Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2)

by Sandra Balzo

  "Got it." AnnaLise managed a weak smile. "Cute."

  Daisy eyed her daughter. ‘Are you all right?’

  AnnaLise pulled herself together. ‘Fine, considering everything. And I'm glad the same is true for you and Josh, though I don't understand why he left before the police got there.’

  ‘Simple,’ Ida Mae stated.

  Daisy frowned at the unkindness. ‘I really don't think he's simple, Ida Mae. I know he spent a lot of time by himself as a boy, but – ’

  ‘Of course he's not simple,’ Ida Mae said. ‘Why would you think that? I meant his reason for leaving the scene was simple.’

  ‘And what would it be?’ This could be a very long evening.

  Ida Mae shrugged. ‘Joshua Eames has had his run-ins with the law, him hanging out in the woods, drinking and the like. His mother was as wild as they come, so he comes by it honestly, I suppose.’

  ‘It didn't help that the boy was big for his age so people expected more of him,’ Daisy offered. ‘Or that Joshua was awful at the very things his father loved, like hunting and fishing. Not that Fred had much time for either, what with a wife who loved money and a business that wasn't – ’

  ‘My point,’ Ida Mae said, glaring at her for the interruption, ‘is that I wouldn't be at all astonished if Joshua Eames is driving without a license.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Daisy said, nodding. ‘That's why I didn't mention his being there to the chief.’

  ‘But that's silly,’ AnnaLise said, though truth be told, she hadn't either. ‘Josh, himself, called nine-one-one, and he's probably going to need the police report for his insurance – ’

  ‘Why? Besides, AnnaLise, we owe him. If it weren't for him, we might still be sitting in that car or worse.’ Daisy said stubbornly. ‘As far as I'm concerned, an unidentified vehicle came at us, but sailed right on past while you were busy bouncing us off that rock wall. End of story.’

  Fine. Let Daisy have it her way. ‘Nice deck, Ida Mae.’

  ‘And how would you know that, either? You've only set foot on the first five boards of it.’

  ‘Leave the girl alone,’ Ida Mae said, getting up. ‘AnnaLise, can I get you another glass of wine?’

  AnnaLise looked at her glass, which was surprisingly low. ‘That would be very nice, but shouldn't we be going?’

  ‘Going?’ Ida Mae asked. ‘But how?’

  AnnaLise felt herself color up. ‘Well, I thought maybe you could give us a ride.’

  ‘Heaven's, I don't drive down at night. Besides, didn't you say the road was blocked, what with the police vehicles and all?’

  ‘Well, yes, but we'd hate to presume on your hospit – ’

  ‘Nonsense. It's my pleasure to put you up and God knows there's all sorts of space. Four bedrooms, remember?’

  ‘I'd forgotten, honestly,’ Daisy said. ‘How many people can you sleep?’

  ‘Eight, officially, but I'm certain the skiers manage to fit in a few more on the floor and what-not.’

  ‘Are you renting the place out in the winter, Ida Mae?’ AnnaLise asked. ‘I'm not sure why, but I thought you stayed on the mountain year-round.’

  ‘I most certainly did, when Robbie was alive. He loved the snow, and I did, too, long as it behaved itself. I'd tell God, “You keep it on the grass and let the streets stay clean, and we'll get along just fine, thank you very much.”’

  AnnaLise laughed, eliciting a chuckle from their hostess. ‘My husband he thought that was funny, too. Said, “Ida Mae, you don't honestly bother God with that, do you?” and I would shrug and tell him, ‘Well, now, Robbie. He knows how I feel.’

  Ida Mae was still smiling at the memory. Robbie Babb was Ida Mae's late husband. Not to be confused with their son Robbie Jr, Bobby Bradenham or any of the myriad Robbies and Bobbies who seemed to dot the area, possibly because of the large Scottish population that had settled there centuries before.

  In fact, if AnnaLise forgot a man's name, she'd trot out Robbie or Bobby – maybe mumble it, so they couldn't tell which one she was saying – and stand a good chance of being right.

  Or, at the very worst, getting a polite, ‘No, ma'am, that's my brother.’ Or father, uncle, cousin or neighbor.

  ‘Ida Mae has a grandbaby now,’ Daisy was saying. ‘Though you certainly wouldn't know it by looking at her.’

  ‘Robbie Jr and his wife have been trying and trying,’ the new grandmother said, pulling a smartphone out of her pocket. ‘This will likely be their one and only but she's a keeper all right.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ AnnaLise said, her mind only partially on the conversation. She was still thinking about the yellow speck Daisy had seen in the rocky wilderness at the base of the mountain. ‘Where are Robbie, Jr and,’ she couldn't remember his wife's name, ‘his family living now?’

  ‘Down to Charlotte.’ Ida Mae rose and gave the phone to her. ‘Isn't she a darling?’

  A bald butter-ball with dimples that didn't stop, the baby was undeniably cute, though the only way you could gauge gender was by the tiny pink bow velcroed to the downy fuzz on the top of her head.

  ‘Adorable,’ AnnaLise said, trying to hand the phone back to the proud grandmother.

  ‘Oh, there are lots more,’ Ida Mae said, returning to her chair. ‘Just use the touch screen.’

  Oh, goody. AnnaLise loved babies, but in her estimation a picture was worth the proverbial thousand words, the emphasis on the singular article ‘a.’

