Hit and Run (20 page)

Rose was nodding. ‘The layout
is
considerably different on that side of the floor, but the room assignments are thoughtful, at least in their own perverse logic.'

‘How so?

‘Come now, you must have noticed: ex-wives and recognized heirs and her mothers in the larger rooms of the north wing; lawyer, affairees, mistresses and other bastard children, the south.'

‘Affairees differentiated from mistresses?' The conversation harkened back to AnnaLise's ‘Bimbette' discussion with Joy.

‘I – and your mother, for that matter – were “affairees.” Dickens Hart was not married during either her time or mine. I've been many things in my life, but not a home-wrecker.'

AnnaLise felt herself flush at the memory of a less-than-honorable segment in her own last few years. ‘You've never lived here?'

‘Heaven's no, even if we'd been more than a fling, this place wasn't built until the early nineties. I believe Joy and Dickens were married in that big room by the lake.'

‘How lovely,' AnnaLise said, meaning it. Joy had never mentioned the venue for her wedding.

‘I do admit it's damn impressive,' Rose said, positioning her chair to see the full length of the corridor. ‘I took a buzz around last night when everybody was having drinks before dinner. Don't care much for alcohol. I prefer—' She pressed her thumb and forefinger together and put them to her mouth like she was taking a hit.

Ah, yes. ‘Joy said you and she were smoking pot this morning.'

‘Everybody went out for a walk and left me behind. I had to find something to occupy myself.'

This time AnnaLise knew better than to offer sympathy. ‘So you brought your stash for just those kind of moments?'

‘Nah.' An impish grin. ‘I found it in Dickie's bedroom when I was taking my grand tour, pre-dinner.'

AnnaLise stopped. ‘You
stole
the pot?'

‘It's an illegal drug in this state. Isn't your indignation a bit misplaced? Though …' Rose, who had been about to thumb her throttle again, hesitated. ‘Is it possible that it's medical marijuana and Dickens was being treated for something?'

‘No.' But even as she said the word, AnnaLise began to wonder. She'd asked Dickens whether Boozer's possible ‘tools of persuasion' toward inviting guests might include an implication that their host-to-be was in poor health. Maybe it
was
true. ‘I mean, I don't think so.'

‘Hmm.' Rose turned the chair to face AnnaLise full on. ‘It was in his nightstand, for what that might be worth to your theory.'

‘It's
your
theory and, besides, what would I know about it? I've never even tried the stuff.' She ignored Rose's skeptical expression. ‘Is pot an aphrodisiac?'

Rose shrugged. ‘It relaxes you, so in that way, yes. Though I've known guys that it …' She dangled a finger loosely.

Now where did one go conversationally from there? AnnaLise wondered. Especially with the septuagenarian hippie mother of the man who seemed increasingly likely to be your half-brother.

‘But as to the weekend at hand,' AnnaLise proffered, pretending not to see the knowing grin on Rose's face as the woman started the wheelchair rolling slowly and still northward. ‘It's a shame Eddie never had more time around Dickens.'

Rose responded over her shoulder with, ‘You're assuming they're father and son?'

‘Well, yes,' said AnnaLise, who came to a sudden halt. ‘You did say your boyfriend, the “druggie,” wasn't.'

‘True, but that leaves any one of five or six men. Or more “boys,” as I then thought of them.' Rose laughed, but kept rolling forward. ‘I don't even have to see your face to tell that I've shocked you, but it's the truth. 'Twas the sixties, and I believed in loud music and free love.'

Shaking her head, AnnaLise caught up but didn't comment.

‘Now, let's see.' Rose was craning her neck to see the high placard next to the door. ‘Yes, this is Tyler's room next to Lucinda's. That puts Sugar and Lacey in the room closest to the stairs, with Eddie across the hall from them.'

‘What do you think about Tyler?' AnnaLise asked.

The older woman frowned as she moved the chair forward again. ‘I don't see the resemblance, quite honestly. The boy's too tall, for one thing, and his mother is a shrimp, as is – was – Dickie.'

‘For what it's worth, Joy doesn't trust him. She thinks he's a little too disarming.'

Rose was nodding. ‘I noticed that. All this, “Gosh, whatever happens, happens” crap. Who
doesn't
need money? Or, at the very least, want it?'

