Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 12

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

“About what?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.

“The sisters?”

“Let O’Malley handle it. My attempts to be helpful have gotten me nothing but wisecracks and condescension. If I wanted that, I could have stayed in tele vision. Besides, I’ve got a garden to restore, and I’ve given myself sixty days to do it. Speaking of which…”

We pulled into the driveway at Halcyon, where once again my helpers had preceded me.

“Just like my place,” Lucy said in amazement.

Behind the house, the true scope of the job revealed itself. In the distance we saw Hugo and Felix working.

“This place is huge. You do need help.”

The compost bins had been built, and Hugo and Felix had already cleared away most of the large fallen branches and debris. Guido Chiaramonte’s borrowed chipper hummed in the background.

“Buenos dнas,” I yelled.

Hugo kept working, but Felix jogged over to greet us. Despite the cool morning, he wore just a sleeveless T-shirt and well- fitting black jeans, which showed his athletic body to full advantage.

“Oh, my,” Lucy purred.

“Dнas. їQuй tal?” he asked. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. Lucy looked like she wanted to make soup with it.

She had morphed into something I’d seen on the Nature Channel-the blue- footed booby pointing to the sky to signal her interest in a potential mate. I was irrationally annoyed. And, just as irrationally, relieved when the object of that interest made a few polite noises in Lucy’s direction, then left.

“Very nice,” she drawled as he walked away.

“I really hadn’t noticed.”

“Right. I can say this now. I was a little worried you’d lost your mind-burying yourself up here in Green Acres land-all compost and Arnold the pig-but I was wrong. This place is like daytime television, a cauldron of seething passions. Who needs the New York bar scene? One guy carries a weapon and the other is good with his hands-nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

“Keep it down. These guys work for me.”

“And that’s a whole other dimension… Mistress Paula.”

She lowered her voice. “All right, all right. I’m just beginning to see the attraction to country living, that’s all. What am I doing here, anyway? Can I really help or did you just want to show off Don Felix?”

I assured Lucy her help was desperately needed, and led her over to the brick terrace and a large green nylon bag held open by circular wires on the top and bottom.

“This is a tip bag. You pull the weeds from in between the bricks and throw them in the tip bag.”

“And when I’m bored in five minutes, then what do I do?”

“Then you find the Zen in weeding. You’ll love it.”

I tossed Lucy a foam knee pad and a pair of gloves, and set about finding the Zen in cleaning out the herb-drying cottage. A shallow porch held an old- fashioned bistro table and a pair of ice cream chairs. Inside, hanging from the rafters were last season’s herbs, tied into bundles and labeled with names and dates. How the old girl got them up there at her age was beyond me. Drying racks, strainers, baskets, and quart jars lined the walls of the thirty- by- thirty- foot cottage. Apart from a fine mesh of cobwebs, Dorothy might have been coming back any minute.

Five hours later, weed and cobweb free, Lucy and I packed up, sent the boys home, and drove back to my place.

“I don’t know if I burned any calories, kneeling for hours on end. Are you sure that’s a workout?”

“Check your monitor.”

“Shoot, I forgot to set it for workout.” She inspected her biceps in the mirror, looking for a pump.

“Three hundred calories per hour,” I said, “trust me. Next weekend I may let you mow. That’s four hundred calories.”

“No can do,” she said, still checking out her arms, not yet convinced of gardening’s therapeutic benefits. “Going to Cannes, remember? But you’ve got me tomorrow, and if you ever need a firm hand with Senor Felix, I’m always available.” A true friend.

After a second day of calorie- burning garden work, I deposited Lucy at the train station, extracting her promise to come back in a few weeks for the Historical Society’s fund-raiser.

“Sure. Keep me posted on your baby, okay?”

“Not my baby. Not my job, remember?”

I took the scenic route home from the train station, stopping at Halcyon for one last look. Despite forty- eight hours of grumbling, Lucy had done a thorough job and even managed to weed most of the stone planters dotting the terrace. Hugo and Felix had raked, chipped, and sorted the debris into various piles, all of which would see active duty elsewhere in the garden, and near the maze a haphazard pile of rough- hewn flagstones had been turned into an informal stacked- stone retaining wall.

I hadn’t given the green house much thought, but now that the path was cleared, I ventured inside. It smelled of damp and rotting vegetation but in a not entirely unpleasant way. The glass panels were filthy, a few were cracked, and the chains that lifted open the heavy glass ceiling were encrusted with gunk.

Potting tables were littered with pot shards and faded plant tags and seed packets, and everything was covered with cobwebs. A three- foot copper stand with spikes on the top looked like a gladiator’s mace, but turned out to be nothing more sinister than an antique sprinkler.

In one corner stood a small cedar hutch. Instinctively I stuck out my hand to open it, then drew back- but what were the odds of finding another corpse?

Cautiously I turned the handle on the door, and pulled it open. Stillness, then a faint fluttering sound turned to Hitchcockian birdlike flapping. Hundreds of moths flew out of their resting place and into my face and hair. My scream caused one of the moths to be sucked into my mouth; I spit it out and flailed my arms spastically, falling on my butt, scattering pots and tools and knocking over a table, which hit the door and caused it to slam shut.

“Thank god there are no witnesses,” I said out loud, feeling foolish and shaking off the few remaining moths. Most of them flew to the domed roof, out of my reach. I made a futile attempt to dislodge them with a broom but decided to deal with them the next day when I could borrow a ladder.

I had about forty- five minutes of daylight left. I swept the floors and the tables, organized the pots by size, inventoried the usable hand tools, and tried to ignore a family of mice I’d sent scurrying when I moved a large unfolded tarp. They’d elicited another involuntary yelp.

Around eight o’clock, in the fading light, I decided to pack it in. I was suddenly overcome by a wave of fatigue, and I was fantasizing about a nice hot bath and a glass of wine, not necessarily in that order.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and reached for the door handle. It was stuck. And no amount of jiggling would unstick it. I looked for a tool or screwdriver to take the doorknob off-nothing. I searched the greenhouse from top to bottom. There were a few cracked glass panels, but none missing-nothing I could wriggle out of. And the foundation was solid stone.

Forty minutes later, it was pitch- black, getting colder, and I was running out of options. Despite my embarrassment, I decided to call Babe at the diner, to see if she or Chloe could rescue me. Dead battery. So much for that idea. One of the unintended consequences of rarely using your cell is that it will inevitably run out of juice without your noticing. Until you need it.

I didn’t trust myself to break any of the glass panels without bringing the whole damn house crashing down around me. Besides, despite its condition, it was exquisite, so, bone tired, I did the only other thing I could think of. Using my backpack as a pillow, I crawled onto the potting table, pulled the dusty tarp over me, and succumbed to what someone once called “the divine stupidity of sleep.”