Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

  * * *

  I nodded and pocketed the card.

  "Yes, ma'am. After a nice, long workout. I'm taking the morning off."

  "That's my girl."

  For the first time in a week, I was doing exactly what I wanted. Back home, I put on some music and wiped down my tag-sale bench and weights. For the next sixty minutes, I sweated, grunted, and thought only about my body in terms of muscle groups—chest, arms, back, and legs. I finished up by hitting the Fat Boy punching bag for thirty minutes. Then I dug out MacLeod's card, called him, and arranged to meet him at his place later that day.

  I showered, dressed, and took a cup of green tea down to my office to catch up on paperwork. After an hour, my billings were in order and I was feeling pretty good. If my few measly clients paid on time this month, I'd be in good shape.

  The Peacock job wasn't going to make me rich, but I was gambling it would land me at least one other big fish. My biggest client to date was Caroline Sturgis, a blond, velvet-headband type, who was plump despite her many hours on her newly landscaped tennis court. Maybe it was all those trendy drinks between sets. Caroline was a glacially slow payer and still owed me for work done last fall. It had been my largest, least-interesting job—over a thousand bulbs lining her court, and another hundred on the berm beside it in the shape of two crossed rackets. I warned her it was going to look like hell in June, but she didn't care.

  "We'll just change them all to white and blue agera-tum, and red impatiens in time for the U.S. Open!" she said, thrilled with her own design skills.

  Yeah, kemo sabe. We. Still, it was all but a guarantee of a future job, since the dying leaves from those bulbs would make her tennis court look like a diseased cornfield by Wimbledon fortnight.

  I made a note to sic Anna on her for payment, then it was time to hit the road. I still didn't know Springfield that well, and I'd have to hunt to find the Nutmeg Apartments, where Neil MacLeod lived, so I packed up my stuff, left Anna Peńa my favorite deadbeat's phone number, and took off.

  The Nutmeg Apartment complex was a cluster of modest, two-story buildings, barnacled with postage-stamp-sized terraces uniformly furnished with Astroturf and molded plastic chairs.

  When he opened the door, I recognized him immediately from the diner. Neil MacLeod was in his thirties, with closely cropped brown hair and long sideburns. He wore a metal stud in one ear, and I would have bet good money there was another piercing somewhere on his body. Incense mingled with the sweet smell of almond-scented massage oil in the tiny, immaculate apartment, and lest you think you were in the hands of a nonprofessional, a blue velvet curtain sensitively set off the massage table and two stacks of meticulously folded towels.

  "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice," I said.

  "Rust never sleeps. Besides, I'm a Glaswegian. We take the work when we can get it."

  I undressed behind the curtain and climbed on the table as he reeled off a laundry list of ailments and conditions. "Any recent surgeries, injuries? Any particular problems? Are you pregnant?"

  Only one of the conditions applied to me. My face was squished and my answer was muffled by the sheepskin face cradle on his massage table. "Stress, I suppose. A lot going on," I mumbled, "and I haven't been working out enough, although I may have overdone it today."

  "Can I come in?" he said.

  I mumbled yes. I heard him moving about the room and felt another towel being folded over my legs with origami-like precision.

  "You have to stretch after, as well as before. Most people don't unless they're in a class. Any parts you'd like me to focus on or stay away from?"

  "Stay away from my toes. I'm kind of funny about them."

  Neil asked what kind of music I'd like to hear, but other than that, he said little, which was good. Buck naked, I didn't exactly feel like having an animated conversation. Despite his slight build, he was deceptively strong, as I found out a short time later, facedown, with only a thin sheet covering me from the hips down.

  "Let me know if it's too hard."

  I was already on Planet Paula. After a few minutes, I drifted off. Too soon, I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  "Take as much time as you need."

  Behind the curtain I dressed. I heard him turn his phone back on and fill a teakettle. Over tea with a splash of milk, I learned how he and Babe had met.

