Pushing Up Daisies db-1

by Rosemary Harris

  Pushing Up Daisies

  ( Dirty Business - 1 )

  Rosemary Harris

  Welcome to Springfield, Connecticut, where gardening just got a whole lot deadlier…Meet Paula Holliday, a transplanted media exec who trades her stilettos for garden clogs when she makes the move from the big city to the suburbs to start a gardening business. Paula can handle deer, slugs, and the occasional human pest—but she’s not prepared for the mummified body she finds while restoring the gardens at Halcyon, a local landmark.“[A] funny and entertaining first installment. May there be many more.”—Kingston ObserverCasual snooping turns serious when a body is impaled on a garden tool and one of Paula’s friends is arrested for the crime. Aided by the still-hot aging rocker who owns the neighborhood greasy spoon, a wise-cracking former colleague, and a sexy Mexican laborer with a few secrets of his own, Paula digs for the truth and unearths more dirty business the town has kept buried for years…

  “Quirky, original, and captivating…sure to please.”—Carolyn Hart, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning author of the Death on Demand series

  PUSHING UP DAISIES

  A DIRTY BUSINESS MYSTERY

  ROSEMARY HARRIS

  Praise for

  PUSHING UP DAISIES

  "If you like gardens and like reading mysteries, this is the book for you—a clever mystery full of garden lore, fast-paced and engaging, with a heroine who isn't afraid to get down in the dirt."

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  "A charming debut."

  —Library Journal

  "Quirky, original, and captivating . . . marks the debut of a sure-to-please series."

  —Carolyn Hart, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity

  Award-winning author of the Death on Demand series

  "A mix of sophisticated comedy, romance, and murder."

  —Connecticut Post

  "[A] funny and entertaining first installment. May there be many more."

  —Kingston Observer

  "Think Diane Mott Davidson's caterer extraordinaire Goldy Schulz or Earlene Fowler's quilting aficionado Benni Harper. Harris plots out a good story."

  —Omaha World-Herald

  "An appealing main character . . . Recommend[ed] to fans of Veronica Heley's series starring avid gardener Ellie Quicke."

  —Booklist

  "Paula Holliday is a sleuth to watch. With an intriguing mix of gardening savvy, sassy wit, and smart plotting, Rosemary Harris has crafted a clever mystery."

  —Susan Wittig Albert,

  author of the China Bayles herbal mysteries

  "Paula Holliday knows her andromedas and her viburnum. Her creator, Rosemary Harris, knows her pacing and suspense. Fast-paced and full of garden lore, Pushing Up Daisies is a great read. If rosemary is for remembrance, Rosemary Harris is an author to remember."

  —Barbara D'Amato,

  author of Death of a Thousand Cuts

  "A very enjoyable read and great tips for gardeners as well."

  —M. C. Beaton,

  author of the Agatha Raisin series

  "Get ready to meet a smart, engaging heroine who isn't afraid to get her hands dirty—literally."

  —Brian Freeman, author of Stalked

  "I just love it—intriguing mystery, great characters, and very funny."

  —Alison Gaylin, author of Trashed

  Copyright © 2008 by Rosemary Harris

  All rights reserved.

  For Paula V. Simari

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Kathy Schneider, Betty Prashker, and Michele Tempesta for getting me off to a good start. To Deborah Schneider for making it happen. To Marcia Markland, Diana Szu, Martha Schwartz, Maggie Goodman, Jonathan Bennett, and the talented people at St. Martin's for making it better. To Andy Martin for making it fun. And to Bruce Harris for keeping me relatively sane during the process.

  In the garden,

  beauty is a by-product.

  The real business is sex and death.

  —Samuel Llewellyn

  CHAPTER 1

  My first guess was heirloom silver, or maybe the family jewels, buried and forgotten years ago by some light-fingered servant or paranoid ancestor. I was wrong.

