Running on Empty (19 page)

Accomplishment can do that for a person.

She and Dr. Stanton had finally connected by phone and Daisy was to see him in his
office at nine a.m., Tuesday. The next morning.

AnnaLise also emailed her boss, Jan, to ask for the coming week off or, failing that,
whatever the union rules provided as a temporary leave of absence. No reply yet, of
course, but at least AnnaLise had gotten the ball rolling. Put the request — OK, the
need —
into words. The upside of Bobby's and her belief that if you said things out loud,
they became real.

Jan and the newspaper could say either yes or no. But, whichever, AnnaLise was prepared
to deal with it. Especially since she had — thanks to the stacks around her — the
equivalent of two years of severance, if her Wisconsin employer decided to pull her
proverbial plug.

AnnaLise sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, surrounded by the boxes relating to
the years of Hart's life that she thought might be the more — or, at least, somewhat
more — interesting.

'If I have to read his elementary school diaries,' she said aloud, 'I'll crowbar the
lock off Dad's gun cabinet and just blow my brains out.'

AnnaLise pawed through the boxes until she found the volume she was looking for: 1981.
The year of Bobby Bradenham's birth. Was he Dickens Hart's son? The answer, AnnaLise
thought as she put her hand on the bound journal, could be inside. She felt more than
a little surge of excitement. Intrusive? Perhaps. But the question intrigued AnnaLise
and with everything else going on right now, she needed some diversion. Failing a
trashy celebrity magazine, this was likely to be as close as she'd get.

'AnnaLise?'

Daisy's voice echoing off the stairwell walls.

The journalist struggled to her feet, lower spine jibing her for sitting hunched over
so long. Oh, to be age twelve again, when body parts seemed perfectly lubricated against
each other and synchronized to create a smooth, silent machine.

And she wasn't even thirty yet.

AnnaLise opened the door and called down to her mother on the first floor. 'Yes, Daisy?'

'The chief is here.'

Uh-oh. 'For me?'

'No, for me.'

It took a second for AnnaLise to realize her mother was kidding. 'Can you send him
up?'

When Chuck Greystone stepped into her bedroom, he looked around. 'The décor is a little
different than I remember.'

'Granted, corrugated cardboard wasn't the new black then. But not to worry, my 'N
Sync bedspread is still in the closet.'

'What a relief,' Chuck said, moving a box to sit on the bed. 'I loved that thing.'

'I know you did,' AnnaLise said, resuming her position on the floor. 'I should have
known a guy who shared my taste in music was too good to be true.'

'You can be forgiven,' Chuck said. 'I sure didn't know, either.'

He waved toward the boxes. 'Moving in or out?'

'Still to be determined. But for now I'm rooming with
Dickens Hart — The Untold Story
.'

'You have my sympathies.'

She shrugged. 'Maybe I'll find him interesting.'

'Not as interesting as he finds himself. The man's left town, you know.'

Huh? 'No, I didn't. Because of the shooting?' One measly flesh wound? Sutherton folk
were usually made of sterner stock. Hell, Mrs. B had lost a bucket of blood and she
kept on ticking. Not that AnnaLise was going to remind Chuck of the incident guided
by Daisy's own hand.

'He's convinced some disgruntled current investor has targeted him.'

'Maybe not such a bad guess,' AnnaLise said. 'Ichiro did say Hart's Landing was underwater.'

'He did?' Chuck asked, suddenly more than mildly engaged. 'When was this?'

'Saturday afternoon. Daisy and I wanted to take a look at the new development and
saw Ichiro there.'

'Bobby told me he'd seen you. Was he or anybody else around when Katou mentioned this?'

'Just Joy Tamarack, but she already knew. In fact, Ichiro found out by accidentally
eavesdropping on her, Hart, and I think this David Sabatino.' AnnaLise looked at Chuck
curiously. 'Why do you ask?'

A shrug. 'Hart's not talking about it, as you might expect. He's afraid if potential
new
investors hear, they'll turn tail and run, leaving the current investors holding the
bag. And blaming him.'

'It makes some sense, I suppose. But why does Dickens think somebody already in the
fold is mad enough to take a potshot at him?'

'Guilty conscience would be my guess. If you're asking what someone might gain by
shooting him, it gets kind of twisty.'

'How about pure and intense self-gratification?'

'Hey,' Chuck said with a grin. 'I don't rule anything out.' His face changed. 'Listen,
I need to talk with you about the Katou case. Your mother, too.'

'OK.' AnnaLise got back onto her feet. 'Did you want to talk to Daisy after me, or
should I go get her now?'

'No, I mean I want to talk to you about... your mother.'

Reflexively AnnaLise crossed her arms into a defensive posture. 'What about Daisy?'

Chuck moved another stack of journals and patted the bed next to him. 'How about sitting
down? I'm not the enemy here, Lise.'

'I know that.'

Problem was, she didn't know who — or what — was. But AnnaLise sat. 'Listen, if you
checked for fingerprints on the cane, you know that Daisy didn't touch it.'

Even as AnnaLise's words hit the air, she was praying they would come true.

'You're right,' Chuck said, and AnnaLise let out her breath. 'In fact, the only fingerprints
on it were yours.'

Well, that wasn't good, on two counts. 'So somebody wiped it.'

'Correct.'

AnnaLise was thinking furiously. Someone strikes Ichiro in the head with his own cane,
then cleans the thing and finally hides it in the Griggs' garage.

But why? 'Do you have a cause of death yet?' she asked.

