Hit and Run

by Sandra Balzo

  ‘No idea, I’m sure,’ Phyllis said. ‘But I do know they’re not doing justice to my meal.’ The duplicate set of food-laden serving dishes on the opposite end of the table were nearly untouched. The restaurateur didn’t take kindly to picky eaters.

  ‘Poor Nicole looks miserable, sitting there in the midst of them,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Maybe I should tell her to—’

  Mama cut her off. ‘Don’t be foolish. Once dinner is over, I plan on getting hold of that child and pumping her for information on what they’re plotting.’

  ‘Plotting?’ Shirley asked. ‘What makes you think that? They barely know each other.’

  ‘Divided by age, but united in a common purpose,’ Joy observed. ‘Getting their greedy fingers on money they don’t have now.’

  ‘I don’t think either Eddie or Tyler are hurting financially,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Tyler’s a broker, though I’m not sure whether real estate or stock, and—’

  ‘Stock,’ Shirley supplied. ‘And from what Lucinda said, the current market volatility hasn’t been kind.’

  ‘Sounds like many of us might be members of the same busted club,’ Patrick said, chiseling a piece of congealed Ritz topping away from the corn and nibbling on it like a cracker. ‘What about Eddie?’

  ‘Dentist,’ AnnaLise said. ‘And I must say he’s a little touchy about it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Joy said. ‘His pupils are barely pinpoints.’

  ‘But what—’

  ‘Opiate addiction, dear,’ Daisy said, reaching across to pat her hand. ‘Remember Ethel Allan up at the top of the mountain? Her dentist prescribed Percocet after an extraction and wanted her to come by with the pills, just to make sure they were right.’

  Phyllis was nodding. ‘Turns out, he was having all his patients do that. Would take the pill bottle for a closer look and swap the Percocet out for sugar pills. Ethel was left hurting and the dentist was higher than a kite, selling what he didn’t swallow himself.’

  ‘Now that’s unfair,’ AnnaLise protested. ‘Just because Eddie’s a dentist doesn’t mean he’s hooked on Percocet.’ Though it might explain why Eddie’s first thought on hearing about Dickens’ death was that he’d overdosed.

  ‘Of course not,’ Joy said. ‘Besides, if Eddie wants to get high, all he has to do is talk to his mom.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Shirley said. ‘I hear Rose was at Woodstock.’

  AnnaLise’s headache was creeping back. She used the pads of her index and middle fingers on both hands to massage her temples in forward-and-back concentric circles.

  Mama noticed. ‘Now don’t you worry. We’re not going to let these vultures get ahold of your fortune.’

  ‘She doesn’t have—’ Hart’s attorney started before slapping his mouth shut.

  Not that Phyllis noticed. She was busy stabbing a turkey leg with her knife and dragging it off the serving plate and onto her own. ‘If I were them, I’d be looking to get some of that paternity testing done. And double quick, too.’

  Joy seemed to have been thinking about that. ‘They’ll need DNA from Hart, and I’m not quite sure how they’d get that at this point.’

  Patrick Hoag put a finger up. And then down again, as if he’d reconsidered.

  ‘A comb or a toothbrush, probably,’ Phyllis said, around the turkey leg. ‘That’s what they’d do on TV. Once the police are done in that bedroom and they cart him away, we’d best lock that door, keep out pilferers.’

  AnnaLise shook her head. ‘As far as I’m concerned, if they want DNA, they’re welcome to it.’

  The other five all stopped eating and looked at her.

  Mama lowered her turkey leg. ‘Honestly, if you weren’t practically my own kin, I’d slap some sense into you. You gotta protect yourself here.’

  ‘Maybe she should hire an attorney,’ said Shirley. ‘Like Patrick here.’

  ‘Now that, I think, would be a conflict of interest,’ AnnaLise said.

  ‘Well, whether it’s Patrick or not,’ Daisy said, ‘Shirley’s right.’

  ‘Think of it like you won the Powerball jackpot, AnnieLeez,’ Mama said, raising her drumstick again. ‘The first thing those lottery winners do before even claiming their prize is get themselves a lawyer.’