AnnaLise couldn't argue with that. Even if she hadn't thought she wanted her birth father's money, Daisy needed it.

Rose coasted to a stop on the gangway just short of where the sweeping staircase from the floor below met it. ‘If I were you, I'd settle into this place, happy as pie.'

‘It
is
lovely,' AnnaLise said, taking in the view of the water through the two-story windows – minus one – of the Lake Room below. ‘If a little … lonely.'

‘Doesn't have to be, though I saw the look on your face when I suggested a booty call with that lawyer. I take it he's not the man in your life?'

‘Patrick Hoag? Good Lord, no.' AnnaLise honestly hadn't even imagined him in that context.

‘A little too clean-cut, I'll agree with you there. Like Clark Kent in those glasses, though who knows? Maybe he's Superman where it counts.' She elbowed AnnaLise mid-thigh, which is where the two lined up given Rose's stature in the wheelchair.

AnnaLise backed safely out of reach. ‘Maybe, but I'm not in the market for a man, I'm afraid. Not even if he was super.'

‘Lesbian?'

AnnaLise smiled. ‘Not so far as I know. Just chose badly regarding my last lover – male, before you ask.'

‘Sworn off men for the time being, eh? Well, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, you might want to seek out a coven for support. Great networking, not to mention they've got some kick-ass vibrators in the catalogs.'

Wait a minute. Witches had … catalogs?

‘Well, it's been real,' Rose continued, doing a 180 degree turn with her chair and trundling back toward her room before AnnaLise could ask.

Probably for the best. Nothing good could come of delving further into Rose's past life. Or lives.

‘'Night,' AnnaLise called after her, getting a wave and ‘sweet dreams' in return.

On the floor below, the party was still going strong in the media room. The polite – or at least social – thing to do was to join the rest of the guests, but AnnaLise just didn't feel like celebrating anything.

A man was dead and even if she couldn't say she'd loved him, Dickens Hart had been her father. Richard ‘Dickens' Hart, as it turned out. AnnaLise hadn't known even that about him and, thanks to the killer, anything else she learned was likely to be second hand or, at best, posthumously from his journals.

Rose's door closed down the hall and the upstairs went quiet.

AnnaLise hesitated, but just for a moment.

R
eturning to her room, AnnaLise tossed the shoes she'd been wearing onto the floor of the closet in favor of padding around in her stocking feet. Pushing the door closed, she paused to consider.

She was going ‘snooping,' as Coy Pitchford had called it.

The logical place to start was the south wing, since that's where the potential heirs were staying. They were, after all, the people who might benefit from Hart's death.

She honestly didn't expect to find the flowered bag. In fact, AnnaLise much preferred not to. If the thing belonged to Chef Debbie and the woman had taken it with her, she had probably killed Dickens Hart for some reason yet unknown. Case closed, if not exactly cleared.

But what if the bag wasn't Debbie's? Or any woman's for that matter?

While it screamed ‘female,' AnnaLise supposed that could have been calculated to throw off the police, or even Hart. If Dickens entered his suite and saw the thing, he'd have assumed a woman was showering in his bathroom, with a strong chance that he'd strip down naked and join her. Or maybe lie expectantly on the bed for whichever one to lavish her charms upon him.

In AnnaLise's generation and world, that would have been downright crazy and not a little creepy. But for an aging swinger like Dickens Hart, maybe it wasn't just business as usual, but exciting: genuine emotional stimuli in scoring another trophy.

But instead of a one-night stand slipping into bed with him, a murderer had struck him hard enough to bash in his skull.

It
was
possible, AnnaLise thought. At least possible
enough
to make searching for the bag reasonable before the thing ended up filled with rocks, heaved into the water and thus anchored on the bottom of Lake Sutherton. If the police weren't going to take what she'd seen seriously—

AnnaLise froze, with one hand hovering over the knob to leave her room. It was true that Coy and Charity Pitchford hadn't done a search. In fact, they hadn't so much as questioned the other guests about the bag. Was that because they didn't believe her? Or, given Chuck's absence, mere oversight?

