by Sandra Balzo
Joy Tamarack raised her hand like a second-grader volunteering an answer to her teacher’s question to the class. ‘Allow me?’
‘Please.’
Her friend smiled. ‘Usually AnnaLise communicates that as “Joy. Please?”’ There was giggling all around at her spot-on impersonation.
Then Joy continued: ‘Sugar Capri wangled an invitation this weekend, thinking she might rekindle her romance – if you can call it that – with Hart. Apparently she and Lacey had been living hand-to-mouth for years.’
‘We know how that can be,’ Rose said, but looking at AnnaLise rather than her son, Eddie.
Nicole seemed puzzled. ‘But then how did Lacey get involved? She seemed like a nice girl. And really smart.’
‘She was – is – both,’ AnnaLise said, the reporter in her not being able to let Joy continue the story solo. ‘Which is why Lacey decided she wasn’t going to let her mom waste the rest of a lifetime with Dickens, whom Lacey saw as an “old lech.” Instead, the daughter would sacrifice herself for their financial security, but just the once.’
Shirley Hart asked, ‘So Lacey thought that if she could seduce Dickens, they’d be able to blackmail him?’
‘Exactly.’ AnnaLise glanced at Joy.
Hart’s ex-wife shrugged. ‘Speaking from experience, he was a fairly easy target, blackmail-wise.’
But Nicole still projected confusion. ‘So where did the roofies come in?’
‘Basically,’ Joy said, ‘the kid was anesthetizing herself.’
‘That is just so sad.’ Nicole was shaking her head.
Back to Joy. ‘While Dickens was in the bathroom, Lacey drank the wine she’d doctored, then slipped into bed, wearing one of Sugar’s naughty negligees. He comes out to find her there and, according to even the still-sentient Lacey, seems horrified.
‘Unfortunately,’ Joy went on, ‘Sugar was up to her old tricks. She came through the book storage room and into the upstairs library. Mama Bear got far enough down the steps to see Hart standing over her nearly naked fifteen-year-old daughter and just reacted.’
‘Had Sugar brought the champagne with her?’ Shirley asked.
‘Yes,’ AnnaLise explained. ‘You’ll remember that Dickens was serving Dom Perignon as people arrived and, recognizing the label, Sugar pilfered a bottle, thinking it would make for a special reunion.’
Phyllis shook her head. ‘But what about the flowered bag? Whose was that?’
‘Sugar’s, as I suspected,’ AnnaLise directed a significant look toward Joy, ‘but Lacey brought it with her to carry the roofies and her mother’s negligee.’
Daisy nodded. ‘So, it was Lacey who came in when you were upstairs?’
AnnaLise was pleased that her mother was following the storyline closely. ‘Yes. As you’ll recall, Lacey didn’t watch When Harry Met Sally in the media room Wednesday night.’
‘That’s right,’ Tyler said. ‘I remember thinking I wasn’t surprised she skipped it, given her age.’
‘But, back to the act itself,’ Patrick Hoag redirected. ‘Sugar has just hit Dickens with the bottle, mistakenly thinking that he’s about to rape her daughter. What did they do then to implicate the chef?’
‘Surviving on the streets takes guts and smarts,’ AnnaLise said, thinking the lawyer sounded like he was fact-finding for the defense. Or maybe, God forbid, a book contract. ‘Sugar probably went into cover-up mode. She got Lacey, who was shocked yet conscious, out from under Hart, who had fallen on her. Then she wiped off the bottle and Hart’s wine glass, as well as the bowl of mine, which is the only part of that glass Lacey had touched. That left my prints on its stem, though Sugar had no way of knowing they were mine. In fact, she may have assumed it was Debbie Dobyns’ glass, given the Las Vegas phone number Sugar would have seen on Hart’s dresser.’
‘But if Lacey wasn’t trying to trick anybody into drinking the roofies,’ Nicole asked, ‘why not just pop a pill and wash it down with Mr Hart’s wine rather than use your glass at all?’
