Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 44

“I’m sorry for calling so early.”

“We’ve been up for hours; Gerald’s anxious to speak with you, too.” Hillary was cool but passed Gerald the phone.

“Hey, kiddo. So you tracked me down. I told Hill we’d get busted, but she just couldn’t keep her hands off me.”

I apologized again. “I’ve been doing some thinking.” “Always dangerous. Did you talk to Margery?” “No. Yesterday flew. Did you reach William?” “Yup. He had no problem leaving a DNA sample. I picked up a testing kit from Sergeant Guzman; she showed me how to do it. Piece of cake.” He lowered his voice a bit. “Are you going to see her? Want some company?” “You bet.”

We agreed to meet at 9 A.M. in the Paradise parking lot.

“Looking good,” I said, hopping out of the Jeep.

“Hillary thinks I need more exercise, so she dropped me off two blocks from here. She’s resurrecting her workout room and hot tub, too. Somewhere her ex-husband must be laughing his fat ass off; sounds like she gave him a lot of grief for that stuff back in the eighties.”

I offered him a hand getting in, but he didn’t need it; under Hillary’s care, he’d be snowboarding by this winter.

“When I called, Margery started to give me Richard’s schedule, but I told her we were coming to see her.”

“She all right with that?” he asked.

“I think she knows why we’re coming. She just told me to come early so we could talk privately.”

The Stapley home looked like a smaller version of the Historical Society’s building. Lots of lawn exactly an inch and a half tall, with a putting green in the front and thick, unnecessary pillars designed to impress. I’d learned my lesson with Hillary and decided, on the way over, to take it slow and let Margery do most of the talking.

There was frailty, but also something resolute in Margery Stapley’s diminutive frame as she answered the door. She led us to a parlor just off the center hall, with a fireplace and a conversational grouping of chairs. Over the fireplace hung a lovely painting of a garden. Gerald admired it and stepped a bit closer. “Is that a Childe Hassam?” he asked.

“Yes,” Margery answered. “Father gave it to me for my twenty- first birthday. Richard had it reframed for me recently, but I’m not sure the new frame is an improvement. Please sit down. And help yourself. My house -keeper put this out for us.” She motioned to a small cart with coffee and cookies.

“My wrists aren’t what they used to be, and using the computer doesn’t help.”

She massaged her wrists as she began. “I used to be quite strong. I played tennis with my first husband, Henry. He was so much taller, we must have made an odd- looking couple on the court. But we were a good team. He had the power and I had the touch. He died, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“I was quite young. All my friends were busy with their own husbands, their families. Father wasn’t much help either. We’d never been close,” she explained. “I was unhappy for a long time, the kind of unhappiness that’s so profound it’s as if you’ll never be happy again. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded mechanically, but Gerald seemed to share a deeper understanding.

“One night I forced myself to go to one of the free concerts in the Peacock band shell. Just to get out of the house. It was a lovely night, this time of year. They were playing a program of standards from before the war.”

She looked down, momentarily lost in the patterns of her rug, and then told us how one night she met a boy there.

“He was visiting Springfield for the summer. After the concert, we walked down to the pier, just talking. I felt as if the floodgates had opened. We talked all night and laughed like I hadn’t for years. We stayed up to watch the sun rise. I saw him only once after that night. He came to the house I’d shared so briefly with Henry. I was so naive. Another woman would have known she was pregnant much sooner.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she went on bravely. “I’d heard rumors. About the Peacocks. I heard they could help girls who were… in need of help. I planned to go very late one night when I was sure I wouldn’t be seen. When I arrived, a strange man was there on the terrace. I was terrified. I hid in the bushes, sobbing, waiting for him to leave, but he just stayed on the terrace, smoking one cigarette after another. It was agonizing. The longer I waited, the more confused I got, and the louder my sobs became. Finally the man heard and called to me. He asked if I wanted him to get Dorothy, but I was too frightened and upset to even reveal myself. When I wouldn’t come out of the bushes, he softly said, ‘Vaya con Dios’ and tossed me a small medal.”

“William Peacock?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know it was William until much later, when I was asked to find him for the Historical Society. I told everyone I couldn’t find him, but that was a lie.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “I decided to have my baby, then give it up for adoption. I was so alone. Henry was gone, and Father was always working. I rarely saw him.

“I saw so few people in those days. It wasn’t difficult to conceal my condition. And Dorothy Peacock was a godsend. She acted as midwife; she delivered my beautiful baby boy, Henry, Jr. I thought of him as Henry’s, you see.”

It would have been hard to keep him and impossible to give him up, but Margery never got to make that choice. Henry, Jr. died of fever before he was three weeks old.

“When I saw William at the party, it all came crashing back,” she said.

The next voice we heard was Richard’s. He was standing in the open doorway. “You people have no right to be here.”

“It’s all right, Richard. All these years of keeping it bottled up inside. I’m relieved to finally tell someone. I’m tired though. Will you tell them the rest?”

He sat on the sofa next to his wife, the strain evident on his face. “Margie’s father thought she needed looking after; I’m just glad he gave me the job.

“When Henry, Jr., was taken, the Peacock sisters agreed to handle things. They treated the body with some herbal concoction and kept him in a makeshift chapel in the Peacocks’ basement, where Margie could visit him. It was no one’s intention, but he wound up staying there for forty- odd years.”

“Wearing the medal that William had given Margery,” I added. They both nodded.

“Any idea where that damn candy wrapper came from?” I was glad that Gerald asked, because even if it proved nothing, I was still dying to know.

“Renata couldn’t do without her English chocolates,” Margery said. “She imported them for years before they were available here.”

“Once Dorothy died, I knew the insurance inspectors would go through the house with a fine- tooth comb,” Richard said, so I moved the baby’s body, just temporarily, to the white garden, until Margery could decide on a permanent burial site.

“To be honest, Ms. Holliday, one of the reasons I gave you the job was because I didn’t think you’d be quite so thorough. And so fast. I thought I’d bought myself some time.”

My ego was bruised. So it wasn’t my expertise and salesmanship that had gotten me the job.

At Margery’s gentle prodding, Richard continued, “I’m afraid I’m the one who locked you in the greenhouse that night; I’d been searching for something. Margery remembered a journal that Dorothy kept of her… clients. I wanted to find it before anyone else did, in case there was anything in it that might embarrass Margery. When I saw you come back, I panicked. I just wanted to get away without you seeing me. I certainly didn’t mean to harm you.”

“Did you send me any e-mails?” I asked.

“No, dear,” Margery said, raising her hand like a schoolgirl. “That was me; Richard is hopeless on the computer.”

The former cop broke the silence. “None of this absolutely needs to come out,” Gerald said kindly. “What you’ve done may not even be a crime. And it has nothing to do with the attack on Guido Chiaramonte.”

“You mean the murder of Guido Chiaramonte.”

We all turned toward the front door. Standing in the doorway was Mike O’Malley.

“Guido Chiaramonte died about an hour ago at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital.”