  The metal crate was heavy, about two feet wide and three feet long with a small handle at one end. Crouching down at the edge of the flower bed, I dragged it out of the hole and used my trowel to pry it open. I was hoping for a reward or at the very least an interesting story to tell. That time I was right.

  Inside was another, smaller container, ornately carved and cushioned by paper, padding, and disintegrating excelsior. I opened the smaller box and took out a tattered bundle wrapped in many layers of thin material. Given the weight of the box, the bundle was lighter than I expected—as if the fabric surrounded nothing more than a handful of feathers. That's when the butterflies first entered my stomach.

  Picking at the rotting fabric with gloved fingers, I exposed a slim chain with a tiny medal. Above it, leathery and doll-like, was a shrunken head.

  I fell back on my butt, flinging the bundle into the air, then I watched it land and roll over until it stopped facedown in the decomposing leaves behind a stone wall. I looked around, half hoping there was a witness but just as happy there was no one to see me act like such a chicken.

  I got up and tiptoed over to where the bundle rested. I couldn't bring myself to touch it but wanted to get the tiny face out of the dirt, so I nudged it with my toe. It didn't move. I did it a second time, but pushed too hard and the bundle rolled again, this time picking up speed on the sloping lawn that would take it into Long Island Sound if I didn't act fast. I wasn't much of a football fan but instinctively knew what I had to do. I tackled it. I scooped up the body and ran up the hill, back to the garden, as if I were heading for the end zone. When I got there, I shook off my hoodie, made a circle on the ground with it, and nestled the tiny body inside, so it wouldn't roll over again. Then, on unsteady feet, I walked a few steps and puked, over by the Album Elegans rhododendrons.

  But I should start at the beginning. Six hours earlier, I'd been minding my own business, lingering over burned cinnamon toast at the Paradise Diner. The coffee was better at Dunkin' Donuts, and the food was better almost anywhere, but the Paradise was my third place— that place you go to that isn't work or home.

  Chalky turquoise and hot pink, with Christmas lights on twelve months a year, the Paradise is a little bit of the Ca rib be an inexplicably transplanted to southeastern Connecticut, courtesy of the proprietor, Wanda "Babe" Chinnery.

  Detractors claim Babe stays in business by dealing pot on the side, and there is a suspicious patch of ground in the back surrounded by a hodgepodge of lattice, but I don't believe it's anything more sinister than your garden-variety suburban debris, and probably a lot less toxic.

  Though only the boldest of the soccer moms ventured in, the Paradise is a magnet for every male in town between the ages of twelve and eighty. That's also due to Babe. Babe is every young boy's fantasy bad girl and every older guy's shoulda-woulda-coulda. They come in to see what color her hair is this week or what sexy, tattoo-revealing getup she'll be wearing. And if none of them can really have her, at least they can dream, for the price of bad coffee and artery-clogging donuts.

  Twenty years ago, Babe and the late Pete Chinnery bought the Paradise. She'd been a backup singer and he was a roadie for a fair-to-middling metal band that'd had one big hit and toured on it for years. They socked away the money they'd made hawking rock 'n' roll memorabilia, and when they decided to settle down, they moved back to Babe's hometown and bought the Paradise. Less than a year later, Pete and another member of the Son Also Rises Christian Bikers Club were killed in a freak accide
nt on Route 7 when some crazy antiquer hit the brakes for a tag sale and sent the two men flying. To hear Babe tell it, there was more leather at Pete's funeral than at an S & M convention.

  Now the Paradise staff was just Babe, a revolving part-time waitress—this one named Chloe—and the cook, affectionately referred to as Pete number two. Babe claims she hired him only because it would be easy to remember his name, and from some of the food I'd sampled there, she might have been telling the truth. Despite our glaring differences, Babe and I had hit it off immediately.

  "Top you off, Paula?" she asked.

  I threw caution to the winds and held out my cup for more.

  "You seen the Bulletin this morning?"

  "I didn't know they bothered to publish that thing once March Madness was over."

  "The New York Times isn't the only newspaper in the country, wiseass."

