Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

Daisy popped back in. ‘Ida Mae wants to know if rib-eyes on the grill and baked potatoes are all right.’

AnnaLise reflexively pushed ‘end’ on the phone. ‘More than all right.’ And it was true. After a week of meals eaten largely at Mama's, something prepared simply with
out
condensed soup, canned tuna or elbow macaroni sounded great.

‘Can I help?’ AnnaLise followed Daisy into the kitchen, glad now that her mother had interrupted the ill-advised call before Ben could answer. She looked around, starting to relax a bit from the wine. ‘Wow, this is beautiful.’

‘I thank you,’ Ida Mae said, going to mute the small television that blared The Mountain News in the corner. ‘This was my remodeling project last year.’

‘Eames Construction?’ Daisy asked.

‘Josh did the woodworking,’ Ida Mae said, pointing to the hickory kitchen cabinets. ‘That boy has a real talent. Every corner, every angle, is perfectly square. No mean feat in old houses built on the sides of mountains. ‘

‘Good to know,’ Daisy said. ‘Aren't you glad you hired Eames for the garage, AnnaLise?’

But her daughter wasn't listening. She was watching the silent TV image of a barely recognizable yellow Porsche being tow-lined onto the ramp of a flatbed truck.

Nine

‘It's my fault, you know,’ Daisy was saying to Phyllis Balisteri the next morning.

‘Yours? Why?’

AnnaLise’s surrogate mother held up the coffee pot to offer her a refill, but the younger woman shook her head. Seated with Daisy in Mama's private booth, she'd barely been able to keep the first cup of java down.

‘I told that woman to take the bridge,’ Daisy said, turning to face AnnaLise across table. ‘You were right about it, you know. The thing's a death trap.’

‘Daisy Lorraine Kuchenbacher Griggs,’ Mama said, ‘you're making yourself all too important in this drama. The woman – from what, Minny-sota?’

AnnaLise forced herself to offer, ‘No, Wisconsin.’

‘Same difference. She didn't know the mountain and went barreling back down too fast and ran off the road, pure and simple, with plenty of examples beforehand. That's her fault, not yours.’

Mama did have a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Whether you wanted it separated or not.

‘Well, then they should put up a railing along that stretch, Phyllis. AnnaLise and I nearly went over at the identical spot on the opposite end of the bridge, didn't we?’

‘So what would you have the town do, Daisy, fence off the entire mountain? And then there's the lake, all them college kids and tourists wandering in and drowning? Maybe we should build a stockade around that, too.’

Phyllis put the carafe back on the heating element of the coffee brewer and came back, moving a copy of
Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars, 1979
, before sliding in next to AnnaLise across from Daisy. ‘’Round here, we don't figure it's our job to protect people from their own stupidity.’ She twisted her head toward AnnaLise, ‘No offense.’

‘None taken.’

Ever since Ida Mae Babb had dropped them off at Mama's restaurant earlier that morning, the accident had seemed the main topic of conversation. The media coverage hadn't identified the woman whose body was found in the car, confirmed as a Porsche with Wisconsin plates, but everyone seemed to know. In Sutherton, both news and conjecture traveled at warp-speed.

‘Had to be the mother of that girl who's dating Joshua Eames,’ Mrs Peebly, Daisy's next- door neighbor and garage co-owner, was seated at the booth across from them, her aluminum-frame walker blocking the aisle.

Weird, AnnaLise thought. The people of Sutherton seem to know more about the Rosewood family than she did. ‘So Josh and Suzanne
are
a couple?" she asked, thinking back to the two talking outside Mama's. "Since when?’

‘I think it might be stretching it a bit to say they're dating,’ Daisy said. ‘Though I did see that girl with Joshua last year during U-Mo's open-house week.’ She looked at Mama. ‘We helped with refreshments, remember?’

‘I do.’ Phyllis bobbed her head. ‘Though I can't say I've seen the girl between then and now.’

Mrs Peebly snickered. ‘Don't mean they haven't been seeing each other. There's this thing they call the Internet now, you know, and Skope.’

‘The mouthwash?’ Mama seemed puzzled, and that didn't happen often.

‘I think she means Skype,’ AnnaLise forced herself to participate. ‘It's – ’

‘Hell's bells, I know what Skype is,’ Mama said. ‘You think I was born yesterday, AnnieLeez?’

More like a half-century of yesterdays, though Mama and Daisy seemed less set in their ways at fifty than AnnaLise was at the age of twenty-eight.

