Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

  Neil MacLeod, my massage therapist and Dorothy's erstwhile student, agreed to work on the garden with me, so I was relying on him to fill in the missing pieces.

  According to the copper plant markers I'd found and scraped clean, the most common herbs were all represented, but so were pennyroyal, feverfew, tansy, rue, and others I assumed were either fashionable in the thirties and forties or were personal favorites of the sisters'. The lavender and oregano still flourished; once the dead foliage was cut back, they'd fill in. Wisely, the mint and lemon balm were in concrete containers, to control their aggressive roots; tiny clusters of lady's mantle peeked out in the newly cleaned beds.

  Everything else had to be replaced. No problem, though; my list didn't raise an eyebrow at Gilbertie's. They had everything, even the hard-to-find ones, like the borage Neil had been looking for.

  In the interest of saving a few bucks, and getting to use the newly cleaned green house, I'd started a few plants from seed. I don't usually, because, as it's been noted, I'm not that patient, but basil, nasturtium, sage, and parsley are so easy, it's just plain lazy not to do it. If the seedlings survived, I'd transplant them when they hardened off. Flats of herbs from Gilbertie's would form the bulk of the garden, and they filled the largest of the tables in the green house.

  Since my unintended nap there, I'd learned the greenhouse was an Amdega, the Rolls-Royce of green houses and conservatories. I'd seen one on top of a building on Sutton Place on the East Side of Manhattan—and supposedly Queen Elizabeth had one—so I was doubly glad I hadn't smashed any glass to get out that night. Hugo had fixed the latch on the door, but I nudged a broken concrete planter between the door and the jamb, just to be on the safe side.

  Everything looked healthy, and the nasturtiums had shot up another two inches. I was thinning out the crowded basil seedlings with a pair of cuticle scissors when I heard a tap on the glass.

  "Anybody home?" It was Stapley.

  "Richard, in here." He seemed in a fine mood, looser than I'd ever seen him.

  "I thought I'd stop by to deliver the news in person. As of today, ticket sales have put us in the black."

  "That's wonderful," I said. I offered him a seat on an upturned whiskey barrel Hugo had brought to the greenhouse to use as a step stool.

  "It was slow going at first, but I called in some markers," he bragged, trying to get comfortable yet still maintain his dignity on the uneven surface of the barrel.

  With the raffle items and silent auction, SHS would cover its costs, pay me, and maybe even deliver the bonus that Richard dangled but didn't promise when we made our handshake deal. I gently reminded him of it.

  "I guess I shouldn't have told you the good news," he joked. "We're not there yet. We'll see what happens the night of the party." I knew he still had hopes of prying checks out of some guests at the event.

  I gave him a quick status report on the garden, and saw his eyes start to glaze over. Good, you raise the money, and I'll handle the garden. I preferred that arrangement to one where the client was constantly second-guessing my decisions. He listened politely, but his mind was elsewhere, and I wasn't surprised when he rode off, presumably to share his good news with Margery.

  Now I was in a good mood, too. Not only did I have a realistic shot at the bonus, but if the restoration came off as planned, Lucy's idea of a Garden Channel feature might not be that crazy. I still had connections. I'd documented and photographed all of the major improvements. Why not? There were plenty of stupider things on television. That was the fantasy I was indulging when I heard another tap on the glass. I thought Richard had forgotten to tell me something, but it wasn't him.

  Felix Ontivares toed the concrete planter away from the door and closed it behind him. Instead of his usual work clothes he wore jeans and a gray V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt. He smelled delicious—a little sweat, a little Armani. He walked toward me slowly, finally backing me up against the edge of one of the empty potting tables. Without uttering a word, he bent down and gently slipped his tongue into my mouth. Whatever I was holding fell out of my hands, and I wrapped my arms around him, sliding my hands up and down the muscles I'd been eyeing for weeks.

  His mouth still on mine, he reached behind me and lifted me onto the table. Then he peeled off his sweater to make a pillow.

  "Someone might come," I said, breathless.

  His lips brushed my ear as he whispered, "Espero que asi sea. I certainly hope so."

