Rosemary Harris: Pushing Up Daisies

The first was walled, with a central raised bed. According to the file, the other had been an herb garden; only the rampant mint betrayed its former use. Beyond them, there was an overgrown privet maze; half a dozen spindly hemlocks barely screened out the neighbors.

On the far side of the allйe was a freestanding stone wall covered by espaliered pear trees. Behind the wall stood a row of cypresses, at least two dead, separating the garden from a lawn that sloped down to a rickety floating dock. Broken statuary, a falling-down greenhouse, a tiny shed, and a musty- looking cottage completed the picture. Only the gnomes were missing.

I retraced my steps and sat down on the brick terrace, somewhat shell- shocked. I checked the pictures again. It had been impossible to appreciate the size of the job from the photos I had. On paper it looked like a few manageable beds, in person-Monticello. No wonder those old ladies hadn’t kept up with the landscaping. What was I thinking when I said I could do this? What was that idiot Stapley thinking when he gave me the job?

Tears were welling up, but I willed myself not to cry. My attack of self- pity didn’t last long; it couldn’t. Otherwise it was back to sucking up secondhand smoke at film and TV markets and feigning interest in yet another documentary on the Kennedys or World War Two, and I definitely didn’t want that.

I walked to the walled garden on the left side of the property. The walls were about eight feet high with arches and openings in the style of an Italian giardino segreto, or secret garden. In the corners were medium-sized understory trees and shrubs, including a fifteen-foot leatherleaf viburnum, bursting with health, and an evergreen magnolia covered with fat golden buds. Overhead, the dogwoods were still beautiful and looked vigorous, unusual since they don’t have a very long life span. In a month or so, they’d explode, some pink, some creamy white. Underneath were hostas and peonies, their pointed, reddish crowns just starting to break through the crusty top layer of soil.

I shuffled through the papers in the file. The walled garden had been Renata Peacock’s contribution. It was a white garden. Moonflowers, clematis, bleeding hearts, nicotiana, spirea-anything white that would catch the waning light and shimmer in the evening. A few crumbling columns and stone benches lined the walls of the garden room, which were covered with wisteria, Virginia creeper, and a thick mat of English ivy. I sat on one of the cool stone benches, imagining the property sixty or seventy years ago, beautiful and as serene as its name would suggest, a place where well- heeled young ladies sat with their tea and cakes, oblivious to the world outside the boundaries of their cozy retreat.

There’d be no shame in going back to Richard Stapley to tell him the job was too big for me. I could do that, or I could simply dig in and see how far I got.

I’d get Hugo and anyone else I could shanghai into working with me. Tools would be a problem, but I knew where I could borrow some heavy- duty equipment. It would require some hair flicking, a skimpy tank top, and industrial- strength lip gloss, but I’d make the sacrifice. And the Historical Society would have to hold more than a “small event”; I’d need at least a hundred plants, probably more. I added to my already voluminous notes and lists.

Making a quick sketch, I named all the different garden areas. Then I labeled the Baggies I’d brought. Call me crazy, but I love taking soil samples. All you do is dig up some soil, ship it to your local extension university, and for five bucks they analyze the soil’s texture and structure; make fertilizer recommendations; and, most important, determine the pH factor-something no serious gardener would consider proceeding without.

Okay, where to start? The center of the white garden was as good a place as any. I reached into my backpack, like a doctor going into his medical bag, and got out my favorite trowel and my thinnest goatskin gloves. I regretted not bringing a tiny airplane bottle of booze to have a little groundbreaking ceremony.

With my first stab, I hit something. When you garden in Connecticut, this is not an unusual occurrence. We grow rocks here. But this didn’t sound like a rock. I plunged my trowel into the soil again, this time scraping a surface that was definitely metal. Ten minutes later, I had unearthed a box. Eleven minutes later, a small body. Stone- cold dead.

Until that moment my involvement with the local constabulary had been minimal. Three years of summers and eight months of full- time residence had netted only a few brushes with the law-once when my neighbor had an unusually rowdy party and another time when my flag was stolen. (What kind of lowlife steals a flag?)

Uniformed cops, Officers Guzman and Smythe, responded first. I told them I was alone but knew they wouldn’t just take my word for it. I stayed put until they’d made some calls and done a preliminary search. Then they returned to get a statement from me. More cars arrived while we spoke, including one bearing the state seal. People hopped out and sprang into action as if they did this sort of thing every day in our little town. I watched, fascinated.

I didn’t have much to tell, but I still had to repeat it all when Sergeant Michael O’Malley arrived about twenty minutes later from the local town center, where he’d been speaking and handing out bicycle safety helmets to kids.

O’Malley was five foot eight or nine and had black hair with the kind of pale skin that made him look like he always needed a shave. If there were two kinds of cops-the rock-hard not-an-ounce-of-fat-on-their-bodies kind and the other-he was one of the others. Not exactly fat but soft; this guy looked like he knew his way to the donut shop. With the whisper of an accent, O’Malley grilled me, repeating and expanding on the same questions asked by the uniformed cops.

“Paula Holliday, two ells. No, I didn’t go in; I didn’t need to. Besides, I don’t have the keys.”

“What made you start digging there?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular. Path of least resistance- maybe there were fewer roots and leaves there.”

He nodded gravely. I repeated my answers in an impatient, slightly singsong fashion, shifting my weight and hugging my arms tightly over my chest to keep warm.

“Is that your sweatshirt?” he asked, standing over the flower bed.

“Yes. It-it was rolling over.”

He picked up the sweatshirt, shook out the imaginary cooties, and draped it around my shoulders. I was taken aback by the intimate gesture.

“Why didn’t you just put it back in the box?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t seem right.”

He nodded again and scribbled more notes. “I see you, uh, mulched the rhododendrons,” he added, referring to the breakfast I’d left in the flower bed.

That shook me out of my stupor. “Haven’t taken that sensitivity training yet, have you, Sheriff Taylor?” I said, snottily suggesting that Springfield was Mayberry and he was out of his league.

“You’d do well to take this a little more seriously,” he said, straightening up and taking his own advice. “Did you see anyone else?”

“No. Oh, wait. There was another woman here. Well, briefly anyway. I almost forgot about her. The other guys didn’t ask.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I get the big bucks,” he said in an obvious attempt to reestablish some connection.

“I see. You can joke, but I can’t.”

“Point taken. Did you know her?”

“No. She said she used to live near here. We talked a bit, then she disappeared.”

He looked at me as if I’d said the dog ate my homework. “All right, she probably didn’t really disappear, but when I came back-I was looking for a pen and paper to get her phone number-she’d taken off. I figured I’d bump into her later somewhere around the grounds, but I didn’t.”