by Sandra Balzo
‘Boozer,’ Daisy said, concern in her voice. ‘Are you all right?’
Boozer Bacchus was holding on to the door jamb, looking ashen-faced.
Sensibilities forgotten, AnnaLise pushed past him.
Dickens Hart was lying face down on his bed.
A gasp came from behind her and AnnaLise turned to see Boozer Bacchus enveloping Daisy in a scene-of-the-accident way, trying to hold her back.
Dickens Hart was naked, but that wasn’t the most shocking thing. The back of the man’s head was caved in, and the overnight bag on the chair had been replaced by a champagne bottle, a smear of blood obscuring the fancy crest of the label.
FOURTEEN
Apparently, Dickens Hart had died in his sleep.
Or, at the very least, in his bed.
As the deceased’s daughter – hell, even as his employee – AnnaLise Griggs knew she should feel … something. But feeling you should feel and actually doing it were two entirely different things. For now, AnnaLise set reflection aside in favor of dealing with the realities of what had happened to the owner of the house in which they were all staying.
Boozer Bacchus had called 9-1-1 but, once he’d shown the first responders to the master suite, AnnaLise had offered to take over with the police. Unlike her, Hart’s longtime employee and friend was visibly shaken and, if he didn’t at least sit down, AnnaLise feared he might fall down.
Officer Coy Pitchford and AnnaLise now occupied Dickens Hart’s office, where AnnaLise had first heard about plans for the weekend’s grand gesture. They were seated respectively in the two guest chairs that fronted the desk.
Outside the window a white panel truck with ‘Medical Examiner’ on its side had joined the ambulance. There’d been no hope of intervention in Hart’s passing.
‘Sure wish you’d been nosy enough to look into that night bag,’ Coy said, writing on a note pad he’d taken from the chest pocket of his uniform. ‘That way, maybe we’d know for sure who it belonged to.’
‘You and me both,’ the journalist said. ‘At the time I was just trying to get out of there without being seen or embarrassing anyone, including myself. I do think, though, that the fact Chef Debbie has disappeared along with the bag suggests a connection.’
‘It does, though it’d be nice to have more than her profession and first name to go on.’ Only in his mid-twenties, Coy’s round face made him look even younger. ‘Like that phone number you said you saw, for example. I can’t find it.’
‘It was written on a scrap of the floor plan Dickens handed out. Did you check the waste basket? That’s where I found it in the first place.’
‘I did.’ Coy pulled on an earlobe. ‘Surely wish Chuck would’ve picked a different time to go out of town.’
‘Me, too,’ AnnaLise said, and then quickly added, ‘not that you can’t handle the situation, Coy. But,’ she was remembering what the mayor had said about the sheriff’s department acting as backup, ‘are you going to call the county in?’
Acting Chief Pitchford looked a little hurt. ‘I expect so. Though I’d like to see what Doc Kilgore has to say first.’
Doctor Kilgore was the area’s longtime and, unfortunately, aptly named medical examiner, though most of the times the man had been called out over the last forty years were more accidental drownings in the lake or lost hikers freezing to death on the mountain.
But even if that weren’t the case, AnnaLise didn’t quite see what Doc could say that would change the facts. It was beyond belief that Dickens Hart had smashed himself in the back of his head with a champagne bottle.
A knock at the door and Doc Kilgore entered, nodding to AnnaLise before saying, ‘A word with you, Coy? In private.’
Pitchford joined the M.E. in the hallway, closing the office door behind them. AnnaLise could hear voices, but not specific words, much less sentences. When the acting chief returned, he was slipping a phone into his chest pocket and looking, if possible, even more forlorn.
‘No surprise. The doc has confirmed that we have a homicide on our hands.’
Not a surprise, maybe, but hearing it aloud was shocking, nonetheless. My father has been killed, AnnaLise said to herself, trying it out. Still, she felt no emotional—
‘Coy Pitchford, are you telling us that Dickens Hart was murdered?’ The words came from Phyllis Balisteri’s mouth, across the threshold of the now open door.
Pitchford turned toward her. ‘Now, Mama, don’t be starting no rumors, especially from what you hear that wasn’t directed toward you. I said “homicide,” not “murder.”’
