Pushing Up Daisies

Very soon, in fact, because just then O'Malley walked in.

Guzman shrugged with a little smile. 'I saw him through the window.'

'Hello, Plant Lady. I hope that's decaf,' he said, eyeing my extralarge coffee.

'Is that my official nickname?'

'Oh, no, just trying it on for size. It needs tweaking.'

I knew it wasn't my business, but I asked how the case was going.

'Not going too far, truth be told. Have a seat.'

While he got out the files, I checked out his cubicle. The bulletin board was layered with yellowed WANTED posters for missing persons and for information regarding a cop shot close to twenty years ago.

'I guess there's not much crime here. Those flyers look pretty old.'

'Or it could mean that we catch most of the bad guys, and those are just a few that got away.'

Touche.

There were perfectly edged stacks of papers lined up against the far edge of the desk. A couple of pictures of kids (his?), a few postcards from national parks, and a wooden plaque inscribed WORLD'S BEST MOM. A pencil cup had the quote MEASURE TWICE, CALL A #*%! CARPENTER. Anal, I thought.

'Okay,' he said, 'the corpse, as you know, had been a corpse for some time, tucked away quite lovingly, until the new gardener came along.'

'How come it didn't decompose? Just working in the garden or hiking I've seen animals . . .'

'Any number of things can cause a body to mummify, but it doesn't usually happen by accident in Connecticut's acid soil. Most probably someone intentionally treated either the body or the material it was wrapped in. It's also possible the body was moved from some drier, more airtight resting place. That was suggested by the outer box, and the absence of seedlings and rocks that unconsciously led you to dig in that particular spot.'

All right, maybe he wasn't just a suburban donut hound.

'So whose baby was it?'

O'Malley shrugged. 'That we don't know. We may never know. The two obvious candidates, those being the dead sisters, aren't talking.'

'What about DNA testing? Can't you do tests to figure out who the baby is?'

'That's the problem with law enforcement nowadays,' he said, looking around to his colleagues for confirmation. 'Too much television. Everyone's an expert.'

I felt a sermon coming.

'Here's the CliffsNotes version,' he continued. 'We can take a sample from the corpse, but we have nothing to match it to without exhuming the bodies of the two dead women. To go through the legal hassle and considerable expense just to confirm that some woman had an illegitimate child forty or fifty years ago . . . who seems to have died of natural causes anyway . . . what purpose would it serve?'

'What about finding the father?'

'You want us to take DNA samples from all the geezers in the area? And what if Dad was a traveling salesman or a sailor on leave? That little tidbit of information may never be known, but odds are very good that the mother was one of the Peacock sisters.'

'I guess you're right. I just thought with all the stuff you hear about DNA testing, you know, it would be easy.'

'It's a wee bit more complicated than it sounds. Without a reference sample you can't prove much more than that it was a human child, a boy, by the way.' I was a little ashamed that I hadn't asked. 'There are half a million DNA samples sitting in labs waiting to be analyzed. And thousands of people currently in prison hoping to have convictions overturned because of them. And these are mostly rape and murder cases, mind you. So don't judge us too harshly just because some dead lady's indiscretion of fifty years ago doesn't rank high on anybody's to-do list. If there's no real payoff, it's hard to justify. We can't exactly drop the sample off at our local drugstore like vacation pictures.'

'Okay, Sergeant, can I help you with that soapbox? You're right—too many reruns of Law and Order.'

'No, you're right. We should be able to do this, but it all boils down to money and priorities. The medical examiner's office just doesn't think it's worth it, given the circumstances. There will be an autopsy, but that will, most likely, just give us the cause of death. If that's suspicious . . . well, I'm getting ahead of myself.'

He paused for effect. 'I can tell you that the baby wasn't one of the Romanovs.'

'You guys must be a riot at your Christmas party.'

I shook my head and tried not to laugh.

'Does this mean I can go back to the house soon?'

'Yes, ma'am. Someone will be there tomorrow to clean up our mess; you can start making your own in a day or two.'

'Thanks.' I got up to leave. 'So, they have Cliffs-Notes in Ireland, too?'

'Indoor plumbing, but no CliffsNotes. That's why we moved,' he teased. 'Dad and I came here from Ireland twenty-five years ago after my mother died.' He held the door for me.

'You know, Sergeant, even if the baby did die of natural causes, someone did move it. And recently. Isn't that a crime?'

'I said maybe someone moved it. Let us deal with that, Ms. Holliday.'

As soon as he closed the door behind me, I could hear the conversation inside start up again, but I was damned if I was going to turn around to see if they were talking about me. I jogged back to my car, then drove home, faintly pissed off but not sure why.

CHAPTER 6

The next morning, the Bulletin's front page was plastered with updates on the Peacock story. Almost everyone at the Paradise Diner had a copy. And a theory. Most of the articles were written by Jon Chappell, the intrepid reporter who'd been bird-dogging me since I'd found the body; twelve phone calls that first night alone. He'd tapered off to two or three a day, but every time I played messages there he was, hounding me, hoping for his Nancy Grace breakthrough story.

'More coffee, honey?' Babe asked. 'You look like you could use it.'

'I didn't sleep much last night.'

'Well, it's understandable, given recent events. I mean, it looks like the Knicks aren't even going to make the play-offs this year. I know a few other people losing sleep these days, too.' Babe motioned to a tall, quiet guy I recognized as one of the Knicks' assistant coaches. Even he was reading the Bulletin this morning and not the sports section.

'Anything else, Herb?'

'Got a center?' he muttered.

In the corner, I saw the guy whose coffee I'd spilled the other day. I saluted him with my mug. 'I still owe you one.'

'So you do,' he said, getting up and joining us at the counter.

'It's Gerald, right?'

He nodded, then motioned to the newspaper. The lead article repeated what O'Malley had told me the day before. The body found at Halcyon had 'almost certainly' been the child of one of the two dead sisters. What the paper suggested, but didn't say outright, was that there wasn't likely to be any further investigation—though the writer was clearly disappointed. With no tangible evidence of a crime, what was there to pursue?

'You were first on the scene,' he said. 'You buy it?'

'Sure. Why not?'

'Just asking. Dead women, dead baby, dead case. Awfully neat and tidy, don't you think? Most crime is messier. Most crimes are never solved.'

I shrugged.

'Sorry. Old habits, as they say. Used to be my line of work.'