‘Apparently she thought the residue in the glass might come in handy for later blackmail.’
‘Smart kid,’ Eddie said.
‘But still just a kid. In fact, she didn’t dissolve the roofie in Dickens’ full glass of wine because she didn’t like the taste of alcohol and knew she couldn’t choke it all down.’
‘At least the girl isn’t a drinker,’ Phyllis said. ‘But what about that telephone call to the chef lady?’
AnnaLise looked to her friend. ‘Joy?’
The fitness trainer coughed a little on her own wine, but recovered nicely and took over the narrative. ‘Sugar grabbed the paper with the phone number from Hart’s dresser, probably recognizing the area code as one for Vegas and therefore Debbie Dobyns’. Maybe Sugar was jealous, or maybe she already knew what her improvised plan required her to do.’
‘Which was … what?’ asked Lucinda Puckett.
‘Use the number to call Debbie from the house phone here, pretending to be AnnaLise, since she obviously couldn’t pass as Dickens.’
‘Sugar did a fair imitation of her daughter Lacey for me,’ AnnaLise contributed, ‘and, apparently, an equally fine one of me for Debbie. Though I doubt the chef, having only just met me would have questioned the identity of the caller anyway.’
‘What exactly did you – or Sugar – tell Debbie?’ Nicole asked eagerly.
AnnaLise was starting to think it was the college student planning a book, instead of Patrick Hoag. ‘Just that she was no longer needed and that I would pay her to get – and stay – as far away from Dickens as possible, and as quickly as possible.’
‘Smart.’ Hoag was nodding. ‘Given the theme of this weekend, Debbie would think AnnaLise was protecting her inheritance from yet another person she believed to have financial designs on her father.’
Joy continued. ‘Debbie was angry at the assumption, but she did as she was told. As for Sugar, her aim was to implicate the chef and slow the investigation so she and Lacey could just evaporate.’
‘Speaking of Lacey,’ Shirley Hart said, ‘what was she doing all this time?’
‘Not much, probably. By then she had to be feeling the effects of the Rohypnol, so I’m sure Sugar waited until Sal picked up Nicole, then snuck her daughter upstairs.’
‘Tell them about the bag, AnnaLise,’ Daisy prompted.
Her daughter obliged. ‘When Lacey woke up the next morning, she found a note from her mother saying Sugar and the others had gone hiking. Piecing together what had happened the night before, Lacey examined the flowered backpack and saw blood on it from the champagne bottle when it was dropped on Hart’s slipper chair.
‘The girl had read enough detective fiction and seen enough TV to fear that just rinsing the thing in their bathroom sink with hand soap or shampoo wouldn’t wash away all the traces of Hart’s blood. Not only that, Lacey thought the blood in their sink trap itself could implicate them.’
‘It does on television,’ Rose said. ‘So she decided to hide the bag in your room?’
‘No,’ said AnnaLise. ‘Lacey took advantage of everybody being gone and went to the pier and threw the bag in the lake after weighting it down with sand from the beach.’
Phyllis pursed her lips. ‘That was good thinking.’
‘Yes, but Lacey didn’t close the bag completely, so some of the ballast washed out.’
Now it was Lucinda who looked perplexed. ‘But how do you know all this? Did Lacey tell the police everything you’ve just told us?’
‘Most of it,’ AnnaLise said. ‘And Roy Smoaks – umm, a former police chief here – saw her from across the lake.’
‘That far away?’ Daisy asked, her nose wrinkling in disbelief.
‘He had binoculars,’ AnnaLise replied, ‘but even so, he couldn’t see her face. Just a small figure in an oversized slicker she’d pulled on as a disguise of sorts.’
Phyllis chimed in again. ‘No surprise to me, Roy Smoaks spying on young women.’
‘He also
shot out the Lake Room window,’ AnnaLise said. ‘But that was just pure spite, not part of the story, as things turn out.’
