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Pushing Up Daisies db-1 Page 5

by Rosemary Harris


  "So whose baby was it?"

  O'Malley shrugged. "That we don't know. We may never know. The two obvious candidates, those being the dead sisters, aren't talking."

  "What about DNA testing? Can't you do tests to figure out who the baby is?"

  "That's the problem with law enforcement nowadays," he said, looking around to his colleagues for confirmation. "Too much television. Everyone's an expert."

  I felt a sermon coming.

  "Here's the CliffsNotes version," he continued. "We can take a sample from the corpse, but we have nothing to match it to without exhuming the bodies of the two dead women. To go through the legal hassle and considerable expense just to confirm that some woman had an illegitimate child forty or fifty years ago . . . who seems to have died of natural causes anyway . . . what purpose would it serve?"

  "What about finding the father?"

  "You want us to take DNA samples from all the geezers in the area? And what if Dad was a traveling salesman or a sailor on leave? That little tidbit of information may never be known, but odds are very good that the mother was one of the Peacock sisters."

  "I guess you're right. I just thought with all the stuff you hear about DNA testing, you know, it would be easy."

  "It's a wee bit more complicated than it sounds. Without a reference sample you can't prove much more than that it was a human child, a boy, by the way." I was a little ashamed that I hadn't asked. "There are half a million DNA samples sitting in labs waiting to be analyzed. And thousands of people currently in prison hoping to have convictions overturned because of them. And these are mostly rape and murder cases, mind you. So don't judge us too harshly just because some dead lady's indiscretion of fifty years ago doesn't rank high on anybody's to-do list. If there's no real payoff, it's hard to justify. We can't exactly drop the sample off at our local drugstore like vacation pictures."

  "Okay, Sergeant, can I help you with that soapbox? You're right—too many reruns of Law and Order."

  "No, you're right. We should be able to do this, but it all boils down to money and priorities. The medical examiner's office just doesn't think it's worth it, given the circumstances. There will be an autopsy, but that will, most likely, just give us the cause of death. If that's suspicious . . . well, I'm getting ahead of myself."

  He paused for effect. "I can tell you that the baby wasn't one of the Romanovs."

  "You guys must be a riot at your Christmas party."

  I shook my head and tried not to laugh.

  "Does this mean I can go back to the house soon?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Someone will be there tomorrow to clean up our mess; you can start making your own in a day or two."

  "Thanks." I got up to leave. "So, they have Cliffs-Notes in Ireland, too?"

  "Indoor plumbing, but no CliffsNotes. That's why we moved," he teased. "Dad and I came here from Ireland twenty-five years ago after my mother died." He held the door for me.

  "You know, Sergeant, even if the baby did die of natural causes, someone did move it. And recently. Isn't that a crime?"

  "I said maybe someone moved it. Let us deal with that, Ms. Holliday."

  As soon as he closed the door behind me, I could hear the conversation inside start up again, but I was damned if I was going to turn around to see if they were talking about me. I jogged back to my car, then drove home, faintly pissed off but not sure why.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning, the Bulletin's front page was plastered with updates on the Peacock story. Almost everyone at the Paradise Diner had a copy. And a theory. Most of the articles were written by Jon Chappell, the intrepid reporter who'd been bird-dogging me since I'd found the body; twelve phone calls that first night alone. He'd tapered off to two or three a day, but every time I played messages there he was, hounding me, hoping for his Nancy Grace breakthrough story.

  "More coffee, honey?" Babe asked. "You look like you could use it."

  "I didn't sleep much last night."

  "Well, it's understandable, given recent events. I mean, it looks like the Knicks aren't even going to make the play-offs this year. I know a few other people losing sleep these days, too." Babe motioned to a tall, quiet guy I recognized as one of the Knicks' assistant coaches. Even he was reading the Bulletin this morning and not the sports section.

  "Anything else, Herb?"

  "Got a center?" he muttered.

  In the corner, I saw the guy whose coffee I'd spilled the other day. I saluted him with my mug. "I still owe you one."

  "So you do," he said, getting up and joining us at the counter.

  "It's Gerald, right?"

