Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2) (4 page)

‘You don't have any real worries about Fred working on the garage, do you?’

‘Not so long as he confines himself to Monday through Friday on our project. Weekends, I hear, he drinks.’ Daisy twisted to look behind them. ‘AnnaLise, the speed limit is forty-five on this stretch and you're doing barely thirty. You'd best step on it or people might not wait until they hit the gym to work out their frustration with you.’

AnnaLise glanced in her rear-view mirror to see at least a dozen vehicles stacked up behind the Spyder. Then she glanced at the cliff that had been cleaved to form the highway. ‘The sign says CAUTION: FALLING ROCK.’

‘That sign has been there since you were a little girl. You just never paid it any mind.’

‘Well, I'm older and wiser now.’

‘Older and scared-er,’ Daisy said, and AnnaLise could feel the weight of her gaze. ‘And scared isn't a good way to live, no matter your age.’

‘I'm not scared,’ AnnaLise said, startled. She'd been working very hard at convincing herself that Ben's wife did not know about the affair. That it truly was the Porsche Tanja was talking about sharing,
not
her husband. But if she could look that murderous just about a car, how would she feel about –

‘You
are
feeling scared,’ Daisy said, ‘and you are feeling guilty. I just don't know why. I'm hoping it's not over me.’

There was just a hint of a sniffle at the end of the last.

‘You?’ AnnaLise asked, ashamed that in addition to Daisy worrying about her own very real problems, the older woman was troubled about her daughter's hypothetical ones as well.

But what to do? Confess to her mother she'd had a year-long adulterous affair with a man who was now sitting in Mama's restaurant with his betrayed wife and daughter?

Granted, AnnaLise had come to her senses and ended it, but that didn't excuse it. Didn't excuse her, either, from the stupidity that made the journalist – of all people – believe that she and Ben were different. That only she understood him and that he, and he alone, ‘got’ her. That she must be pretty and smart and funny, because this man – this intelligent, powerful, older man – said so.

And, biggest lie of all, that if nobody found out about their affair, no one would be hurt.

AnnaLise
, Daisy would say if she knew,
a married man?

And, worse, a married man, who – as cool as Ben Rosewood had played it – now didn't seem to be able to simply let go, witnessed by the text messages and emails she'd been systematically deleting without reading after the first two or three from him.

AnnaLise had finally sent one last text message, composed painstakingly on her computer first, so she'd be sure to get it right. A clear and concise argument written in parallel structure and using the ‘Rule of 3’ Ben followed in making his closing arguments to juries.

AnnaLise could hear the district attorney now, explaining why ‘three’ was the magic number: ‘Think about it. Julius Caesar's
Veni, vidi, vici
– I came, I saw, I conquered. Lincoln's
We can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground.
Even FDR's very own advice to speakers:
Be sincere, be brief, be seated.
We remember them, we repeat them, we live by them, all because of the Rule of 3.’

Even the man's explanation of the rule was in triplicate. So, in answer to Ben's ‘Why can't we be together?’ AnnaLise replied:

‘Three reasons – you have a wife, you have a daughter, and I have a mother who needs me. Do not text me, do not email me, do not call me.’

If only she'd thought to break the ‘Rule of 3’ to add a fourth: ‘And don't
ever
show up on my doorstep.’

Four

The appointment with the neurologist was a huge relief or a colossal waste of time, depending on which of the two Griggs you believed.

The doctor had been two hours late, meaning they'd finally gotten in to see him at 4 p.m. When he'd entered the exam room, where they'd been waiting another twenty minutes, he'd asked Daisy a few questions and suggested memory exercises she could do at home before saying she should call his medical assistant – who'd already left for the day, naturally – to schedule a CT scan and MRI ‘just to be safe.’

‘Talk about the bum's rush,’ AnnaLise said as they drove back toward Sutherton.

‘The man had an emergency,’ Daisy said, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary. Or worse, the Cheshire Cat who swallowed the canary. She seemed so smug, in fact, that AnnaLise wanted to scream.

‘Besides,’ Daisy continued, ‘
I
had no trouble with his little tests. On the other hand, when
you
tried to "play" along . . .’

‘Nobody uses analog clocks anymore,’ AnnaLise muttered. ‘How the hell should I know where the big and little hands are supposed to be?’

‘But you do know how to count, right?’ The suppressed grin in Daisy's tone was palpable.

