Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 14

The smell of French toast and frying bacon hung in the air like smog; it was warm and welcoming. I was getting to love it. After only two hours’ sleep, I climbed on the counter stool slowly, carefully, like an old person afraid of breaking something. Without my asking, Babe brought me a mug of coffee and told Pete to fix me the morning-after special.

“What happened to you?”

“You want the long version or the short version?”

“Start with the short version.”

Counting off on my fingers I said, “Worked like a dog yesterday, got trapped in the green house, got rescued by Felix, got kissed by Felix, got no sleep-except for a few hours on a moldy potting table. Oh, yeah, and I got another dozen messages from that jerk at the Bulletin and a weird e-mail.”

“Does the ‘no sleep’ mean what I hope it means?”

“Dream on,” I said, twisting my torso in a long stretch. I could hear the bones and muscles creak.

“I know a great massage therapist who can fix that.”

We both waited for the caffeine to kick in.

“Since there doesn’t seem to be anything juicier, tell me about the kiss,” she said.

“It was friendly. Mostly.” I guzzled the coffee like it was a drug.

“Tongue?”

“Have you ever had a friendly tongue kiss?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, but that’s my story. I want to hear yours.”

I told Babe about the previous night, leaving out Felix’s family history. If it was true, it wasn’t up to me to blow his cover, and if it wasn’t, I’d feel like less of sap for having believed him. “He followed me home to make sure I was okay. We talked, had some wine, a little food, and then, as he was leaving”-I leaned in, and lowered my voice-”he kissed me.”

“Bodies touch?” she asked.

“I didn’t film it. It was fast… They may have touched. A little. They touched a little.”

“So, now that he’s followed you home, are you going to keep him?”

“Hey, the only things I want to keep right now are my house, my business, and my sanity. The last thing I need is another complication. Ever since the baby…” I sputtered. “Finding that body has been like having a baby.” I looked around surreptitiously. “Last night Felix suggested I was locked in the green house intentionally. And I got a stupid crank e-mail from someone trying to scare me. That’ll teach me to leave my business card just anywhere. Now I’ll have to change my e-mail address, and that’ll be another pain in the ass.” Even I knew I was escalating into hysteria.

“I’m just as curious as the next person,” I said, breathing deeply to calm myself, “but if Springfield’s finest think there’s no case here, there’s no case, right? People around here are getting carried away.”

“Settle down. Someone might think you’re one of the people getting carried away.”

Mercifully, the food came. Who knew cinnamon toast had such curative powers? It was no substitute for a hot tub and a good night’s sleep, but it helped bring me back to center. And if my mouth was full, it reduced the chances that I’d have another meltdown.

Babe plucked something from the Paradise bulletin board and dropped it near my plate. “Despite the fact that you’ve maligned my bulletin board, I’m gonna give you this. Here’s the name and number for that massage therapist. Make an appointment, honey. You need it.” She patted my hand and went off to chat with other more rational customers.

I did need it. And I needed something else I didn’t like to admit. Sex had never been all that great between Chris and me; there were more than a few nights I was left staring at the ceiling thinking clematis when I should have been thinking clitoris. Especially toward the end. Even so, when you don’t have it, you damn well miss it.

Exercise helped, but recently working in the garden had taken the place of serious weight training, so I was also missing that endorphin high. I decided to go back home and pump some iron before heading to Halcyon.

“Babe, I don’t know what Pete put on this bread, but I feel a lot better already.”

“Who knows? He’s been watching the Food Network for two solid days.” She motioned to the business card near my toast. “You gonna call my pal or what?”

I looked at the card-tasteful aqua and cream-

I nodded and pocketed the card.

“Yes, ma’am. After a nice, long workout. I’m taking the morning off.”

“That’s my girl.”

For the first time in a week, I was doing exactly what I wanted. Back home, I put on some music and wiped down my tag- sale bench and weights. For the next sixty minutes, I sweated, grunted, and thought only about my body in terms of muscle groups-chest, arms, back, and legs. I finished up by hitting the Fat Boy punching bag for thirty minutes. Then I dug out MacLeod’s card, called him, and arranged to meet him at his place later that day.

I showered, dressed, and took a cup of green tea down to my office to catch up on paperwork. After an hour, my billings were in order and I was feeling pretty good. If my few measly clients paid on time this month, I’d be in good shape.

The Peacock job wasn’t going to make me rich, but I was gambling it would land me at least one other big fish. My biggest client to date was Caroline Sturgis, a blond, velvet- headband type, who was plump despite her many hours on her newly landscaped tennis court. Maybe it was all those trendy drinks between sets. Caroline was a glacially slow payer and still owed me for work done last fall. It had been my largest, least-interesting job-over a thousand bulbs lining her court, and another hundred on the berm beside it in the shape of two crossed rackets. I warned her it was going to look like hell in June, but she didn’t care.