‘So get on with it, then,’ Phyllis said, suddenly impatient, as if she’d just now realized her restaurant had been without her for days. ‘A busted window is nothing around these parts, leastways in comparison to murder.’
‘It was Thanksgiving morning when Lacey disposed of the bag,’ AnnaLise said. ‘By the time I got around to searching their room that evening—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Eddie interrupted. ‘You searched the Capris’ room?’
‘AnnaLise intended to search everybody’s,’ Phyllis said, looking proud.
Eddie the Pill-popper didn’t look pleased. ‘But you—’
‘Not to worry,’ AnnaLise said, reaching out to pat his hand. ‘My attention was diverted and I never got around to the other guests’ rooms. Which doesn’t mean that everyone else shouldn’t keep their own houses in order.’
‘Point taken,’ said Eddie.
‘Fine, fine,’ Daisy said to him. ‘You’re not going to abuse prescription drugs anymore. Now, can we get on with my daughter’s story?’
‘So,’ AnnaLise said, resisting the urge to laugh at her mother’s new-found forthrightness, ‘the floral bag was already in the lake when Lacey interrupted my search. Doubly good for them, since not only had there been the blood to consider, but word had already gotten around that I’d seen the thing on Hart’s bedroom chair.’
‘But then, how did it end up in your room?’ Rose sounded testy. ‘And who popped out of your closet?’
‘When Lacey told Sugar not only about the bag, but that she suspected I was looking for it in their room, Sugar got worried.’ AnnaLise turned to Joy. ‘Remember on Friday, when you and I were on the patio with Patrick and I was freaking out about being arrested?’
‘Which time?’
AnnaLise ignored her. ‘Anyway, I thought I heard the side door. Turns out Sugar had sent Lacey to make sure the bag was either safely gone or to hide it better.’
‘That must be why Lacey was sniffling this morning at breakfast,’ Daisy said. ‘What kind of mother sends her daughter into a freezing cold lake?’
AnnaLise didn’t bother with the ‘you don’t get colds from being cold’ battle she’d always fought with her own mother, but continued. ‘Anyways—’
Now Lucinda interrupted. ‘That gaudy thing was still there?’
‘The sand had only partially been washed out, as I said. The bag began to rise and one of the straps got caught on the pier piling. Figuring any evidence was long gone, Lacey managed to pluck it out and wipe it off before stuffing the thing under her coat to bring back to the house. I was with Sugar when she came in, but all I saw was Lacey’s head around the corner as she told her mother she was “back from her walk” and intent on taking a hot bath.’
‘Sounds like a signal,’ Daisy said. ‘Between the two of them, I mean. But, as Rose keeps asking, why put it in your room?’
‘By then, I’m thinking that Debbie and I were clearly neck-and-neck for chief suspect. The bag being discovered in my room probably seemed like the final nail in my coffin. By the time the police sorted it out – if they sorted it out – mother and daughter would have been long gone.’
Daisy visibly shivered, but it was Tyler who asked the next question. ‘So it was Sugar you surprised? But if you’ll recall it was Lacey who sent you to look for the iPad charger in the first place. Wouldn’t she know her mother was there?’
‘They wanted me to find the bag, but with Lacey as witness, so I’d be forced to turn it in. Only problem was that Sugar was delayed because she had trouble getting the thing to stay on the high closet shelf, given how short she is. Well, that most of us are.’ She glanced around the table.
‘And?’ Phyllis prompted.
‘And Lacey practically collided in the hallway with her mother after Sugar knocked me down. Realizing what had happened, Lacey came in to do damage control.’
Phyllis, seeming placated, muttered, ‘The younger really was wilier than the older.’
‘Smarter, certainly,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Once inside my bedroom, Lacey even managed to pick up the bag, so any of her own prints she might have missed throughout all this would be accounted for.’
‘But what about Sugar’s fingerprints?’ Nicole asked, frowning. ‘She’s the one who couldn’t get the bag on the shelf.’