  ‘I don’t want a lawyer, and I don’t intend to stop the Boccaccios and Pucketts – or even the Capris – from trying to prove they’re related to Dickens.’

  Phyllis looked like she was going to throw the turkey leg at her.

  AnnaLise held up her hands. ‘And don’t you be giving me the evil eye, Mama. The inheritance would be timely, granted, but not at the expense of acing someone else out of what Dickens intended them to have. Case closed.’

  She stood up just as the dining room door opened. Boozer Bacchus, neatly dressed in a suit but looking a little worse for wear around the gills, cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Boozer,’ AnnaLise said. ‘I’ve finished eating, so why don’t you take my seat and have some dinner?’

  ‘You sit back down, AnnieLeez,’ said Mama, waving at her. ‘Boozer can pull up a chair here on the end.’

  ‘They want me to lock Dickens’ room,’ AnnaLise explained.

  ‘And hire a lawyer,’ added Daisy.

  Bacchus looked confused. ‘Well, now, I can’t speak about the first, at least until the police are done, but as for the second, you might want to ask Patrick there.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ AnnaLise had actually been hoping for a little clearer backing from this quarter.

  Bacchus hooked his finger for her to come closer and lowered his voice. ‘Coy Pitchford sent me. He wants to have a word with you.’

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘They probably just want to tell me they’re done for tonight,’ AnnaLise told Joy, who had insisted on accompanying her to help carry plates of food that Mama, in turn, had insisted they take with them. ‘Or maybe they want to know what to do with Dickens’ body. I have no idea which funeral home – or even whether he’d prefer burial or cremation. Do you?’

  ‘Nope. But then, I always just assumed he’d spontaneously combust, like an oily rag in hell,’ Hart’s ex-wife said. Plates of turkey and its fixings in both hands, she tapped on the door to the master bedroom with the toe of her foot.

  Charity Pitchford opened the door.

  ‘We figured you might be getting hungry,’ AnnaLise said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Charity said, ‘but can you just leave them on the hall table out there? We need to preserve the crime scene as best we can.’

  As AnnaLise and Joy deposited the plates on the round foyer table, the reporter was feeling uneasy. ‘Doesn’t look to me like they’re wrapping things up. You?’

  ‘Not really, though—’ Joy was interrupted by the front door opening. Two men came through with a gurney. ‘I could be wrong.’

  ‘I’m such an idiot,’ AnnaLise said, smacking a palm against her forehead. ‘Of course they’ll need to take him to the county morgue and do an autopsy.’

  ‘Of course.’ Joy was looking a little green around her own gills.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ AnnaLise said, lightly resting the smacking palm on her friend’s shoulder. ‘I don’t mean to upset you, but … well, as a police reporter, I learned how some of this stuff has to play out.’

  Joy burped. ‘The only thing that’s upset about me is my stomach. That second helping of yams wasn’t a good idea.’

  ‘My opinion, the first helping was a mistake.’ This from Tyler Puckett, who had just entered the foyer with his coat on. ‘I thought I’d go walk it off before it gets dark. You two want to join me?’

  ‘Afraid we need to deal with all this.’ AnnaLise gestured toward the bedroom where Dickens Hart’s body still lay, if not for long. ‘Rain check?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Tyler said. ‘And I’m sorry about your father, AnnaLise.’

  ‘And maybe yours?’ Joy seemed to be probing.

  Tyler shrugged, his freckled face grim. ‘We may never know now. Mom is in there with the Boc
caccios talking about paternity tests and all, but … well, sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.’

  ‘Or lying dogs sleep,’ Joy muttered as Tyler exited.

  ‘Are you dissing Dickens again?’ AnnaLise said, tucking the cloth napkins around the plates to keep them warm. ‘After all, the man is dead.’

  ‘Actually, I was talking about Tyler-boy there and his professed disinterest in what has to look like tens of millions of dollars from what they’ve seen here in the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘You think it’s an act?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Only you could act so indifferent to that kind of money and actually mean it.’

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ AnnaLise said, ‘I did notice that Tyler has taken off his name badge now that he knows that Dickens is dead.’

  ‘What more proof do you need?’

  ‘You say that facetiously, but—’ AnnaLise had her hand on the knob when the master suite door swung open abruptly.

