I'd go home, take a short run, and eat clean. Digging in the garden the last few days had been a good upper-body workout. I wouldn't be worrying Serena Williams anytime soon, but my arms looked good. There was still an hour or so of daylight, and the run would help me think.
I quickly changed and strapped the heart-rate monitor on, making sure the watch was set for Workout. At the last minute, I grabbed my baseball hat with the reflective tape on it and a nylon anorak. The rain Al Roker had promised hadn't materialized yet, but there was a good chance it would come soon, probably while I was out running in the middle of nowhere.
For the first two miles, everything hurt. Then I settled into a rhythm. My heart rate was good, and if I'd been running with anyone, I would have been able to keep up a conversation.
I got to the intersection of Huckleberry and Glen-dale. If I turned left, it was another six miles back to the house; if I turned right, I could cut through the UConn parking lot and be home in twenty minutes. Just then it started to drizzle, and that made the decision for me. I pulled on the anorak, tied the drawstring hood tight around my hat, and took the shortcut home. The cloud cover made it dark sooner than I'd expected. I was sorry I hadn't brought a small flashlight with me, but hopefully the reflective tape on my hat would keep me from getting killed by oncoming traffic.
As I jogged through the deserted parking lot, I noticed a vehicle at the entrance to the recycling center. The center was padlocked after 3, so I couldn't imagine who'd be there. I tiptoed across the street, past the cemetery, and onto the fringes of the Sunnyview property, where I knelt behind a staggered hedge of Japan-ese barberry to find out.
I saw a nursery pickup—open in the back, with two or three power lawn mowers and rakes and other garden implements strapped to the raised wooden sides. A brown tarp was tied down, covering something in the back of the truck, and the bottom of the tarp obscured my view of the license plate.
I heard the sounds of shuffling feet, then the clang of metal against metal—a chain dragging across the chain-link fence, but I still hadn't seen anybody. I crouched down a little lower. The gate squeaked open. The rain was coming down pretty good by then. The prickly barberry was scratching my legs and I was getting paranoid about ticks, but I flattened myself as much as I could behind the hedge. Someone must have heard me, because I saw a flashlight switch on and point in my direction. I remembered the bit of reflective tape on my baseball hat and tore it off and stuck it in my pocket. Then I held my breath and waited.
The light moved back to the recycling center and disappeared. After a while, I crab walked closer to the road for a better view of the truck. It was dark green. Big deal; most nursery trucks were. The scratches on my legs were stinging now. Great, I was probably sitting in a patch of poison ivy, and for what? To watch somebody dumping a refrigerator or pilfering compost? I was just about to stand when I heard cursing and angry muttering. I hunkered down just as the door slammed and the truck screeched out of there. A second vehicle followed, swerving close to the shoulder where I was hiding. I fell backward, hitting my head on a tree stump. The next thing I saw was a man standing over me whacking his palm with the long object he held in his other hand.
CHAPTER 41
"You wanna come outta there?"
Soaked to the skin, legs covered with raised red welts, leaves and twigs stuck to my hat and anorak, I must have presented a ridiculous picture to Sunnyview's security guard.
With his flashlight, he lit my way out of the brambles, and we got to the entrance of the nursing home just as the patrol car did. Officers Guzman and Smythe tried unsuccessfully to hide their amusement.
"I thought you were going to wait for us, Uncle Rudy," Guzman said, kissing the security guard.
"We could use a little excitement around here," he said. "I knew it was nothing I couldn't handle."
The cops walked toward me as I sat on the steps of the porch, rubbing the back of my head and drying myself with a towel someone had tossed me. I was bigger news than the bingo game going on inside, so I was garnering quite an audience. All the residents who were ambulatory and not hearing-impaired drifted out to see what was up.
"Are you okay?" Officer Smythe asked.
"I'm all right."
"I know there's a very simple explanation for why we're here. Isn't there?" He was almost laughing.
