Pushing Up Daisies

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 Cafй 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 couple 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.