‘I'm a word person, so sue me,’ AnnaLise exploded. ‘Besides, who counts backwards from 100? By sevens, no less.’

‘
And the date? I suppose – ’

‘Last Monday was Labor Day,’ AnnaLise snapped, ‘and a short week is always confusing. Besides, when I'm working – ’

‘I'm sorry, dear. I didn't realize Wisconsin was over the international dateline,’ her mother said mildly. ‘Or perhaps you time-travel at the newspaper?’

Daisy was having way too much fun with this. And why shouldn't she? The woman had just been given a reprieve. Besides, for the most part, Daisy herself was unaware of the memory blips that AnnaLise all too clearly noticed. The lost keys or forgotten clothes in the washer didn't bother AnnaLise. Who
didn't
do those things occasionally? No, it was more the two incidents, both witnessed by other people, in which Daisy Griggs, the mid-life woman, slipped back into Lorraine Kuchenbacher, the teenage girl.

It had given AnnaLise the creeps, so she'd told the doctor about them. And what had he replied?

‘Interesting,’ Daisy's daughter repeated, starting the car. ‘He said your memory glitches were “interesting.” And where does he get off keeping us waiting all afternoon? What could he have been doing for two hours? Performing – ’

‘Brain surgery?’ Daisy finished for her. ‘Could be, I suppose. Or maybe neurologists leave that to the neurosurgeons. Whichever, dear, it does no good to sputter. Besides, you went next door to the office supply store. I was the one cooling my heels in the waiting room.’

‘I invited you to come with me,’ AnnaLise said stubbornly. ‘And I'm not sputtering.’

‘Yes, you are. And for the record, even reading old magazines is preferable to following you around while you shop for printer ink and red Flair pens. Besides, I wanted to call Ida Mae and let her know we were going to be late.’

‘What did she say?’ AnnaLise looked at the clock – the
digital
clock – on her dashboard. ‘It's past five-thirty, maybe we shouldn't – ’

‘Honestly, you are such a worry wart, AnnaLise. Besides, we could have cut a good ten minutes off our trip if you’d taken the Blue Ridge Parkway.
And
we'd have gotten off before the section that spooks you.’

The Blue Ridge Parkway runs nearly 470 miles through the mountains from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia south to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. A breathtakingly beautiful drive with scenic vistas that drew people from all over the world, the local stretch of Parkway provided a handy shortcut between the town of Boone to the south and upper entrance of Sutherton Mountain, at least when the route wasn't packed with rubber-necking tourists.

But it wasn't the gawkers that, in Daisy's words, 'spooked' AnnaLise. Her problem started at the Parkway's Milemarker 303.4, the Linn Cove Viaduct. The viaduct skirted Grandfather Mountain, essentially Sutherton Mountain's big brother to the west, so as not to destroy that mountain's delicate ecosystem. Seeing it from a distance, you would swear the snaking concrete span and the vehicles crossing it were suspended in thin air. And they were. Above forty-one hundred feet of nothingness.

AnnaLise didn't like nothingness. In fact, she even hated the viaduct which performed the same function on their own mountain. Not nearly as long or impressive – a simple ‘c’ curve tucked against the mountain, as opposed to the Linn Cove Viaduct's long sweeping ‘s’ – the Sutherton version had been dubbed simply a "bridge" rather than the more pretentious "viaduct." Semantics aside, Sutherton Bridge still danced a precarious semi-circle around a gorge deep enough to give AnnaLise conniptions.

‘Well, not to worry,’ Daisy said. ‘It won't be dark for another couple of hours, so you don't even need to concern yourself about getting down the mountain before nightfall. Besides, the people who stay at Hotel Lux drive up and down it without a problem and some of them are two or three times your age.’

‘That's because they have cataracts as thick as quarters and cars the size of cabin cruisers. They just point downhill and let ’er rip so they won't miss the early-bird specials at Mama's.’

‘“They,” and the rest of our visitors, keep this town solvent,’ Daisy scolded. ‘I won't have you badmouthing them.’

Sure, AnnaLise thought, until they ignore the no-parking sign in front of your garage and block you in. Again.

But she didn't say it. Instead, ‘I just meant that Ida Mae might have given up on us and is having dinner.’