  They had the band experience in common. Neil MacLeod had been the massage therapist for a perennial opening act called the Downward Dogs. Who knew that was a job? The Dogs toured for five years, then broke up when the lead singer, a free spirit named Skye, ran off with a classic car salesman from New Jersey. Unable to replace her, and getting tired of life on the road anyway, they divvied up their dough and belongings and scattered to the winds, right after a gig at UConn.

  Neil was telling this story to the sympathetic woman at the diner and decided it was kismet, or karma or something, so he settled down where the Dogs had barked their last. Now he lived near the university, teaching yoga and Pilates at the UConn Fitness Center and seeing private clients in his apartment.

  "What's that you're burning?" I asked, tying my shoelaces.

  "Is the smoke bothering you?"

  I shook my head.

  "It's a smudge stick—copal resin and rosemary. Copal is sacred to a lot of Central and South Americans. I smuggled this in from Belize, but you can get it online now. It's used in some Mexican churches, too. It's supposed to call in the spirits of health," he said. "I can't guarantee that."

  "I like it. Do you know much about this stuff? Herbs, I mean."

  "A bit. I've read a few books."

  "The house I'm working on has an herb garden and a drying cottage."

  "I know. I've been there."

  "You have?" So, he was Babe's friend who'd known Dorothy.

  MacLeod told me he'd been in the local food co-op a few years back looking for borage. They didn't stock it, but another woman overheard the conversation and suggested he contact Dorothy Peacock.

  "I left a note in her mailbox, and she invited me over for tea. At first, I thought she was daft as a brush— most of the time she talked as if someone else was with us—but she knew her stuff as an herbalist. I'm an amateur compared to her. Seemed a bit lonely; I didn't find out till later that her sister had just died. After that, she told me I was welcome to harvest herbs anytime I liked, as long as I was careful. I only went a few times, more to visit her than anything else; the co-op carries just about everything these days."

  We talked a bit more, then I sensed I was cutting into his free time between clients, so I got up to leave.

  "You really are tight, you know. And your left trapezius is pretty knotted. You carry your bag on that shoulder?"

  "I just slept funny last night. Listen, I may need some advice about the herb garden. Okay if I call you?"

  "Sure. We can 'gather the enchanted herbs.' "

  "Excuse me?"

  "Shakespeare."

  CHAPTER 15

  Good do-bee that I am, I felt too guilty not to stop at Halcyon to see how Hugo and Felix were making out. I didn't want my mental health day to leave us too far behind, and I didn't want Felix to think one kiss from him had sent me into a swoon.

  When I got there, I saw three vans in the driveway and a small army of Mexicans pruning, raking, nipping, and chipping, ignoring most of my borrowed tools in favor of their own rusty rakes and coas. A traditional Mayan tool, the coa has a sharp, curved blade and a wooden handle, like a scythe. It's been used for centuries in the Yucatán, and it's the tool of choice for many of the Latin American gardeners up north, who do everything but pick their teeth with it.

  "żQué pasa?" I yelled to Felix nervously. "What's going on? Who are these guys?"

  He sauntered over to me, as if he were the boss and I was his helper. "More of Hugo's cousins," he teased. "They're friends—just helping out for the day. As a favor to me."

  "Are you the Godfather in your little village? I can't afford to pay all these p
eople," I whispered, stress level rising again. "My bud get isn't that big. . . ." I started to protest further, but Felix held up his hand to stop me.

  "I told you: it's a favor. Think of it as the Felix Onti-vares Bracero Program. I know I should have asked you first, but I wanted to surprise you. I didn't want you to worry because of what I told you last night."

  I couldn't argue with that; I had been a bit worried, but the men had come in on their one day off and done an amazing job. Most of the dead shrubs were gone, and once we trucked in compost, we'd be ready to plant.

  Felix told the men to pack up. They collected their things, doffing their hats to me, nodding to Don Felix, and piling into the vans that would take them back to the inexpensive, crowded rooms and apartments they shared while they did their time up north. We walked to the back of the house.

  "So, what's a bracero program?" I asked lightly, trying to forget the feel of his tongue in my mouth and keep things professional.

  "Braceros were Mexican field-workers imported into the United States in the forties, fifties, and sixties to help with the harvests. Most of them went to California, Texas, and Florida but some drifted up the East Coast."