  Felix's hands were on my waist, rolling up my thin T-shirt and stopping only to unhook my bra.

  "Wait a minute. I can't do this."

  "Afraid I'll accuse you of sexual harassment?"

  "I'm sorry. I can't start sleeping with—"

  "The help?" He laughed. "What if you don't pay me? Am I still the help? Or is it something else?"

  "Of course not."

  He searched my face to make sure I was serious. Then he rolled down my T-shirt. "Está bien, maestra." He gave me a fake salute and left me in the suddenly chilly green house.

  CHAPTER 20

  By the time I pulled into my garage, the first snowflakes were falling, but I was reasonably warm, thanks to the sweater Felix had left in the green house.

  I'd nearly broken one of those unwritten rules. Thou shalt not go food shopping when you're hungry; thou shalt not commit DUI (dialing under the influence); and the biggie, thou shalt not make the beast with two backs with someone who works for you.

  I had mixed feelings. True, I'd risen above my animal instincts, but feeling virtuous never seems to last that long, and it's generally a lot less fun than feeling guilty. It'd been a long time since the earth had moved for me. On the other hand, the image of me, half-dressed, flailing about, and kicking over the nasturtium seedlings was not one I would have been particularly proud of. I only hoped Felix didn't think my re sis tance was because he was Mexican. There was something in the way he called me boss in Spanish that suggested he did. I consoled myself with an obscenely large bowl of mint chocolate chip yogurt.

  I tried to put Felix out of my mind and enjoy the last of my firewood—and hopefully the last snowfall—of the season. Before settling in, I scanned my bookshelf for something I remembered picking up at a tag sale. I routinely bought old garden books despite the fact I hadn't read half the ones I already owned. There it was— Culpeper's Complete Herbal.

  Culpeper's is a six-hundred-page tome first published in 1653. My copy was an inexpensive paperback reprinted in the 1970s during the last big wave of interest in alternative medicine. After the author warns the reader about bootleg copies, in the seventeenth century, no less, he starts with Amara dulcis, which "is excellently good to remove witchcraft both in men and beasts." Always useful.

  From amara to yarrow, Nicholas Culpeper explains where to find and how to grow the herbs, trees, and plants he claims could treat common illnesses. Most of the plants were new to me—ladies bed-straw, for example, which was "good to bathe the feet of travellers and lacquies." Mustn't forget the lackeys. And duck's meat, which could be applied to "the breasts before they be grown too much." Cheaper than breast-reduction surgery, I suppose.

  I leafed through to the entry for one of the Peacocks' less-common herbs, pennyroyal, which was described as being "so well known unto all . . . that it needs no description." Wonderful. This was going to be a productive read. Then, under Culpeper's heading of virtues, I saw a number of applications for pennyroyal related to fainting and swooning in women and the more intriguing "provokes women's courses."

  I flipped back to his description of feverfew.

  "Venus commands this herb and has commended it to succur her sisters (women) and to be a general strengthener of their wombs, and remedy such infirmities as a careless midwife hath there caused."

  The next two snowy spring days I spent at home, buried in Culpeper's. When I didn't hear from Felix, I shrugged off the disappointment, telling myself it served me right for being so stupid. Then his flowers were delivered, and I softened. A
family emergency requires me to leave town for a few days. Take care of yourself, and my sweater, until I return. Felix. Like a teenager, I'd slept in the damn sweater the first night, then balled it and threw it into a corner of my closet when he didn't call. It was still there.

  In Felix's absence, I worked hard to keep my mind on business. Remarkably, there wasn't much that was new in the world of botanica medica. Another book extolling the virtues of newly fashionable echinacea, ginseng, goldenseal, and black cohosh was published over a hundred years ago. Roots, bark, berries, vines, and flowers of certain plants had been cultivated for their medicinal properties for centuries. Aristophanes refers to them as early as 421 B.C.

  Unable to work in anyone's garden, and not wanting to obsess about Felix, I was off on another tangent. One that would probably lead to nothing more nefarious than the Peacock sisters' fondness for potpourri, but what the hell. I needed a reality check. And food. The cupboard was just about bare. Can't put condiments on condiments.

