Pushing Up Daisies

CHAPTER 4

The cold woke me, and the sky was so clear, it seemed as if Orion’s belt was dangling over my head. I briefly considered dragging my telescope outside, then the memory of the day’s events shook any fanciful notions of stargazing out of my head.

Inside the house, last Sunday’s dutifully purchased but unread New York Times made excellent kindling. I started a fire and went to clean myself up. A hot shower and fresh clothes made me feel almost normal again, normal enough to be hungry. Back in the kitchen, I checked out the dismal contents of my fridge: yogurt, wilting veggies, water, and every condiment known to man. I was always so virtuous when I went food shopping, but once home, hanging on the refrigerator door, I invariably craved high- fat food of no nutritional value. Since I never had any in the house, I opted for my patented Greek yogurt with flaxseed, honey, and raisins sundae; if I was feeling really reckless, I might throw in a handful of wonderful walnuts. Why not go to hell in a handbasket?

I settled in on the floor in front of the fireplace with the Halcyon file, my laptop and garden books spread out around me.

Oddly enough, finding the body hadn’t scared me. Everything pointed to its being evidence of someone’s old secret, as opposed to someone’s new crime. Perversely I even found myself thinking it would add to Halcyon’s mythology and make it even more of a local attraction once the gardens were restored. I got to work.

Renata Peacock’s birthday, June 18, would be an appropriate date for an opening. And there was a certain symmetry to it. Richard’s file revealed that was the date the sisters used to do their noblesse oblige thing and invite the locals. Problem was, it was only two and a half months away. Tomorrow I’d get in touch with Hugo and maybe rope some of my city friends into pulling weeds and mulching in exchange for a pleasant weekend in the country. I pored over the stacks of garden books and old pictures, adding to my bulging folders of notes and shopping lists.

I didn’t doubt Richard Stapley’s ability to raise funds. He was handsome, in a rugged, old- fashioned, Mount Rushmore way; I could see the blue- rinse crowd getting weak in the knees and handing over checks after just a few flattering words from him. I also saw that every once in a while I’d have to remind him I was a grown- up-not some kid he’d brought in to mow the lawn.

I’d need everything within a month, preferably by Easter if the shrubs were going to get established early in the season. Despite the inevitable consequences, I would throw myself at Guido Chiaramonte for the loan of a chipper, chain saw, some leaf blowers, and whatever other equipment I didn’t own.

Guido was a local nursery own er, in his eighties and notorious for hitting on women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Women on walkers did not escape his advances. One of my early Springfield fantasies had been to buy Guido’s place when he retired or went back to Sicily, but the old reprobate had shown no signs of doing either. I once took him up on his offer to teach me about the nursery business, and I was met with amorous overtures that were half- amusing, half- revolting. Now I was planning to flash a little cleavage and bat my eyelashes at the old letch. For tools. I was shameless.

I made a timeline for the Halcyon job and refined my sketch of the garden, eventually getting around to the white garden and the spot where I’d found the body. Unconsciously, I’d been avoiding it, but I would have to go back there-mentally and physically.

Not to night though. My legs were stiff from sitting on the floor, and my neck ached from scrunching down to inspect old photos with a magnifying glass. I gave myself a good stretch, packed up my notes, and went downstairs for some mindless entertainment.

Mindless was right. The former programming exec inside me couldn’t help but criticize. Five shows devoted to moving your furniture and cleaning your closets? No wonder cable television kept resurrecting classics. That was my first job in the business, screening vintage sitcoms for TVLand. Uncle Miltie must be turning over in his grave. And the shopping channels were growing like ground cover. Who really needs another peridot pendant? I sure didn’t, but the disembodied hand dangling the necklace lured me the same way the tarnished chain had that morning. I shook off the urge.

I passed on the plastic surgery shows in favor of something called Island Survival. Very realistic. Someone should produce Manhattan Survival. It’s an island. The winner would have to score a good table at a trendy new restaurant, pick up a model, get a hair appointment with this month’s stylist- to- the- stars, and get a cabbie to take him to one of the outer boroughs-all the really useful survival skills.

A couple of hours later, all but brain- dead, I was glued to one of the grisly true- crime programs I might have been producing had I stayed in New York. “John claimed his wife went shopping and never returned, but he really killed her, put her in a metal drum, and left her in the basement for thirty years until we found her.”

That was the direction the new own ers of my old company wanted me to take. I’d cranked out a few episodes, but my heart was never in it. It was too hard to take. And there was always one cop who still had all the facts at his fingertips, as if the crime had just happened yesterday-his own Lindbergh baby.

There were lots of those cases. Too many. And just as many on the other side. The Jane Does who turned up and remained unclaimed. I started to wonder what my little baby’s name was. Wait a minute. My little baby? Who said that? I didn’t have a baby-get a grip.

But I did have a baby. At least I did for the twenty minutes or so it took the cops to find me in the Peacocks’ garden, crouched down, the taste of vomit fresh in my mouth and my eyes locked on the partially unwrapped body of a dead baby.

A noise upstairs shook me down to my Polarfleece socks. I put the TV on mute and strained to hear what it was. Between the acorns and the bird feeders, my place is one giant salad bar for critters, so I don’t usually get too spooked by the odd noise in the middle of the night. I grew up in New York, so not much scared me, except when things were too quiet.

Heart pounding, I tiptoed upstairs to investigate. I still held the remote in a white- knuckled death grip. It’d make a dandy weapon if the intruder was a munchkin.

Outside my kitchen window, the blackness held all sorts of bogeymen. I imagined shadowy figures with outstretched arms in the weeping hemlock but, happily, saw nothing. Behind me, another log in the dying fire collapsed, repeating the sound that first startled me. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath, until it came out in a whoosh. What an idiot. Sheepishly, I went back down the stairs, but not before setting the security alarm. The previous own er had had it installed, probably to safeguard his collection of bling. I didn’t have anything worth stealing, so hardly ever used the alarm, but it wouldn’t hurt to have advance notice if an ax murderer was coming up the stairs.

My usual antidote to stressful situations is sports, but at this hour only ESPN Classic sports was broadcasting. I recognized the vintage Knicks game where Willis Reed limps out of the locker room, plays for three minutes, but so inspires the team that it carries them to victory. The clip is shown ad nauseam at Madison Square Garden, usually when all hope is lost. Not exactly a surprise ending but just what the doctor ordered. So I fell asleep again, not dreaming of dead babies and bodies stuffed in fifty- gallon drums but of Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and Walt “Clyde” Frazier. And the scariest thing in my dream was Clyde’s postgame outfit.