Hit and Run

by Sandra Balzo

  And, therefore, Bobby was, as Mama so delicately put it, ‘doing his stepmother.’

  ‘“Dysfunctional family holidays” seem to be the theme this year,’ AnnaLise said, slowing the car as they approached where Main Street ended and the potholed eastern shore road commenced. Which reminded her: ‘What two words, Daisy?’

  Her mother cocked her head. ‘Whatever are you talking about?’

  ‘When we were parked back at the restaurant, you said that “two words” were the explanation for why Main Street hasn’t been continued along the lake and kicks away to the east here past the inn instead.’

  ‘Your friend Sheree is doing a fair business,’ Mama observed as they passed the parking lot of the bed and breakfast.

  The thirteen-room Sutherton Inn’s owner, Sheree Pepper, had gone to school with AnnaLise. And while Mama was right about the half-dozen cars in the parking lot, AnnaLise was disappointed to see that writer James Duende’s wasn’t among them.

  With Chuck off the eligible board and Bobby Bradenham in an apparently happy – if somewhat complex – relationship, the newcomer was the only age-appropriate man with a brain in town.

  Not that AnnaLise was looking, at least so soon after a relationship that had ended badly. Very badly. But …

  ‘For goodness’ sake, AnnaLise.’ Daisy broke into her thoughts. ‘I’m not sure why you’re worrying about my memory when you’re always off on your own flights of fancy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ AnnaLise said, as Main Street turned into Scout Road, which curved like a backward ‘C’ away from the lake.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Phyllis was leaning forward to join the conversation. ‘You’ve always just said that to pronate us.’

  ‘“Placate,”’ Daisy corrected before AnnaLise could bring herself to do the same. ‘You need to watch those kind of careless mistakes in your blog posts, too. Spell-check doesn’t pick them up, Phyllis.’

  ‘You see what you’ve done, AnnieLeez?’ Mama said, twisting her head. ‘Like daughter, like mother. Daisy’s becoming you, what with your oh-so-grand grammar and all.’

  ‘Sorry,’ AnnaLise said again.

  Phyllis sputtered and sat back as the car hit a pothole.

  ‘Whoa,’ AnnaLise said, slowing down, ‘this cow path needs fixing. I suppose since the Scout Camp closed nobody uses this road much.’

  ‘Dickens Hart,’ Daisy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your two words. Dickens Hart owns the land and leased the camp to the scouts.’

  AnnaLise whistled. ‘That’s a lot of land. And some very valuable footage along the lakefront.’

  From the backseat came: ‘Your daddy’s money’s not sounding so bad now, I’d wager.’

  ‘He’s not my/her daddy,’ AnnaLise and Daisy protested in tandem.

  ‘Timothy Griggs was my daddy,’ AnnaLise expanded. ‘Dickens Hart just happens to be the biological father.’

  ‘Tomato, tomahto,’ added the peanut gallery.

  AnnaLise slowed and turned left into a driveway leading back toward the lake. ‘I came in from the north the last time, but I think this driveway has been resurfaced.’

  Daisy said, ‘Well, will you look at that?’

  AnnaLise did.

  The private road led uphill toward the house, which had the feel of a traditional southern plantation structure scooped up from a manicured lawn of the Carolina Low Country and plopped down on a slope of the state’s northwestern mountains. Beautiful, concededly, with white brick, tall columns and multiple verandas, but jarringly out of place.

  AnnaLise had been to the house a few times since returning to Sutherton, first to pick up her birth father’s near endless boxes and boxes of journals, discs and drives, and then to consult with the man himself about his memoir.

  But even the last time, just a couple of weeks ago when Hart had told her his family reunion plan, it hadn’t looked like this. The concrete paving stones of the circle drive now looped around a stately fountain that would look even statelier but for the marble water nymphs – naked, naturally – frolicking in it.

  Could the man actually have had this enormous renovation completed in a mere two weeks? AnnaLise wondered.

  She pulled around the new fountain to the front door where two valets – in full livery, no less – awaited, seemingly eager, the soles of their shoes tapping on the concrete as though the pavers were hot coals.

  ‘Welcome!’ The driver’s side valet had the fresh-scrubbed look of a male student from the nearby University of the Mountain.

