Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 37

“I’ve got some explaining to do.”

“I agree,” I said, standing stiffly, arms folded, in front of Jon Chappell. I was not happy.

“Your friend Lucy’s great,” he said, unfolding himself from the Sunbeam and trying to make nice.

“I know. She’s smart, too. She’s the one who spotted the Just for Men hair dye I was too polite to stare at. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“My job. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare anyone. Then I met you and I liked you. I’ve wanted to tell you a dozen times since then but it never seemed like the right moment.”

All the false bravado fell away. He looked like such a kid, I’d already forgiven him but wanted to drive home the point.

“Anything other than stalking you want to confess to?”

He admitted to driving by the house a few times, once when Lucy was there, and following me to the Paradise Diner a few times. As luck would have it, he also knew my geeky neighbor and had borrowed his telescope one night to spy on me.

“See anything interesting?”

“Nothing worthy of publication. Let me rephrase that: nothing I’d write about. You do have great abs, though.”

“Stop trying to butter me up, pervert.”

We walked around the porch to the back terrace, where the two muffins O’Malley brought me were crawling with ants. I tossed them into a nearby tip bag. Jon sat on the steps and flipped through the pages of his spiral notebook until he found what he was looking for.

“On the Yoly Rivera front. Like most things, there’s good news and there’s bad news. I found the wife of the crew leader Yoly worked for when she came to Connecticut. Real sweetheart. She called Yoly every name in the book-and some I hadn’t even heard of. I’ll spare you the more colorful details, but basically she thought our Yoly was a puta.” He brandished the word as if it wasn’t part of his regular vocabulary but he was considering making it one.

“I thought I’d make her feel guilty by telling her Yoly disappeared, but the only thing she said was ‘Whose husband did she take with her?’ “

“She could just be jealous,” I said, sitting down and leaning against one of the stone planters. “Pretty younger woman. Mrs. Crew Leader sounds like she might have missed the whole feminist sisterhood thing.”

“After thirty years, you’d think she’d mellow out a bit. Don’t you girls ever let bygones be bygones?”

“Nope. Friend of mine refers to it as sediment. Never really goes away. Scary, isn’t it?”

He filed that feminine insight for future use.

“She also thought Yoly might have been moonlighting as a waitress while she was working as the nanny. Nothing permanent-weddings, parties, stuff like that.”

He shuffled through some papers. “The crew leader’s kids got a postcard from Yoly with a Rhode Island postmark.” He looked up at me. “Life before Xbox; the kids collected stamps and noticed the postmark. Mom was thrilled; the farther away the better-she was just sorry the letters didn’t come from Outer Mongolia.”

“You think she relocated?”

“No. According to Mrs. Rivera’s letters, she heard from Yoly twice after that, both times from Springfield. Not much else, I’m afraid. No luck finding Celinda Rivera yet, but I’m still working on it.”

He was craving approval. As punishment for stalking me, I withheld.

“What’s the story between you and the congressman’s aide, the lovely Ms. Colford?” I asked, watching him squirm.

“I should have known it was only a matter of time before you started poking around in my direction. We had a thing; it ended. I’m not successful enough for her,” he said. “She’s dated a guy from the Washington Post.”

Suddenly he reminded me of the nerdy twelve-year-old who didn’t get picked for softball. Not only did I forgive him, now I wanted to help him make points with the little snob.

“That guy probably makes up his stories. Don’t worry. By the time this thing is over, you’ll be fielding job offers from all over. Just stay on the high road, okay? Lighten up on the ‘Mother’s Anguish.’ The story’s good enough without playing to the lowest common denominator.”

I told him my idea about looking for someone who’d videotaped their wedding ceremony the day Hugo and Anna were at the marriage license bureau, and he was on it in a flash, scribbling notes and inventing a story line.

“I don’t even have to say what it’s about,” he said, “in case someone is nervous about getting involved.”

“Any ideas about your girlfriend’s boss?” I asked.

“Win Fifield and Yoly Rivera didn’t exactly travel in the same circles, but it’s not impossible they knew each other. Pretty girl on her own, maybe on the sidelines at some high- profile parties? They could have met.”

It was more likely she knew Guido Chiaramonte, especially with his taste for Hispanic women. But I had yet to find that connection. I debated whether I should tell Jon my theory about the Peacock sisters and their secret garden.

“Do you know much about herbal remedies?”

He perked up. “That reminds me of our other little drama. Margery Stapley.”

We agreed there was something fishy about the one-glass-of-wine-and-she’s-on-the-floor story.

“I ran out to e-mail my story about Margery collapsing. When I got back to the party, it had already broken up. I stuck around, offering to help clean up, and I got an earful. Did you know Richard isn’t Margery’s first husband? She was Margery Russell, married her high school sweetie, a guy named Henry Pierce. The honeymoon was barely over when Henry shipped out to Korea. He never came back.

“Richard was a transplant from Boston, an up-and-coming attorney in her father’s firm,” Jon continued. “It took a while, but Margery finally agreed to marry him. Seems Dad had a hand in it.”

More than a hand. Apparently Margery’s father had orchestrated the whole thing, including the financial arrangement that kept all Margery’s assets in her own name.

“So she’s loaded,” I said.

“Correct. And she was so delicate at the time, her father was worried she might kill herself and her inheritance from her mother, who was a…” He shuffled through his notes. “Her mother was a Hutchinson-”

“As in the parkway?” I asked, astonished. “All those tolls must really add up.”

“Dad didn’t want the dough to go to an outsider in the event that something happened to Margery. Stapley married her in the early seventies; my Deep Throat at SHS wasn’t sure when.”

Jon had done well. “Did you notice the old guy at the party?” I asked.

“Which one?” he asked, and thought back to the crowd at the party. “The guy in the denim shirt? You think that was Margery’s first husband? He didn’t really die?”

“Calm down. It’s not that weird. It was William Peacock.”

“No shit.”

“Keep your distance. Gerald and I are going to see him first.”