Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 46

The next morning, Lucy and I drove downtown to the same hotel where I’d met William Peacock.

“Charming. Is this where the locals come for a nooner if they don’t have a green house?” Lucy smirked. “You still haven’t told me the whole story. I need details.”

“Grow up.”

I was relieved that my first meeting with Felix since the green house episode would be in a group and not one on one. They were waiting for us in the hotel’s coffee shop. I’d forgotten how good- looking Felix was, and unconsciously pressed down my shoulders and sucked in my stomach, Pilates style. He stood up as we approached, nodding to Lucy and giving me a brotherly peck on the cheek.

“How in the world did you find her?” I asked.

“The power of television. In Mexico, everyone watches the soaps. I simply had a friend of mine say a few words after one of the episodes. We were inundated with phone calls.”

That was because Celinda had kept her daughter’s memory alive, plastering hand- lettered signs-їUsted conoce esta muchacha?-everywhere she went and pestering officials on both sides of the border for so long they ceased to hear her. A neighbor brought her the news that now someone else was looking for Yoly.

Celinda Rivera spoke almost no English, so there was a lot of smiling and gesticulating with little actual dialogue. She was not quite five feet tall; pleasantly round; with gray- streaked hair coiled into a bun at the base of her neck. Despite the mild weather, she wore four or five layers of brightly colored clothing. And if the clothing was cheery, it was in sharp contrast to her face, which was dark caramel, deeply lined, and ineffably sad. She reminded me of the Argentinean women going to the Plaza de Mayo to show they hadn’t stopped looking for their lost relatives.

“You’ll be happy to know that Mrs. Rivera says there is no connection between her family and the family of Hugo Jurado. The families lived many miles apart in Mexico, in different states. And Yoly has been missing since long before Hugo arrived in Springfield,” Felix said, “so they couldn’t have met here.”

I tried to sound happy. “That’s wonderful. There is some bad news though. I don’t know if you’ve heard; Guido Chiaramonte is dead.”

They didn’t know. Felix had repeatedly tried to reach me and Jon Chappell yesterday but was only able to leave messages.

“I haven’t seen a paper today.”

“It’s bad for Hugo, but it was just a theory of mine that Guido knew about Yoly’s disappearance, a possible motive for his murder.” It was the first time I’d spoken the word out loud, and instantly regretted using it in Celinda’s presence.

Felix explained the situation to her, but the familiar word spoke volumes.

“Jon and Felix have brought this case back into the public eye. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed.”

As I fumbled for other, more comforting words, Lucy bent over to whisper to me. “I appreciate the thought, but, uh, Felix owns that network. That was how he got Yoly mentioned on the air. Have you really been out of the business that long? They live for this stuff,” Lucy continued. One of her many ex- boyfriends had slid seamlessly into my old TV job, and was churning out true- life tragedy on a weekly basis. Lucy thought she could interest him in Yoly’s story.

“And these guys work fast. They have a basic template and just plug in this week’s gory details,” she said thoughtlessly. She started to apologize, but Felix cut her off.

“It’s not necessary. Mrs. Rivera couldn’t understand you. She knows only that you want to help.”

Half the story would be Felix’s successful search for the mother, and the other half, our search for the daughter. It’d make a good feature. I didn’t want to get Celinda’s hopes up, but it was worth a try.

While Lucy made some calls, Celinda brought out a stack of blue airmail envelopes, tied with a brown and gold nylon shoelace. She took out Yoly’s last letter and handed it to me.

She watched me struggle with the Spanish, and started to speak. Recite, really. As many times as she’d read that last letter, she knew it by heart, like a prayer.

“Yoly was happy,” Felix said, in his rough translation. “She’d met a man. An older man she said had been good to her. He’d even taken her on a trip to Newport, Rhode Island. He said it reminded him of his home, the boats and the water. He wasn’t from here, originally.”

For the first time, a little smile crossed Celinda’s face, and words passed between her and Felix.

“Yoly joked that they had something in common,” Felix said. “He had an accent, too.”

Celinda said something else to him.

“It wasn’t in the letter, but Celinda believes Yoly was embarazada-pregnant.” Another heartbreaking smile and more words.

Maybe that was the connection. Could Yoly have gone to the Peacocks for help? “What made her think that?” I asked.

“Yoly said she’d need a new rebozo soon.”

“A shawl?” Lucy asked, phone to chest, obviously on hold.

“It’s also used to carry a baby,” I said, appreciating the shorthand between mother and daughter.

“She thinks Yoly didn’t want to tell her until she and the man were married, but there was a difficulty. That’s why she didn’t give the man’s name.”

“Already married?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps an immigration issue,” Felix suggested. He was thinking of Guido.

“Senora Rivera, where was Yoly working the last time you heard from her? Could she have met this man at work?” I asked in halting Spanish.

“She was a cleaning lady, at a big house near the water,” Felix translated. “Live- in.”

“Right in Springfield?”

“We think so. Most of her letters have a Springfield postmark.”

Obsessed with where Yoly’s letters had come from, I’d neglected to ask the obvious.

“Senora Rivera, when you wrote to Yoly, where did you send your letters?”

When Yoly worked as a nanny for the crew leader, letters were sent to her at that family’s home. Once she switched jobs, her mail went to a post office box in Springfield. At the request of her new employers, mail should not be sent to their address. Celinda showed me the one letter that was returned to her as undeliverable- 2381 Hawthorne Lane. One bus stop away from the Peacocks. And the Fifields.