"There is. At least, there was a while ago."
I checked my watch and groaned. It read 54. Somehow I knew my heart rate wasn't going to be helpful, so I pressed a button on the side of the watch and switched from Workout mode back to Time. It was 10:15. I'd been out there much longer than I realized. I must have passed out when I hit my head.
"I'm not sure what time it was when I saw the truck, but it was just after the rain started."
"And what truck was that?"
I described the truck but had no information on the vehicle that knocked me into the woods.
"The center closes at three, but a few local businesses have the keys," Rudy said. "They get special permission from the town, 'cause they drop off a lot of stuff and they're too busy during regular hours." He seemed disappointed I hadn't been observing aliens or waiting for the mother ship to pick me up.
The cops were satisfied with this explanation, but they, too, looked like they were waiting for another, more outlandish story from me. When, exactly, had I turned into the town loony?
"I didn't hear any bottles or cans," I said lamely.
"Maybe it was catalogs, dear," one of the Sunnyview residents volunteered. "We get so many of them."
"What if somebody was dumping something they didn't want anyone to see?" I said, convincing no one. Not even myself.
"We'll make sure the lock's not broken, but if they had the key, there's nothing illegal about accidentally leaving a gate open," Smythe said.
Guzman was kinder. "What exactly do you think you saw?"
I was uncharacteristically speechless.
"Is there anything else you can tell us about the truck?"
I was grateful she didn't just blow me off, and I described the truck as best as I could.
"It's not much to go on. No name on the truck, no plate numbers, probably green, but not sure . . . tarp in the back." She reread the list of my useless observations.
I was a lousy witness. I tried to recall anything else, any small detail. I closed my eyes to get a mental picture. In the background, I heard one of the codgers whisper, "What is she doing? Is she going to sleep? Luann Barnhart did that at dinner the other night."
"The mud flaps had pictures of women on them. You know, hot pants, legs in the air." I'd just described every other truck in America. I knew how it sounded. I'd staked out a conscientious nursery worker who grumbled about working late. What did I expect them to do, put out an all points bulletin?
"I can find out who's got keys to the recycling center, but unless we can prove it was someone not on that list, you're the only one here who's actually done anything illegal. Technically," she said, "you were trespassing on Sunnyview property."
"No, she wasn't. She's my guest." Inez from the thrift shop stepped out of the crowd, happy to be part of the drama. Just as Inez was bailing me out, a black Lexus pulled up, and Hillary Gibson and Gerald Fraser joined the circus on the nursing home's porch.
The cops were relieved to be let off the hook, and my entertainment value was fading, so the crowd broke up. I could hold my own against bingo but would lose every time against ice cream sundaes, which was the next course in Sunnyview's dining room.
"Take care of yourself, dear," Inez said. "She's one of my best customers," she said to the others, ushering them back into the building. She'd probably dine on the story for weeks.
"Are you following us?" Gerald asked, once everyone else had gone.
"Of course not. Just a little extracurricular activity that went nowhere."
"You look like you're freezing," Hillary said, looking me over. She took off her large woolen shawl and wrapped it around
me. "I'm taking you home."
CHAPTER 42
Hillary's car was not like my Jeep—no plastic water bottles littering the floor, no stray CDs in the wrong jewel cases, no coffee splashes on the gearbox. I held myself in tightly so as not to sully her vehicle.
"Are you warm enough?" she asked.
I nodded, but it came out like a shiver, so she turned up the heat on my side.
She drove aggressively for an older woman, with none of the nose-peering-over-the-steering-wheel, hands-frozen-at-10:10 timidity of most of her generation. We got to my place fast.
"Thanks for the lift." I peeled off her shawl, folded it, and placed it on the passenger seat.
"You're welcome." She seemed in no great hurry to leave.
"Would you like to come in for a drink or something before you head home?"
"I'd like that."
She parked the car and followed me in.
"What a charming house."