  They jumped back to allow the gurney, now laden with what was probably Dickens Hart’s covered body, to be rolled out through the main entrance.

  Coy Pitchford looked up as Charity ushered AnnaLise in and closed the door behind them. ‘AnnaLise – good. Did you happen to notice that last night?’ He was pointing to the dresser, where a crime-scene technician was carefully pouring the contents of a wine glass into a jar.

  ‘Morris, is that you?’ asked AnnaLise.

  Morris Seifert had been AnnaLise’s partner in biology class at Sutherton High School. He looked up from what he was doing. ‘Hey, AnnaLise. Welcome home.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said to the technician. ‘Good to see you’re still in—’

  Coy cut them off. ‘If you all don’t mind me interrupting this reunion, would you mind answering the question, AnnaLise?’

  AnnaLise stopped, thinking that Coy had a way to go before he understood how things were done in Sutherton. The thought made her realize how quickly she, herself, had re-acclimated to the mountains.

  She and Morris exchanged looks that said, Flatlander, before the technician returned to bagging the now empty wine glass, and AnnaLise to the acting chief. ‘Just being polite, Coy. Now what was your question again?’

  ‘I asked if that wine was here last night.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Remember? I told you I brought it in here for Dickens.’

  Coy frowned and pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. ‘No, I don’t think you did. Just that you were snooping around and saw the overnight bag before you left.’

  She’d actually said ‘nosing around’ but the sentiment was the same, so why quibble? ‘And that was true, as far as it went. But the original reason I came in was to leave the wine for Dickens. I’m sorry if I didn’t tell you about it in the first place, but the bag seemed more significant at the time. Especially given it had disappeared.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Coy made a note. ‘Nobody else seems to be able to tell us anything about this “Chef Debbie,” nor the Las Vegas phone number you said was on the dresser.’

  ‘Including Boozer?’ AnnaLise asked.

  ‘He says the decedent met her once in Las Vegas, so that fits, but Bacchus didn’t have any particulars.’

  ‘We’ll be looking into the phone records and such,’ Charity said, only to earn a perturbed look from her husband.

  ‘Now, AnnaLise,’ Coy continued, ‘does anything else here look different than it did when you left this room last night?’

  AnnaLise scanned the room before closing her eyes. ‘The bed was already turned down, as it is now. Though, of course, there wasn’t the umm, rumpling, and … and … blood.’ AnnaLise was trying not to look at the impression – and stains – Hart’s body had left on the plushy duvet.

  ‘Of course,’ Charity said, ignoring the daggers her husband was again tossing her way. ‘Coy said that you were upstairs when you thought Mr Hart came into the room – is that right?’

  ‘It is. I was embarrassed to come down, given that I was … snooping,’ a nod toward Pitchford, ‘so I waited and left while he was in the bathroom.’

  ‘How do you know it was Mr Hart, then, rather than this Chef Debbie? Or anybody else, for that matter?’

  Both Coy and Charity were set to full alert, like two separate pointer dogs suddenly picking up the same interesting scent in the woods.

  ‘I don’t, honestly,’ AnnaLise said, a little unnerved. ‘In fact, I was just saying—’

  ‘To whom? And when?’ Coy interrupted, sounding like Mama and Daisy earlier.

  AnnaLise felt her face flush. ‘People in the dining room, before Boozer came to get me.’

  ‘And you were telling them?’ Charity prompted.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Just that thinking about it after the fact, since the overnight bag wasn’t there when I entered the room, I realize it’s very possible it was her, rather than him, that I heard.’ She wasn’t even convincing herself. ‘Meaning the bag-owner, rather than Dickens.’

  AnnaLise instinctively folded her arms.

  Coy frowned. ‘No need to get defensive, AnnaLise. We’re just friends, here, asking a few questions.’

  AnnaLise was astonished. ‘I’m not being defensive. I—’

  ‘Ignore him, AnnaLise,’ Charity said. ‘He’s been reading one of those books on how to tell if somebody’s lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying!’ AnnaLise said, probably a little hoarsely. ‘Why—’

  ‘Non-verbal protective gesture,’ Coy said. ‘You crossed your arms.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’ She dropped them to her sides.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Charity said. ‘Returning to this unseen person, though. You had no indication whether it was a man or woman? He or she didn’t cough, for example?’

