Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2)

by Sandra Balzo

  Try another tack – reason disguised as empathy.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ AnnaLise said, holding up both hands, palms out in apology. ‘You're under enough strain without my adding to it. I only thought that given . . .’ She let her sentence drift off.

  ‘Given?’ Ben said, also standing down.

  AnnaLise looked around and lowered her voice. ‘Given what you told me about Tanja's drinking . . .’

  ‘What about it?’ The walls were back up.

  ‘Well, I'm just not sure that Joy's spa could be held responsible for what Tanja drank before she got there.’

  ‘Who says she had anything earlier that morning?’ Ben demanded.

  AnnaLise shrugged. ‘I smelled it on her breath in Mama's restaurant, when Tanja made the remark about not being a good sharer. Or I should say I smelled a menthol cough drop. As I don't have to tell you, cough drops – and mouthwash and peanut butter, of all things – are all ploys alcoholics use to disguise the booze on their breath.’

  Now AnnaLise forced a smile. ‘The cough drops have the added plus of keeping the germ-aphobics a fair distance away.’

  ‘Tanja had a cold.’

  ‘She didn't cough or sniffle the entire time we spoke.’

  ‘Then apparently the cough drop did its job.’

  ‘Deny it all you want,’ AnnaLise said, tiring of the game. ‘But you told me Tanja was an alcoholic and I'll testify to it if I have to.’

  ‘Hearsay. And besides, the fact she was an alcoholic doesn't prove that she was, indeed, drinking that morning.’

  If AnnaLise was a television lawyer, she’d have followed up with ‘Ahah! So you admit your wife was an alcoholic.’ But this wasn't court and she wasn't a lawyer, though apparently she played one in the foyer.

  So instead, she said: ‘But presumably the serum blood alcohol test will indicate approximately how much Tanja had to drink, and if it's more than she could have gotten at the spa . . .’ AnnaLise performed the shrug of the foregone conclusion.

  Ben, however, wasn't done yet. ‘Fine. Let's say my wife was an alcoholic and she'd been drinking – was even drunk – when she arrived for her appointment.’

  When Ben made his point in court, he had a perfectly-crafted way of showing it. No shit-eating grin, of course: he was too good. No, the DA's lift of his eyebrows was a non-verbal ‘so there,’ serving to cue the jury that the next few questions would be significant and that they should take note.

  Now his brows rose. ‘All that means, AnnaLise, is that Sutherton Spa as an entity and Joy Tamarack as a person are even more liable – they served alcohol to someone they knew – or should have known – was already intoxicated and, despite that, let her leave to drive down an unfamiliar mountain.’

  ‘But,’ AnnaLise looked puzzled, ‘maybe they didn't know.’

  Ben's turn to shrug. ‘The standard is whether a reasonable person should have known, and you yourself just testif . . . sorry, you just said that you did.’

  ‘True.’ AnnaLise seemed to give it some thought, then gave Ben a little smile. ‘But you have told me that I'm smarter than most people.’

  He met her smile and raised one himself, seeming to relax after scoring the win. ‘I told you that you are one of the smartest women I've ever met. And I meant it.’

  ‘You know, I never quite believed you about that, but now,’ she moved toward the inn's front door, ‘I think you may be right.’

  He opened it for her, smiling down. ‘So, what changed your mind?’

  ‘I realized that if Tanja had been drinking and I noticed, certainly her husband would have.’ AnnaLise ducked under Ben's braced arm and stepped out.

  When she turned back, Ben's eyes had narrowed. ‘Your point?’

  ‘My point,’ she said, ‘is that if you then let Tanja get behind the wheel, you would be legally responsible. Especially,’ a lift of her own eyebrows, ‘if she was driving a car you gave her as a gift, but – knowing you – kept in your name. In fact, Ben, you're very lucky your wife didn't kill anyone else.’

  Not being the man, or the lawyer, Benjamin Rosewood was, AnnaLise allowed herself a shit-eating grin as she started back down to the sidewalk.

  Thirteen

  ‘Do you honestly think that little debate will keep the man from suing me?’ Joy Tamarack asked.

  AnnaLise got up from her mother's kitchen table to pour them each another margarita from the blender pitcher. Given the subject of the last hour or two, perhaps not the best idea, but at least no one would be driving anywhere.