  Springfield, Connecticut, is a bedroom community, one of New York City's many moons, more famous for the planet it orbits than for anything in the town itself. Springfield has a healthy mix of low, middle, and upper-middle classes, and we're within spitting distance of the blue bloods in Greenwich and Bedford.

  The Springfield Bulletin is our local paper, and unless it was college basketball season, when the UConn Huskies ruled, it took all of five minutes to read. Example? Now that the Huskies hadn't made it to the Sweet Sixteen, a recent feature was THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WALNUTS. I was saving it for some really lonely night by the fire.

  Babe slid the paper across the counter to me. The entire front page covered the death of someone named Dorothy Peacock, last member of one of the oldest, most prestigious families in Springfield. We had a Peacock Lane, a Peacock Road, a Peacock band shell, and undoubtedly lots more a relative newcomer like me hadn't heard about.

  "I didn't know there were any actual Peacocks."

  "I guess there aren't. Anymore. Not exactly the crowd I ran with," Babe said, "but I always thought their house was cool"—pointing to the paper. "Weird, but cool. They even gave tours of Halcyon's garden."

  "Their house had a name?"

  "Sure, doesn't yours?" she said, grinning.

  "Yeah. Right now it's Chez Citibank." I pushed my cup and plate to the side and spread out the skimpy paper. "Ever meet her?"

  "Dorothy? No. A pal of mine did. I saw her a few times though, from a distance. Looked like quite a character."

  "Oh, yeah, not like us," I said, returning to the article.

  In one deft move, she cleared the plates and wiped down the silver-and-gold Formica counter, then consolidated the ketchup bottles in that precarious upside-down way they must teach in diner school. She used a balled-up napkin to erase a few words from the blackboard behind the counter, changing the breakfast specials into the lunch specials.

  "Have you ever considered adding some heart-healthy options to that menu?" I asked gently. "It might help business."

  "You gotta be kidding. I should take business advice from you? Just don't eat the fries," she snorted, dismissing my health concerns and substituting the word French for home.

  I realized she was right and went back to the paper. The Bulletin carried a basic bio of Dorothy and her late sister, Renata. There was no mention of survivors. Archival photos of Halcyon and the garden were provided by the Springfield Historical Society. I'm something of a regular there, too, as well as at the diner. Not that I'm such a history buff, but designing on a dime is easier when you frequent the local thrift shops. And the Historical Society had a great one.

  "I bet those old girls at SHS could even help you get the job," Babe said. "The Doublemint twins?"

  "Who says I need another client? I'd have to leave all this," I said, barely looking up from the paper. But her arrow had hit the mark; my dance card was hardly full, as my almost daily presence here confirmed. Did I mention I'm a gardener? Zone 6. I've got my own small landscaping business, emphasis on small. I'm also a master gardener and periodically volunteer with local landscaping programs as part of the classes—and to drum up new business.

  "Since we're in advice-giving mode, why don't you volunteer at Halcyon—that'd be a real community ser -vice. That place has been an eyesore for years. And it'll move you into the high-rent district."

  Not a place I'd been visiting recently. The year before, a global media conglomerate swallowed up the boutique production company I worked for. My once-promising career as a documentary filmmaker had degenerated into endless speculations about Who Killed Diana. Or worse. Who killed some poor bastard no one had ever heard of.

  That had been the catalyst for this new chapter in my life. I took the moral high ground—and my severance package—loaded up the car, and made an offer on the bungalow I'd been taking as a summer rental. Then I hung out my shingle —PH FACTOR, GARDEN SOLUTIONS. PH is me, Paula Holliday. PH is also the measure of how sweet or how sour your soil is. The name was supposed to be clever, but so far, few people got it. And few people called.

  Every time the wolf seemed to be at the door, Babe chatted me up to one of her customers, so I had a handful of clients, which kept the bank happy; but working on the Peacock garden could definitely jump-start things for me.

  "I'm not a licensed landscape architect. This may be out of my league."

