Pushing Up Daisies

Halcyon job.

Because of the body, I hadn't gotten beyond the planning stage. Our first week would be all cleanup; the area near the herb cottage would be our base of operations. Behind it, out of sight, we'd build a frame for our compost piles. All the dead plants and garden debris, unless diseased, would be recycled. Downed branches and those I planned to prune would be chipped and used as mulch. When Hugo said he could have the frame built by the end of the day, I had to restrain myself from doing a little fist pump.

'It's quite a coincidence you two are cousins.'

'Well, we're not exactly cousins—that's just a figure of speech, like paesani in Italian. We come from the same town in Mexico, and our fathers know each other,' Felix explained.

Hugo smiled and remained silent, but I thought I caught a flicker of surprise in his expression.

'I don't mean to be nosy. It's really none of my business.'

'No, no, it's quite all right,' Felix said. 'You'd be surprised how many people wouldn't even ask. Or don't really listen when you tell them.'

Clearly he was pleased that I did, but he didn't volunteer any more information, so I didn't press.

When we reached the white garden, we all fell silent. Hugo crossed himself. I didn't have any bright ideas for the space. I knew I wanted to memorialize the child that had rested there, but not to the extent that it turned into one of those morbid roadside shrines that sometimes mark fatal traffic accidents.

Just then, Guido Chiaramonte came out of the hemlocks.

'Every good garden has a toad,' I muttered.

Guido strode toward us like some padrone coming to inspect the peons. Happy to avoid him, Hugo volunteered to start on the compost frame, and before I had time to say anything, he and Felix were gone.

'Mr. Chiaramonte, how are you?'

'I'm good, I'm good. My men are doing some work next door at Mrs. Fifield's. I came here earlier to see how my competition is doing.'

'I'm hardly competition,' I said, shaking my head. 'Is that Congressman Fifield's home?'

'His mother's. Dina Fifield. She's a lady friend of mine,' he said, making sure I didn't miss the implication.

Guido pointed to my helpers. 'Are those muchachos working for you?'

'They're helping me, but it's not an exclusive arrangement. Hugo is a friend.'

'If you need anything, you should let me know. I'm always happy to help my lady friends. I see your girl Anna waiting for the bus. Sometimes I try to give her a lift.' He cackled. 'So far she says no, but one day she'll say yes.'

Not if she's smart, I thought. 'That's very kind of you, Mr. C. As a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me.' Just one little old, teensy-weensy thing. 'We won't have much of a bud get for equipment. None, in fact. The Historical Society, and I personally would be very grateful for anything you'd care to donate or lend. I'm sure they'd publicly acknowledge your generosity.' I added that last bit because philanthropy was not one of Guido's strong suits. He'd need every incentive to part with the smallest dibble free of charge.

'I should be angry with you. You were a cattiva—a bad girl—for underbidding me on this job. But if it wasn't you, I suppose it would have been someone else. Getting money out of Stapley is like trying to get into Anna's pants. Difficult but not impossible.'

I still needed him, so I said nothing.

'And I couldn't have asked for a prettier bad girl to be so close by. Come and see me,' Guido said. 'I'm sure we can work something out.'

'Would this afternoon be possible?' I suggested. 'If you're not too busy?' Fiddle-de-dee. And I promise to eat barbecue with you at Twelve Oaks! I didn't have much experience batting my eyelashes—I probably looked like my contact lenses were bothering me— but Guido bought the Scarlett O'Hara routine. And he promised me everything but a backhoe. He'd be pissed when Felix and Hugo picked up the tools instead of me, but I'd think of some excuse.

He hitched up his pants and stood a little straighter, like some 1980s lounge lizard who had just scored big. He bent down to kiss my hand, and it was a good thing I had five inches on him, otherwise he'd have seen me roll my eyes. Then he flashed a gold-toothed smile, his version of courtliness. It took all my willpower to suppress a snort. Guido waved his hand dismissively at Felix and Hugo, then swaggered out to his Caddy, no doubt planning this afternoon's seduction scene.

Felix and Hugo were speaking back and forth in rapid-fire Spanish; I couldn't understand much. Something about trees, money, and Guido. When I heard his name, I broke in.

'I worked for Chiaramonte last season,' Hugo explained. 'There's a small matter of some unpaid salary.'

'That's terrible. I have a few slow payers, too. Would you like me to speak with him, Hugo?'

'No, gracias. I will handle it. Perdoname,' Hugo said. 'A Mr. Chappell from the Bulletin was here earlier. We told him you weren't here.'

'Good. I'm never here for Mr. Chappell, okay? I'm already as famous as I want to be.'

We spent the rest of the day planning, deciding what to rip out and what was salvageable. Then I sent them off, with my apologies, to Chiaramonte's, where Guido would probably be waiting in a satin smoking jacket with a bottle of Asti Spumante on ice and Dean Martin on the CD player. I almost wanted to see it. Almost.

CHAPTER 8

If most of the following days were spent in the garden, most of my evenings were spent either online or at the Ferguson Library ferreting out snippets of information from a variety of sources on the specific plants at Halcyon. With the help of my new best friend, Mrs. Cox, I'd just about wrung everything out of the library and the newspaper archives. She'd even contributed some useful firsthand info, like the fact that Dorothy Peacock was severely allergic to roses and didn't grow them.

Exhausted, I'd fallen into bed fully clothed the night before, so it was no surprise I was up like a shot at 4 A.M. the next morning, raring to go. It was far too early to leave for Halcyon, and, as dedicated as she was, I didn't see Mrs. Cox opening the library for me at this hour, so I took my coffee and oatmeal downstairs and turned on the computer.

If I'd had any special gift in my last career, it had been finding things. Obscure documentaries, forgotten films, foreign gems. My biggest coup had been finding a reclusive film producer hiding out in a yurt in New Mexico. He was living an ascetic lifestyle while holding the rights to his seventies' cult classics which were now, unbeknownst to him, worth two million dollars to an interested party. He still has the yurt, but now it's sitting next to his Taliesin-style home in Scottsdale, Arizona.

All of my once state-of-the-art equipment was now available smaller, cheaper, and faster, but for my purposes the old setup would do. People searches had changed, too, since I left the old job; it was a helluva lot easier than it used to be. Disturbingly easy. People you hated in high school could find you in minutes. How disturbing was that?

I silently apologized to the woman whose privacy I was about to invade, but this was business. Meeting Dorothy Peacock, even electronically, would help me restore her garden. At least, that was how I rationalized poking around in her past.

'You look lovely today. You've got some letters.' It was Hugh Grant with my wake-up call. I didn't need another mortgage, cheap prescription drugs, or the dozen press releases from companies I no longer cared about. And I wasn't interested in the few e-mails I suspected were from my stalker, Jon Chappell. Delete all. If anything's important, they'll send it again; otherwise it was relegated to Spam Heaven.

I googled Dorothy. No, not a school in British Columbia, not a porcelain doll named Dorothy from the Peacock company, no, no—. I scrolled down through the obviously incorrect matches.

'Hello, I think we have a winner.'

The New En gland Women's Hall of Fame. Who knew? Dorothy Charlotte Peacock, b.1911(?)– d.2008. And they keep current.