  ‘More so than your crying act. Damn!’ The last of the frozen margaritas had plotched out, overflowing Joy's glass and hitting the table. AnnaLise eyed her empty glass as well as the now equally empty pitcher and went to get a spoon out of the drawer. ‘What good did you think tears were going to do? The man is a hardbitten lawyer.’

  ‘And an asshole to boot, from what you've told me. Cheating on his wife.’

  ‘Like I said, I have to take half the blame in that category.’ AnnaLise had settled down at the table and was carefully ladling half of the slush from Joy's glass into hers.

  AnnaLise drew the line at slurping any drink off the table, but just barely. Today – including just having told Joy about the affair with Ben – had taken its toll and the margaritas were going down mighty easy.

  Joy pulled her glass away. ‘Believe me, I'm not absolving you. You'll recall a certain incident with a “fawn” in my marital bed.’

  AnnaLise was reminded of The Godfather. ‘Better than a horse's head.’

  ‘Yeah, my luck,’ Joy said dryly. ‘I had the horse's ass, instead.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ AnnaLise said, admittedly a little tipsy, ‘that's my father you're talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, well, “stupid is who stupid does,” to paraphrase another of your favorite movies. Your mother and me, sleeping with the same guy. Doesn't that strike you as a little creepy?’

  ‘It strikes me as a lot creepy, though happily it wasn't simultaneously. Hey,’ AnnaLise looked up from her drink, sensing a margarita mustache on her upper lip, ‘does that make you my stepmother?’

  ‘Si, Señor,’ Joy said, leaning across the table to wipe the tequila-mix residue off her friend's face. ‘And my step-motherly advice to you is “Give yourself a break.” Fact is, you're young and you made a mistake with Rosewood.’

  ‘I honestly believed that as long as we were careful, as long as no one found out, it would be OK,’ AnnaLise said, now tending toward miserable again. ‘Nobody would get hurt.’

  ‘But you ended it. And didn't you just tell me that Rosewood's wife never did know?’

  ‘The basic premise was flawed, Joy. The mistake – the thing I should have been worried about – was the affair itself, not getting caught.’

  ‘You were in love.’

  ‘I thought.’

  ‘You're not the first one to have made that mistake.’ Joy leaned forward. ‘Don't get me wrong. Like I said before, I'm not saying it's no blood, no foul. But . . . well, have you stopped to think that maybe this has something to do with your father?’

  ‘So, what – I inherited the “philander” gene?’ AnnaLise put her hand on her heart dramatically. ‘My God, you're right – I was doomed from the start.’

  ‘Not your biological father, dunce. Your functional father: Timothy Griggs.’

  ‘My “functional father” died when I was five. I barely knew him.’

  ‘But that's what I mean. Geez, AnnaLise, can you possibly be this dense? You're a journalist – you probably even read occasionally. Ink on actual paper and everything.’

  AnnaLise let the insult to the printed word pass. ‘All right, so you're trying to say I have a father fixation?’

  ‘You've told me that after your dad died, your two ”moms” – Daisy and Phyllis – teamed-up to take care of you, while they were also running the market and the restaurant.’

  ‘Joy, if you're saying I suffered from the arrangement, you're wrong. I never questioned tha
t I was loved.’

  ‘Loved, yes, but – ’

  AnnaLise interrupted. ‘And, before you go any further, yes, I was praised. And got positive reinforcement and was made to feel good about myself. Almost to the point of nausea, in fact. When I got an “A” on a test or report, Mama would post the paper right next to the menu board.’

  ‘I'm sure they did everything they could, but,’ Joy started to reach across the table toward her, but was stopped by the sticky drink spill, ‘honey, they couldn't be your father.’

  ‘I don't believe it.’ AnnaLise kept hold of her margarita glass. ‘You, of all people, think women can't do everything men can?’

  Joy's eyes narrowed. ‘I do not. I just think they – we – do it . . . differently.’

  ‘Right.’ While AnnaLise's tone was skeptical, she feared there was more than a kernel of truth to what Joy was saying. Maybe not so much in that AnnaLise had suffered from a lack of a father figure growing up, but more . . . well, mothers, no matter the number, had to love you, right? At least in her experience, Daisy and Mama had doted on everything the little AnnaLise had done or said.