Phyllis took affront. ‘Well, you and the doc were standing there in the hallway, plain as day. I can’t help it if Daisy and me heard you two while we were setting the dining room table for Thanksgiving.’
It seemed that if the medical examiner and acting police chief had wanted privacy, they would have been better off in the office with AnnaLise than in the hallway within earshot of Mama, Daisy and the other dozen or so people who might be roaming about.
Which reminded AnnaLise that the house was full of guests, and was likely to stay that way. Given that Hart’s bedroom suite had become a crime scene, she was certain nobody would be going anywhere soon. ‘Mama, I saw Eddie and Tyler in the dining room earlier, but that’s about it. Where’s everybody else?’
‘Still out on their walk, most of them. But back to this murder—’
‘Homicide,’ corrected Pitchford.
Having covered the crime beat in Wisconsin, AnnaLise explained to Phyllis, ‘The act of killing another human being is “homicide,” but it’s not “murder” unless some other factors are also involved.’
‘AnnaLise Griggs,’ Daisy joined them, ‘that makes no sense at all.’
‘Yes, ma’am, it does,’ Pitchford said. ‘Murder means that somebody had to be possessed of a malicious intent to kill.’
‘“Malicious”?’ Mama repeated. ‘You been up at the university taking fancy crime courses?’
‘Criminal justice,’ Coy corrected. ‘And it’s true I did study—’
But Daisy was not to be diverted from her personal curiosity’s sense of the main track: ‘Seems like hitting somebody with a champagne bottle would be malicious, by definition of that word.’
‘It does,’ AnnaLise concurred, ‘but we don’t know what the circumstances are, Daisy. For example, it could have been self-defense.’
‘That sure would make some sense,’ Mama said. ‘About time somebody stood up for themselves and made that man pay for his bad intents and acts.’
This last bit seemed to be directed at Daisy, though AnnaLise’s mother just looked puzzled. ‘But Dickens—’
‘Enough conjecture!’ Acting Chief Pitchford exploded. ‘And, yes, Mama, that’s another fancy crime word.’
Phyllis Balisteri’s eyes narrowed, but before her claws could be fully extended, AnnaLise said, ‘Do I smell something burning?’
Mama sniffed the air. ‘The bird should have at least another hour in the oven so’s it’s done nice and dry, the way we like it.’
‘I think I smell it, too, Phyllis. We’d better check.’ As Daisy tugged Mama toward the kitchen, she threw Coy a ‘you owe me one’ look.
‘I’m going to pay for that,’ Coy muttered.
‘Could be,’ said AnnaLise, with the experience of one who’d ante’d up that price plenty throughout her young life, or at least the earlier years of it. ‘But, Coy, you have a job to do.’
‘That is the truth.’ Coy Pitchford seemed more resolute now that his authority had been challenged, even if by a turkey-burning restaurant owner. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and checked a message. ‘Crime Scene is just pulling off the main road into the drive here.’
AnnaLise followed Pitchford into the foyer. ‘Is there anything you want me to do?’
‘Maybe just keep them,’ he hooked a finger in the direction of the kitchen, where Phyllis’ dark head and Daisy’s blonde locks had just disappeared, ‘out of the way?’
> ‘I’ll do my best,’ AnnaLise said. ‘What about the guests?’
‘You said they’re mostly from out of town?’ Pitchford swung open the front door.
‘Five flew in yesterday and drove up with two others from Charlotte for the holiday weekend.’ AnnaLise hadn’t gone into detail on the purpose of the gathering. ‘Then there’s Mama, Daisy and me, of course, plus Joy and Patrick Hoag. We—’
‘I’ll want to interview each of you,’ Pitchford interrupted, straightening the parade hat on his head. ‘And since everybody planned on staying the weekend, anyway, it’s fine to go about your business here, so long as nobody leaves the grounds.’
‘Excuse me,’ Daisy interrupted from the dining room, ‘but we’d be happy for you,’ her eyes grew wide as the crime-scene van had just pulled up outside, ‘to join us for Thanksgiving dinner.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. But you folks go ahead and have your feast, and please tell everyone I’m real sorry it has to be one person short.’ Pitchford touched his brim.
‘Thank you, Coy,’ Daisy said, tears glistening in her eyes. ‘That’s kind of you.’