“We’ll just change them all to white and blue agera-tum, and red impatiens in time for the U.S. Open!” she said, thrilled with her own design skills.

Yeah, kemo sabe. We. Still, it was all but a guarantee of a future job, since the dying leaves from those bulbs would make her tennis court look like a diseased cornfield by Wimbledon fortnight.

I made a note to sic Anna on her for payment, then it was time to hit the road. I still didn’t know Springfield that well, and I’d have to hunt to find the Nutmeg Apartments, where Neil MacLeod lived, so I packed up my stuff, left Anna Peсa my favorite deadbeat’s phone number, and took off.

The Nutmeg Apartment complex was a cluster of modest, two- story buildings, barnacled with postage-stamp- sized terraces uniformly furnished with Astroturf and molded plastic chairs.

When he opened the door, I recognized him immediately from the diner. Neil MacLeod was in his thirties, with closely cropped brown hair and long sideburns. He wore a metal stud in one ear, and I would have bet good money there was another piercing somewhere on his body. Incense mingled with the sweet smell of almond- scented massage oil in the tiny, immaculate apartment, and lest you think you were in the hands of a nonprofessional, a blue velvet curtain sensitively set off the massage table and two stacks of meticulously folded towels.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I said.

“Rust never sleeps. Besides, I’m a Glaswegian. We take the work when we can get it.”

I undressed behind the curtain and climbed on the table as he reeled off a laundry list of ailments and conditions. “Any recent surgeries, injuries? Any particular problems? Are you pregnant?”

Only one of the conditions applied to me. My face was squished and my answer was muffled by the sheepskin face cradle on his massage table. “Stress, I suppose. A lot going on,” I mumbled, “and I haven’t been working out enough, although I may have overdone it today.”

“Can I come in?” he said.

I mumbled yes. I heard him moving about the room and felt another towel being folded over my legs with origami-like precision.

“You have to stretch after, as well as before. Most people don’t unless they’re in a class. Any parts you’d like me to focus on or stay away from?”

“Stay away from my toes. I’m kind of funny about them.”

Neil asked what kind of music I’d like to hear, but other than that, he said little, which was good. Buck naked, I didn’t exactly feel like having an animated conversation. Despite his slight build, he was deceptively strong, as I found out a short time later, facedown, with only a thin sheet covering me from the hips down.

“Let me know if it’s too hard.”

I was already on Planet Paula. After a few minutes, I drifted off. Too soon, I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“Take as much time as you need.”

Behind the curtain I dressed. I heard him turn his phone back on and fill a teakettle. Over tea with a splash of milk, I learned how he and Babe had met.

They had the band experience in common. Neil MacLeod had been the massage therapist for a perennial opening act called the Downward Dogs. Who knew that was a job? The Dogs toured for five years, then broke up when the lead singer, a free spirit named Skye, ran off with a classic car salesman from New Jersey. Unable to replace her, and getting tired of life on the road anyway, they divvied up their dough and belongings and scattered to the winds, right after a gig at UConn.

Neil was telling this story to the sympathetic woman at the diner and decided it was kismet, or karma or something, so he settled down where the Dogs had barked their last. Now he lived near the university, teaching yoga and Pilates at the UConn Fitness Center and seeing private clients in his apartment.

“What’s that you’re burning?” I asked, tying my shoelaces.

“Is the smoke bothering you?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a smudge stick-copal resin and rosemary. Copal is sacred to a lot of Central and South Americans. I smuggled this in from Belize, but you can get it online now. It’s used in some Mexican churches, too. It’s supposed to call in the spirits of health,” he said. “I can’t guarantee that.”

“I like it. Do you know much about this stuff? Herbs, I mean.”

“A bit. I’ve read a few books.”

“The house I’m working on has an herb garden and a drying cottage.”

“I know. I’ve been there.”

“You have?” So, he was Babe’s friend who’d known Dorothy.

MacLeod told me he’d been in the local food co-op a few years back looking for borage. They didn’t stock it, but another woman overheard the conversation and suggested he contact Dorothy Peacock.

“I left a note in her mailbox, and she invited me over for tea. At first, I thought she was daft as a brush- most of the time she talked as if someone else was with us-but she knew her stuff as an herbalist. I’m an amateur compared to her. Seemed a bit lonely; I didn’t find out till later that her sister had just died. After that, she told me I was welcome to harvest herbs anytime I liked, as long as I was careful. I only went a few times, more to visit her than anything else; the co-op carries just about everything these days.”

We talked a bit more, then I sensed I was cutting into his free time between clients, so I got up to leave.

“You really are tight, you know. And your left trapezius is pretty knotted. You carry your bag on that shoulder?”

“I just slept funny last night. Listen, I may need some advice about the herb garden. Okay if I call you?”

“Sure. We can ‘gather the enchanted herbs.’ “

“Excuse me?”

“Shakespeare.”