  But that wasn't earning it. Having someone you admired, hell, the whole county admired, say you were smart, or funny or –

  ‘. . . so intoxicated by the feeling,’ Joy was saying, ‘that nothing else seems to matter.’

  This time, AnnaLise didn't interrupt. The feeling she'd had at the height of the affair – thinking about Ben, being with Ben – had been very much like being high without realizing you were drunk. Right down to waking up the next morning ashamed of yourself.

  ‘. . . and no matter how stirred up we get, eventually we're left with exactly what we started with.’ Joy nodded significantly at the overflow of their frozen margarita, melted and running on the table between them. Three people. Like the ingredients of a margarita. And whatever you do, your love and his spouse will always be its main ones – tequila and lime juice.’

  Against her will, AnnaLise was impressed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You, my friend, are – all you ever can be – is the triple sec. The splash of flavor. My metaphor is, forgive me, brilliant, right down to the triple in triple sec. The third wheel.’

  Joy's expression suddenly changed, and she pointed at the rivulet of green liquid just starting to trickle off the edge of the table and onto the thighs of AnnaLise's jeans. ‘Leaving you home alone, with nothing to show for it but a sticky crotch.’

  Joy Tamarack managed to stand up in one, graceful motion. ‘Now that's a metaphor.’

  Fourteen

  Joy Tamarack was both crude and . . .

  No, ‘crude’ pretty much captured it.

  Nonetheless, before her friend left, AnnaLise had broached the subject of including a blog on the new Sutherton Visitor website. Joy had liked the idea and suggested they get together, sans margaritas, at the spa at nine a.m. the following day.

  The more the journalist thought about it, the more she thought the blog was a good idea. The doctors – first Tucker's father, Dr Jackson Stanton, and now her mother's neurologist – had suggested writing and word games like crossword puzzles and the like to keep Daisy's mind engaged, especially now that she was no longer running the store.

  Now, on Wednesday morning, one foot in the leg of her jeans – a clean pair, thank you very much – as AnnaLise dressed toward driving up the mountain to the spa, something occurred to her: her mother's cognitive ‘shifts’ had started after she had closed the shop and rented the space to Tucker. Though Daisy continued to help Mama – writing up the menu boards as she had for as long as AnnaLise could remember, and hostessing, and handling the cash register – Daisy no longer had the day-to-day responsibility of running a business on her shoulders. Or on her mind.

  Good, in some ways, but could it be part of the reason she'd slowed down so noticeably?

  AnnaLise wasn't sure, but an added benefit of the blog was that, perhaps once mounted and running, Daisy should be able to take over responsibility for its coordination. People like Mama and Ida Mae would have plenty of stories to tell and their contributions would keep the job from becoming too burdensome in the search-for-Sutherton-anecdotes sense. Not only would it be good for all of them, but it was a great way of preserving the area's history and lore.

  Who knows, maybe there was even a book in it. AnnaLise zipped up her jeans, wishing she hadn't had that extra half-margarita yesterday. The things had a ton of calories in them, as fastening her top button confirmed.

  Grabbing her cell phone and handbag, AnnaLise descended the stairs from her room and left via the front door, locking it behind her. Daisy had already been up and gone when AnnaLise awakened late – and groggy – at quarter past eight. Yet another reason to regret the margaritas. She wasn't going to make her 9 a.m. meeting with Joy.

  Happily, Daisy hadn't gone farther than Mama's, so AnnaLise had the use of her mother's car, still parked conveniently down the street while the garage work was being done. She started the Chrysler and pulled away from the curb.

  As AnnaLise passed the garage, she saw Joshua Eames patching the concrete wall between its doors. Apparently, Mr Eames had won the one-door-or-two issue, resulting in the status quo of a pair.

  ‘Morning, Josh,’ AnnaLise said, coming to a stop and turning off the engine after having driven all of twenty feet. At this rate, she wouldn't make the spa before first snowfall.

  ‘Morning,’ Josh echoed, wiping his palms on a rag before shaking hands with her through the driver's side open window. His blue eyes were sad. ‘I'd like to apologize for my friend's behavior yesterday at Mama's. Suze was upset.’

  ‘She has reason to be,’ AnnaLise said.