  I pulled the Jeep in to the far end of the Paradise parking lot, honking to displace a group of ducks sunning themselves on a mound of dirty snow. They plopped back into the lake.

  "Hey, stranger," Babe yelled. "Where've you been hiding?"

  "Not hiding, just house bound. Doing research mostly. Neil was great, by the way. I don't think I ever told you. I should factor the cost of a massage into every job I get from now on." I stretched like a cat on the counter stool.

  "Massage is a beautiful thing. Keeps people out of watchtowers," Babe said.

  "You heard about Anna?" I asked.

  "Old news. Some kid, right?"

  "Maybe."

  "You've reached celebrity status in our little burg. Lotta kids around here with nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it. I haven't seen you, or Felix, for a while. I thought maybe you two eloped."

  Was the woman clairvoyant? "No." I laughed nervously. "I think he's out of town. And I've been swamped. We're getting to the homestretch on the Peacock job, and I still have the Caroline Sturgises of the world to deal with. Those monthly guys pay the bills . . . that is, when they pay the bills."

  "Well, you haven't been gardening in this weather. What else have you been up to?" Babe pressed. She poured me some coffee and brought a menu.

  "Taking a crash course in this." I reached into my backpack and held up Culpeper's, my new bible.

  "You be careful with that stuff," she warned. Not the response I'd expected from a former flower child.

  "People have killed themselves not knowing what they were doing with that shit. That stiff I told you about? The backup singer? Stupid kid drank something she was supposed to make tea with. What was the name of it? Neil would know. What the hell was it? It was like a woman's name. Kurt Cobain wrote a song about it—not about her, about the herb."

  I was not a huge Nirvana fan, so nothing instantly leaped to mind. I held the menu, but my mind was running through the list of Nirvana songs I actually knew until the jingle of the cash register snapped me out of it. Babe took a five-dollar bill from a customer and waited while he fished around in a small cardboard box on the counter—Leave a penny, take a penny. And the penny dropped.

  "Pennyroyal?" I asked.

  "Bingo," she said, slamming the drawer shut.

  CHAPTER 21

  "Decoctions, concoctions, infusions, extracts . . . It all sounds a little eye of newt, tail of frog to me."

  "You wouldn't be the first to feel that way. People used to be burned at the stake for practicing that stuff. It's not that mysterious. It just has to do with how much water you soak the plant material in and for how long," Neil said.

  He handed me a cup of tea. "It's toe of frog, by the way. Good Scottish recipe."

  "Any toe of frog in here?"

  He shook his head, smiling. "Straight from the Food Emporium. It's honeybush tea from South Africa.

  "After my first visit to Dorothy's," he said, sitting at his desk in a swivel chair, "she let me do some harvesting on my own. She was very knowledgeable, and I quite enjoyed her company. I went over a few times, early in the morning, after the dew had dried and before the morning sun wilted the plants. Dorothy was careful about that sort of thing."

  He leafed through some papers on his desk and handed me one. "I made a list for you. Things I remembered seeing there. My memory's pretty good, but her notebook probably has all of these in it."

  My blank stare told him I didn't know about any notebook.

  "It was an old black bookkeeper's ledger, with sketches and notes. She even pressed specimens in it. I don't think it was for the whole garden, just the herb garden."

  "I haven't found anything remotely like a journal or notebook. I've been relying on ancient news clippings and anecdotes from octogenarians." I groaned.

  "C'mon, let's go," he said, taking my cup and putting it in the sink. "I haven't been there for over a year. Maybe going back to the scene of the crime will help me remember."

  On the way, he told me more: how Dorothy believed in working by the phases of the moon, how she'd harvest only during certain signs of the zodiac, and pick only certain parts of the plants during certain quarters of the moon.

  "I guess that's why she needed the journal," he said, "to keep track of all that stuff."

  When we arrived at Halcyon, we could see Guido Chiaramonte and his men next door at the Fifields'. It was impossible to avoid him. He waved and, uninvited, walked toward us through the spotty line of trees that separated the houses.