  "I'm not sure I like the sound of that. Weren't most of them exploited by unscrupulous companies and practices?"

  Felix stared at me. "I was teasing you. You need to relax."

  "I just had a massage. This is as relaxed as it gets."

  We continued our inspection tour, with me finally checking things off my to-do list instead of adding to it.

  All this time, nothing in his manner suggested he had planted a wet one on me last night; I started to think I'd imagined it or misinterpreted its meaning.

  "Hugo fixed the door to the green house . . . in case you decide to sleep there again to night," he added playfully. At the green house, Hugo was just finishing up.

  "ĄTu hiciste un gran trabajo! Gracias," I said lamely. Then I remembered how good Felix said Hugo's English was, so I dropped my pitiful Spanish.

  The green house sparkled. Glass panels and wooden potting tables had been thoroughly hosed down and years of soot, grime, and mouse droppings washed away. The antique sprinkler had been scraped clean, and Hugo spun it around to show me that it was still in working order. The chains and hardware had been oiled, and the roof panels had been opened—something I'd been too afraid to do—to air out the place. An iron plant stand organized empty pots and planters, all the wildlife had been evicted, and smack in the middle of the central table was a mason jar holding a bunch of yellow tulips.

  "They're only from the supermarket," Hugo said, "but we thought they might cheer you up."

  I thought I might cry. Obviously, those closest to me had seen the meltdown coming.

  "You guys . . ." I fumbled for the right words. "Why are you being so nice to me?" Hardly adequate but all I could think of.

  A muffled sound and slight vibration in my backpack interrupted. I hunted for the phone and found it just before the outgoing message would have kicked in.

  "Hello? Is she all right? Of course, we'll be right there." I hung up and shoved the phone back in my bag.

  "It was Mike O'Malley. Something's happened to Anna."

  Hugo and Felix were talking too fast for me to understand them, but I could guess what they were saying.

  "I don't know what happened; she's not hurt. Looks like maybe someone tried to break in to my house," I said. Hugo turned pale.

  The three of us sped to my place, where two silver-blue Springfield police cars sat in the driveway. I sprinted past them into the house and up the stairs to my living room, where Anna was daintily sipping a Diet Coke, and holding court for five of Springfield's finest, including Mike O'Malley.

  Anna got up when she saw me, and we hugged. Her blackened, tattooed eyes welled up, and she dabbed at them gently with a hankie.

  "What on earth happened? Are you all right?" I squeezed her chubby hands and told her to sit down.

  "Sí, sí. I am all right, Miss Paula."

  "Shaken up, mostly," O'Malley said.

  Hugo and Felix joined us in the living room. The veins were popping out on Hugo's neck and forehead. "Dios mío. żQué te paso, mi bella flor? Dime quién te hizo esto," he spat. "ĄYo lo mato!" Felix calmed him down, but Hugo's eyes were wild and his fists clenched. I'd never seen him like that.

  To make matters worse, Hugo hadn't seen Anna since her questionable beauty treatment, and seeing her two black eyes and puffy lips, he thought she'd been savagely beaten. Anna did nothing to disavow him of this notion. She stoically looked down and quietly refolded her embroidered hankie.

  "Tell us what happened."

  "Like I tell the police. I finish my office work quickly." She took another sip of soda. "By the way, Mrs. Sturgis brought over a check. Then I go outside to tidy up the toolshed."

  Good grief, how did she wheedle the money out of Caroline Sturgis so fast? I hoped threats weren't involved. And she was ambitious; my toolshed's a wreck. "Good girl. Go on," I prodded.

  "I hear something out in the woods. At first I think it is just the deer, but then the sounds came slowly, more de-li-be-rate-ly." She said it carefully, pleased with her new word. And why not? I don't know how to say deliberately in Spanish.

  "They start to sound more like footsteps, and they were coming closer. I call out. Maybe it's you," she explained, "or Senor Hugo," she added sweetly, fluttering her swollen eyelids.

  "I become frightened. I feel someone behind me, so I grab the first thing I can get my hands on, and I swing around and hit him in the face. Then he run away, and I run inside, lock the door, and call the police."

