Pushing Up Daisies

chipper, chain saw, some leaf blowers, and whatever other equipment I didn't own.

Guido was a local nursery own er, in his eighties and notorious for hitting on women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Women on walkers did not escape his advances. One of my early Springfield fantasies had been to buy Guido's place when he retired or went back to Sicily, but the old reprobate had shown no signs of doing either. I once took him up on his offer to teach me about the nursery business, and I was met with amorous overtures that were half-amusing, half-revolting. Now I was planning to flash a little cleavage and bat my eyelashes at the old letch. For tools. I was shameless.

I made a timeline for the Halcyon job and refined my sketch of the garden, eventually getting around to the white garden and the spot where I'd found the body. Unconsciously, I'd been avoiding it, but I would have to go back there—mentally and physically.

Not to night though. My legs were stiff from sitting on the floor, and my neck ached from scrunching down to inspect old photos with a magnifying glass. I gave myself a good stretch, packed up my notes, and went downstairs for some mindless entertainment.

Mindless was right. The former programming exec inside me couldn't help but criticize. Five shows devoted to moving your furniture and cleaning your closets? No wonder cable television kept resurrecting classics. That was my first job in the business, screening vintage sitcoms for TVLand. Uncle Miltie must be turning over in his grave. And the shopping channels were growing like ground cover. Who really needs another peridot pendant? I sure didn't, but the disembodied hand dangling the necklace lured me the same way the tarnished chain had that morning. I shook off the urge.

I passed on the plastic surgery shows in favor of something called Island Survival. Very realistic. Someone should produce Manhattan Survival. It's an island. The winner would have to score a good table at a trendy new restaurant, pick up a model, get a hair appointment with this month's stylist-to-the-stars, and get a cabbie to take him to one of the outer boroughs—all the really useful survival skills.

A couple of hours later, all but brain-dead, I was glued to one of the grisly true-crime programs I might have been producing had I stayed in New York. 'John claimed his wife went shopping and never returned, but he really killed her, put her in a metal drum, and left her in the basement for thirty years until we found her.'

That was the direction the new own ers of my old company wanted me to take. I'd cranked out a few episodes, but my heart was never in it. It was too hard to take. And there was always one cop who still had all the facts at his fingertips, as if the crime had just happened yesterday—his own Lindbergh baby.

There were lots of those cases. Too many. And just as many on the other side. The Jane Does who turned up and remained unclaimed. I started to wonder what my little baby's name was. Wait a minute. My little baby? Who said that? I didn't have a baby—get a grip.

But I did have a baby. At least I did for the twenty minutes or so it took the cops to find me in the Peacocks' garden, crouched down, the taste of vomit fresh in my mouth and my eyes locked on the partially unwrapped body of a dead baby.

A noise upstairs shook me down to my Polarfleece socks. I put the TV on mute and strained to hear what it was. Between the acorns and the bird feeders, my place is one giant salad bar for critters, so I don't usually get too spooked by the odd noise in the middle of the night. I grew up in New York, so not much scared me, except when things were too quiet.

Heart pounding, I tiptoed upstairs to investigate. I still held the remote in a white-knuckled death grip. It'd make a dandy weapon if the intruder was a munchkin.

Outside my kitchen window, the blackness held all sorts of bogeymen. I imagined shadowy figures with outstretched arms in the weeping hemlock but, happily, saw nothing. Behind me, another log in the dying fire collapsed, repeating the sound that first startled me. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath, until it came out in a whoosh. What an idiot. Sheepishly, I went back down the stairs, but not before setting the security alarm. The previous own er had had it installed, probably to safeguard his collection of bling. I didn't have anything worth stealing, so hardly ever used the alarm, but it wouldn't hurt to have advance notice if an ax murderer was coming up the stairs.

My usual antidote to stressful situations is sports, but at this hour only ESPN Classic sports was broadcasting. I recognized the vintage Knicks game where Willis Reed limps out of the locker room, plays for three minutes, but so inspires the team that it carries them to victory. The clip is shown ad nauseam at Madison Square Garden, usually when all hope is lost. Not exactly a surprise ending but just what the doctor ordered. So I fell asleep again, not dreaming of dead babies and bodies stuffed in fifty-gallon drums but of Earl 'the Pearl' Monroe and Walt 'Clyde' Frazier. And the scariest thing in my dream was Clyde's postgame outfit.

CHAPTER 5

Like everyone else in Springfield, Babe Chinnery had heard about the body. She'd left me a voice mail message the next afternoon, so I checked in at the Paradise at around 5 P.M. before heading to the library, where I planned to spend my downtime researching the Peacock garden. I'd barely walked through the door when she rushed over and hugged me, showing a maternal side I hadn't known existed.

'How the hell are you?' she whispered, steering me to a booth. She sat down with me. This was about as common as Rick having a drink with someone in Casablanca.

'You okay?'

I nodded.

'Really?'

'Really. I just didn't expect to walk into a local ghost story my first day on the job. I thought they were kidding when they called that place the Addams family house.'

She motioned for Chloe to bring us some coffee. 'I found a stiff once. Backup singer. OD'd right before a show. Pretty unprofessional, if you ask me.'

The midriff-baring waitress came over with two cups and a plate of Pete's homemade donuts, which I suspected could also be used to border flower beds.

'Why does every sixteen-year-old kid think we want to see her belly?' I asked. Then I remembered who I was talking to. I sipped the coffee and broke off a chunk of the donut. Babe wasn't moving until I told her everything.

'It was so old,' I whispered, donut in midair, 'it looked more like a museum piece than a body. Like a toy papoose you'd see in a Thanksgiving pageant.' That crack finally convinced her I was all right.

'I heard you hurled in the flower bed. Is that what you call adding organic matter?'

'What, is that in today's Bulletin?' I angrily popped the hunk of donut into my mouth. Stress eating.

'O'Malley stopped by this morning. Don't be mad. He was worried about you.'

'Mr. Sensitivity. If he's so worried, he can finish up fast and let me back onto the property. I'm losing time. I don't work, I don't eat.'

'You don't eat anyway. Get an advance. Tell Stapley you need to order things. Don't you need stuff?'

'I don't even know what I need yet.' Mysteriously, the entire donut on my plate had disappeared. 'Not until I hit the books. Any idea how late the library's open?' I asked.

'Beats me. I get all my books from Kathy's Book Nook; us little guys have to stick together.'

After a minute or so, someone said, 'The main branch is open until nine P.M. tonight.'

I turned to a lean Hispanic guy reading at the counter. At first glance, you might mistake him for any one of the dozens of guys who stand around downtown Springfield at six or seven in the morning. They wait for contractors or landscapers to give them the nod like the rotten union boss does in On the Waterfront. I'd met a lot of the Manual laborers at the nurseries; most of them looked sad, slump- shouldered in their cheap T-shirts from places they'd never been and weren't likely to go. Not this one.

'There is a book club meeting to night from seven to nine.'

'Thanks. I wonder what they're discussing.'

He held up a copy of Lolita. 'I am almost finished. Lots of work at the beginning of