  "Something wicked this way comes?" Neil whispered.

  "No planting today. Too wet," Guido pronounced, dusting the non ex is tent dirt from his hands as if he'd actually been working.

  "No, just a little planning. Neil knows a lot about Dorothy's herb garden."

  "Is that so? You don't look like a gardener," Guido said in his usual dismissive tone.

  "Too bad we don't have her notebook," Neil said, inspecting the beds and doing his best to ignore Guido.

  "A notebook?" Guido asked. "For what?"

  "Apparently she kept a record of her herb garden. I didn't even know there was one until about an hour ago," I said.

  "A record. What a good idea." Guido tapped his forehead. "But the old lady, she was a little funny at the end, stunad. Who knows what nonsense she may have scribbled?" he said, shrugging. Then he returned to his favorite subject. "So many years in the same house with only her sister. It's no good for the woman to be without the man. That's what I keep telling my little friend here," he said, looking back and forth between us, trying to figure out if Neil was his rival for my affections.

  I motioned to the Fifield property. "What are your men working on?" I asked, hoping he'd get back to it soon.

  "We are turning on the signora's fountain. It is my crowning achievement in Springfield. Eight tons of Carrara marble," he said proudly. "I commissioned two of the statues myself. We blow out the pipes in the fall and restart the system in the spring. We're late this season. Signora Dina has been away for a month, and she likes to be here when we do it," he cackled, pleased with his clumsy innuendo.

  "It's chilly today. Can I take you for an anisette to warm you up?" he asked, trying again.

  I'd never be that cold. I begged off politely, blaming Neil and the work we still had in the herb garden.

  "Eh," Guido said, not believing me. He returned his attention to his workers at the Fifield house. "I must go back. Otherwise those lazy boys will be standing around sunning themselves."

  I said nothing about the fact that they all looked busy and the sky was overcast. I was too anxious for him to leave so that Neil and I could look for that journal.

  CHAPTER 22

  "Is this what you Americans call breaking and entering?" Neil asked.

  "We're not going to break anything," I whispered, "and this is more like . . . trespassing." Still, unflattering images of people holding cardboard numbers under their chins flashed in my head. (Winona Ryder? Robert Downey, Jr.? Frank Sinatra?) />
  Neil and I had first checked out the herb cottage, a safe distance from Guido and his men. No such luck. Since Neil knew what the journal looked like, and I didn't, I thought we'd have a better shot at finding it together in the rambling old house. Otherwise I might spend days and still come up empty. I dialed Richard's number at SHS to see if it was okay for us to go in the house. Inez answered.

  "Richard's in Hartford for the next few days," she said. "Some big doings about a painting for the Wadsworth Atheneum." She started to elaborate, but I cut her ramblings short, telling her I needed to get into the house to look at Dorothy's garden books. She hesitated.

  "Well, I suppose it'll be all right." She paused again. "There was one door that never had a lock; it probably still doesn't."

  "That's hard to believe. I wonder why."

  "Things were different in the old days," she said softly. "Safer. Springfield was a small town; everyone knew each other. I'd be very surprised if Dorothy ever bothered to put a lock on that door." Her voice trailed off, and I had to lead her back.

  "Which door was it?"

  "To the left of the French doors on the back terrace. Well, let's see, that would be if you were in the house. To the right, near the statue of the woman holding the basket." I looked across the terrace and saw a narrow door practically obscured by a climbing hydrangea. If you didn't know, it would have looked another tall window.

  Hugo had scrubbed the moss and dirt from all the statues at Halcyon: the stone dogs, a respectable copy of Diana the huntress, and the little peasant woman I'd barely noticed before. She wore a full skirt and petticoats, and a scarf held back long curly hair. On her shoulder was a basket filled with wheat, and she stood guard outside the door I hoped was still unlocked.

  The door handle squeaked from disuse but clicked open. Neil and I bent down under the hydrangea and entered a small mudroom with an old Formica table, a sink, and floor-to-ceiling shelves. The shelves were empty, except for a few mildewed needlepoints. An inner door led to the main house. It, too, was unlocked.