  ‘Thank you,’ AnnaLise said, turning off the engine as the valet swung open her door and his clone scurried around the car to get Daisy. ‘May I take your luggage?’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ AnnaLise popped the trunk and retrieved her purse.

  As the valets lifted the lid and unloaded the bags, a young woman in a black dress punctuated by a white ruffled apron approached with a tray of fluted glasses, each half-filled.

  ‘Champagne?’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ Daisy had joined her daughter on the sidewalk and snagged a glass for AnnaLise before doing the same for herself.

  As the trunk slammed, knocking could be heard. Impatient and continuous.

  ‘Oops. Hold this, please?’ said AnnaLise, handing the drink back to her mother and reaching in to unlock the Chrysler’s rear door. ‘Sorry. Must be child safety—’

  ‘AnnieLeez,’ Phyllis climbed out with her carpetbag while surveying the scene, ‘weren’t you the one told me that our Dickens Hart didn’t have house servants?’

  AnnaLise shrugged. ‘I never saw anybody but Boozer Bacchus before today. I’m betting Dickens hired all these people for the occasion. And had that fountain built, too.’

  But Mama was already handing the valet her bag and motioning over the champagne lady. AnnaLise looked around for Daisy and her own glass of bubbly, but neither were in sight.

  It hadn’t exactly taken a full-court press to break down either woman’s resistance.

  ‘Incredible,’ AnnaLise muttered to herself as she crossed onto the lush side lawn to get away from the spray of the fountain being battered by cold and gusty High Country winds.

  If the temperature dropped another twenty degrees, Hart could be seeing snow and his stone nymphs freezing their cute little privates off under a layer of ice. And for the fountain to survive the winter, their host best have its pipes drained first thing Monday morning.

  While the slanting afternoon sun gave the illusion of warmth, even here at the foot of Sutherton Mountain they were 4,000 feet above sea level. The first trace of snow had already fallen – and promptly melted – on the first of October, and the ski slopes would be open by Christmas, even if that meant unleashing their arsenal of snow guns, an artillery version of Hart’s fountain that combined water and pressurized air to supplement the natural fall of flakes. Or, during an uncooperative winter, just plain ‘supply’ the slopes with acceptable amounts of the white stuff for visiting skiers.

  Buttoning her wool jacket up to the throat, AnnaLise moved far enough away from the house to be able to see the lake and a small sand beach. Beyond the beach a solid, workman-like fishing pier jutted into the water, a knot of trees masking what Hart probably considered an eyesore from view through the expansive windows at the back of the house.

  ‘Crikeys,’ a voice said in a godawful cockney accent. ‘The Lord of the Manor must be mounting a carnival for the villagers.’

  AnnaLise turned to see the former ‘lady’ of the manor, Joy Tamarack. Fortyish, with short-cropped, white-blonde hair, Joy was an athletic trainer who both smoked and drank. Now she held two oversized wine glasses with broad bowls but stems so slim and delicate AnnaLise thought they would snap under the weight of the rather generous amount of wine above each.

  Joy extended one to AnnaLise. ‘Methinks you’ll like this better than the champagne.’

  AnnaLise accepted hers carefully, taking a sip before closing her eyes in sheer, internal bliss. ‘This may be th
e best red wine I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Should be. It’s a twenty-five-year-old cabernet I found squirreled away in Hart’s wine cellar.’ Borderline criminally, Joy chugged a third of her glass. ‘I split the bottle between our two glasses.’

  ‘Dickens doesn’t mind you opening the good stuff?’ Or the really good stuff. AnnaLise gently swirled hers before lifting it toward the sun to appreciate the nearly opaque, deep ruby color.

  A Cheshire cat’s grin. ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Someday you’ll have to tell me what dirt you have on him that gives you free run of his house and other treasures.’

  A native Midwesterner, Joy had met Dickens Hart circa 1995, when she and a group of college friends came to the High Country for a girls-getaway. The couple had been married for just a year when Joy abruptly left the marriage – and town – with a hefty enough financial settlement to set local tongues wagging.

  Not that it took much.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Joy asked. ‘If everybody knows, I lose my leverage.’

  ‘I’m writing his biography,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Are you telling me there’s a skeleton in an obscure closet that Dickens didn’t chronicle in the thousands of disturbing pages I’m sifting through?’

