again.

  We watched Anna waddle back downstairs to the office, comfortable in her skin, her light, sweet coffee in one hand and a bag of buttered Portuguese rolls in the other. "She may be my new role model," Lucy said. "The mythical woman who doesn't think she needs to lose ten pounds I've heard tell of. And why don't I have someone who wants to help me and not get paid for it?"

  "C'mon, let the games begin," I said. "I want you to meet the cast of characters."

  "Sure, we can figure out who the baby is this weekend. Last night, I decided the mother was Dorothy Peacock. Now I'm leaning toward the next-door neighbor, this Congressman Fifield as the daddy."

  "And why do we think that?"

  "He's a congressman. Need I say more?" Close to perfect, Lucy fluffed her hair, blotted her lipstick, and was ready to go. "Lead on."

  The Paradise Diner's new thought for the week was IT'S DIFFICULT TO LOSE A SPOUSE—BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE. Catchy. The place was half-empty.

  "Health department been here again?" I asked, sliding onto a counter stool in front of Babe.

  "Bite your tongue, Ms. Green Jeans. You look good. What happened?"

  "Ms. Green Jeans? Where'd that come from? Oh, let me guess—Mom?"

  "You should be flattered. Not everyone gets a cop nickname. Someone must like you."

  "Someone must like me? I must be having flashbacks to junior high school. This is Lucy. She's an old friend, helping me with the garden; the valuable fashion and makeup tips are a bonus."

  "You do nice work. I can see an improvement already," Babe said, looking me up and down.

  "Just how bad do I usually look?" I asked, not really wanting an answer.

  "I'm helping with the garden? I thought I was here for a Ralph Lauren weekend. Read the paper, sit in a hammock, maybe get to wear all these tweedy duds I buy and never take the tags off."

  "What'll you two have?" Babe asked.

  "Turkey on rye, no mayo, and an iced coffee for me."

  "You're having a turkey sandwich for breakfast?" Lucy asked.

  "It's not breakfast, it's brunch. And it's never too early for turkey. It's one of God's perfect foods."

  "To each his own." Lucy was more adventurous and went for the blueberry pancakes with ham and Pete's special potatoes.

  "I like to see a girl with a healthy appetite," Babe said approvingly. "You're not going to throw it up after, are you?"

  "Of course not. I've cleansed, but I've never barfed intentionally," Lucy said, offended at the suggestion and making sure we saw the distinction. Lucy leaned over the counter and grabbed a copy of that morning's Bulletin, skimming the latest articles for mentions of me.

  "Look at this." She laughed. "There was a candy wrapper stuck in with all the paper in the box you found. Have you been sneaking junk food on the side?"

  "Let me see that." I took the paper. It was true. Crumpled in with the rest of the packing material was a Cadbury's chocolate wrapper.

  "So it was murder?" Lucy said. "Death by chocolate?"

  "You're cracking yourself up, aren't you? A stray, crumpled piece of paper that probably has nothing to do with this matter." Still, it was odd. And maybe a tiny clue. Other than that, there was little new information on the case, just a packaged statement from Win Fi-field's office.

  As we ate, Lucy launched into her theories from the night before. Convinced she'd found the father, she peppered Babe with questions about Congressman Fifield. Did she know him? How old was he? What kind of kid had he been?

  "Easy, tiger. Babe may not even know him."

  "Oh, I know the little pisher, all right. He's in his forties now. Terrible brownnoser as a kid. Even worse as a teenager. The Young Prince," she added for emphasis. "Thought all the girls should be tickled pink to jump into the backseat of his convertible. I hear more than a few did, and they were sorry afterward.

  "When he first ran for office, he tried to park himself here, to glad-hand and kiss babies. Tried to use my boys as campaign props since he didn't have his own kids. I changed the marquee outside to read IF CON IS THE OPPOSITE OF PRO, IS CONGRESS THE OPPOSITE OF PROGRESS? That kept him away."

  "Your boys?" Lucy asked.

  "I've got twins. Dylan's in Colorado, studying to become a meteorologist. Daltry's in LA, trying to make it in the movies." She grabbed a few menus and left to seat some new arrivals.