  ‘Yes, ma'am, but not at you, and I told her that. Suze said to tell you she was sorry when I saw you.’

  Suzanne hadn't looked ‘apologetic’ when she and AnnaLise had practically run into each other at the top of the stairs at the inn, but given the affair AnnaLise'd had with the girl's father, she had no right to criticize Suzanne's behavior. Or, for that matter, her protective clan instincts.

  ‘That's a very nice gesture, Josh, but truly neither Suzanne nor you has anything to apologize for. How is she holding up?’

  He gave a little head-tilt. ‘Hard to tell, I have to say. I don't know a lot of people from the Midwest, so maybe they handle this manner of thing different. She just seems . . . mad? Says her mother killed herself.’

  AnnaLise's heart stopped. ‘Killed herself? Like in . . . suicide?’

  ‘That's what I thought at first, when Suze said it, but no. Turns out her mama,’ Josh looked around to see if anyone was passing by and therefore could overhear, ‘she liked to drink.’

  ‘Oh.’ AnnaLise didn't have anything else appropriate to contribute.

  ‘According to Suze, her mother was always telling her not to drink alcohol and not to drive too fast, but she didn't take her own advice.’

  ‘I guess a lot of us don't practice what we preach.’

  ‘That's just what I told Suze.’ Josh's blue eyes turned sadder. ‘I also said she was lucky to have had her mama for as long as she did, but that just made Suze, like, more . . . bitter?’

  Poor Josh. Despite everything, he showed signs of maturing into a good guy. AnnaLise feared he be no match for Suzanne's biting intellect and, if half of what Ben said about his daughter was true, legendary temper tantrums.

  AnnaLise touched his arm. ‘Suze is very lucky to have you.’

  ‘Thank you, ma'am, but I'm not sure she's feeling that way right about now.’

  ‘Some people find it less painful to be angry rather than sad. She'll get past it.’ AnnaLise checked her watch. Five more minutes late. ‘Well, I'd best go. I'm due at Hotel Lux in ten minutes.’

  ‘Don't think you're going to make it, less'n you fly.’

  ‘I crawl, more like it. Which reminds me,’ AnnaLise couldn't believe she'd forgotten, ‘I'd like to pay for any damage to your dad's truck from yesterday afternoon. That way you won't have t
o report it to your insurance company, especially since my mother already told the police officers at the scene that we hit the rock wall, not another vehicle.’

  ‘That's good, because that's exactly what you did. Don't you remember?’

  ‘No, actually, I don't.’ Great, now the town would be talking about AnnaLise's memory quirks as well as Daisy's. ‘I think I must have closed my eyes.’

  A grin twisted the corners of Josh's mouth, despite what seemed his best effort to control it. ‘That's not a real good thing to do when one's behind the wheel.’

  ‘I may have been behind the wheel, but I wasn't driving,’ AnnaLise said. ‘My car stalled in the middle of the road.’

  ‘Well, that might be so, but when I came up on you, that little car of yours jumped right across the road, bounced into the rock wall and back again to the edge.’

  ‘Huh,’ AnnaLise said, thinking. ‘Now that you mention it, I remember putting the car into park and finally getting it started. I must have hit the accelerator in panic.’

  ‘Sure looked that way to me, ma'am.’

  AnnaLise kicked herself for thinking at the time that Josh had fled the scene, when he'd simply been a Good Samaritan, stopping to help and call 911.

  ‘Well, I'm very glad I didn't damage your father's truck. How do you like working for him?’ She was already going to be late, so might as well add another couple of minutes assuaging her guilty conscience.

  ‘My dad can be difficult, I won't lie, but I do like the work.’

  ‘From what I've heard, you're also very good at it.’

  She was rewarded with a pleased smile and AnnaLise had a hunch she'd have seen a blush if Josh wasn't so tanned from his outdoor job. ‘I thank you, though Suze and me've been talking about my maybe going back to school.’

  ‘College?’ AnnaLise asked, wondering if this was Josh's idea or Suzanne's. Either way, the journalist thought it would be a good thing. Fred Eames might love his son, but he couldn't be doing much for the young man's self-esteem.

  Josh tilted his head. ‘Well, I really do like the work and it pays the bills, but it sure would be nice to have a little something left for my back pocket.’