  ‘You’ll have to let me know when you’re done sifting.’

  ‘He is an interesting man,’ AnnaLise said.

  ‘He … was.’ Joy’s tone was tinged with a note of regret, perhaps even genuine sadness.

  Although the two women had known each other casually from Joy’s annual visits to Sutherton, after her divorce they had struck up a true friendship when the older woman returned in September to open the spa at Hotel Lux on the summit of Sutherton Mountain.

  Now AnnaLise touched her friend’s arm. ‘I’m sure this isn’t easy for you, Dickens’ other wives and lovers showing up.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve always been friendly with his two other ex-wives.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll both be here?’

  ‘Kate, my direct predecessor, died of breast cancer last year, but Shirley’s coming. She was Hart’s first wife and a real pistol. You’ll like her.’

  ‘I’m sure I will.’ But, all of a sudden, AnnaLise’s stomach was tied in knots. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘What? You don’t want to meet your probably mutant half-brothers and half-sisters all by your lonesome?’

  ‘Believe me, I’m never “by my lonesome” these days and, anyway, both Mama and Daisy are here with me.’

  Joy’s eyebrows were raised. ‘Well done. How did you ever manage that?’

  ‘Played to their curiosity. And, at least on Mama’s part, a little of her greed. On my behalf, of course.’

  ‘Of course. I have a hunch we’re in for an interesting weekend.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ AnnaLise repeated, raising her glass in salute. ‘I was hoping that Bobby would come, too, to keep me sane.’

  ‘And what am I, chopped liver?’

  ‘No, but when it comes to the subject of Dickens Hart you’re certainly not a role model for mental balance.’ She held up her free hand. ‘Sorry. I’m a fine one to talk.’

  But her friend didn’t seem to have taken offense at her characterization. ‘Bobby’s even-keeled for the most part, I’ll grant him that, which would come in handy this Thanksgiving weekend.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. We just ran into him, driving Roy Smoaks back from the airport.’

  ‘What? You don’t think it’s heartwarming?’ Joy asked, seeing the look on AnnaLise’s face. ‘Grandfather and grandson discovering each other after a lifetime apart?’

  ‘And, coincidentally, when said grandson has inherited the second-most impressive house on the lake.’ AnnaLise waved across the lake at Bradenham, with its trellised wooden deck cantilevered out over the lake. ‘Not that it seems enough for Roy. He was reminding Bobby that he – Bobby, I mean – was no longer part of Sutherton’s ar-is-to-cra-cy.’ She drew the word out like Smoaks had.

  ‘Nice guy. But, as you said, it’s only the second most impressive, this place being numero uno.’

  AnnaLise shrugged. ‘Roy has no grounds to grouse about that. If Bobby had, indeed, been Dickens’ son instead of Rance’s, Roy would have no claim on him in the first place. And, I might add, Bobby would be here with us.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll wish he was by the time Grandpa Roy leaves. I can’t imagine how they’re going to occupy themselves all weekend. From what Kathleen tells me, the only thing the Smoaks men know how to do is drink, shoot and screw. Generally in that order.’

  ‘Lovely,’ AnnaLise said with another sigh. ‘Poor Kathleen.’

  ‘Hey, Kathleen was stupid enough to marry into the family, but at least she’s learned her lesson. She’s spending the holiday with her mom.’

  ‘Poor Bobby then,’ AnnaLise amended, glancing back toward Hart’s circular driveway. ‘I guess there are worse places to be than here.’ Anywhere with Roy Smoaks being one of them.

  ‘You bet there are, and besides, you need to protect your turf,’ Joy said. ‘If all goes as my loving ex-husband plans, you stand to lose a shitload of money this weekend.’

  ‘I don’t want his money.’ AnnaLise was feeling simultaneously anxious and weary and it was only late afternoon on Wednesday. She’d still need to get through tonight and Thanksgiving Day itself before she could even hope to extricate herself.

  ‘Listen.’ Joy’s free hand clamped on AnnaLise’s shoulder and she brought her face close – not all that difficult, since they were bookends at five feet tall. ‘I don’t know about the other people who are coming, but you are Dickens’ daughter and you deserve his fortune, whatever’s left of it when he turns up his toes. Claim it here and now and stop this whiny “I don’t want it” crap before the gravy-train passes you by.’

