Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 32

The dark, shaggy head bobbed up and down, fumbling for something on the front seat of the old white sports car. Leaning toward the passenger window of the tiny car, Jonathan Chappell looked up at me. “I was beginning to think you were avoiding me,” he said.

“What ever gave you that idea?”

“I don’t take it personally. Most people hate to talk to the press, even a small fry like me.”

Well, at least he didn’t have any delusions. He was scrawny, bookish, and, judging from the fresh acne scars, younger than I expected. He looked as if he should have been writing for his college paper instead of the Springfield Bulletin. A scraggly beard, probably grown to make him look older, was just filling in. He pulled his car around to the right- hand side of the Peacock house.

“Nice wheels.”

“Thanks. Got it on eBay. Still needs a little work. So, your highness,” he said, hands on his non ex is tent hips, “why did you finally decide to grant me an audience? You must want something pretty bad.”

So much for being cagey. “I have some stuff I’d like to show you. There’s a cottage in the back. We can talk there.”

“Okay. Great place,” he said, looking around as we walked across the terrace to the herb cottage. I could see him trying to calculate the property’s value. “Helluva job you’ve done here. It was a dump.” He turned to me. “Were you here that first day when the Mexican guy said you weren’t?”

“Of course not,” I protested, although I had been there the second time he stopped by, crouching in the maze until Felix assured me the coast was clear.

Inside the cottage, we brushed off the rickety chairs and sat down. I started to empty my backpack onto the old wooden table Dorothy must have used to prepare her herbs. Then I stopped. “You have to promise me something.”

“Conditions? I don’t like this already. Where’s the trust?”

I wondered if I should go ahead. “The only reason I’m talking to you is to clear Hugo Jurado’s name. I have a feeling the baby I found and a missing girl may be connected to Guido’s stabbing.” I was having a hard time spitting it out; you’d think I was coming out myself. “There’s something about the Peacock sisters…”

“You mean that they were carpet munchers?”

I winced. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“We went back and forth on that at the paper,” he said, trying to sound like a grizzled veteran. “To me, news is news-’All the print that fits,’ as my junior high school paper taught me.”

Chappell claimed his editor yanked all his best stuff. CRAZED LESBIANS SACRIFICE BABY. HOW MANY MORE DID THEY KILL? I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “I knew he’d never let those stories run. Hypocrite. He said it was like putting in all the gory details of a child murder-who needs to know? ‘The Bulletin’s not the Enquirer, you know. When does it stop being news and start being pandering?’ “ he said, mimicking the editor I was starting to like. “Damned if I know.” He shrugged. “I spent all of my time in ethics class hitting on the girl next to me. Great rack. She wanted to be an anchor-not a reporter, an anchor.”

I was betting she never gave this weasel a tumble.

“I can’t make any promises,” he said, “but you should feel better since we already knew they were sweethearts and haven’t printed it. No promises about the missing girl either. So now you’ve got me interested, who is she?”

I hated his style and still wasn’t sure I could trust him, but I needed him. I had no choice. I showed him everything: scribblings, notes, and the faded missing persons notice Fraser had given me.

“Pretty girl.”

“I think you’ll agree it’s unlikely one of the ‘sisters’ was the mother of the baby. Yolanda Rivera disappeared around here sometime in the early seventies. I think she may be connected to the body. And Guido Chiaramonte may be connected to her.”

“So the baby was wearing a Mexican necklace. O’Malley didn’t tell me that. Probably wanted to keep the crackpots and fake confessors away. And a Mexican girl went missing some years ago. Doesn’t this give your amigo even more of a motive?” Jon asked.

“It may give someone a motive, but I know it isn’t Hugo. He’s one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met. He says he’s innocent, and I believe him.”

“Touching. What do the cops say?”

“Nothing. I don’t think any of them has made the connection yet. Fraser said Yolanda didn’t know the Peacocks. She didn’t know many people at all-that’s why the original investigation hit a dead end.”

Chappell looked at the pictures again.

“He also gave me this.” I whipped out Gerald’s letter to Mrs. Rivera and showed it to Jon.

“That hotel still exists,” I said, pointing to the address. “I spoke to the current manager, Jaime Gutierrez, this morning. Celinda Rivera, Yoly’s mother, did work there years ago, and he thinks she’s still alive. He didn’t know where she was, but he said he’d ask around. I told him to call collect if he found her.”

“Not bad. So what is it you think I can do for you?”

Was he dense? I chose my next words carefully. “I don’t believe no one knows what happened to that girl. Maybe they didn’t think anything of it at the time, or maybe they knew exactly what was going on. If you wrote a story on Yoly, it might jog people’s memories.”

There was no response.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that? This is a good story. Are you too busy working on the sequel to the walnut feature? THE DARK SIDE OF HAZELNUTS?” I said, exasperated.

“Relax. I’m just jerking your chain. Aren’t gardeners supposed to be patient? Of course I’ll write the story. That’s what I do. We just have to think how we’re going to play this.”

He took out a small tape recorder. “Start with the day you found the body.”

