Rosemary Harris - Dead Head

The third book in the Dirty Business Mystery series, 2010

Since my first book, Pushing Up Daisies, was published, Ive had occasion to meet many wonderful and generous people in the mystery community. That community is made up of writers, retailers, librarians, conference organizers, readers, publishers, bloggers-people who just love the genre. They are a tremendous source of inspiration for any new writer, and I am grateful for the support that theyve shown me.

In particular I would like to thank Carolyn Hart, Molly Weston, Jane Murphy, Bernadette Baldino, and my indefatigable friend and blog sister (at www.jungleredwriters.com) Hank Phillippi Ryan.

Id also like to thank copy editor extraordinaire Martha Schwartz for her exhaustive research and incredible attention to detail. Any errors or omissions are mine and not hers.

dead head (also deadhead) vt 1: to decapitate or

cut off fading flower heads to promote a second bloom

2: truckers slang for driving an empty vehicle

n 1: someone who travels without paying, a freeloader

2: a loyal fan of the band the Grateful Dead

So many lies. The day you start telling them, you expect a hand on your shoulder at any moment. Every time you open your mouth and the fake history comes out-the fake family, the fake anecdotes. If not the hand, then the stony gaze, as if to say I know thats not true or like hell you are. The challenge is anticipated. It may be delivered casually with a slightly puzzled look and a muttered really? Or more forcefully by a relentless questioner pressing you for names and dates, distances between the cities where you say youve lived, and the names of the schools you say youve attended, because miraculously the speaker has a relative in each of them.

When the challenge doesnt come-or the hand or the handcuffs that would eventually follow-theres a whoosh, like a plane slipping through a layer of clouds or a diver breaking the surface, coming up for air. Youre free. And after years of that happening and feeling free, maybe you are. When every trace of who you were has disappeared or been buried and all thats left is the new person.

Everyone remembers the crooked financier who turned himself in to the authorities-the one who stole billions with a decades-old Ponzi scheme. Springfield was abuzz with gossip. The names of those whod been hit and were quietly deaccessioning boats and pied- -terres were spoken in hushed tones as if the victims should somehow be ashamed for having been bilked out of their fortunes. People were astonished at the greed and the lavish lifestyle the mans crimes had supported. At how otherwise smart people had handed over millions of their hard-earned dollars apparently without checking the man out.

I marveled at how the man had kept the lies straight for so many years-the nonexistent meetings and transactions, the phantom companies, the fictional world hed created a thousand times more complex and intricate than the one Id devised-and how it had all come crash ing down around his ears and whether the same thing might happen to me.

But then, I had no intention of confessing.

Its a false lamium, I said.

Babe Chinnery folded her muscular arms, appraised the plant, and said simply, If its not a lamium, why in hell do you keep calling it one?

Things arent always what they seem to be.

Thank you, Yoda.

The woman had a good point. She usually did. Despite the rock n roll outfits, the hair color that changed with the New England seasons, and the boyfriend twenty years her junior, Babe had more common sense than most of the people I knew. It was a perfectly legitimate question and I couldnt answer her.

Dont give me a hard time. Im just a gardener, not Linnaeus.

Whos Lin-ay-us?

Some Swedish guy who named plants, I said. Dont worry-there wont be a quiz. I was just trying to dazzle you with my smarts.

Consider me dazzled.

In fact, Linnaeus hadnt named this plant. There was a lot of deception in the garden. Beautiful plants that were poisonous to the touch. Things that look like one thing but were something else-false spirea, false hellebore, false Solomons seal. I suppose its accurate to label them false, but why not just call them what they are? When Im queen, Ill change that and give them all their own lyrical, poetic names, like Kalmia latifolia or Platycodon grandiflorus or a new favorite, nicotiana Only the Lonely. Roy Orbison would be so pleased.

Trust me, you dont want real lamium in these planters. You said you want more yellow. This may not look like much now, but when this baby flowers, believe me, itll be yellow.

Babe squinted and walked around the parking lot. She held a nursery catalog near each planter to visualize what it would look like next year when it was in full bloom. I resisted the urge to tell her the images in the booklet were almost as unrealistic and unattainable as the ones in the Victoria s Secret catalog. Why burst her bubble? Optimism was a critical ingredient in any garden.

Babe had specifically requested yellow because that color would work with the diners new hot-pink shutters. Not exactly ye olde New England color scheme found in regional magazines, which always wanted to call red, Betsy Ross red, and blue, Heritage blue, as if the buildings occupants all wore knee breeches and white hose and were called Lemuel or Goody. But Babe was not your garden-variety New Englander and the colors worked for her-a little punk rocker, a little Caribbean beachcomber-to go with the lakeside setting and the tiki-bar feel of the place.

Damn, she said.

What now? She stood at the far side of her outdoor caf, looking perturbed. Behind the lattice and the flaking hand-painted HOMEMADE DONUTS sign stood the small utility shed where Babe stored her trash cans and where a Dumpster was temporarily parked. The top and side doors of the shed were open, and the industrial-sized cans beside it had been knocked over.

They cant be bargained with. They cant be reasoned with. They dont feel pity or remorse or fear. And they absolutely will not stop.

Where had I heard that?

Raccoons. She smacked the side of the shed in frustration. How can they have lifted those rocks off the top?

Beats me. The rock trick works at my place. You want me to help clean up?

Nah. I shouldnt do it now, either. Im needed back in the kitchen. Ill take care of it tonight. Just chaps my butt, though. Look at this-papers and food scraps strewn all over. She hauled off and kicked one of the rocks that had held down the top of the shed, and it bounced off one of six metal cans lined up in formation behind the shed.

What are you saving the empties for? I asked. Deposit?

Theyre not empty. Its WVO-waste vegetable oil. I leave it out for the people with the fat wagons.

Id read about the fat wagons, or French frymobiles. Serious environmentalists or loonies, depending on which side of the gas pump you stood, reconfigured engines to run on waste vegetable oil; and, apart from making their cars smell like a death wish-sized tub of onion rings, it sounded like a good idea. Maybe it was a diet strategy, too. Perhaps if you smelled fried food all day long, you were less likely to eat it.

You think it was one of those guys?

Looking for what? I leave all the good stuff out. Theres no need to go through the trash. And most of them arent poor. One guy has a Mercedes fat wagon. He just hates paying for gas. For some its the carbon footprint; for others its the dependency-on-foreign-oil issue. I think the Mercedes guy just wants to relive his radical youth. It kills him that hes turned into his dad. Im happy. They recycle my garbage. And it makes me feel less guilty for not having traded in my SUV for a Prius, like I told my sons I would.