Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

"I'm putting in an elevator. A friend of mine has trouble with stairs."

  CHAPTER 30

  From the porch of the Sunnyview Nursing Home, a resident would have a good view of both Morning Glory Cemetery and the Springfield Recycling Center. I wondered if the old folks appreciated the constant reminders that we're all future compost. Gerald Fraser saw me pull into the driveway, and he waved me over to where he sat, tapping his gimpy leg to keep the circulation going.

  It was a far cry from the picture I'd gotten of him last night. On the passenger seat of my Jeep, stuck in between nursery receipts and old copies of Garden Design, were the attachments I'd finally printed out from Lucy's e-mail of the week before: two articles from the New York Times and two from the Bulletin.

  The first Times article had a cropped picture of Gerald Fraser's graduating class at the police academy, with Fraser's head circled. Wrestler's body, thick brows, superhero jawline, and million-watt smile. Full of testosterone and good intentions. The headline read:

  CT COP SAVES JOGGER IN PARK.

  On March 17, 1976, Fraser and some other local cops had been in New York for the St. Paddy's Day Parade. After a busy day marching and partying, Fraser and a few of his buddies were watering some bushes in the north end of Central Park when they surprised two guys attacking a woman. Fraser zipped up the fastest and took off after the assailants. He managed to subdue them both but not before being stabbed in the leg so viciously the doctors thought he'd never walk again. And never be a cop again. They were only half-right. The second Times attachment was one line in the Metro Briefing section,

  HERO COP GOES HOME.

  The Bulletin's headlines were almost as intriguing:

  FORMER COP REPRIMANDED and FORMER COP TAKES ITS PRIZE AT BIG E ARTS FESTIVAL.

  "Come on up," he said, putting his paper down. "Hard to believe all this is coming back. And then some."

  I took the stairs two at a time and settled in next to him on one of Sunnyview's green-and-white-striped gliders. "I appreciate your seeing me." An attendant brought us a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses.

  "Thanks, Genevieve. I love to watch her walk away," he said to me, looking at her. "I don't get many visitors. Except Tom Robbins, the kid from the recycling center. He brings me scrap metal for my sculptures and slips me the occasional Victoria's Secret catalog for inspiration."

  "I'd like to see them one day," I said politely. "The sculptures," I clarified. "I was surprised when Babe told me you lived here. If it's not too presumptuous, you don't seem old enough."

  "I'm not. Some developer offered me a ton of dough for my property, and I couldn't refuse. I like to think of this place as a bad hotel I'm temporarily booked into until I find the right piece of land to build on."

  "Did you say something, Officer Fraser?" a nearby worker chirped.

  "I was a detective." Under his breath, he added, "Half-wit.

  "My wife had just passed away," he said, returning to me, "and the kids had scattered. It was too much house for me and too many memories. The last few years were tough, especially with the kids so far away, but she didn't suffer. At least, not according to that quack doctor. You know 'Dumbo' Parrish?"

  I shook my head.

  Robert "Dumbo" Parrish had been the class clown when he and Gerald were kids, but he gave up his plans for a career in stand-up comedy when a minor surgical procedure corrected his protruding ears and changed his life. Impressed by his doctor's power, he decided to devote his life to medicine, but fifty years later—and with no evidence of his previous deformity—many still referred to him as "Dumbo."

  "Well, I see your memory's still good," I said positively.

  "It's my curse. Take me to lunch. You'll be rescuing me from the week's culinary atrocity, chipped beef on toast. That way I can tell you what I know away from Nurse Ratched here." He motioned inside to a perfectly pleasant-looking woman whose name tag actually bore the unfortunate name Ratched. I agreed and we made our way haltingly to my Jeep.

  "It just stiffens up a little if I sit too long," he explained. "My leg, that is."

  "I feel like I know them already," I said, holding the car door open for Gerald.

  "Who?" he said.

  Maybe he was older than I thought. This was going to be a long afternoon if he couldn't remember who we were talking about. "The Peacock sisters," I said gently.