  "Dylan and Daltry?" Lucy whispered, making a face and playing air guitar with her fork.

  "I saw that, honey," Babe said over her shoulder, smiling. "It could have been a lot worse; we were gonna call them Rainbow and Democracy."

  "They did luck out," Lucy said, digging into her carbfest. "Your congressman sounds like a slug, but I may be wrong about him. If one of the sisters was the mother, we might have to eliminate young Mr. Fifield. He may be a sleazoid, but I don't see a stud like him going after sixty-or seventy-year-old booty."

  "I'm not convinced it was one of the sisters," I said. "If that baby was mummified, the mother could be anyone. The list of suspects can go back five years or fifty. Unless the body was tested, it would look pretty much the same. And if it had been moved it might not even have anything to do with the Peacocks."

  "That's right. Your cop friend didn't know, did he?"

  "Nope."

  Babe came back with more coffee.

  "Did they make Cadbury's fifty years ago?" Lucy asked.

  "I was starting to like you," Babe said. "Am I supposed to have firsthand knowledge of that?"

  I explained about the candy wrapper found with the baby. "Just another thing the cops don't know—to go with the mother, the father." I counted off the question marks that remained. "They don't know much. But someone must. Someone always knows."

  "Like who?" Lucy asked, sopping up the last puddles of maple syrup on her plate.

  I sipped my coffee and looked around, frustrated with all these idle theories. A woman with a stroller struggled with the door; I almost got up to help her. When she finally cleared it, she held it open for the person behind her.

  "Like, like—her," I said, stunned.

  CHAPTER 11

  The woman sat at the first table near the long picture window in the Paradise Diner. From there you could see the lake and what ever wildlife happened to be visiting, but she ignored the view, concentrating instead on unwrapping her shawl so that it didn't graze the sticky condiments on the tiny pedestal table. She looked around frequently, as if expecting someone.

  I motioned for Babe to come down to my end of the counter. "Do you know the woman in the corner?"

  "Never seen her before."

  "That's her—that's the woman I met at the house!" I hoped I was whispering, but I couldn't be sure.

  "Go across the street and get O'Malley," Lucy said to me. "I'll check her out." She grabbed a menu and a pad, as if to take the woman's order.

  I pretended to go to the ladies' room but dashed out the side door, across the street, and up the stairs to the police station, nearly getting creamed by an SNET truck in the process. O'Malley watched through the mini blinds.

  "I could ticket you for jaywalking, you know."

  "She's there," I said breathlessly, pointing to the diner.

  "Who's where?" he said casually.

  "The woman I saw at the Peacock house is across the street at the Paradise. I thought you were a cop. Are you guys really cops," I said, looking around, exasperated, "or am I channeling an old Barney Miller episode? Where's the Asian guy who looked like Robert Mitchum?"

  "Calm down," he said, leading me to a small private office in the rear of the station. The other cops looked amused. "She was just in here to make a statement," he told me, closing the door. "I didn't realize we had to notify you every time we interviewed someone."

  I sat on the sofa, refusing the coffee he offered me. "Outburst over?"

  "Can you at least tell me what she said?" I asked.

  "Why don't you ask her yourself? Ms. Gibson's a lovely woman. C'mon, I'll wal
k you back."

  He gripped my arm as we walked down the steps and crossed the street to the diner. "Now you've got me jaywalking. You're a bad influence, aren't you?"

  Babe and Lucy looked up as we came in.

  "That's right, Officer. Paula ran out before paying her bill. You gonna lock her up?"

  I looked around. The lunchtime crowd was going strong, but the mystery woman was gone. Lucy gave O'Malley the once-over.

  "Maybe I'll get her to perform a little community service," O'Malley said. "I need to determine whether or not she's a repeat offender first," he added, somewhat suggestively.

  "I love it when people talk about me as if I'm not here." I pulled my arm away from his.

  I rejoined Lucy at the counter, where my untouched turkey sandwich was still sitting.

