Pushing Up Daisies

thirty minutes. Then I dug out MacLeod's card, called him, and arranged to meet him at his place later that day.

I showered, dressed, and took a cup of green tea down to my office to catch up on paperwork. After an hour, my billings were in order and I was feeling pretty good. If my few measly clients paid on time this month, I'd be in good shape.

The Peacock job wasn't going to make me rich, but I was gambling it would land me at least one other big fish. My biggest client to date was Caroline Sturgis, a blond, velvet-headband type, who was plump despite her many hours on her newly landscaped tennis court. Maybe it was all those trendy drinks between sets. Caroline was a glacially slow payer and still owed me for work done last fall. It had been my largest, least-interesting job—over a thousand bulbs lining her court, and another hundred on the berm beside it in the shape of two crossed rackets. I warned her it was going to look like hell in June, but she didn't care.

'We'll just change them all to white and blue agera-tum, and red impatiens in time for the U.S. Open!' she said, thrilled with her own design skills.

Yeah, kemo sabe. We. Still, it was all but a guarantee of a future job, since the dying leaves from those bulbs would make her tennis court look like a diseased cornfield by Wimbledon fortnight.

I made a note to sic Anna on her for payment, then it was time to hit the road. I still didn't know Springfield that well, and I'd have to hunt to find the Nutmeg Apartments, where Neil MacLeod lived, so I packed up my stuff, left Anna Pena my favorite deadbeat's phone number, and took off.

The Nutmeg Apartment complex was a cluster of modest, two-story buildings, barnacled with postage- stamp-sized terraces uniformly furnished with Astroturf and molded plastic chairs.

When he opened the door, I recognized him immediately from the diner. Neil MacLeod was in his thirties, with closely cropped brown hair and long sideburns. He wore a metal stud in one ear, and I would have bet good money there was another piercing somewhere on his body. Incense mingled with the sweet smell of almond- scented massage oil in the tiny, immaculate apartment, and lest you think you were in the hands of a nonprofessional, a blue velvet curtain sensitively set off the massage table and two stacks of meticulously folded towels.

'Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,' I said.

'Rust never sleeps. Besides, I'm a Glaswegian. We take the work when we can get it.'

I undressed behind the curtain and climbed on the table as he reeled off a laundry list of ailments and conditions. 'Any recent surgeries, injuries? Any particular problems? Are you pregnant?'

Only one of the conditions applied to me. My face was squished and my answer was muffled by the sheepskin face cradle on his massage table. 'Stress, I suppose. A lot going on,' I mumbled, 'and I haven't been working out enough, although I may have overdone it today.'

'Can I come in?' he said.

I mumbled yes. I heard him moving about the room and felt another towel being folded over my legs with origami-like precision.

'You have to stretch after, as well as before. Most people don't unless they're in a class. Any parts you'd like me to focus on or stay away from?'

'Stay away from my toes. I'm kind of funny about them.'

Neil asked what kind of music I'd like to hear, but other than that, he said little, which was good. Buck naked, I didn't exactly feel like having an animated conversation. Despite his slight build, he was deceptively strong, as I found out a short time later, facedown, with only a thin sheet covering me from the hips down.

'Let me know if it's too hard.'

I was already on Planet Paula. After a few minutes, I drifted off. Too soon, I felt his hand on my shoulder.

'Take as much time as you need.'

Behind the curtain I dressed. I heard him turn his phone back on and fill a teakettle. Over tea with a splash of milk, I learned how he and Babe had met.

They had the band experience in common. Neil MacLeod had been the massage therapist for a perennial opening act called the Downward Dogs. Who knew that was a job? The Dogs toured for five years, then broke up when the lead singer, a free spirit named Skye, ran off with a classic car salesman from New Jersey. Unable to replace her, and getting tired of life on the road anyway, they divvied up their dough and belongings and scattered to the winds, right after a gig at UConn.

Neil was telling this story to the sympathetic woman at the diner and decided it was kismet, or karma or something, so he settled down where the Dogs had barked their last. Now he lived near the university, teaching yoga and Pilates at the UConn Fitness Center and seeing private clients in his apartment.

'What's that you're burning?' I asked, tying my shoelaces.

'Is the smoke bothering you?'

I shook my head.

'It's a smudge stick—copal resin and rosemary. Copal is sacred to a lot of Central and South Americans. I smuggled this in from Belize, but you can get it online now. It's used in some Mexican churches, too. It's supposed to call in the spirits of health,' he said. 'I can't guarantee that.'

'I like it. Do you know much about this stuff? Herbs, I mean.'

'A bit. I've read a few books.'

'The house I'm working on has an herb garden and a drying cottage.'

'I know. I've been there.'

'You have?' So, he was Babe's friend who'd known Dorothy.

MacLeod told me he'd been in the local food co-op a few years back looking for borage. They didn't stock it, but another woman overheard the conversation and suggested he contact Dorothy Peacock.

'I left a note in her mailbox, and she invited me over for tea. At first, I thought she was daft as a brush— most of the time she talked as if someone else was with us—but she knew her stuff as an herbalist. I'm an amateur compared to her. Seemed a bit lonely; I didn't find out till later that her sister had just died. After that, she told me I was welcome to harvest herbs anytime I liked, as long as I was careful. I only went a few times, more to visit her than anything else; the co-op carries just about everything these days.'

We talked a bit more, then I sensed I was cutting into his free time between clients, so I got up to leave.

'You really are tight, you know. And your left trapezius is pretty knotted. You carry your bag on that shoulder?'

'I just slept funny last night. Listen, I may need some advice about the herb garden. Okay if I call you?'

'Sure. We can 'gather the enchanted herbs.' '

'Excuse me?'

'Shakespeare.'

CHAPTER 15

Good do-bee that I am, I felt too guilty not to stop at Halcyon to see how Hugo and Felix were making out. I didn't want my mental health day to leave us too far behind, and I didn't want Felix to think one kiss from him had sent me into a swoon.

When I got there, I saw three vans in the driveway and a small army of Mexicans pruning, raking, nipping, and chipping, ignoring most of my borrowed tools in favor of their own rusty rakes and coas. A traditional Mayan tool, the coa has a sharp, curved blade and a wooden handle, like a scythe. It's been used for centuries in the Yucatan, and it's the tool of choice for many of the Latin American gardeners up north, who do everything but pick their teeth with it.

'zQue pasa?' I yelled to Felix nervously. 'What's going on? Who are these guys?'

He sauntered over to me, as if he were the boss and I was his helper. 'More of Hugo's cousins,' he teased. 'They're friends—just helping out for the day. As a favor to me.'