"It's getting there. I'm too much of a pack rat. Sometimes I look around and think, What is all this stuff?"
"They're things you enjoy. That's very different from acquisition merely for the sake of acquisition."
I guessed she was thinking of her former husband. I put the water on for tea and excused myself to change into dry clothes.
When I got back Hillary was checking out my bookshelf, leafing through the copy of Culpeper's Herbal I'd borrowed from Dorothy Peacock. She saw me and replaced the book on the shelf.
"Quite a collection you've got," she said, still scanning the shelves but tactfully not confronting me about the pilfered book.
"I'm always on the lookout." I walked past her into the kitchen, where I set our tea on an old painted tray and brought it into the living room.
"Not very elegant, I'm afraid, but it should chase the chill away."
"It's perfect, thank you. The Peacock sisters had an extensive gardening library."
"Yes, I know. I spent a few hours there. Ms. Gibson, I didn't steal that book, I just borrowed it."
"I didn't think you had. I've borrowed a book or two from them myself."
"There may be a few that are quite valuable—I've told Richard," I said.
"Oh, I don't think there's much you can tell Dick Stapley about that house. He even worked there one summer. The bluestone wall with the pear trees? Richard built that himself."
"Margery mentioned it. It certainly has held up, I'll give him that," I said. "Maybe he thinks it gives him something in common with Winston Churchill; although I'm pretty sure Churchill used brick."
"If it does, it's the only thing they've got in common," she said. "You've inadvertently brought back a lot of memories to some of the people in this town. Some good—" She wavered.
"Some bad?" I interrupted. I kicked myself for not letting her finish.
"I was going to say 'uncomfortable.' "
This time I was patient.
"You said you've spent some time in the Peacocks' library. Were you looking for anything in particular?" she asked.
"Should I be?"
"No wonder Gerald likes you. You're alike," she said with a sly smile. She looked me straight in the eye as she spoke. "I didn't believe for a minute that one of the sisters was the mother, but I didn't want their names dragged through the mud. Then Gerald went off again on his Yoly Rivera obsession and you encouraged him."
Oh, shit. I felt a lecture coming on.
"Please don't misunderstand me. Gerald has always been pigheaded. No one could make him do anything he didn't want to do. But now that it seems the baby has nothing to do with Yoly, why not drop it?"
She was right. Given everything I knew—or thought I knew—about the Peacocks, they'd probably want to protect the mother, even if it meant tongues would wag about them. After all, gossip couldn't hurt them now.
Hillary got to the point. "Gerald says the two of you are planning to talk to Margery. I've tried to talk him out of it. I know I don't have the right to ask," she continued, "but I wish you wouldn't." She chose her words carefully. "Margery's fragile; she's had a hard time."
"You mean losing her first husband?"
She nodded. "Margery was a ghost those first years. I remember seeing her at Halcyon when I was a child and thinking, Who is that terribly tragic and romantic figure? Pale, painfully thin—almost invisible. Renata told me we must always be kind to Margery, because the world had not been."
Margery Russell's father had been a tyrant. She'd married against his wishes, and when her husband was killed in the war, the father practically celebrated. Richard Stapley ingratiated himself with Margery's father, and after only a year, he and Margery were married. Some doubted she was even consulted. All that dovetailed with what Jon Chappell had told me.
"People make mistakes," Hillary said. "There's no need to spend the rest of one's life paying for them."
"Ms. Gibson, I appreciate your loyalty to your friends. We may never know how that baby came to be buried in the garden, but I've got a bigger problem. I'm loyal, too, and my friend is in jail for a crime he didn't commit. I'm convinced either the baby or Yoly Rivera or both motivated someone to stab Guido Chiaramonte. And I'm going to find out who did it."
"I suppose I knew you'd say that. Just like Gerald." She got up to leave. "I hope you find the person and find out what happened to that girl. I just hope you'll be sensitive and give some thought to the living, too. And don't judge people too harshly if you find out some other things in the pro cess."