Either way, it didn't bode well. If the bag wasn't here or with Debbie – meaning if it was never recovered – then the logical conclusion was that AnnaLise was lying. And the obvious follow-up question was why? To frame somebody else for a crime she'd committed?

Enough. Get a grip on yourself.

AnnaLise stepped out into the hallway and listened. The upstairs remained quiet, with muffled conversation and music drifting from the media room.

The one person AnnaLise knew to currently be on the second floor was Rose Boccaccio. Accordingly, the snooper decided to start with the south-wing room farthest from the older woman.

Sugar and Lacey's.

AnnaLise crept across the gangway, grateful there was nobody below to spot her. Then she tapped on the door, trying to formulate a reason should somebody answer. Happily, when there was no response, she cracked open the door and slipped in.

The suite was nearly identical to the one Mama and Daisy shared. The two queen-sized beds might as well have been twins for the proportional amount of space they occupied. There was a sitting area with a sofa and a desk. The floor was carpeted, thank God, so nobody below would be able to hear her moving around, even without shoes.

Nonetheless, she tiptoed to the bed. It had been made by somebody, but clothes were strewn across it, like somebody – or two somebodies – had been having trouble deciding what to wear.

Moving to the closet, AnnaLise had just opened the door when she heard the sound of footsteps outside the room.

‘Hello?'

AnnaLise turned to see Lacey Capri. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, pulling a spare pillow off the top shelf. ‘I'm turning down the beds. I thought everybody would be downstairs for a while.'

‘They decided to watch
The Big Chill
.' Lacey's tone conveyed how she felt about yet another baby-boomer fave.

‘Daisy probably had something to do with the movie selection. She loves the music.' AnnaLise folded down the blanket and set the pillow at the head of the bed. ‘There you go. Would you like me to do the other bed?'

‘I can do it,' Lacey said. ‘I made the beds this morning. I didn't realize there was … maid service.'

‘Oh, yes,' AnnaLise said. Then: ‘Though with Dickens death they seem to have abandoned us. I'm filling in.'

‘That's so nice of you,' Lacey said, moving aside a dress to sit down. ‘What do you think happened? To Mr Hart, I mean. Nobody's telling me much.'

‘I wish I knew,' AnnaLise said honestly. ‘He was hit in the head, but how and why?'

‘People are saying the police asked about Chef Debbie, like she had something to do with it.'

‘It's anybody's guess at this point,' AnnaLise said, not wanting to add speculative fuel to the fire. ‘But enough about sad things. Your mother says you live near Charlotte. Where do you go to school?'

‘Online. We've moved quite a bit since Daddy died, and it's easier than switching schools and trying to make friends all over again.'

AnnaLise, who'd never been out of the High Country until she moved away for college, couldn't imagine that. ‘So it's just you and your mom?'

Lacey nodded, and AnnaLise thought she saw the tell-tale glint of tears.

‘I'm sorry about your father,' AnnaLise said. ‘Mine died, too. When I was five.'

A look of confusion. ‘But I thought Dickens Hart was your daddy.'

‘As it turns out,' AnnaLise said, not sure how much more to tell the girl. ‘But I had no inkling of that until just a couple months ago.'

‘So … um, your mom and Mr Hart, were … umm … like my mom and him?'

AnnaLise nodded, thinking that Rose Boccaccio – despite her advanced age – would be a whole lot more comfortable with this conversation than AnnaLise Griggs would. Ever.

But Lacey seemed fine with the simple affirmation. Relieved, even. ‘Well, that's good. That you know finally, I mean.'

‘It is,' AnnaLise said. ‘Just feels a little … odd.'

Lacey's turn to nod. ‘You mean knowing that your mother had sex and all?
Tell
me about it. I mean, you're older and know more about the world than I do, but doesn't it kind of weird you out, too?'

Now the girl sounded like a true teenager. AnnaLise laughed, thinking that Lacey's mother was not so much older than AnnaLise herself. This must be the way Daisy felt when AnnaLise treated her like a dinosaur. And a sexless one, at that.

‘So you take classes online,' AnnaLise said. ‘That's interesting. Back in my day— Yikes, I sound old, even to me.'

‘Not as old as the people downstairs,' Lacey said with a little smile. ‘Or the movies they watch.'