  "And you think all the women around here who call themselves decorators have some kind of sheepskin? Can't hurt to ask. Besides," she said, "I need to clean that spot where you've been sitting for the last two hours."

  "I have a mother, you know."

  "She just called. She thinks you should go, too."

  I guess I had been hanging out at the Paradise a lot. Newly single, I dragged my feet going back to my empty house. It was one thing to be a regular, quite another to be a fixture. Babe waved away my halfhearted attempt to pay.

  "Forget it. We're still working off the plantings you did out in the parking lot. Get outta here. And good luck," she called after me, betting I'd take her advice.

  Outside, I inspected the beds I'd put in last fall. Not bad, and they'd look even better in a month or two. The diner's LasVegas–style neon marquee was now surrounded by a tasteful assortment of foliage plants to harmonize with the tropical paint job. Very tiki bar. On the marquee was Babe's thought for the week. This week's was A CLEAR CONSCIENCE IS USUALLY THE SIGN OF A BAD MEMORY. Babe, in a nutshell.

  I climbed into my Jeep, mulling over her suggestion. Why not? The girls at SHS may know something, and, if not, I'd treat myself to the vintage ceramic lamp I'd been eyeing the last few times I'd been in.

  The Springfield Historical Society is located in a formidable brick building, early nineteenth century, with impressive white pillars and a great expanse of front lawn sloping down to the street. They'd approve of that tasteful description. Unfortunately, the own er of the property next door is one of those cheerful retired fellows who think even minor holidays need to be celebrated with a display of lights, hundreds of ornaments, and larger-than-life inflatables, so now the Historical Society is known countywide as the building near Holiday Harry's.

  I made a right at the giant bunny (Easter was coming), parked near the bicycle rack in the SHS lot, and picked my way down the stairs to the shop, sidestepping boxes of recent donations. That's where I was, poking through the castoffs, when I overheard the news of an even bigger donation. Halcyon and all Dorothy Peacock's property had been left to the Historical Society.

  "Well, there really wasn't anyone else to leave it to, was there, Bernice?"

  I cleared my throat to announce myself.

  "Hello, Paula. I almost didn't see you over there." In theatrical fashion, Inez Robertson covered the mouthpiece of the old rotary phone and pantomimed that she'd be off soon.

  Inez and her friend Bernice were known locally as the Doublemint twins. They were lifelong friends who sported identical upswept hairstyles (Inez's jet-black and Bernice's Sunkist orange) straight out of the sixties, although it's probably unfair to blame an entire de cade for their molded, shellacked heads. In additi
on to being the well-coiffed guardians of Springfield's best junk, with the slightest encouragement they were good for a little local dirt.

  "Paula, you should have seen that garden." Without missing a beat, she hung up the phone and continued, with me, the conversation she'd been having with her friend. "Once a year, the sisters opened it to the public. All the local children were invited for games, and there were Shetland ponies that took us from one end of the garden to the other. Then there was a race through the maze and all sorts of treats and exotic candies. It was a wonderful tradition," Inez added wistfully. "What a shame Dorothy couldn't keep it up." She patted her immovable hair for punctuation. "Their brother helped, of course."

  "The paper didn't mention a brother."

  "I'm sure of it." She tapped her chin, mentally flipping through years of town history. She slammed her powdery hand on the counter in triumph. "William was their younger brother. He disappeared years ago. Went to Alaska or someplace. No one ever heard from him again. At least not as far as I know."

  "Well, whoever's handling the estate will have to look for him," I said, wondering when I could tactfully get around to the real reason for my visit.

  "Now I remember. Margery tried to find him once, years ago, for some Historical Society function. Richard was just as happy she didn't succeed. Probably jealous, the old fool."

  Richard was Richard Stapley, the Historical Society's president; Margery was his wife. And now the house had been left in their care.

  "William was a handsome boy," Inez droned on, oblivious to my mounting impatience. "Quite a heart-breaker, too. He might have gone to Hollywood."