  Still, being left to her own thoughts as she scrolled through wasn't so bad. Thank God, with new technology, people didn't make you peer over their shoulders while they showed you shot after shot in a computer slide show anymore.

  Ida Mae did, though, keep up a running commentary on her new granddaughter, whose name AnnaLise missed and whose current age she couldn't guess from the pictures.

  No matter, the reporter was consumed with other thoughts, the phone in her hand reminding her of her own, on top of her handbag in the other room. Should she try to call Ben? If now, a couple hours after the accident, she remembered that Tanja Rosewood's car was yellow, would it seem so odd that she called to make sure the family was safe?

  The truly odd thing might be that she, AnnaLise Griggs, had Ben Rosewood's personal cell phone number. Especially if their acquaintance was as casual as they'd pretended in front of his wife and daughter.

  Speaking of the family, wasn't the Porsche a two-seater? If so, Ben or Suzanne could have been with Tanja, but not both of them. The same was true, of course, on the drive from Wisconsin. So how had all three gotten here? Perhaps they'd rented a truck or a van – something that Ben would have driven – to transport Suzanne's clothes and things to school. With a one-way rental, Ben could turn-in the truck here and drive back to Wisconsin in the Porsche with –

  ‘Wouldn't it, AnnaLise?’

  Daughter looked at mother. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Ida Mae offered to drive us home tomorrow morning after breakfast.’ Daisy raised her eyebrows at AnnaLise.

  ‘Oh, I'm sorry. I was just enjoying the photos,’ she said. ‘That's very nice of you – above and beyond the call of duty, really.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Ida Mae said. ‘We're practically family. Did you know I used to babysit for your mother?’

  ‘No,’ AnnaLise said, looking back and forth between the women. At sixty-five, Ida Mae was fifteen years older than Daisy, so it made sense. ‘I had no idea your family was here that long ago.’

  The oldest of the three women laughed. ‘That long ago – you make it sound like ancient history.’

  ‘Not ancient, certainly,’ AnnaLise said, ‘but has anybody done a history of Sutherton? Or documented who settled here and when?’ She'd had an idea prompted by the memory games the neurologist had suggested for Daisy, and this seemed an opportune time to trot it out.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Ida Mae said. ‘There was that lady in Foscoe, who wrote up something and sold it at her jam and honey stand on the highway, but I think that was just her own family.’
<
br />   Daisy was regarding her daughter. ‘Whatever are you thinking, AnnaLise? That you'd do it?’

  In truth, AnnaLise was trying to think about anything other than the Rosewoods. ‘Heaven's, no. I haven't even started combing through Dickens Hart's journals toward doing his memoirs yet. No, I was thinking more of a blog on the town website, maybe, where people could share their memories and family stories.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ Ida Mae said. ‘But does the town even have a website?’

  ‘Joy Tamarack and Sheree Pepper have been talking about doing one for visitors,’ Daisy contributed, though her face had turned guarded at AnnaLise's mention of ‘memories.’

  Sheree Pepper was the owner of the Sutherton Inn and one of AnnaLise's oldest friends. Though AnnaLise hadn't run this brainstorm past Sheree or Joy, who she was also close to, she was certain they would buy in. Especially if it were to help Daisy.

  ‘Well, I think it's a fabulous idea,’ Ida Mae said, getting to her feet. ‘But I'm starving. Shall I get dinner started?’

  ‘Sounds wonderful,’ AnnaLise said, getting up to hand Ida Mae her phone.

  As their hostess took it, the thing gave off the tweet-tweet signaling a text message.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ida Mae said. ‘Barbara Jean – she's the one who lives on Ruff Road – was having stomach pains earlier and her daughter insisted she call down for the paramedics.’

  Slipping on reading glasses, Ida Mae surveyed the message and typed in one of her own, before slipping the phone back into her pocket. ‘All's well, thank the Lord. Though it took the fire department over an hour to get there, can you believe that?’

  Daisy glanced at AnnaLise. ‘Given the two accidents where we were, the town's emergency services were probably severely taxed.’

  Or they couldn't find 'Ruff Road,' AnnaLise thought. ‘Did they take your neighbor in for observation?’

  ‘No, but they did confiscate her North Carolina Hot Sauce. Honestly, you'd think the woman would learn.’ Ida Mae waved her guests into the house.

  ‘Truly, Ida Mae,’ AnnaLise said, ‘thank you so much for both the hospitality and for driving us home tomorrow.’

  ‘Not a problem at all,’ Ida Mae said. ‘I have to see Kathleen at Sutherton Realty anyway and work out the rental arrangements for the ski season.’

  Ida Mae and Daisy continued through the living room into the kitchen, while AnnaLise went to retrieve her handbag and the cell on top of it from the couch. The room was dark now that the sun was fully down, and she could see a red light on the phone, signaling a new text message.

  She picked it up with trepidation, but found only a Twitter from the newspaper where she worked in Wisconsin, a tease of the next day's special section on fall lawn care. Glancing toward the kitchen door where the other two women were talking she punched in Ben's number.

  It was impulsive – the text equivalent of drunk-dialing – but in this case the act was driven more by anxiety than the wine AnnaLise'd had. The affair might be over, but she'd loved the man and not knowing if he was OK was intolerable. If all was well and he was with his wife and daughter, AnnaLise could claim that she was simply being hospitable, making sure they didn't need anything during their –

  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 without 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 Pe
ebly 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.