  ‘Nor speak, which I assumed meant it was just one person, not two. The room is carpeted, as you can see, so I couldn’t even tell you whether the person was wearing shoes or, beyond that, heels or flats.’

  ‘Not important,’ Coy said irritably. ‘We know Hart came into this room because he died here.’

  Charity sighed. ‘I’m just trying to establish the facts, Coy. You don’t have to get your boxers in a bundle.’

  His face reddened this time. ‘And you don’t have to …’ He interrupted himself before they got into a real row. Or further into what would likely develop into one tonight at home. ‘Now back to the wine. AnnaLise, you brought it in, but did you also pour it?’

  Now both Coy and Charity were watching her closely again. Even Morris, who was stashing both the glass and the jar he’d transferred the wine to in a paper bag, looked up.

  ‘No,’ AnnaLise said carefully. ‘Nicole did.’

  Coy had the notebook out again. ‘And Nicole is?’

  ‘Nicole Goldstein. You know, Sal’s granddaughter?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ Coy wrote it down, despite seeming to lose interest in Nicole in particular, if not the wine itself. ‘Who told Nicole to pour the wine?’

  ‘Apparently Dickens. We’d run out of the cabernet that was served at dinner, so she had to choose a new wine to open and it was a bit young for his taste.’

  Charity muttered, ‘First time for everything, I hear.’

  Coy shot his wife another look and AnnaLise tried to pick up where she’d left off. ‘Nicole felt terrible, but Dickens said the wine in the glass would open up and be drinkable by the time he went to bed, so would she put it in his room? She had her hands full, so I offered to help.’

  ‘Then where did Mr Hart go?’ Coy asked as the crime-scene technician packed up.

  ‘Into the media room, where the others were watching a movie.’

  ‘And you came into this room straightaway,’ Coy said.

  ‘Correct.’

  But Charity’s eyes narrowed. ‘AnnaLise, you said Nicole had her hands full. Of what?’

  ‘Dickens told her to cork the opened bottle and put it on the bar in the Lake Room, then open a different bottle for the guests.’r />
  ‘Hear that, Morris?’ Coy asked the technician.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Seifert was on his way up the steps. ‘There next.’

  ‘For the wine bottle?’ AnnaLise asked. ‘It’s not on the bar. But why—’

  ‘You just said that’s where Mr Hart told Nicole to put it,’ Charity pointed out.

  ‘I know, but I looked this morning and there was no bottle on the bar. Maybe she stashed it in the wine fridge or cupboard instead. You’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘So,’ Coy pursed his lips, ‘not only has the overnight bag gone missing, but so has the wine bottle?’

  More than a little weary, AnnaLise put a hand to her forehead. ‘I can’t speak for the whereabouts of the wine, but the bag – flowered with a black handle – was there.’ She pointed at the slipper chair. ‘I’m just sorry I can’t tell you who the owner was and make things easier.’

  Coy bristled. ‘We don’t need you to make things easier for us.’

  ‘I didn’t say “for you,”’ AnnaLise protested. ‘I meant for everybody.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Morris said, coming down the stairs. He held up a bagged glass. ‘I’ll just see what I can pull up in the way of fingerprints on this, and that should help … “everybody.”’ He winked at AnnaLise.

  AnnaLise squinted at the glass. There were grains of sediment in the bottom of it. ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ Morris said. ‘Right on the top step, like somebody was maybe sitting there with it.’

  ‘Seems like you would have practically kicked it when you were up there,’ Coy said. ‘Another thing you forgot to tell us, maybe?’

  AnnaLise tried to think back though her fatigue. ‘I’m certain there was no glass on the stairs. But—’

  ‘Could this mysterious woman have brought it with her?’ Charity suggested. ‘So they’d each have a glass.’

  The journalist glanced toward the paper bag where Morris had put the wine glass and its contents and then toward the dresser. ‘Was there yet another glass? A third one, on the dresser?’

  Coy, now. ‘You mean on top of the phone-number note you also told us was there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now AnnaLise was trying to control her temper. And her nerves.