‘Let me, let me,’ Joy said, waving her hand. ‘Remember the thigh-high knee socks Sugar wore with the short skirt to go hiking?’
‘I don’t think any red-blooded American male ever would forget them,’ Eddie Boccaccio said. ‘But please don’t tell me she wore them as gloves while planting the bag.’
‘Well, it turns out she did, yes.’ Joy shot eye-daggers at the man for stepping on her line. ‘It explains why Sugar botched the job. The woman had socks on her hands.’
‘It’s all so horribly sad.’ Nicole slid back her chair and stood to clear the table. ‘A modern O’Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. By Sugar and Lacey each trying to save the other, they …’
‘… destroyed everything,’ AnnaLise finished softly for the college student. ‘Including Dickens Hart.’
Rose Boccaccio was the last to leave the next day. AnnaLise was by the mansion’s door, having already said goodbye to all the other guests.
Rose rolled up in her wheelchair and dropped a plastic sandwich bag containing a dried, leafy substance in AnnaLise’s hand.
She looked down at it. ‘Don’t tell me you’re giving up weed.’
‘Hell, no. I’m just not quite old or stupid enough to try carrying marijuana onto a plane.’
AnnaLise smiled and tossed the bag into the foyer’s decorative waste basket. ‘It was genuinely good meeting you.’
‘Same here.’ The older woman hesitated.
‘Is something wrong?’ As much as AnnaLise liked Rose, the new owner of Hart’s Head had been being very honest the night before at dinner. She wanted all these people gone.
Now.
Rose stammered a little. ‘I’m afraid I have a confession.’
‘You snagged something else besides pot?’
‘No.’ She shook her head and looked up at AnnaLise. ‘I heard the elevator that night.’
‘The night of Dickens’ … death?’ Sugar may not have been protecting herself, but she’d certainly thought she was protecting her daughter. Homicide, certainly, but murder? Though who knew how the district attorney or jury would see it?
‘Yes,’ Rose said. ‘I was having a little late-night smoke and, as you know, my room was closest to the elevator. I thought I heard something and rolled out into the hallway, and there were Sugar and Lacey. No way was the girl getting off that elevator under her own power. I couldn’t be much help physically, but I did,’ she tapped her armrests, ‘let Sugar use my wheelchair to get Lacey to their room.’
‘Did Sugar tell you what happened?’
‘She did.’ Rose took AnnaLise’s hand. ‘I apologize that suspicion had to fall on you. I just felt so sorry for the two of them. I … well, I’d been there. On my own, like Sugar, with a child to protect. And needing to anesthetize myself, as Lacey did, against my only option at the time. Once the two of them were safely away, I’d have gone to the police. There was never any intention on their side or mine to let you take the punishment for this.’
AnnaLise remembered how Rose had looked at her and not her son, Eddie, during the ‘hand-to-mouth’ exchange at the ‘Last Supper.’ ‘It’s OK, Rose. And I do appreciate your telling me now.’ She leaned down and kissed the woman’s musk-scented cheek.
‘It’s the least I could do,’ Rose said, rolling over the threshold and out onto the porch before executing a one-eighty in her chair. ‘We have to stick together, you know?’
‘Because we’re family?’ AnnaLise asked, wondering what Bobby Bradenham would have to say about that sentiment after weathering the visit by Grandpa Smoaks.
‘Because we�
��re women.’ Rose grinned. ‘And don’t worry, dear. My Eddie’s not your half-brother.’
‘But you told me you weren’t sure.’
‘Ach, I was being melodramatic. Fact is Dickens couldn’t get up his nerve, much less his kielbasa that night.’
‘But his diary said—’
‘Dickie probably remembered his sexual “debut” as he chose to. Who am I to crush a young man’s wet dreams?’
With that and a wave, discreet cougar Rose Boccaccio rolled down the ramp and off into her proverbial sunset.