Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 16

My mother is a wonderful woman, but she knows as much about gardening as most women who live in apartments in Brooklyn. She buys azaleas at Easter, mums in the fall, and poinsettias at Christmas, and watches their slow decline from the moment they enter her overheated apartment until she inevitably pitches them down a chute where unwanted items in New York miraculously disappear.

That’s how I came to own a hedge trimmer (I have no hedges) and high- priced Wellington aerator sandals (I have no lawn). Those sandals had been hanging, unused and rusting in my toolshed, until Anna Peсa pre-sciently decided to clean up the shed, arming herself in the pro cess.

For the uninitiated, aerator sandals can best be described as cleats on steroids. You strap the spiked soles on over your shoes then walk around Frankensteinlike, sinking the three- inch- long spikes into your lawn. This is supposed to break up thatch and aerate the soil, thereby letting in water, nutrients, etc. You can also, as Anna learned, hold the flat side against your hand and scare the bejesus out of someone with even a kittenish swipe in their direction.

I wasn’t somebody who saw conspiracy everywhere, and weapons of mass destruction in every garage, but something was starting to smell fishy to me, even if it didn’t to O’Malley. Was there something more mysterious here than a dead woman’s old heartbreak and a suburban kid with too much time on his hands? Or was I turning into a hysterical female? I gave myself the benefit of the doubt.

After the law enforcement types and my Hispanic friends cleared out I sat down at the computer, ready to do a different kind of digging. I’d already learned one of Dorothy Peacock’s secrets online; who would my next victim be? I started with Lucy’s favorite suspect, Congressman Win Fifield.

The screen filled with Fifield links. I dismissed his official Web site as pure propaganda and clicked on the more interesting “Loser” Fifield home page. His head appeared full frontal and in profile, like mug shots.

It was almost too easy to dislike Winthrop “Winner” Fifield. The unauthorized Loser Web site told the tale. Rich kid, faked his way through school. Bought out of half a dozen scrapes-that the papers knew of-before the age of twenty. Probably more that Daddy’s money and position were able to bury, pun intended.

Early pictures show him unlined, always smiling, exposing more teeth than the rest of us have. He ran for class president at Fairfield Prep, and his Ken- doll looks helped him get elected by unanimous vote; apparently even his opponent voted for him. That’s when people started calling him Winner. At twenty-eight, Winner slid effortlessly into Connecticut’s 53rd congressional seat finally vacated by eighty-four-year-old Warren Chamberlain, who one morning decided to sleep at home instead of in the House.

Since then, Winner had an inauspicious career, avoiding the tedious subjects of health care, education, crime, and rebuilding inner cities in favor of two burning issues-supporting recognition of quasi-Native American groups for casino development and extending the bow- hunting season. His position on Native Americans was well crafted by his aides, but in a rare moment when his handlers weren’t watching, Winner committed to the bow-hunting faction, mistakenly thinking it would get him in solid with the Indians, who, of course, couldn’t care less.

Now the clock was ticking for Winner. If he was ever going to have a national presence, it had to happen soon, and message boards were betting it was going to be in a scandal rather than because of some groundbreaking legislation.

Still online, I called Babe. She gave me an earful about Winner and one of his “scrapes.” Apparently, he got a girl “in trouble,” as they used to say, and she refused to have it “taken care of.” Whole family moved away, relocation paid for by the Fifields.

“That must have set them back a bundle,” I said.

“I don’t think so. They were just a decent, working-class family…” She sifted through her memory to find a name. “The Yampolskys. Seems they were more concerned about preserving the family honor than extorting money from Loser. Don’t know what happened to them or the baby.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked.

“Twenty, twenty-five years.”

The timing could be right, but why come back here to bury the baby if you’ve already left town? Still, it was a place to start. While she talked, I continued with my snooping. More unflattering photos of Congressman Win Fifield appeared on the computer screen.

In addition to his lousy record in and out of the House, Winner was not aging well. Only a vestige of the boyish good looks remained, just enough to make him look like a child actor who’s outgrown his cute-ness. The endless comp meals and drinks had added thirty or forty pounds to his once- athletic frame. In another twenty years it might lend him an air of gravitas а la Ted Kennedy; right now, it gave Winner a sweaty, overinflated look to go with his perpetually worried but trying-not-to-show-it look. Not attractive.

“Okay, we have a flabby congressman of questionable character,” I said. “Alert the media.”

“But your friend Lucy’s instincts were right: he is a loser,” Babe said. “I gotta go; the after- theater crowd is coming in. Did you, by any chance, look up Cadbury’s?” Babe asked. “She ticked me off with that question, but now I’m kind of curious.”

“Forgot. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I keyed in Cadbury’s chocolate, and a page loaded. And another, and another.