  "Go ahead," Lucy said, motioning to the sandwich. "Eat. Babe and I will fill you in. That was Hillary Gibson. Her identity was confirmed by her old sweetie, Gerald Fraser, your new diner buddy and, coincidentally, the person she was waiting for. Here are her numbers," she said triumphantly. She wiggled a slip of paper in the air and handed it to me with no small mea sure of satisfaction.

  "You almost got away with the sneaky exit, but that truck driver had a few choice words for you which we all couldn't help but hear." She pointed to a lummox hunched over a mountain of food. "He's over there. I'm sure he'd be happy to repeat them."

  "Maybe later."

  "Anyway, Hillary decided this might not be the best place for a quiet tęte-ŕ-tęte with the old flame, so they split. She said you could call her. They did drop one piece of news you should find interesting. Hillary and Gerald don't think the baby belongs to either of the sisters, and do you know why?"

  "I've got a pretty good idea," I said.

  "I'm not sure we should have this conversation here in the diner," Mike said.

  "We've already had some of it," Lucy continued. "They were both very fond of Dorothy and Renata, and they're concerned that people are thinking the worst of the two women. Which is a hell of a lot worse than the truth."

  I'd been on the receiving end of Lucy's dramatic reconstructions since we were fifteen and knew this could take a while. Besides, I thought I knew where she was going. I took a bite of my sandwich during her pregnant pause. Pete the cook had struck again; tough as shoe leather.

  I swallowed hard and put down the sandwich. "They weren't sisters, were they? Babe, can I have a little Russian dressing on the side? Fat-free, if you have."

  "Would you mind repeating that?"

  "Russian dressing. Fat-free?"

  She gave me her are-you-kidding look, and handed me a paper cup of gelatinous orange goop, then just stared.

  "All right, Miss Marple, how did you know?" O'Mal-ley asked.

  "No, no, no, no, nooo, too old," I said, referring to the nickname. "Try again." I dipped a tiny corner of my sandwich into the orange goop. I remembered this stuff. It wasn't as bad as it looked.

  Now I was milking it. If this wasn't "Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a knife," it was damn close. Through the window, I could see Officer Guzman trying to get O'Malley's attention. I let him know and reluctantly he got up to leave.

  "To be continued," he said.

  As the door slammed behind him, Babe said, "He's taken the bait. Now it's just a matter of reeling him in, isn't it?"

  "I told you, I'm not interested in him. Not in that way."

  There may have been people who wanted more coffee, or their checks, but Babe wasn't moving. "Talk," she said.

  "Dorothy's sister was christened Rose. She goes to visit Dorothy in Italy and returns calling herself Renata. That alone might have been a tip-off, but the locals apparently considered it a youthful affectation."

  "She was so taken by all things Italian, she was reborn. I can dig it," Babe said. "After my first trip to Mexico, I called myself Juanita for months."

  "And it was hardly the hot issue in 1934," I added. "Their parents had died; people were just glad she wasn't closing the family business. You guys ever hear of the Depression?"

  Even more telling were the clippings I'd found at the Ferguson Library. Although similar, the faded images of Renata, before and after the trip to Italy, seemed to reveal two different personalities. Before the trip, the younger sister could always be seen with a big crooked smile, hanging on to her older sister's hand or watching lovingly from the sidelines. After they returned, there were fewer photographs. And Rose/Renata always seemed to have her face turned from the camera or covered by a heavy veil or shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat.

  "Maybe she was just growing up and at an awkward age, or maybe she didn't want to be photographed," I said. "And all the trips, the secrecy, the mysterious illness?" I continued. "What ever it was, I wouldn't mind getting it—she lived well into her eighties. I'm guessing it wasn't Rose. It was a different woman, and she and Dorothy were lovers."

  "Well done," Lucy said. "Hillary called it a Boston marriage; she didn't elaborate. Why didn't you say something?"

  "It was just a guess. Besides, it wasn't up to me to out them."

  "Well, they may have been gay, but it doesn't mean one of them couldn't have had a child," Lucy said.

  Babe broke in. "David Crosby's not that old. We're not talking Melissa Etheridge. We're talking the love that dares not speak its name, not the love that gives interviews. Those days, straight or gay, women didn't just go off and have babies on their own, even if they were financially in de pen dent enough to do it. It wasn't so easy being a little different in the thirties and forties. Not that I was there, of course."