  He nodded, then motioned to the newspaper. The lead article repeated what O'Malley had told me the day before. The body found at Halcyon had "almost certainly" been the child of one of the two dead sisters. What the paper suggested, but didn't say outright, was that there wasn't likely to be any further investigation—though the writer was clearly disappointed. With no tangible evidence of a crime, what was there to pursue?

  "You were first on the scene," he said. "You buy it?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "Just asking. Dead women, dead baby, dead case. Awfully neat and tidy, don't you think? Most crime is messier. Most crimes are never solved."

  I shrugged.

  "Sorry. Old habits, as they say. Used to be my line of work."

  "Babe mentioned. It was here in Springfield, right?"

  "I got out of it. Mostly this," he slapped his bad leg. "But I couldn't stand it when the bad guys won."

  "Did that happen often in a town like this?" I asked.

  "Not often. There was . . . There was one case . . . missing girl. Gnawed at me for years."

  "Pretty girl? Long, dark hair?" I asked.

  He squinted at me. "How'd you know?"

  "I saw an old poster in the police station. What do you do now?" I asked, relieving him of an unwanted memory.

  "A little carpentry, a little painting."

  "Handyman?"

  "Handyman?" Babe said, coming back to us in between customers. "This guy is an artist. Have you seen the bar at Café Gennelli's? Gerry hand-carved the bar and created the sculpture outside. I'm saving up for one."

  "Just working down my bar bill; it was easier than washing dishes," he said modestly.

  I hadn't been to Gennelli's but recognized it as a downtown restaurant popular with the designer martini crowd, not a place I would have thought appealed to a guy like him. He saw what I was thinking.

  "My friend's kid owns it. I was just helping him out; the clientele's a little underripe for my taste. By the way, forget what I said about that other thing. I've just got too much time on my hands. Aside from the corpse, how's the new job going?"

  I gave him the brief, polite answer I'd been conditioned to give most people, but when he asked a few intelligent gardening questions, we launched into a lengthier discussion on bamboo, something he had wrestled with at his last house. I was for, he was vehemently against.

  "Well, don't try to plant any on the Peacock property. Dick Stapley will never let you. If he can't control it, he doesn't like it. Besides, they never had it at Halcyon."

  "We could plant some here," Babe said. "I'd like that . . . maybe put a hammock outside. . . . I could get a hula girl tattoo." She swiveled her hips in a way that drew ahs from the customers at the counter.

  "I'm gonna run," Gerald said. "Thanks for the coffee, kiddo. Next time's on me."

  As he left, he crossed paths with Mike O'Malley. They acknowledged each other with the universal male grunt "ay" instead of "hello."

  Babe held up the paper. "Nice bit of detecting. Take you guys long to figure that one out?"

  "You cut me to the quick. Here we are, making the streets safe for you and yours, and all we get is grief and the occasional stale-donut joke." Mike held his hand to his heart and faked a pained expression. Then he leaned over the counter and whispered something in Babe's ear. She howled.

  "Two large coffees to go and a c
ouple of those fine greasy donuts. Extra trans-fatty acids on mine, please."

  From the kitchen, Pete yelled, "I made those myself this morning. No partially hydrogenated anything, just pure unadulterated fat."

  Yum .

  O'Malley paid little attention to me and left soon after. The rest of the early morning crowd drifted out, too, and Babe came back to me.

  "What was so funny?" I asked.

  "Mike told me you thought he should be looking for the baby's father. He said he couldn't imagine trying to get the old coots in this town to jerk off in Dixie cups. He thought the effort might kill some of them."

  "They don't even have to do that anymore. I saw this on TV the other night, they can just use a cotton swab—"

  "Honey, honey, it was a joke."

  "All right, he has a sense of humor and knows what trans-fatty acids are. That's promising. What's the deal with him?"

  "Why—you interested?"

  "Please. I'm a gardener, remember? I dig. Never mind. I'm more interested in that guy Felix who was here the other day."

  "He's a honey, isn't he?"

  "I'm wondering if he'd work on the garden with me. I could use another pair of hands."