She put down her teacup, and I walked her to the door.
"God knows, I'm no fan of Guido Chiaramonte's," she said, "but if there is some connection between him and Yoly Rivera, this could get dangerous for you. And for Gerald. Please be careful. I've just found him again, and I don't want to lose him a second time."
As soon as she was gone, I called Lucy.
"She knows Margery's the mother," I said, "and doesn't want the old girl pushed off the deep end. Or . . . Margery knows Hillary's the mother and will spill her guts as soon as anyone asks her."
"What about the fertility issues?" Lucy said.
"Maybe she did have mumps as a teenager. How do I know the mumps can really make you sterile? Maybe she's just flat-out lying to me and to Gerald."
"She was helpful at the beginning," Lucy said.
"When she thought it was the answer to the big unsolved case from her sweetie's career."
"Sounds like you've narrowed it down to two candidates. What does your accordion player think?"
"O'Malley?" I asked. "Who knows? He's pissed at me because I didn't tell him that was Hugo's car at the nursery."
"Too bad. He could be useful," she said. I had a feeling she was referring to his other possible talents.
"How's the lovely Anna holding up?"
"She's amazing. Baking goodies for Hugo and the guards. He's been moved to Stamford; they have a larger facility there."
"And Felix?" she asked.
"I got a voice mail message, but it was vague, and he didn't leave a number."
"At least he called. I'm free this weekend. Still need help?"
"Sure."
CHAPTER 43
Mike O'Malley once told me Springfield had everything the big city had, just less of it. I wasn't so sure Springfield didn't have more than its share.
After talking to Lucy, I poured myself a drink and made a fire. It wasn't that cold, but there was a chill in my bones I couldn't shake. I wanted to blame it on my snooze in the ditch, but as I settled in with my wine and a yellow legal pad in front of me, I knew that wasn't it.
I made three columns—Yoly Rivera, Guido Chiara-monte, and Baby. Then I sat and stared at the blank page, filling in the things I knew, or thought I knew, about each of them. I scribbled down thirty different scenarios, but no amount of English would make all the cherries line up.
I was putting a few more logs on the fire when I heard the fax machine chugging in my office; I went to investigate. Printed on Springfield police department letterhead
was a typed note from Sergeant Guzman.
Dear Ms. Holliday,
Six companies/entities are authorized to enter and use the facilities of the Springfield Recycling Center during off-hours. They are:
UConn at Springfield Extension Services
Harleysville Raceway
Aardvark Refuse
Morning Glory Cemetery
Fairmont Lawn Funeral Home
Springfield Historical Society
Yours truly,
Sgt. Rosaria Guzman
Springfield Police Department
The raceway I could understand. The town couldn't be cruel enough to make someone open the gates for a dump truck of steaming horse manure and then force him to spend the entire day babysitting it. The sanitation company probably had a contract with the town— Gerald could find out. Presumably, the funeral home and the cemetery were dumping faded floral arrangements and nothing more sinister. That left the university—shredded term papers, probably. But why should SHS need to dump anything after hours?
I gambled that Gerald Fraser would be one of the few Sunnyview residents still awake at the ungodly hour of 11 P.M.
The switchboard operator kept me on hold for twelve minutes before returning to tell me, "He's gone."
"You mean he's out?"
"No, ma'am, he's gone."
Stay calm, I told myself. If your voice betrays the fact that you think she's an idiot, she'll be even less helpful, if that were possible.
"Gone where, dear?" I said, through clenched teeth.
"Well, usually they go across the street."
The fax from Sergeant Guzman made me ask the next stupid question. "To the recycling center?"
"No," she said solemnly. "Morning Glory. The cemetery."
"But Mr. Fraser didn't, did he? He went somewhere else." This conversation was going to be work.
"The main office is closed. I really don't know anything. You can call back tomorrow, during regular hours," she added.
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