  "Either one of those women was raped—," Babe continued.

  "Or it really was someone else's baby. And it's sounding less like an indiscretion and more like a crime," I added.

  CHAPTER 12

  "Are you going to do anything about it?"

  "About what?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.

  "The sisters?"

  "Let O'Malley handle it. My attempts to be helpful have gotten me nothing but wisecracks and condescension. If I wanted that, I could have stayed in tele vision. Besides, I've got a garden to restore, and I've given myself sixty days to do it. Speaking of which . . ."

  We pulled into the driveway at Halcyon, where once again my helpers had preceded me.

  "Just like my place," Lucy said in amazement.

  Behind the house, the true scope of the job revealed itself. In the distance we saw Hugo and Felix working.

  "This place is huge. You do need help."

  The compost bins had been built, and Hugo and Felix had already cleared away most of the large fallen branches and debris. Guido Chiaramonte's borrowed chipper hummed in the background.

  "Buenos días," I yelled.

  Hugo kept working, but Felix jogged over to greet us. Despite the cool morning, he wore just a sleeveless T-shirt and well-fitting black jeans, which showed his athletic body to full advantage.

  "Oh, my," Lucy purred.

  "Días. żQué tal?" he asked. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. Lucy looked like she wanted to make soup with it.

  She had morphed into something I'd seen on the Nature Channel—the blue-footed booby pointing to the sky to signal her interest in a potential mate. I was irrationally annoyed. And, just as irrationally, relieved when the object of that interest made a few polite noises in Lucy's direction, then left.

  "Very nice," she drawled as he walked away.

  "I really hadn't noticed."

  "Right. I can say this now. I was a little worried you'd lost your mind—burying yourself up here in Green Acres land—all compost and Arnold the pig—but I was wrong. This place is like daytime television, a cauldron of seething passions. Who needs the New York bar scene? One guy carries a weapon and the other is good with his hands—nudge, nudge, wink, wink."

  "Keep it down. These guys work for me."

  "And that's a whole other dimension . . . Mistress Paula."

  She lowered her voice. "All rig
ht, all right. I'm just beginning to see the attraction to country living, that's all. What am I doing here, anyway? Can I really help or did you just want to show off Don Felix?"

  I assured Lucy her help was desperately needed, and led her over to the brick terrace and a large green nylon bag held open by circular wires on the top and bottom.

  "This is a tip bag. You pull the weeds from in between the bricks and throw them in the tip bag."

  "And when I'm bored in five minutes, then what do I do?"

  "Then you find the Zen in weeding. You'll love it."

  I tossed Lucy a foam knee pad and a pair of gloves, and set about finding the Zen in cleaning out the herb-drying cottage. A shallow porch held an old-fashioned bistro table and a pair of ice cream chairs. Inside, hanging from the rafters were last season's herbs, tied into bundles and labeled with names and dates. How the old girl got them up there at her age was beyond me. Drying racks, strainers, baskets, and quart jars lined the walls of the thirty-by-thirty-foot cottage. Apart from a fine mesh of cobwebs, Dorothy might have been coming back any minute.

  Five hours later, weed and cobweb free, Lucy and I packed up, sent the boys home, and drove back to my place.

  "I don't know if I burned any calories, kneeling for hours on end. Are you sure that's a workout?"

  "Check your monitor."

  "Shoot, I forgot to set it for workout." She inspected her biceps in the mirror, looking for a pump.

  "Three hundred calories per hour," I said, "trust me. Next weekend I may let you mow. That's four hundred calories."

  "No can do," she said, still checking out her arms, not yet convinced of gardening's therapeutic benefits. "Going to Cannes, remember? But you've got me tomorrow, and if you ever need a firm hand with Senor Felix, I'm always available." A true friend.

  After a second day of calorie-burning garden work, I deposited Lucy at the train station, extracting her promise to come back in a few weeks for the Historical Society's fund-raiser.

  "Sure. Keep me posted on your baby, okay?"

  "Not my baby. Not my job, remember?"