‘Sure you did.’ The dollop of sarcasm was unmistakable. ‘Here, take Main Street, but don't forget to bear left toward the mountain.’

AnnaLise turned onto Main Street and then bore left, as ordered. The opposite direction would have taken them home. Instead, though, she was reluctantly circling Lake Sutherton clockwise on Main, a route which would eventually take them up Sutherton Mountain.

The western side of the lake was dominated by large homes with names like Miller House, Preston Place, Watkins Nest and Cranswick Cottage. Then came the north boat launch, the post office and Lucky's Bait Shop. A handy arrangement since during the during the summer months, mail was delivered to the lake homes by boat.

Tourists paid fifteen dollars a head for the fun of riding along to cheer on the college-age runners who hopped off the boat on one side of the property, raced to the flagged boxes to deliver and collect the mail and then, with luck, hopped back on the vessel – which never stopped or slowed – before it was out of leaping range.

Lake Sutherton was cinched at the waist like a figure eight and just below the belt was Bradenham, Mayor Bobby Bradenham's homestead. Just north of Bradenham was the turn-off for what had been White Tail Island, now converted into ‘Hart's Landing.’

A half-mile north of Hart's Landing was where Main Street began to climb the mountain. This so-called ‘low entrance’ took visitors past the strategically placed Sutherton Real Estate office, which handled properties on both the lake and mountain. AnnaLise's friend Kathleen Smoakes headed the rental division.

‘How far along are the Eames on Ida Mae's deck?’ she asked her mother as the little Mitsubishi passed the first tee of the eighteen-hole golf course and then six clay tennis courts, already covered in fallen, wind-blown leaves.

‘Done, I hope. That rickety thing was practically falling off the place. As tight as the woman is with money, I finally convinced her that she'd best fix it before someone landed on the expert slope without wearing any skis.’ Ida Mae's place was one of the many stilt-supported chalets on the fringe of the ski hill.

‘I hear you.’ AnnaLise nodded at a rustic wooden lodge diagonally across the road from the tennis courts. Located at the base of the ski hill where all the runs came together, the place would be jammed with parka-sheathed skiers in a couple of months. Now, though, the lodge was nearly deserted, the metal benches for the chair lift detached and lined up on the grass, half of them looking newly painted. ‘Speaking of skiing, it looks like they're getting a jump on the season.’

‘The lodge has to be ready for the first snowfall, whenever that should come,’ Daisy said. ‘Besides, they've taken to doing ski-lift rides on fall weekends. I hear it's beautiful, what with the changing leaves and all. We should do it this weekend before you leave.’

Again, that push-pull in Daisy's voice. Wanting her daughter to stay, but hoping she wouldn't need to.

‘Sounds good,’ AnnaLise said, though the very thought of it shot acid into her stomach. Someone born and bred in the High Country should not be afraid of heights, but there it was.

AnnaLise stepped on the brake to make the tight left turn onto Ridge Road, which would take them up the mountain without needing to cross the Sutherton Bridge. As with most things in life, though, there was a price: the narrow switch-back roads. They were especially a problem for AnnaLise's Spyder, which had an amazingly wide front-axle and long wheelbase for a car so small, meaning that while it held the road very well, the convertible had the exaggerated turning radius of a tractor-trailer.

‘You're going to have to give it some gas, you know,’ Daisy said, looking back at a shiny black panel truck emblazoned with the words "Scotty the Electrician" coming up fast behind them. ‘The road climbs about five hundred feet in elevation during this section.’

Said ‘section,’ in AnnaLise's estimation, being maybe the equivalent of only eight city blocks. The grade was so steep she was afraid her poor Mitsubishi's twin tailpipes were scraping.

But AnnaLise stepped on the gas and the little car leapt forward, just in time for another hairpin turn. She slammed on her brakes and was rewarded with a screech of tires behind her and the sound of a horn.

Negotiating the bend, they continued to climb, the panel truck on their tail. ‘Back off,’ AnnaLise said into the rear-view mirror.

‘He's likely just trying to get to a job,’ Daisy said mildly. ‘You could jack up your speed to ten miles an hour.’

‘I'm going fifteen.' She rolled down her window. 'Jackass!'

‘AnnaLise Griggs, I will not have you talking that way. And the last thing you want to do is alienate the only electrician in town before that garage is wired. Though,' she squinted into her side mirror. 'I don't think that's Scotty himself.'