‘Love at first sight, those two,’ Mrs Peebly was saying. ‘Nice girl, even if her father and mother, bless her soul, come on uppity. Sheree Pepper says the woman was nothing but trouble.’

‘Well, it does take one to know one,’ Mama said, moving aside the walker to get past. 'Sheree Pepper sure doesn't have a halo on that blonde head of hers.'

‘Not
that
kind of trouble,’ Mrs Peebly said, with a glint in her eye. The shrunken ninety-year-old loved a good dirty story that she could then declare ‘disgraceful’ even as she was laughing about it. ‘Sheree gave them number seven and eight, the best rooms in the inn, and the woman still found fault.’

‘Two rooms?’ Mama asked as she slipped onto the bench next to her. ‘She and her hubby don't sleep together?’

AnnaLise felt her cheeks flame, having been wondering the same thing.

‘Now, hush,’ Daisy scolded. ‘That second room was probably for their daughter– ’

The electric chime on the door rang out and Suzanne Rosewood, herself, entered, eyes red. She was with Joshua Eames, Josh's arm wrapped around her protectively.

Mama stood up to seat them, but AnnaLise slid out after her.

‘I'll take them,’ she said, gesturing for Mama to sit back down.

Not sure if she was trying to assuage her conscience or simply protect the two from ‘inquiring minds,’ AnnaLise pulled two menus out of the stack and greeted Josh, then turned to his companion. ‘I am so sorry about the accident, Suz – ’

The young woman's face twisted. ‘I bet you are.’ She snatched the menus from AnnaLise's hand and pushed past her to a table at the back. Josh trailed after her, throwing AnnaLise a puzzled look.

Well, that pretty much settled that. Tanja must have known about the affair and either told her daughter, or Suzanne had sensed it. AnnaLise closed her eyes, drawing in her breath slowly and releasing it the same way, before she opened them.

Daisy and Mama were staring at her from opposite sides of the booth. Phyllis said, ‘Now what in the world was that all about?’

Daisy just sat, her lips tightened into two narrow – and probably disapproving – lines.

‘I'm not sure,’ AnnaLise mumbled miserably. ‘Maybe, umm, maybe she blames me for them coming up here at all.’

‘I don't think it's Sutherton she has the problem with,’ Mama said, looking toward the back of the restaurant. ‘She seems to be getting along just fine with parts of it.’

AnnaLise followed her glance to the table where Josh and Suzanne were locked in a kiss. A long kiss. ‘I guess this explains why Suzanne was so adamant about coming here.’

‘Your pocketbook is vibrating,’ Mama said, passing the bag from the bench next to her.

AnnaLise pulled out her cell phone, which showed a text from Chuck, who she'd been trying to get hold of all morning. It read: Here, if you want to come by.

‘I have to run,’ she said. ‘I'll catch you later.’

‘Do you need my car?’ Daisy called after her.

‘Not for this, but thanks,’ AnnaLise said, hesitating at the door and coming back to give her mom a kiss on the cheek. ‘I'm sorry I almost killed you.’

Daisy flushed with pleasure. She and AnnaLise weren't given to shows of affection.

‘Now don't you be saying that,’ Mama said, waving the younger woman off. ‘Your mother already likes to make herself the center of attention.’

Which, of course, was where Mama thought her own rightful place was. AnnaLise gave her a cheek-kiss, as well. ‘Well, she certainly has a right, what with her side of the car hanging off over the cliff last night.’

‘It was?’ Mrs Peebly asked, eyes rounding. ‘What . . . ?’

AnnaLise let herself out the door as Daisy recounted the story, accompanied, no doubt, by the Greek chorus pantomime of Mama's eyes rolling.

***

AnnaLise was sitting in one of the two guest chairs in front of Chuck's desk.

The last time she had been here, the other seat was taken by their friend Mayor Bobby Bradenham and the two of them – AnnaLise and the mayor – had engaged in a shouting match.

Now Bobby, who'd had a rough past week, had taken off for a few days. AnnaLise missed him. Not only had she and Bobby been friends since kindergarten and first grade respectively, but he was the only one she'd confided in about Ben.

Granted, the revelation had been inadvertent and accompanied by an epic and uncharacteristic torrent of tears – hers, not his – but it felt good, nonetheless, to tell someone.

Not that she planned to tell anyone else, especially Chuck, given the circumstances.