As the door closed behind the acting chief, AnnaLise slipped an arm around her mother’s shoulder. ‘Dickens Hart might have been an asshole, but he was our asshole, right, Daisy?’
Her mother laughed and gave AnnaLise’s encircling arm a little slap before snagging a tissue from the apron’s pocket to blow her nose. ‘Your language aside, AnnaLise, I just find it so awfully sad.’
‘You mean Dickens being dead?’
‘I mean that even after sixty-eight years on this earth, nobody’s likely to mourn him.’
FIFTEEN
When AnnaLise accompanied Daisy into the kitchen, she expected Phyllis Balisteri to start firing questions. The restaurateur, though, was too busy answering them.
‘… setting the table for dinner and heard Doc plain as day in the front hall,’ Phyllis was telling Nicole. ‘Murder.’
Knowing when she was beat, AnnaLise didn’t bother to argue the homicide/murder point.
‘Murder,’ Nicole breathed. She touched AnnaLise’s arm. ‘It could have been one of us instead.’
‘Us? How?’
‘Mr Hart asked me to put the wine by his bed, but you offered to do it instead. What if one of us had stumbled upon the killer in his suite?’
AnnaLise thought Nicole’s concern was a bit of a stretch, but it quickly became obvious that the journalist was distinctly in the minority on that issue.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ Mama’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘This girl is exactly right.’
‘You were in that man’s bedroom?’ Daisy demanded of her daughter.
Oh, for God’s sake, AnnaLise thought. Dickens Hart was her father, and through no fault of her own. ‘Not to worry, Daisy. I merely took the opportunity to case the master suite, for when it became mine.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Mama said. The other two women, though, looked scandalized.
AnnaLise held up both hands. ‘Down, Daisy. Like Nicole said, Dickens wanted wine in his room and since Nicole had her hands full with the other guests, I ended up taking it there.’
‘He was alive then?’ Phyllis asked.
‘And fully dressed?’ Daisy followed.
AnnaLise blinked. She and Nicole exchanged puzzled looks before the youngest woman tipped to it. ‘Ohh, I see why you’re confused. Mr Hart wasn’t in the bedroom.’
The light dawned for AnnaLise, too. ‘Right, right. Dickens wanted the wine for later. He was on his way to the media room to watch the movie. I assume you two were in there, too.’
‘I was,’ Daisy said. ‘Phyllis didn’t care for the movie.’
‘Who doesn’t like When Harry Met Sally?’ AnnaLise asked. ‘It’s a classic.’
‘It’s a lot of romantic pap.’ Mama sniffed. ‘Real life isn’t like that.’
‘Which is why we watch movies,’ her lifelong friend countered, as if she’d made the argument a hundred times before.
‘Why you watch movies,’ Phyllis snapped in reply.
‘Shouldn’t our hikers be back soon?’ AnnaLise asked, ever the peacemaker. Or at least a deflector.
Nicole, smart girl, circled around the granite-topped peninsula that held a shallow bar sink and overhead stemware rack to make her escape into the hallway, carrying a stack of napkins for cover.
‘Sooner than we know.’ Mama picked up a bag of frozen corn. ‘Assuming nobody gets shot for trespassing.’
Or by Roy Smoaks, AnnaLise thought.
‘… trail is a public right-of-way,’ Daisy was saying. ‘They’re much more likely to break an ankle than get shot.’
‘That is true.’ Phyllis dumped the corn into a casserole dish and added two giant cans of creamed corn. ‘The rules just say you have to provide a path, not that it can’t be made of banana peels or have exposed tree roots to trip people up.’
For as long as AnnaLise could remember, property owners abutting Sutherton Lake were required to maintain a public right-of-way for hikers. Just what constituted that right-of-way – or maintenance, for that matter – was a subject of perpetual debate.
‘It’s gun season for the deer hunters,’ AnnaLise reminded the other two women. ‘Maybe going out for a hike wasn’t the best idea.’
‘They had their minds set,’ Daisy said, straightening up from peering in at the turkey. ‘And we were just as happy to have the lot of them out from underfoot.’
‘’Sides,’ Mama was stirring the two types of corn together, ‘if they stay along the lake they should be just fine. Most hunters head on up the mountain.’
‘True,’ AnnaLise said, thinking about her conversation with Bobby and Smoaks. ‘Which is the argument I should have used.’