  "On your bud get? Don't count on it. But leave a note for him, and I'll put it on the bulletin board. I'll make sure he sees it next time he's in."

  We returned to our postmortem of the Knicks and their abysmal season, eliciting a few more grunts from the tall guy in the back and prompting him to leave.

  "Hey, think lottery," Babe called after him, as he stooped to walk out the door.

  A voice came from the back of the diner. "I could use some service here."

  "Sure, honey. I almost didn't see you back there behind that newspaper," Babe said. She picked up a menu and headed to the far corner of the diner. "What can I get you?"

  I overheard the man ask what I was having.

  "Paula? Egg-white omelet, no fries, skim milk in the coffee."

  "Yes, well, that doesn't really work for me. Two eggs, scrambled well, on a bagel, hash browns, bacon on the side. And coffee with real milk, please."

  "You got it."

  I fished out a business card and scribbled a few words on the back of it for Felix Ontivares. Then I wedged the card in the upper-right-hand corner of the Paradise bulletin board on top of the signs for handymen, gently used furniture, and a new miracle weight-loss program that promised to "melt 10 lbs. in 2 days."

  "Yeah, right," I mumbled.

  "What's that?" Babe asked.

  "Oh, nothing. You just can't believe everything you read."

  From behind his newspaper, I thought I heard Babe's last customer grunt in assent.

  CHAPTER 7

  A few days later I got a call that the yellow crime scene tape was down, so I hustled over to the Peacock house to start work. When I arrived, I was surprised to see two cars already in the driveway. The first I recognized as Hugo Jurado's old junker. An Olds 88, it either had a custom paint job or all the rust spots had finally connected to give it an eerie, radioactive glow. The other was a baby-blue Caddy, the type favored by Floridian retirees who wear those flattering plaid pants and white belts. I knew who owned that one, too.

  I walked around to the back of the house and saw Hugo and Felix Ontivares standing together, talking. They walked toward me.

  "Buenos días, amigos. żQué tal?" I asked, brandishing my high school Spanish. "Something tells me you talked to Babe."

  "Yes. We couldn't find your card, so I just brought my cousin Felix to meet you. It may be at odd times because of other jobs, but we can each work fifteen or twenty hours a week until the job is done," Hugo said.

  "That's wonderful. I wondered if you two knew each other. There's a ton of work to do here. If Felix is as good as you are, you won't need a lot of supervision either, so you two can be here even if I'm not."

  I felt obliged to deliver the bad news sooner rather than later. "You do know I can't pay you much," I said to Felix.

  "Babe told us. I can use the experience, though. And Hugo said you were a decent person to work for. We can do it."

  I couldn't believe my good luck. "Once the business gets going, things will be different. I'll need full-time help and for three seasons, not just spring and summer." I mumbled some more stuff that I hoped sounded attractive, but I'd already made the sale.

  We walked around the property, discussing the work. Hugo and I quickly fell into our shorthand way of speaking, half English and half Spanish, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I might actually be able to tackle the Halcyon job.

  Because of the body, I hadn't gotten beyond the planning stage. Our first week would be all cleanup; the area near the herb cottage would be our base of operations. Behind it, out of sight, we'd build a frame for our compost piles. All the dead plants and garden debris, unless diseased, would be recycled. Downed branches and those I planned to prune would be chipped and used as mulch. When Hugo said he could have the frame built by the end of the day, I had to restrain myself from doing a little fist pump.

  "It's quite a coincidence you two are cousins."

  "Well, we're not exactly cousins—that's just a figure of speech, like paesani in Italian. We come from the same town in Mexico, and our fathers know each other," Felix explained.

  Hugo smiled and remained silent, but I thought I caught a flicker of surprise in his expression.

  "I don't mean to be nosy. It's really none of my business."

  "No, no, it's quite all right," Felix said. "You'd be surprised how many people wouldn't even ask. Or don't really listen when you tell them."

  Clearly he was pleased that I did, but he didn't volunteer any more information, so I didn't press.

  When we reached the white garden, we all fell silent. Hugo crossed himself. I didn't have any bright ideas for the space. I knew I wanted to memorialize the child that had rested there, but not to the extent that it turned into one of those morbid roadside shrines that sometimes mark fatal traffic accidents.

