Pushing Up Daisies

'Unless what? What do we do next?' I interrupted.

'We do nothing. I'll make a few phone calls. I'm not even sure where the wrapper is. It may still be in New Haven.'

'Why New Haven?'

'Chain of custody. I think the Forensic Science Center still has everything. I'll look into it.'

He seemed ready to send me on my way.

'How long do you think it will take?'

'Sweet Jesus, you're impatient. This isn't the big city, you know.'

'My point entirely. Have you found any other bodies around here lately?'

He picked up the phone and hit a button.

'It's Mom. I've got Paula Holliday here. The woman who found the body? She's got a notion related to the Peacock matter. Okay if I put you on speakerphone?'

I was annoyed by his use of the word notion. He pressed the mouthpiece of the phone to his chest.

'I'm on with Marian Lyle. I took some of the pictures at the crime scene, but she took the ones that came out.'

I told Marian my Cadbury's theory. I couldn't tell if her silence meant she was considering my suggestion or covering the phone and laughing her ass off.

'All the pictures I took are on a disk,' she said finally. 'I can send them to your computer, Mike, but I don't recall spending much time on the candy wrapper other than to record its existence. I was more interested in the necklace the baby was wearing. Took a lot of shots of that. Thought it might help with the ID.'

'And I've been kicking myself for not having taken a closer look at that medal,' I added.

'It was something in Spanish; I couldn't quite make it out,' she said.

'Send everything here,' Mike said. 'My home computer, too.' He hung up.

'So now that we're, sort of, partners, are you going to tell me what happened to Dorothy's sister?'

'Number one, we are not partners. Number two, Dorothy Peacock's sister died four years ago. Check Morning Glory Cemetery if you don't believe me.'

'Right. And Jimmy Hoffa is alive and well and in the witness protection program.' I got up to leave, taking my research with me.

'Where's the other Hardy girl?' Mike asked.

'Lucy? Home. Working. Like I should be, instead of wasting my time here.'

'If anything comes up, I'll call you.'

'Sure you will. Thanks a lot, Sergeant,' I said, silently vowing not to share anything else with that guy until I could rub his nose in it.

CHAPTER 18

I was on my hands and knees, weeding, when Hugo and Felix pulled into the Peacocks' driveway in a thirty- foot U-Haul truck. As soon as they parked, the back door rolled up and five other men piled out and immediately started off-loading the shrubs and trees they'd been riding with.

Hugo stayed with the men, acting as foreman, while Felix joined me at the perennial bed. He dropped to his knees alongside me and sat back on his heels.

'Hi, boss. Hugo thought you would want to plant these today,' he said, motioning to the shrubs. 'He says it will rain tomorrow and if we get them in the ground today, they'll get off to a healthy start.'

'Smart thinking.'

'He may even turn me into a gardener—always good to have something to fall back on if the president thing doesn't work out. He looks after you. You've been very kind to him and to Anna.'

'They're good people,' I said. 'I didn't realize they were a couple. I guess that's why she comes over so often.'

'That's not the only reason. She likes you. We all like you,' he said. I realized our knees were almost touching, and scrambled to my feet, losing my balance and nearly falling over into the bed. Felix stayed on the ground for a minute, looking up at me. Then he got up, too, calmly brushing himself off. Hugo joined us and bailed me out of the awkward moment.

'My knight in shining armor. I see you brought in the cavalry again,' I said, referring to his helpers. 'We'll need them.'

'The men are happy to do it,' Hugo said. 'For you and for Don Felix. And for the baby. Some of the men consider it a blessing that you found it.'

'I don't know how much of a blessing it's been for anyone. I just seem to be annoying people and raking up a lot of old stuff.'

'Perhaps it's like turning the compost pile,' Hugo said. 'The material takes a while before it is ready to be used.'

I hadn't seen Anna since the incident at my place, and it was unlike her to disappear for days, unless more cosmetic enhancements were involved, which was entirely possible. Now that the cat was out of the bag I asked Hugo how she was doing.

'She is good. Very busy, but she will be back to work this week.'

'You two should have told me,' I said, and he actually blushed.

'Anna wanted to,' he stammered, 'but I am a very private person, and old-fashioned. There are traditions to be followed, from my family and my village. It will take some time, but we will be married,' he said proudly.

Two men came over to us, awaiting more instructions. Balled and burlapped trees were dragged to the spots that Felix and Hugo had previously prepared. Nursery pots were placed where they'd eventually be planted—starting with fifty small boxwoods on either side of the oyster-shell path that separated the herb garden and the white garden.

'Is this everything from the nursery?' I asked, getting back to business.

'Only the evergreens. I didn't think we'd have time to plant everything today. Better to let the nursery's men water them until we get them in the ground than to have to do it ourselves. Excave los hoyos tan hondos como las bolas de las raices,' he told the men.

'zQue estas diciendo?' I asked.

'I was just telling them to dig the holes as deep as the root-balls.'

The men operated like an assembly line, and the work went quickly. Dig, place, fertilize, backfill, water. The allee was finished. Five large rhododendrons replaced those that had had to be severely cut back in the front of the house. Luckily, two twenty-foot viburnums on either side of the porch had survived and would serve as a backdrop for the rhododendrons until they filled in and re-created the lush hedge that had once been there.

Woolly adelgid, the sticky white critters ruining the hemlocks in Connecticut, had done a number on the trees marking the property line shared by Halcyon and the Fifield home. The men planted a dozen new ones. Staggered, they'd look less like puny replacements and more like offspring of the larger ones. At least, I hoped they would.

My biggest challenge had been finding mature cypress trees to fill in Halcyon's Italianate hedge that lined the far side of the Peacocks' stone wall and separated the garden from the lawn and Long Island Sound beyond. These were grown in Oregon, and were a remarkable match for the ones Dorothy Peacock had planted.

The men dug a long trench on that side of the wall. The cypresses would be evenly spaced along the length of the wall, providing shelter and privacy, which I now understood was a priority for Dorothy and Renata.

We stood on the brick terrace, telling the men where the trees should go—this one to the left, this one to the right.

'Perhaps we measure the space and plant them equidistant,' Hugo suggested, no longer feeling the need to hide his exceptional English.

'That's a good start, but they're not all the same size. We'll have to eyeball it, too.' I squinted into the sunlight and motioned for the last one to be moved closer to the edge of the wall.