‘Argument?’ Phyllis looked up. ‘When?’
The journalist quickly weighed the pros and cons of adding the bullet Boozer had found – and her subsequent visit to Bradenham – to the stew of intrigue Mama and her mother already had simmering. AnnaLise came down firmly on the side of cons.
‘Joy and I were just talking earlier about what people might want to see while they’re here,’ she fibbed. ‘Less argument than discussion.’
Daisy looked confused. ‘Must have been before she ran over to the restaurant.’
‘Oh,’ AnnaLise said, wishing she’d been even vaguer, lest she get caught in a lie. Fact was she hadn’t even seen Joy yet that morning. ‘Why’d she do that?’
‘Well, we sure couldn’t make Thanksgiving dinner with what was here.’ Phyllis waved her hand in dismissal of the array of fresh ingredients – asparagus and shallots, whole cranberries and fennel, etc. – that had been shoved aside on the big table to make room for the likes of boxed stuffing mix and miniature marshmallows, cream of mushroom soup and, joy of joys, jellied cranberry sauce.
‘Shouldn’t the can be chilled?’ AnnaLise asked, pointing. The only thing worse than room-temperature jellied cranberry sauce was no jellied cranberry sauce at all.
‘You do that,’ said Phyllis. ‘And while you’re in the refrigerator, can you get me an egg and some milk?’
AnnaLise obliged, then watched Mama add a dash of milk and the beaten egg to the corn, along with a soupçon of sugar.
Daisy was surveying the array of cans and boxes on the table. ‘Aren’t we making green bean casserole? I see cream of mushroom soup, but no beans.’
‘Freezer,’ Phyllis said.
Daisy slid open the lower drawer and retrieved the prescribed bag. ‘Do you want to cook the beans first or just stir them frozen into the mushroom soup?’
But Phyllis had other things on her mind. ‘Damnation! Didn’t we tell Joy to bring the Ritz Crackers?’
‘Over there.’ AnnaLise’s birth mother pointed to a red box next to the stove. ‘I needed a snack to keep me going through all this.’
‘Well, it’s a good thing you left me enough to top off the creamed corn,’ said Phyllis, pulling out a sleeve of the crackers and whacking it with a rollin
g pin before dumping the resultant crumbs on top of the corn mixture.
‘Thanksgiving wouldn’t be a holiday without your scalloped corn,’ Daisy agreed. ‘Here’s some butter.’ She handed over two sticks, which Phyllis cut up and used to dot the cracker crust.
‘And that is that.’ She slid the casserole dish into the oven and straightened up, listening. ‘Is that the hikers?’
Daisy pursed her lips. ‘They’ll likely be entering the house from the lake side, AnnaLise, and not see the commotion out front. What are you going to tell them?’
‘The truth, I guess,’ said her daughter, ‘though I’m not sure it should come from me. Maybe Boozer?’
‘You … rang?’ The man in question appropriately lurched into the kitchen. AnnaLise didn’t have to see the flask in his hand to know he was drunk.
And, God help her, her first thought was to join him, as the people outside sounded to be coming ever closer. This had been Dickens Hart’s soiree, yet here they were with only his acknowledged daughter to explain what—
‘Looks like you could use some food in you,’ Daisy said, guiding Bacchus to a chair.
Phyllis shook her head side to side before addressing AnnaLise. ‘I don’t know whether Boozer’s up to joining us at the table, but we were thinking that we’d eat family-style, maybe asking Nicole and him to join us. Is that all right?’
‘Great idea,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Though I’m not sure you need my approval.’
‘Don’t be dense, girl,’ said Phyllis. ‘You didn’t just replace Dickens as the host. You damned well own this place now.’
‘Whoa,’ AnnaLise held up her hands like double stop signs. ‘Dickens isn’t even cold—’
‘Coy tells me the king is dead.’ Joy Tamarack entered the kitchen from the dining room and did a sweeping bow. ‘Long live the princess.’
‘Please tell me you’re not drunk, too,’ AnnaLise said.
‘I’m not … drunk … too,’ Joy said, spacing out her words. ‘After I got back from my trip to Mama’s, Rose invited me in for a chat. She had some dynamite Mary Jane to share.’ Joy snitched one of the French-fried onion rings from the can Daisy had just opened to top the beans.
