Pushing Up Daisies

I fell back on my butt, flinging the bundle into the air, then I watched it land and roll over until it stopped facedown in the decomposing leaves behind a stone wall. I looked around, half hoping there was a witness but just as happy there was no one to see me act like such a chicken.

I got up and tiptoed over to where the bundle rested. I couldn't bring myself to touch it but wanted to get the tiny face out of the dirt, so I nudged it with my toe. It didn't move. I did it a second time, but pushed too hard and the bundle rolled again, this time picking up speed on the sloping lawn that would take it into Long Island Sound if I didn't act fast. I wasn't much of a football fan but instinctively knew what I had to do. I tackled it. I scooped up the body and ran up the hill, back to the garden, as if I were heading for the end zone. When I got there, I shook off my hoodie, made a circle on the ground with it, and nestled the tiny body inside, so it wouldn't roll over again. Then, on unsteady feet, I walked a few steps and puked, over by the Album Elegans rhododendrons.

But I should start at the beginning. Six hours earlier, I'd been minding my own business, lingering over burned cinnamon toast at the Paradise Diner. The coffee was better at Dunkin' Donuts, and the food was better almost anywhere, but the Paradise was my third place— that place you go to that isn't work or home.

Chalky turquoise and hot pink, with Christmas lights on twelve months a year, the Paradise is a little bit of the Ca rib be an inexplicably transplanted to southeastern Connecticut, courtesy of the proprietor, Wanda 'Babe' Chinnery.

Detractors claim Babe stays in business by dealing pot on the side, and there is a suspicious patch of ground in the back surrounded by a hodgepodge of lattice, but I don't believe it's anything more sinister than your garden-variety suburban debris, and probably a lot less toxic.

Though only the boldest of the soccer moms ventured in, the Paradise is a magnet for every male in town between the ages of twelve and eighty. That's also due to Babe. Babe is every young boy's fantasy bad girl and every older guy's shoulda-woulda-coulda. They come in to see what color her hair is this week or what sexy, tattoo-revealing getup she'll be wearing. And if none of them can really have her, at least they can dream, for the price of bad coffee and artery-clogging donuts.

Twenty years ago, Babe and the late Pete Chinnery bought the Paradise. She'd been a backup singer and he was a roadie for a fair-to-middling metal band that'd had one big hit and toured on it for years. They socked away the money they'd made hawking rock 'n' roll memorabilia, and when they decided to settle down, they moved back to Babe's hometown and bought the Paradise. Less than a year later, Pete and another member of the Son Also Rises Christian Bikers Club were killed in a freak accident on Route 7 when some crazy antiquer hit the brakes for a tag sale and sent the two men flying. To hear Babe tell it, there was more leather at Pete's funeral than at an S & M convention.

Now the Paradise staff was just Babe, a revolving part-time waitress—this one named Chloe—and the cook, affectionately referred to as Pete number two. Babe claims she hired him only because it would be easy to remember his name, and from some of the food I'd sampled there, she might have been telling the truth. Despite our glaring differences, Babe and I had hit it off immediately.

'Top you off, Paula?' she asked.

I threw caution to the winds and held out my cup for more.

'You seen the Bulletin this morning?'

'I didn't know they bothered to publish that thing once March Madness was over.'

'The New York Times isn't the only newspaper in the country, wiseass.'

Springfield, Connecticut, is a bedroom community, one of New York City's many moons, more famous for the planet it orbits than for anything in the town itself. Springfield has a healthy mix of low, middle, and upper-middle classes, and we're within spitting distance of the blue bloods in Greenwich and Bedford.

The Springfield Bulletin is our local paper, and unless it was college basketball season, when the UConn Huskies ruled, it took all of five minutes to read. Example? Now that the Huskies hadn't made it to the Sweet Sixteen, a recent feature was THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WALNUTS. I was saving it for some really lonely night by the fire.

Babe slid the paper across the counter to me. The entire front page covered the death of someone named Dorothy Peacock, last member of one of the oldest, most prestigious families in Springfield. We had a Peacock Lane, a Peacock Road, a Peacock band shell, and undoubtedly lots more a relative newcomer like me hadn't heard about.

'I didn't know there were any actual Peacocks.'

'I guess there aren't. Anymore. Not exactly the crowd I ran with,' Babe said, 'but I always thought their house was cool'—pointing to the paper. 'Weird, but cool. They even gave tours of Halcyon's garden.'

'Their house had a name?'

'Sure, doesn't yours?' she said, grinning.

'Yeah. Right now it's Chez Citibank.' I pushed my cup and plate to the side and spread out the skimpy paper. 'Ever meet her?'

'Dorothy? No. A pal of mine did. I saw her a few times though, from a distance. Looked like quite a character.'

'Oh, yeah, not like us,' I said, returning to the article.

In one deft move, she cleared the plates and wiped down the silver-and-gold Formica counter, then consolidated the ketchup bottles in that precarious upside-down way they must teach in diner school. She used a balled-up napkin to erase a few words from the blackboard behind the counter, changing the breakfast specials into the lunch specials.

'Have you ever considered adding some heart-healthy options to that menu?' I asked gently. 'It might help business.'

'You gotta be kidding. I should take business advice from you? Just don't eat the fries,' she snorted, dismissing my health concerns and substituting the word French for home.

I realized she was right and went back to the paper. The Bulletin carried a basic bio of Dorothy and her late sister, Renata. There was no mention of survivors. Archival photos of Halcyon and the garden were provided by the Springfield Historical Society. I'm something of a regular there, too, as well as at the diner. Not that I'm such a history buff, but designing on a dime is easier when you frequent the local thrift shops. And the Historical Society had a great one.

'I bet those old girls at SHS could even help you get the job,' Babe said. 'The Doublemint twins?'

'Who says I need another client? I'd have to leave all this,' I said, barely looking up from the paper. But her arrow had hit the mark; my dance card was hardly full, as my almost daily presence here confirmed. Did I mention I'm a gardener? Zone 6. I've got my own small landscaping business, emphasis on small. I'm also a master gardener and periodically volunteer with local landscaping programs as part of the classes—and to drum up new business.

'Since we're in advice-giving mode, why don't you volunteer at Halcyon—that'd be a real community ser -vice. That place has been an eyesore for years. And it'll move you into the high-rent district.'

Not a place I'd been visiting recently. The year before, a global media conglomerate swallowed up the boutique production company I worked for. My once-promising career as a documentary filmmaker had degenerated into endless speculations about Who Killed Diana. Or worse. Who killed some poor bastard no one had ever heard of.

That had been the catalyst for this new chapter in my life. I took the moral high ground—and my severance package—loaded up the car, and made an offer on the bungalow I'd been taking as a summer rental. Then I hung out my shingle —PH FACTOR, GARDEN SOLUTIONS. PH is me, Paula Holliday. PH is also the measure of how sweet or how sour your soil is. The name was supposed to be clever, but so far, few people got it. And few people called.

Every time the wolf seemed to be at the door, Babe chatted me up to one of her customers, so I had a handful of clients, which kept the bank happy; but working on the Peacock garden could definitely jump-start things for me.

'I'm not a licensed landscape architect. This may be out of my league.'

'And you think all the women around here who call themselves decorators have some kind of sheepskin? Can't hurt to ask. Besides,' she said, 'I need to clean that spot where you've been sitting