  "Sure, sure, kid. We'll talk about them. But the person you really want to know about is Yoly Rivera. I wouldn't be surprised if she's the mother."

  CHAPTER 31

  Yolanda Angelina Grace Rivera was born in Mexico in a dusty, corrugated shack held together by bottle caps. Her mother was a worn-out woman of twenty-three, and by the time Yoly was sixteen, she realized her life would be no different from her mother's. So one season, when the men went north for the harvest, she stuffed a few things in a nylon shopping bag and left her small town to go with them.

  In El Paso, the group contracted for agricultural work on the East Coast, picking crops in Florida—beans and tomatoes mostly. Rickety buses and trucks took them from one state to the next, one crop to the next, through the Carolinas, up to Virginia, then to New Jersey and New York. In New York she learned about the tobacco crop in Connecticut, and when the rest of the group drove south to start the cycle again, Yoly headed east.

  She worked the tobacco fields for a year, then got work as a nanny for a crew leader with five children. She wasn't much older than the kids she was looking after, but it kept her from the backbreaking work in the fields, and Yoly loved the kids and dreamed of one day having her own family in this quiet Connecticut town. When the season ended, and the crew leader moved on, Yoly stayed. In her last letter home, she said she was engaged to be married to a very important, very wealthy man, un hombre de renombre. Yoly's mother never heard from her again.

  Fraser unfolded a familiar-looking piece of paper and handed it to me.

  "This is the missing persons flyer I saw at the police station, I said."

  "No one wants to be the one to take it down. It would be admitting defeat."

  "So you think she's dead?"

  He nodded. "I bet her mother wrote a hundred letters, looking for that poor girl," Gerald Fraser said. "The department never even answered her. Chief Anderson just threw those pitiful letters in a drawer, said we had no time to chase down 'some little wetback.' Nowadays the mother would go on TV and on the Internet. They'd find the kid like that." He snapped his fingers. "Like I said, though, probably dead." He pushed his coffee cup to the edge of the table and signaled Babe for a refill.

  "Those days Chiaramonte had the only nursery in town. He'd hire illegals who were too scared to complain if he treated them badly. He denied it, but I felt sure that Guido and Yoly had met. What if they more than met? What if the baby is Yoly's and Guido's?" He sat back, a satisfied grin on his face.

  "Even if it's true, what's the connection with the Peacocks? Did Guido work for them?"

  He shook his head. "The sisters didn't like him. But he did work next door. And he was there a lot more than any gardener needed to be."

  "Still, who would try to kill him now, after all these years?"

  That was a question neither of us could answer. If my naive plan had been to save Hugo by finding the real assailant, it was backfiring badly. If Guido was connected to this missing Mexican girl, and she was connected to the baby, that could be a motive for Hugo, or some other Mexican, to have attacked him. And I didn't want to think about who that other Mexican might be. A lot of ifs, but this was a small town—even smaller thirty years ago. Anything was possible.

  "I just can't believe Hugo's involved, even if this Yoly is somehow related. Millions of Mexicans have come to the States. They don't all know each other."

  "Ray O'Malley, Mike's dad, and I were out drinking one night. We took some heat for it afterward, but we wrote to the mother in pidgin Spanish. You should have seen the two of us, with no more Spanish than you'd get off a bottle of Dos Equis. It didn't matter, though—th
e letter came back marked undeliverable. Not that we had any answers for her. We just hated to think of that poor woman sending these letters off into the void, and no one having the common decency to reply. Then this happened," he said, slapping his leg, "and I got sidetracked."

  "You don't happen to remember the town she was from, do you?"

  "I can do better than that," he said. He pulled a tissue-thin, pale-blue airmail envelope out of his breast pocket.

  "The postmark's illegible, and unfortunately I only put the month and date on the letter itself, but Phil Anderson was chief at the time, and he didn't get promoted till 1973. This would have happened a year or two after that."

  "You think Ray O'Malley might remember?"

  "I doubt it. They're not calling it Alzheimer's yet, but he's got all the signs."

  I held the envelope with both hands.