  "That was smart. He didn't hurt you, did he?" I asked.

  "No. I lose my balance when I hit him and I fall, but I have a lot of padding." Looking at Hugo, she stroked her extra-large mint-colored leggings seductively.

  "Well, you're very brave," I said to Anna, hugging her. "Somebody will think twice before messing with you again." Felix and Hugo joined Anna on the sofa, where they comforted her in Spanish.

  I got up and pulled O'Malley into the kitchen, where they couldn't hear us. "You're the cop. What do you think?" I whispered.

  "She wasn't hurt and nothing was taken. Probably not a serious burglar. A vandal, maybe. Sometimes they take tools or patio furniture—anything left outside can be a temptation once the weather gets nice. Usually they're just kids raising a little hell." He looked down at his notes. "From the description it could have been anybody. Skinny, dark hair, about one hundred and fifty pounds, age unknown—twenty to what ever. You know, since you found the body, you've acquired a certain notoriety. . . ."

  "Do you think they're connected?" I pressed.

  "Hugo and Anna? I'd say."

  "Not them! This, and what happened last night. Could they be connected, for god's sake?"

  "Well, since I don't know what happened last night, I couldn't say."

  Of course he didn't. I gave him the edited version, omitting the good parts.

  "Why didn't you call someone? Me, for instance?"

  "To tell you that I'm clumsy?" I felt stupid for letting my phone die, and I had no intention of volunteering the fact that Felix had rescued me.

  "Never mind."

  His beeper went off. "I've got to go. But we should talk. I don't see any mass conspiracy here, but I understand how you might be concerned."

  "That's very understanding of you. As long as you're here, I've got a question about the Peacock case. . . ."

  "Ms. Holliday, there is no Peacock case. Besides, I thought you didn't want to get involved in our local ghost story."

  Great. He'd been in the diner during my tantrum.

  "I don't. I was just curious. Forget it."

  In the living room, Hugo and Felix were still soothing the victim.

  "Hugo and Anna, who knew?" I whispered as we walked toward them.

  "Love is all around," Mike said. "You know, if she really did make contact with the intruder's face, he shouldn
't be hard to find."

  He pointed to something on the floor that looked like an instrument of torture from the Spanish Inquisition— a pair of dirty, steel-spiked aerator sandals.

  CHAPTER 16

  My mother is a wonderful woman, but she knows as much about gardening as most women who live in apartments in Brooklyn. She buys azaleas at Easter, mums in the fall, and poinsettias at Christmas, and watches their slow decline from the moment they enter her overheated apartment until she inevitably pitches them down a chute where unwanted items in New York miraculously disappear.

  That's how I came to own a hedge trimmer (I have no hedges) and high-priced Wellington aerator sandals (I have no lawn). Those sandals had been hanging, unused and rusting in my toolshed, until Anna Peńa pre-sciently decided to clean up the shed, arming herself in the pro cess.

  For the uninitiated, aerator sandals can best be described as cleats on steroids. You strap the spiked soles on over your shoes then walk around Frankensteinlike, sinking the three-inch-long spikes into your lawn. This is supposed to break up thatch and aerate the soil, thereby letting in water, nutrients, etc. You can also, as Anna learned, hold the flat side against your hand and scare the bejesus out of someone with even a kittenish swipe in their direction.

  I wasn't somebody who saw conspiracy everywhere, and weapons of mass destruction in every garage, but something was starting to smell fishy to me, even if it didn't to O'Malley. Was there something more mysterious here than a dead woman's old heartbreak and a suburban kid with too much time on his hands? Or was I turning into a hysterical female? I gave myself the benefit of the doubt.

  After the law enforcement types and my Hispanic friends cleared out I sat down at the computer, ready to do a different kind of digging. I'd already learned one of Dorothy Peacock's secrets online; who would my next victim be? I started with Lucy's favorite suspect, Congressman Win Fifield.

  The screen filled with Fifield links. I dismissed his official Web site as pure propaganda and clicked on the more interesting "Loser" Fifield home page. His head appeared full frontal and in profile, like mug shots.