When I finished, Jon said he needed copies of my research, so I suggested a drugstore about three blocks away that I knew had a copier. I scooped up my papers and shoveled them into my backpack.

“Want to walk?” he asked.

“And miss the chance to ride in that snappy vehicle? No way.”

“Top down?”

“Of course.” The car was a Sunbeam Alpine, white with a red leather interior. I waited while he collapsed the top and tucked it away.

He turned the key in the ignition, and, after a few false starts, the car sputtered to life.

Ehrlich’s was an old- time pharmacy. A small sign in the window, next to a glass urn filled with colored liquid, read ESTABLISHED 1872. A woman who could have been one of the original cashiers told us the mimeo machine was located in the back, near the pharmacist’s window. While Jonathan figured out how to use the copier, I nosed around.

The store looked as if it had been frozen in time. While most drugstores today carry flash drives, copy paper, and rainbow- colored condoms, Ehrlich’s still sold individual hairnets in blond, black, and brown. Hair dye, shoe polish, yellowed greeting cards-everything looked old even if it wasn’t. One display did look familiar-Bach Original Flower Remedies. My health food store had the same green wall rack.

Dr. Edward Bach was a general practitioner in London in the 1920s. By 1930, he’d left Harley Street to devote himself full time to research on natural remedies, identifying thirty- eight ailments and the thirty- eight plants and flowers he claimed could alleviate their symptoms. I’d heard about him from a dancer friend who swore by his essences to calm her nerves before performing.

I stood there reading about the different floral essences and how they were used-gentian, for feelings of discouragement; olive, for lack of energy; walnut, to help adjust to a new situation. Bach remedies had been around for seventy years. With more people turning to alternative medicine, I guessed they were seeing a resurgence.

“How’s that copying coming?” I yelled to Jonathan, still reading. “Do you have a future as a guy Friday?”

“Don’t break my concentration, I’m on a roll.”

I felt a tap on my elbow and heard a faint, childlike voice behind me.

“Paula? I thought that was you.”

“How are you, Mrs. Stapley? Are you getting excited about the fund- raiser?”

“Oh, yes. So many RSVPs. Richard’s had me order more food and party supplies. He’s enjoying the fuss. He refers to it as troop movements.”

“Sounds like you’re doing a lot of the work,” I said.

“I was very fond of Dorothy. Richard, too. You know he built the stone wall there. No mortar,” she added proudly.

“I didn’t know that.”

Chappell finished his copying and joined us at the cash register.

“Who’s next?” the cashier asked.

I motioned for Margery to go first. She had just a few items, so basic as to make me think they were a cover for her real purchase-two small brown bottles of Bach Flower Essences-honeysuckle.

“I was just looking at those. Do they really work?”

“Yes, they do. I’m a firm believer in floral and herbal remedies,” Margery answered, her chin lifted. She sounded a little defiant, as if she expected me to contradict her.

She put the two small bottles in her purse while the clerk bagged the other items. “Well, children, I’m off. More errands to run. Richard’s bicycle is in the shop. I may surprise him and pick it up.”

“There’s a sweet lady,” I said to Jon, as she left.

“Husband’s kind of a prick, though,” he whispered. Once she’d gone, he continued. “He was in the war, Korea. The way he parades around you’d think he’d stormed the beaches at Normandy.”

“What did he do before he retired?”

“Big- shot lawyer. He was a partner in Russell, Jenkins and Stapley.”

The cashier painstakingly counted out the copies, twice, as if fifteen cents one way or the other would make a huge difference in the day’s take. “You two probably never even heard of a mimeograph, have you?” the cashier said.

“Sure-some kind of Flintstonian copy machine,” Jon said, putting his change and his receipt in a separate section of his wallet.

I kicked him on the way out.

“Look who’s calling someone else a prick,” I whispered on our way out. “What’d Richard ever do to you?”

“He squashed a couple of good stories. Didn’t squash, really, but he was aggressively unhelpful.”

Chappell told me that two years ago there was a heated controversy in town about extending the downtown sewer system. Most residents were against it, except for those who stood to make a profit from it. Stapley helped both sides reach a compromise, but it opened the door for increased development, which had yet to materialize but was threatening.

“Rumor had it Stapley had a silent interest in one of the companies looking to build, and he adamantly refused to be interviewed on the subject. I don’t ordinarily hold a grudge, as you well know, but I made an exception in his case.”

“Well, you said yourself most people don’t like to talk to the press.”

“There’s a difference between personal stuff and community affairs. The public has a right to know,” he said with a straight face.

“Catchy. You make that up?”

“Chiaramonte was probably happy about the sewer deal, too. That run- down nursery of his must have tripled in value-he doesn’t need to sell another…” He struggled to think of a flower.

“Honeysuckle,” I prompted.

The honeysuckle reminded me of something.

“Hold on a sec.” I ran back to the drugstore.

When I returned, Jon asked, “So, what’s it for? The Bach’s honeysuckle?”

“To help ‘stop yearning for the past.’ And the poor dear needed two bottles.”