‘Your car is totaled?’ he asked, lacing his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair to stretch. Chuck's green eyes always looked a little dreamy – Mama insisted on calling them ‘bedroom’ eyes – but now the chief looked downright tired, the result of a long night which, according to Chuck, had culminated in the positive identification of Tanja Rosewood as the driver of the Porsche.

‘And how. The mechanic who answered the phone at the garage said: ”Well, ma'am, we can fix it, but this is the one time the whole will not be greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, I'm not sure we can even
find
all the parts.”’

‘That would have been Earl.’ The chief took a swig of his Diet Coke. ‘The man does have a silver tongue to go along with his eagle eyes.’

‘He's the one who spotted the car yesterday.’ Her own Diet Coke, untouched, was sitting on the desk.

‘Yup. And good thing. There were no signs at the spot the car went off the road and it wasn't the first.’

‘There's more than one car down there?’ AnnaLise was feeling very lucky all of a sudden.

‘At least two, though the one's slipped deeper into the gorge, so we'll need some time and equipment to recover it. Could be just a stolen car someone was trying to get rid of, or maybe the poor folks
did
go over like Mrs Rosewood. If Earl Lawling hadn't spotted the yellow of that car before the leaves and eventual snow covered it and the spring thaw sent water into that gorge, God knows when we'd have found it.’

‘I assume Mrs Rosewood died on impact?’ From the horror AnnaLise had experienced just being close to the edge, she couldn't even fathom what it would feel like to be hurtling over it.

‘It's a long way down and, despite the law, Mrs Rosewood wasn't wearing a seat belt.’

‘They wrinkled her clothes,’ AnnaLise said reflexively.

Too late, she saw Chuck's sleepy eyes sharpen, like they'd just hopped out of bed and strapped on a six-shooter. ‘And just how would you know that?’

AnnaLise felt her face get warm. ‘I'm sorry, I thought you knew. Ben is the district attorney for the county I work in.’

‘“Ben” being Mr Rosewood?’

There she went, digging herself in deeper. The less said the better. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, Mr Rosewood certainly made it clear he's a DA there in Wisconsin, but he didn't mention you two were acquaintances. You know the family quite well then?’

Maybe Chuck should have been a district attorney, though interrogational skills certainly came in handy in police work, too, as witnessed by . . . well, right now.

‘The family? No,’ AnnaLise said, following her own mental advice to keep it short, stupid. ‘We were introduced just yesterday at Mama's.’

‘Which is when Mrs Rosewood volunteered the information that she hated seat belts?’

What was Chuck doing? Auditioning for a position with the prosecution? ‘No,’ AnnaLise screwed up her face, like she was thinking. Which she was, fast and furious. ‘I'm not sure how . . . oh, I know, it must have been my friend, Katie, who mentioned it. She works in the DA's office and, well,’ a smile, ‘you know how girls talk.’

Katie, AnnaLise's own mother and every woman who supported the equal rights amendment would shoot her.
Should
shoot her.

‘Huh,’ was all Chuck said.

‘Anyway, that's pretty much all I know.’ AnnaLise shrugged. ‘Besides the fact that Suzanne Rosewood just started at U-Mo and . . . oh, you do know that Tanja had a spa appointment up at what used to be Tail Too, right?’

‘The Sutherton Spa? Yes.’

A rise by any other name. ‘Fine, Sutherton Spa. Did she keep that appointment?’

‘She did, though she arrived a few minutes late for her three-thirty, according to Joy.’

‘Joy?’ AnnaLise sensed an opportunity to turn the conversation from what she might know about the Rosewoods to something more mundane. ‘I heard just last night she owns the place, but is she actually working up there now?’

Chuck seemed to accept the deflection. ‘Honestly, Lise, it's tough to know just what Joy is doing. Or intends to do. I never knew her when she was married to your daddy, but – ’ He eyed her.

‘Don't mess with me, Chuck,’ she warned. ‘I know where all your skeletons are buried, too.’

‘My only skeleton was being gay and that one was stuck in the closet, not buried.’

‘Not anymore,’ AnnaLise said, happy that her friend was content, but a little sad for herself. Why did the best-looking, nicest guys have to be gay? Though it did make her feel a mite better about the wheel-spinning in their relationship. At the time, she'd thought it was her and her desire to leave Sutherton, see the world, all that rot.

Now, she realized, the wavering was on both sides.

‘But you're right about Joy being full of ideas,’ AnnaLise went on. ‘I would think, though, that it's a graveyard up there before ski season.'

‘Hence her interest in a second location in Hart's Landing.’