by Sandra Balzo
‘Enough of what?’ Rose Boccaccio had motored up noiselessly behind them.
‘Exes,’ AnnaLise explained.
‘Hexes?’ Rose was fiddling with a wire behind her ear. ‘How exciting. I’ve heard there’s still an active Wiccan community up here. In fact, I used to belong to a coven back in the day.’
AnnaLise and Patrick exchanged looks, before he cracked a grin and ducked back into the media room.
AnnaLise said, ‘I didn’t know that, Rose, but I said “exes,” as in ex-wives and ex-lovers. Not “hexes,” as in spells.’
‘Ahh, that makes much more sense. I’m afraid I lost a bit of my hearing during my rock ’n roll phase.’ Rose reversed the chair as she spoke then pushed the lever full forward, making the thing almost leap toward the kitchen. ‘Fucking woofers.’
AnnaLise laughed and trailed after her, grateful for the distraction. ‘Anything I can get for you, Rose?’
‘No. No, but thank you, dear. I was just going up to my room.’
‘Are you taking the elevat—?’ AnnaLise paused, silently cursing at herself. ‘I’m so sorry. That was a stupid question.’
‘Not so stupid,’ Rose said. ‘I have been known to hoist myself out of this mini-tank for special occasions.’ Then a sigh. ‘Although I doubt I’d have the stamina anymore to climb Mt. Everest there.’ She inclined her head toward the staircase.
‘Was it a stroke?’ AnnaLise asked as she accompanied the woman into the kitchen.
‘That put me in this chair?’ Rose maneuvered herself close enough to the counter next to the stove to reach a pan of Rice Krispy Treats. ‘Stroke of luck, maybe. I fell from a third-story window and lived to tell the tale, though my spine’s a little worse for wear.’
AnnaLise levered out a hunk of the Krispy Treat, putting it on a napkin and extending the sticky bar to Rose. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ the older woman waved off the younger one with her non-engaged hand. ‘It sure wasn’t your fault.’
‘If I may ask, how did you fall?’
‘“Fall” is the way I candy-coat it for public consumption, but since we’re nearly back-door family, I can level with you.’ A wicked grin. ‘I jumped.’
‘You tried to commit suicide?’
‘Ineptly, as it turns out. At the time I couldn’t seem to do anything right. I was pregnant and jobless – though in those days just being knocked-up was enough to make you unemployable. When my druggie boyfriend dropped out of the scene, too, I swallowed what few pretty pills he’d left behind and took a swan dive.’
AnnaLise searched for something vaguely reassuring to say, but could come up with only, ‘How old were you?’
‘Twenty, then. And, very nearly, forever.’ Rose maneuvered her wheelchair to the doorway opposite of that they’d just entered through. ‘If you’re going upstairs, the elevator is this way.’
AnnaLise followed her along to a back hallway. Straight ahead were the stairs to the basement and a door that would lead to the garages on the side of the house. To the right was a powder room and opposite that …
‘The elevator,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Joy and I walked through here on our way down to the wine cellar and I never even noticed. The door blends into the cabinetry nearly seamlessly.’
‘I’m sure no expense was spared, given what I’ve seen of this place. It’s also the quietest elevator I’ve ever been on and, I’ll tell you, I’ve ridden more than my share.’
‘I guess you have.’ AnnaLise had been thinking about what Rose had told her. ‘You mentioned the druggie who left you. He wasn’t Eddie’s father?’
‘I’m impressed,’ Rose said, adjusting her chair to push the button. ‘You actually listen to this nattering old bag. However, no, he wasn’t.’
‘So that leaves Dickens. Why didn’t you approach him for help when you got pregnant?’
‘First of all, like I said before, my being twenty made Dickie just eighteen. I didn’t hold out much hope that he could support himself, much less me and a child, too.’
‘But what about his family?’
Rose cocked her head as the elevator door slid open. ‘Do you know much about your paternal grandparents?’
‘No,’ AnnaLise admitted. ‘I do have Dickens’ journals for writing his memoirs and—’
‘Memoirs?’ Rose repeated. ‘He was having you write them?’
‘I think it may have been an innocuous ploy by him, toward getting to know me before I knew he was my birth father.’
‘Innocuous. If I understand the word, Dickens was never that, nor even innocent. Not unlike this little gathering, before any paternity testing – to my knowledge – has even been done.’ The wheels in Rose’s head seemed to be rolling as smoothly as those on her chair. ‘Did he know?’