  Sra. Celinda Rivera, c/o La Palapa Hotel, Alpuyeca, Mexico

  "Can I have a friend of mine take a look at this? I promise to return it."

  "Be my guest. But remember, you'll be raking up something that's been buried a long time, and, chances are, whoever stabbed Guido isn't going to like it. If I think of anything else, I'll give you a holler," he said, easing out of the booth. "Don't get up. I'm going to walk back to Sunnyview. The exercise will do me good."

  Once standing, he looked as fit as he did in his academy picture. He strode to the door of the Paradise with just the barest trace of a limp. If you didn't know, you might not have even noticed. He must have felt me staring, because he turned to me just as he was leaving. "This doesn't count. You still owe me lunch, kid."

  Back home, I checked my atlas. Alpuyeca wasn't even on the map, but an online search showed it was uncomfortably close to Temixco, Hugo Jurado's hometown.

  I didn't know if Felix was back—or if he had even really gone away—and I didn't have his phone number, so at 6 A.M. the next morning I headed for the downtown corner where the day laborers congregated, on the outside chance someone there would know how to find him.

  Dozens of them, maybe a hundred, clustered at the coffee shop, dressed for work. Some knew who they were waiting for; most just showed up and hoped. They hoped they'd get picked, they hoped the work was safe, and they hoped they'd get paid what they were promised. These were the people who fixed roofs, laid tile, put up walls, planted trees—and we called them unskilled workers. Most of the men I knew didn't know which end of a hammer to hold.

  I was the only woman in the coffee shop, except for Gina. At least that's what was written with a black Sharpie on her uniform. It may have been the last girl's name. She was barely visible behind a hill of plastic-wrapped rolls. In Spanish, I asked if she knew Felix. She shook her head quickly and moved on to a paying customer. That went well.

  A young man shyly approached me to offer assistance. He identified himself as one of the small army of men Felix had brought to work at the Peacock house. I managed to get a cell number for Felix and reached him right away.

  "Hola, maestra."

  "Are you still in Mexico?" Damn—that came out too fast.

  "Yes. I had to attend an emergency board meeting and I also agreed to deliver an important package for a friend. Don't get nervous—I'm not a drug dealer. It was a letter to Hugo's mother and a present for her. He didn't want to entrust it to the mail."

  I moved away from the throng of men, smiling and trying to pretend I was having a casual conversation. "Hugo's been arrested for stabbing Guido Chiaramonte." A ripple went through the crowd at the mention of Hugo's name, and the men moved away from me, either to give me privacy or to distance themselves from a potential legal problem. I gave Felix the details. "They have Hugo's fingerprints on the weapon and they think they have a motive. The cops may not know it yet, but Gerald Fraser may have uncovered something even more damning." I told him Yoly's story.

  "Do you think Hugo could have known her?"

  "Everybody knows somebody named Rivera in Mexico. Close your eyes, spin around, and touch someone. It is like hitting a pińata: every third person is named Rivera."

  "Gerald has a letter he wrote to the mother. It'd be more helpful to have one of Yoly's letters, but this is better than nothing. Maybe her mother worked at that motel. It's the La Palapa in Alpuyeca. We can at least check to see if the place still exists."

  "Oh, it still exists."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've passed it a thousand times. It's the only two-story building in Alpuyeca. It's on the main road from Cuernavaca to the coast."

  "You're kidding. Well, then we can just call them and see if they know how to contact her."

  Before the words even left my mouth, I knew how ridiculous that was. Did Babe keep tabs on every waitress who passed through the Paradise? His hesitation told me what he thought of the idea.

  "I know it won't be easy, but Hugo needs us. And it may solve a thirty-year-old mystery—two, if the baby and the missing girl are connected. Isn't that worth a few phone calls?"

  "It's unfortunate you weren't there thirty years ago when Yoly Rivera went missing. It might have spared her family a lot of heartache." He chose his next words carefully. "We must be careful not to reopen old wounds if this has nothing to do with Celinda Rivera's daughter."

  He was right about that part. Why break some woman's heart all over again?

  "My Spanish is good enough for me to get in touch with someone at La Palapa. Maybe there were stories in the Mexican papers. Any chance of you getting info from your media contacts down there?"