'Drowning,' Chuck said. 'Mr. Katou was alive when he hit the water.'

'But unconscious?'

'Presumably. Or he couldn't swim, maybe on account of the bum hip.'

Hip,
not
leg. 'Have you been able to contact his family?' AnnaLise asked.

'We're working on it,' Chuck said. 'The closest relatives seem to be Mr. Katou's grandparents,
who raised him, but his grandmother died a few years back and his grandfather just
months ago.'

'Maybe Ichiro had been taking care of his grandfather and now he was free to see the
world.' In the still unlikely form of Sutherton, North Carolina.

'Using any inheritance to open a sushi restaurant in the High Country?' The irony
of chosen locale apparently hadn't been lost on Chuck either.

'No wife or kids?'

'Nope.'

'Well, that's good.' She saw Chuck cock his head at her. 'I mean, Ichiro's not leaving
a family behind, one that depended on him.'

Chuck shrugged. 'Family comes in many forms, but so far as we can tell, he also wasn't
in a serious relationship.'

AnnaLise was quiet.

Chuck cleared his throat. 'I hate to ask this, but I need some... whereabouts. On
Saturday — after you met Bobby Bradenham and Ichiro Katou on the island — where did
Daisy and you go?'

AnnaLise swallowed hard. She knew he had to ask, but it nevertheless stung a bit.
'You know where I was — Sal's. Daisy went to Torch.'

'What time?' Chuck pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket.

'We had dinner at Mama's.' Not exactly a revelation. 'Then Daisy walked down the block
to Torch and I crossed the street to Sal's. When I sat down for Frat Pack it was seven
thirty.'

Chuck was writing. 'Good. Now I know you left Sal's at eleven when it closed. Did
you go right home?'

'No,' AnnaLise said. 'I went to Torch, make sure Daisy was OK. Don't you remember?
I asked you if you wanted to come.'

Chuck looked up. 'Just because I came out, Lise, doesn't mean I want to sit through
an evening of show tunes any more than I did before. Maybe you should have asked Bobby.'

'By the time you turned me down, he'd already left.'

'So you got to Torch just after eleven and joined Daisy?'

No hesitation. 'Yes.'

More writing. 'Until when?'

'One thirty. I remember seeing the time on my alarm clock as I was going to bed.'

AnnaLise pointed toward the clock on her nightstand, only to find it obscured by notebooks.

Chuck moved them. 'Ahh, T-Rex lives. The alarm still work?'

'Don't know, I haven't needed it.' She reached for the clock with the face of a dinosaur.
She pushed a button and got a reverberating 'ROARRRRRR'.

'Yup.'

Chuck took it. 'You were a child of — to put it charitably — eclectic tastes.'

'I like to think so.' She smiled brightly and stood. 'Any other questions?'

'Nope, that should do it.' Chuck tucked the notebook back into his pocket and followed
AnnaLise downstairs.

'I'm going to be here for a few more days, as it turns out,' she said on the bottom
step. 'Maybe lunch?'

'Dinner would be better. I never know when something
else
is going to blow up.'

'I hear you.' She turned at the front door. 'At least the Smoaks case is easy. You
even have somebody in custody.'

'Palooka, the idiot. Or, as I should call him, Stewart Chapel. Not a bad guy, but
his new best friend is whichever yahoo last bought him a round. He and Rance each
had blood-alcohols of nearly triple the legal limit.'

AnnaLise opened the door and they both stepped out onto the sidewalk. To their right
was the garage. 'That cane was planted, Chuck. You have to know that. Daisy and I
had no reason to hurt Ichiro — we liked him, even though we also hardly knew him.'

'You and everybody else, it seems.' He was studying the sidewalk between them.

AnnaLise looked down and saw a large black ant.

Chuck stepped on it.

'Why'd you do that?' AnnaLise protested.

'Carpenter ant. You may have an infestation.'

'But they don't
eat
wood like termites. They just tunnel into it and build their nests.'

Living with Daisy, AnnaLise had been the one to deal with bugs — usually by picking
them up gingerly in a paper towel and relocating them. Outside. Where neither mother
nor daughter had any problem with them.

'You're right,' Chuck said. 'Which
only
means you have structural posts and beams that might look like Swiss cheese. You should
check.'

'Check,' AnnaLise said, making a giant check-mark in the air with her index finger.

Chuck hesitated. 'Listen, I should have asked earlier, but how's your mom doing?'

'Fine. Why?' AnnaLise had been fairly certain that Chuck was oblivious to Daisy's
momentary regression in his office.

'Somebody mentioned she's having... problems. And beyond the mistake at the blood
drive.'

'Honestly? Daisy does seem forgetful,' AnnaLise admitted. 'I've made an appointment
with Dr. Stanton. Might be a vitamin deficiency.'

That was her story and she was sticking to it.

Chuck met her eyes and AnnaLise looked down. 'Oh, look. He's going to help his friend.'

A second ant was levering the wounded one onto his own back.

'More like helping himself,' Chuck said, turning toward the parked patrol car with
what AnnaLise had learned on the police beat in Wisconsin was a 'cop-laugh.'

'Huh?'

'Waste not, want not.' Chuck opened the car door. 'Carpenter ants got into recycling
long before man began walking this earth of ours.'

'I don't... recycling?'

'Your "helper" is taking his sidewalk-kill friend back to the nest for a snack, kind
of a cannibal kabob.'

AnnaLise swallowed her 'eewww' and stomped both insects flat.