Pushing Up Daisies

circus on the nursing home's porch.

The cops were relieved to be let off the hook, and my entertainment value was fading, so the crowd broke up. I could hold my own against bingo but would lose every time against ice cream sundaes, which was the next course in Sunnyview's dining room.

'Take care of yourself, dear,' Inez said. 'She's one of my best customers,' she said to the others, ushering them back into the building. She'd probably dine on the story for weeks.

'Are you following us?' Gerald asked, once everyone else had gone.

'Of course not. Just a little extracurricular activity that went nowhere.'

'You look like you're freezing,' Hillary said, looking me over. She took off her large woolen shawl and wrapped it around me. 'I'm taking you home.'

CHAPTER 42

Hillary's car was not like my Jeep—no plastic water bottles littering the floor, no stray CDs in the wrong jewel cases, no coffee splashes on the gearbox. I held myself in tightly so as not to sully her vehicle.

'Are you warm enough?' she asked.

I nodded, but it came out like a shiver, so she turned up the heat on my side.

She drove aggressively for an older woman, with none of the nose-peering-over-the-steering-wheel, hands- frozen-at-10:10 timidity of most of her generation. We got to my place fast.

'Thanks for the lift.' I peeled off her shawl, folded it, and placed it on the passenger seat.

'You're welcome.' She seemed in no great hurry to leave.

'Would you like to come in for a drink or something before you head home?'

'I'd like that.'

She parked the car and followed me in.

'What a charming house.'

'It's getting there. I'm too much of a pack rat. Sometimes I look around and think, What is all this stuff?'

'They're things you enjoy. That's very different from acquisition merely for the sake of acquisition.'

I guessed she was thinking of her former husband. I put the water on for tea and excused myself to change into dry clothes.

When I got back Hillary was checking out my bookshelf, leafing through the copy of Culpeper's Herbal I'd borrowed from Dorothy Peacock. She saw me and replaced the book on the shelf.

'Quite a collection you've got,' she said, still scanning the shelves but tactfully not confronting me about the pilfered book.

'I'm always on the lookout.' I walked past her into the kitchen, where I set our tea on an old painted tray and brought it into the living room.

'Not very elegant, I'm afraid, but it should chase the chill away.'

'It's perfect, thank you. The Peacock sisters had an extensive gardening library.'

'Yes, I know. I spent a few hours there. Ms. Gibson, I didn't steal that book, I just borrowed it.'

'I didn't think you had. I've borrowed a book or two from them myself.'

'There may be a few that are quite valuable—I've told Richard,' I said.

'Oh, I don't think there's much you can tell Dick Stapley about that house. He even worked there one summer. The bluestone wall with the pear trees? Richard built that himself.'

'Margery mentioned it. It certainly has held up, I'll give him that,' I said. 'Maybe he thinks it gives him something in common with Winston Churchill; although I'm pretty sure Churchill used brick.'

'If it does, it's the only thing they've got in common,' she said. 'You've inadvertently brought back a lot of memories to some of the people in this town. Some good—' She wavered.

'Some bad?' I interrupted. I kicked myself for not letting her finish.

'I was going to say 'uncomfortable.' '

This time I was patient.

'You said you've spent some time in the Peacocks' library. Were you looking for anything in particular?' she asked.

'Should I be?'

'No wonder Gerald likes you. You're alike,' she said with a sly smile. She looked me straight in the eye as she spoke. 'I didn't believe for a minute that one of the sisters was the mother, but I didn't want their names dragged through the mud. Then Gerald went off again on his Yoly Rivera obsession and you encouraged him.'

Oh, shit. I felt a lecture coming on.

'Please don't misunderstand me. Gerald has always been pigheaded. No one could make him do anything he didn't want to do. But now that it seems the baby has nothing to do with Yoly, why not drop it?'

She was right. Given everything I knew—or thought I knew—about the Peacocks, they'd probably want to protect the mother, even if it meant tongues would wag about them. After all, gossip couldn't hurt them now.

Hillary got to the point. 'Gerald says the two of you are planning to talk to Margery. I've tried to talk him out of it. I know I don't have the right to ask,' she continued, 'but I wish you wouldn't.' She chose her words carefully. 'Margery's fragile; she's had a hard time.'

'You mean losing her first husband?'

She nodded. 'Margery was a ghost those first years. I remember seeing her at Halcyon when I was a child and thinking, Who is that terribly tragic and romantic figure? Pale, painfully thin—almost invisible. Renata told me we must always be kind to Margery, because the world had not been.'

Margery Russell's father had been a tyrant. She'd married against his wishes, and when her husband was killed in the war, the father practically celebrated. Richard Stapley ingratiated himself with Margery's father, and after only a year, he and Margery were married. Some doubted she was even consulted. All that dovetailed with what Jon Chappell had told me.

'People make mistakes,' Hillary said. 'There's no need to spend the rest of one's life paying for them.'

'Ms. Gibson, I appreciate your loyalty to your friends. We may never know how that baby came to be buried in the garden, but I've got a bigger problem. I'm loyal, too, and my friend is in jail for a crime he didn't commit. I'm convinced either the baby or Yoly Rivera or both motivated someone to stab Guido Chiaramonte. And I'm going to find out who did it.'

'I suppose I knew you'd say that. Just like Gerald.' She got up to leave. 'I hope you find the person and find out what happened to that girl. I just hope you'll be sensitive and give some thought to the living, too. And don't judge people too harshly if you find out some other things in the pro cess.'

She put down her teacup, and I walked her to the door.

'God knows, I'm no fan of Guido Chiaramonte's,' she said, 'but if there is some connection between him and Yoly Rivera, this could get dangerous for you. And for Gerald. Please be careful. I've just found him again, and I don't want to lose him a second time.'

As soon as she was gone, I called Lucy.

'She knows Margery's the mother,' I said, 'and doesn't want the old girl pushed off the deep end. Or . . . Margery knows Hillary's the mother and will spill her guts as soon as anyone asks her.'

'What about the fertility issues?' Lucy said.

'Maybe she did have mumps as a teenager. How do I know the mumps can really make you sterile? Maybe she's just flat-out lying to me and to Gerald.'

'She was helpful at the beginning,' Lucy said.

'When she thought it was the answer to the big unsolved case from her sweetie's career.'

'Sounds like you've narrowed it down to two candidates. What does your accordion player think?'

'O'Malley?' I asked. 'Who knows? He's pissed at me because I didn't tell him that was Hugo's car at the nursery.'

'Too bad. He could be useful,' she said. I had a feeling she was referring to his other possible talents.

'How's the lovely Anna holding up?'