  "I'll see what I can do. And I will arrange for Hugo to have the best attorney in southeastern Connecticut— one of those sharks who handles all your white-collar criminals. You'll see. Everything will be all right." "I wish I had your faith in the judicial system." The thought of media contacts reminded me of Jonathan Chappell, that pest from the Bulletin. Maybe I'd break down and talk to him . . . if he'd agree to do something for me.

  CHAPTER 32

  The dark, shaggy head bobbed up and down, fumbling for something on the front seat of the old white sports car. Leaning toward the passenger window of the tiny car, Jonathan Chappell looked up at me. "I was beginning to think you were avoiding me," he said.

  "What ever gave you that idea?"

  "I don't take it personally. Most people hate to talk to the press, even a small fry like me."

  Well, at least he didn't have any delusions. He was scrawny, bookish, and, judging from the fresh acne scars, younger than I expected. He looked as if he should have been writing for his college paper instead of the Springfield Bulletin. A scraggly beard, probably grown to make him look older, was just filling in. He pulled his car around to the right-hand side of the Peacock house.

  "Nice wheels."

  "Thanks. Got it on eBay. Still needs a little work. So, your highness," he said, hands on his non ex is tent hips, "why did you finally decide to grant me an audience? You must want something pretty bad."

  So much for being cagey. "I have some stuff I'd like to show you. There's a cottage in the back. We can talk there."

  "Okay. Great place," he said, looking around as we walked across the terrace to the herb cottage. I could see him trying to calculate the property's value. "Helluva job you've done here. It was a dump." He turned to me. "Were you here that first day when the Mexican guy said you weren't?"

  "Of course not," I protested, although I had been there the second time he stopped by, crouching in the maze until Felix assured me the coast was clear.

  Inside the cottage, we brushed off the rickety chairs and sat down. I started to empty my backpack onto the old wooden table Dorothy must have used to prepare her herbs. Then I stopped. "You have to promise me something."

  "Conditions? I don't like this already. Where's the trust?"

  I wondered if I should go ahead. "The only reason I'm talking to you is to clear Hugo Jurado's name. I have a feeling the baby I found and a missing girl may be connected to Guido's stabbing." I was having a hard time spitting it out; you'd
think I was coming out myself. "There's something about the Peacock sisters . . ."

  "You mean that they were carpet munchers?"

  I winced. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

  "We went back and forth on that at the paper," he said, trying to sound like a grizzled veteran. "To me, news is news—'All the print that fits,' as my junior high school paper taught me."

  Chappell claimed his editor yanked all his best stuff.

  CRAZED LESBIANS SACRIFICE BABY. HOW MANY MORE DID THEY KILL?

  I couldn't tell if he was kidding. "I knew he'd never let those stories run. Hypocrite. He said it was like putting in all the gory details of a child murder—who needs to know? 'The Bulletin's not the Enquirer, you know. When does it stop being news and start being pandering?' " he said, mimicking the editor I was starting to like. "Damned if I know." He shrugged. "I spent all of my time in ethics class hitting on the girl next to me. Great rack. She wanted to be an anchor—not a reporter, an anchor."

  I was betting she never gave this weasel a tumble.

  "I can't make any promises," he said, "but you should feel better since we already knew they were sweethearts and haven't printed it. No promises about the missing girl either. So now you've got me interested, who is she?"

  I hated his style and still wasn't sure I could trust him, but I needed him. I had no choice. I showed him everything: scribblings, notes, and the faded missing persons notice Fraser had given me.

  "Pretty girl."

  "I think you'll agree it's unlikely one of the 'sisters' was the mother of the baby. Yolanda Rivera disappeared around here sometime in the early seventies. I think she may be connected to the body. And Guido Chiaramonte may be connected to her."

  "So the baby was wearing a Mexican necklace. O'Malley didn't tell me that. Probably wanted to keep the crackpots and fake confessors away. And a Mexican girl went missing some years ago. Doesn't this give your amigo even more of a motive?" Jon asked.