  Just then, Guido Chiaramonte came out of the hemlocks.

  "Every good garden has a toad," I muttered.

  Guido strode toward us like some padrone coming to inspect the peons. Happy to avoid him, Hugo volunteered to start on the compost frame, and before I had time to say anything, he and Felix were gone.

  "Mr. Chiaramonte, how are you?"

  "I'm good, I'm good. My men are doing some work next door at Mrs. Fifield's. I came here earlier to see how my competition is doing."

  "I'm hardly competition," I said, shaking my head. "Is that Congressman Fifield's home?"

  "His mother's. Dina Fifield. She's a lady friend of mine," he said, making sure I didn't miss the implication.

  Guido pointed to my helpers. "Are those muchachos working for you?"

  "They're helping me, but it's not an exclusive arrangement. Hugo is a friend."

  "If you need anything, you should let me know. I'm always happy to help my lady friends. I see your girl Anna waiting for the bus. Sometimes I try to give her a lift." He cackled. "So far she says no, but one day she'll say yes."

  Not if she's smart, I thought. "That's very kind of you, Mr. C. As a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me." Just one little old, teensy-weensy thing. "We won't have much of a bud get for equipment. None, in fact. The Historical Society, and I personally would be very grateful for anything you'd care to donate or lend. I'm sure they'd publicly acknowledge your generosity." I added that last bit because philanthropy was not one of Guido's strong suits. He'd need every incentive to part with the smallest dibble free of charge.

  "I should be angry with you. You were a cattiva—a bad girl—for underbidding me on this job. But if it wasn't you, I suppose it would have been someone else. Getting money out of Stapley is like trying to get into Anna's pants. Difficult but not impossible."

  I still needed him, so I said nothing.

  "And I couldn't have asked for a prettier bad girl to be so close by. Come and see
me," Guido said. "I'm sure we can work something out."

  "Would this afternoon be possible?" I suggested. "If you're not too busy?" Fiddle-de-dee. And I promise to eat barbecue with you at Twelve Oaks! I didn't have much experience batting my eyelashes—I probably looked like my contact lenses were bothering me— but Guido bought the Scarlett O'Hara routine. And he promised me everything but a backhoe. He'd be pissed when Felix and Hugo picked up the tools instead of me, but I'd think of some excuse.

  He hitched up his pants and stood a little straighter, like some 1980s lounge lizard who had just scored big. He bent down to kiss my hand, and it was a good thing I had five inches on him, otherwise he'd have seen me roll my eyes. Then he flashed a gold-toothed smile, his version of courtliness. It took all my willpower to suppress a snort. Guido waved his hand dismissively at Felix and Hugo, then swaggered out to his Caddy, no doubt planning this afternoon's seduction scene.

  Felix and Hugo were speaking back and forth in rapid-fire Spanish; I couldn't understand much. Something about trees, money, and Guido. When I heard his name, I broke in.

  "I worked for Chiaramonte last season," Hugo explained. "There's a small matter of some unpaid salary."

  "That's terrible. I have a few slow payers, too. Would you like me to speak with him, Hugo?"

  "No, gracias. I will handle it. Perdóname," Hugo said. "A Mr. Chappell from the Bulletin was here earlier. We told him you weren't here."

  "Good. I'm never here for Mr. Chappell, okay? I'm already as famous as I want to be."

  We spent the rest of the day planning, deciding what to rip out and what was salvageable. Then I sent them off, with my apologies, to Chiaramonte's, where Guido would probably be waiting in a satin smoking jacket with a bottle of Asti Spumante on ice and Dean Martin on the CD player. I almost wanted to see it. Almost.

  CHAPTER 8

  If most of the following days were spent in the garden, most of my evenings were spent either online or at the Ferguson Library ferreting out snippets of information from a variety of sources on the specific plants at Halcyon. With the help of my new best friend, Mrs. Cox, I'd just about wrung everything out of the library and the newspaper archives. She'd even contributed some useful firsthand info, like the fact that Dorothy Peacock was severely allergic to roses and didn't grow them.

 

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