‘That I was his daughter, you mean?’
She nodded.
‘I think he suspected. Or maybe he just had a soft spot for Daisy over the years.’
Rose smiled in a kind way. ‘And decided to recognize you formally, however late in the process. Though it seems like there’s a lot of that going on around here.’ The older woman appeared to be chewing on something. ‘Related matter – no pun intended. Have you seen how that Bacchus man looks at your mother?’
‘Boozer?’ AnnaLise was momentarily surprised, though she realized she shouldn’t have been. The grizzled, tattooed ex-soldier always seemed to soften when Daisy was in the vicinity. Or even mentioned.
‘But back to Dickens’ parents.’ AnnaLise redirected the conversation. ‘I don’t recall him mentioning them in his journals, even the very early ones.’
‘Not surprising, since from what he told me they weren’t around much. By the time I met Dickie, he was at a college preparatory school in upstate New York. He reminded me of young Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, always left behind on holidays.’
Another kind smile as the second-floor door opened. The movement of the car had been so slick and silent, as Rose had predicted, that it had been barely noticeable.
The older woman leaned forward in her chair to hold the door. ‘I was living with a bunch of other kids – hippies to look at us, but never very dedicated to peace or harmony. Still, I felt kind of sorry for the little wretch, so I invited him for Christmas. We had turkey TV dinners, as I recall.’ Now appearing embarrassed, Rose gestured AnnaLise into the hallway.
The reporter stepped out. ‘It’s sad – almost a self-fulfilling prophesy – that the child named Dickens became a real-life version of his character in the novel by his namesake, Charles Dickens.’
‘Sad, maybe,’ Rose said. ‘But not a coincidence.’
‘Because his given name is what spurred your thought of Scrooge in the first place?’
‘I’m afraid you have the cart before the horse, dear. Dickens named himself after the author. His birth name was “Richard.”’ Rose rolled out of the elevator and stopped her chair. ‘You didn’t know that?’
‘Honestly? I had no idea.’ AnnaLise felt even worse for the man who’d died alone, even in his crowded mansion, and who had apparently lived much the same way, despite all surface appearances to the contrary.
‘Don’t feel sorry for him,’ Rose said, as if she could read AnnaLise’s mind. ‘He chose his path, just like we all do.’
The elevator door glided back to its closed position.
AnnaLise stepped away from the wheelchair, so that Rose didn’t have to crick her neck to maintain eye contact. ‘Then again, maybe this weekend was his “aha” moment – like Scrooge the morning after the visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.’
‘So Dickie flings open the window and calls for Bacchus to run and buy the “prize turkey” in the butcher’s window? That would make the rest of us the Cratchit family.’
‘Exactly. Though one holiday early.’
‘Well, then. God bless us every one, Tiny Tim,’ Rose said, rolling farther down the hall. ‘Especially your writer’s imagination.’
Anna
Lise frowned. ‘Believe me, my imagination’s not good enough to make up this situation. The gathering of the heirs—’
‘Or not.’ Rose pushed the joystick on her chair. ‘This is my room here, closest to the elevator.’
‘That’s convenient.’ AnnaLise had expected Rose to enter her own bedroom, but the woman kept right on rolling toward the end of the hall.
‘C’mon,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you the “South Wing” of the house that dick built.’
AnnaLise tried to decide if Rose had capitalized the next-to-last word.
Rose slowed and reached back to pat her hand. ‘No smarmy reply? You’re such a nice girl. Are you sure you’re related?’
‘To Dickens? So I’m told.’
‘Well, lucky you. You’ve had the best of all possible worlds. Inherit the big man’s money, but raised by genuine human beings.’
‘I certainly don’t have any regrets about my childhood, that’s true. Though I’m sure a little of that money early on would have smoothed our way considerably.’
‘Yet, like Dickens, it was your mother’s path to choose, bumpy as it might have been. You have to respect that.’
‘I do. Believe me.’
‘Now this door,’ Rose said, starting the tour at the end of the hall, ‘is that lawyer’s.’ She winked. ‘Just in case you want to know.’
AnnaLise didn’t pursue it. ‘And, from what I’ve been told, corresponding to a closet on the north wing, where I am.’
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.
TWENTY
Returning 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.