  AnnaLise tried to shrug her friend off without spilling any wine over the rims of their glasses. ‘Passes me by?’

  The hand dropped. ‘There’s Boozer. He’ll give you an earful on what he thinks of all this.’

  ‘I already know, thank you very much.’ AnnaLise waved at Bacchus, who appeared to be coming from the garages on the other side of the main house. In contrast to his usual uniform of khakis, Hart’s right-hand man was wearing a pressed, dark suit. Raising his hand in response to AnnaLise’s greeting, he hesitated, using the hand to shade his eyes as he peered up into a tall tree.

  ‘What’s he—’ Even as Joy started to ask the question, there was movement in the tree – a bending almost like a leafy springboard and then a gigantic bird emerged, wings beating, but nearly silent against the air currents.

  ‘Holy shit!’ AnnaLise ducked involuntary despite the distance. ‘I’d forgotten how big our owls are. That thing must have a six-foot wingspan.’

  ‘Very nearly.’ Joy tipped her head to watch as the bird gained altitude. ‘Amazing how quiet they are for their size, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure it comes in handy for sneaking up on a snack,’ AnnaLise said dryly.

  ‘They have to eat, you know. And I bet the out buildings here are Mickey and Minnie-free.’

  ‘Mice don’t bother me so much. It’s more the squirrels and cats.’ She shivered and returned to their earlier subject. ‘Boozer is the one who had to track down Dickens’ tootsies.’ She looked at Joy. ‘Present company excepted.’

  ‘“Tootsies”?’ Joy repeated. ‘God, you are a throwback.’

  ‘What do you want me to call you all?’

  ‘Wait a second.’ Joy devolved into mulling mode. ‘We need to define our terms more specifically for this lollapalooza of a weekend. The women he fooled around with can be Bimbettes; the ones, like me, who married him, Fools.’

  AnnaLise’s jaw was set. ‘My mother’s not a Bimbette.’

  ‘Relax,’ Joy said, punching her in the shoulder. ‘Daisy is, and always will be, just Daisy – a one-hundred-percent original. But we should get back. It looks like the curtain is about to be raised on Act One.’


  AnnaLise followed her gaze toward the stretch limousine that was slowly making its way up the long drive. The valets and servers were lining up to greet the new arrivals like something out of an episode of Downton Abbey. ‘Do you know who they are?’

  ‘Your “tootsies”? Nope.’ Joy started toward the front door, then stopped and swiveled, her still significant volume of wine wildly sloshing enough to make AnnaLise feel seasick. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course. My dear father,’ she felt her lip curl at the word, ‘had me come up with the list of former lovers that Boozer then vetted as to whether they had children who might be his and thus be invited. Dickens approved the final list.’

  Joy actually sighed. ‘I wish I could say that surprises me, but it doesn’t. So dish, girl. Or do you want me to guess?’

  AnnaLise handed her glass to Joy and dug through her purse, coming up with the list she’d jotted down when Bacchus had called her with the results of his efforts.

  ‘Is that a unicorn?’ Joy asked, blinking at the brightly colored artwork at the top of the paper.

  ‘And a rainbow,’ AnnaLise said, shaking out the list. ‘Daisy kept all of my old Lisa Frank pencils and notebooks and such. Bottom drawer, right next to the Beany Babies and Hello Kitty backpack purse.’

  ‘The nineties have a lot to answer for,’ Joy said.

  ‘I can’t argue with you there.’ AnnaLise reclaimed her glass. ‘Now, can I assume you just care about the ones who are actually attending?’

  ‘Versus the ones he simply shtupped? Yes, please. Life is too short for a recitation of the entire dishonor roll.’

  ‘It’s not as many as you might expect, particularly given the carrot he dangled.’

  ‘So to speak.’

  AnnaLise felt herself blush, but continued. ‘The only ones coming are Rose Boccaccio and her son Eddie, Lucinda Puckett and her son Tyler, and Sugar Capri and her daughter—

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Yup, and her daughter is called Lacey.’ AnnaLise shook her head. ‘Lacey Capri. Honestly, who would do that to a kid? Though I suppose if your own parents had named you something like Su—’