Running on Empty (4 page)

'As in Dickens Hart's seed,' Mama said. 'How else could Eee-mah Bradenham live in
that big house? Her baby-papa bought it for her, is how.'

AnnaLise thought, 'Baby-papa?' Had hip hop come to the mountains, or did the mountains
come to hip hop? Either way, Mama must have been clipped in the crosswalk.

'Baby-
daddy
―' AnnaLise started to correct, but she was interrupted by Daisy.

'Phyllis, you do not — and could not — know that.' Daisy managed to simultaneously
chin-gesture toward the Bradenhams' booth while hurling warning daggers in AnnaLise's
direction.

Mama said, 'They can't hear me, and your daughter is plenty old for knowing the truth.'

'The truth, you say? You're spouting nothing but idle gossip.'

'Eee-mah worked at the White Tail Lodge.'

'So did I. So did you. Dickens Hart was the town's biggest employer. Almost everybody
worked at the lodge one time or the other.'

'But
hers
was the right time. You remember her winning the White Tail Games that year? The boys
from school — Rance Smoaks, when he wasn't even fifteen, and that pimple-faced kid
whose folks owned the inn back then. Why, Daisy, even your Tim sniffed around that
girl like she was a bitch in heat.'

'Phyllis, you watch your mouth now.'

'What? I'm just talking about a dog. A female one.'

AnnaLise raised her hand, about to explain that, technically, a 'dog' was the male
canine, while 'bitch' was the female.

But Phyllis shook her index finger. 'Not a word, AnnieLeez. You hear me?'

Surrogate-daughter dropped her hand and shut her mouth.

'I swear, Daisy,' Mama continued, 'if we had them thought balloons over our heads
like in a cartoon, your daughter'd be correcting them, too.'

Time to guide the squeaky wheel back on track. Unlike her mother, AnnaLise had nothing
against idle gossip. In fact, it was the reporter's bread and butter. 'So you were
saying Ema was... popular?'

Mama snorted.

'Enough,' Daisy commanded.

AnnaLise's mother didn't 'command' often, but when she did, her daughter obeyed.

Phyllis, on the other hand: 'And just why are you defending her, Daisy? It's not like
you owe that woman anything... well, 'cepting a pint of blood or three.'

Smiling at her own joke, Mama turned to AnnaLise. 'Your mother's just being overly
sensitive like she gets. She was Eee-mah's best friend way back when, at least until
Dickens Hart picked her to be a Tail.'

'You were a Tail, Daisy?' AnnaLise teased. Despite the lodge's best public-relations
efforts, the Fawns had quickly been dubbed Tails by the locals. Even as a kid, AnnaLise
could've seen that coming.

'You know perfectly well that I worked in the kitchen,' Daisy snapped. Then to Mama,
'And
you
know that when Ema was promoted, our paths just didn't cross much anymore.'

'Probably on account of she was busy
un
crossing other things. Like her legs.'

Oh, boy. AnnaLise again caught the eye of the man she'd helped with the door what
seemed like a year earlier. The sections of the newspaper he'd brought to his booth
were annotated in red Flair and scattered across its tabletop. AnnaLise smiled sheepishly
with a what-can-you-do shrug.

Daisy was trying to shush Mama, all the good it did.

'Our Eee-mah goes away,' Mama continued, 'and comes back with a baby and her story
about a rich husband who died from this automobile accident they'd all three been
in.'

'You saw the scars for yourself back then, Phyllis.' Daisy seemed to want no further
part of the discussion, throwing worried glances toward the subject of their conversation,
still sitting with her son and Ichiro Katou.

'What? That itty-bitty one up by her hairline? Sure didn't look new to me. And how
about the child? Bobby came through this "devastating" crash just fine, supposedly
because he was strapped into some kind of baby bucket.'

From the corner of her eye, AnnaLise caught movement at the Bradenham booth. Mrs.
B was leaving. Or maybe she'd overheard the conversation about her and was just getting
up to sock Mama in the jaw.

Before AnnaLise could throw herself into the breach, the restaurant door burst open
and an unfamiliar voice bellowed over the chime, 'A body's just been pulled out of
the lake!'

'Huh,' Daisy Griggs said. 'A little early in the season, now, isn't it?'

Mouth open, AnnaLise turned to her
other
mother.

'Daisy's dead-on right, I'm afraid,' Phyllis said, rising. 'Classes don't start up
to the university till Tuesday.'

The University of the Mountain. Where kids drank too much, went to the water's edge
to relieve themselves and tumbled into the lake. With luck, their friends dragged
them out. The buddy system of drinking was much encouraged in Sutherton.

Mama was peering out the front window toward the beach across the street. 'Usually
be a week or two after that before somebody actually sees a floater going past.'

'A... floater?' said the herald. A man of about thirty, with the tell-tale sunburn
of a tourist, he was obviously perplexed by the lack of excitement his announcement
had engendered. 'My God, a corpse just washed up on the beach. Shouldn't we do something?'

'Like what?' Mama turned. 'Police chief's car is already kicking up gravel over there.'

'And from what you yourself said, they don't need an ambulance,' Daisy contributed.
She was paging through Mama's copy of
The Kraft Cookbook
. 'At least, not right away.'

Mrs. B, who had made it as far as their table, looked shocked at the collective insensitivity.
AnnaLise seconded the emotion. Her grandmother used to say that, getting older, 'you
can finally say what you think. Other people don't like it, that's too damn bad'.
But Grandma Kuchenbacher had been eighty. If Daisy was starting now, how would she
be in another thirty years?

Mrs. B might originally have intended to confront Mama and Daisy about their gossiping
over Bobby's paternity, but if so, she wisely changed her mind. Skirting the tourist,
she kept right on going.

He followed her out, seeming relieved there was at least one person in the restaurant
with a social conscience. AnnaLise could see him trailing, trying to point the way
to the action. When Mrs. B ignored him and went in the opposite direction, he glanced
back toward the restaurant.

Mama waved. 'Y'all enjoy your vacation, now.'

AnnaLise didn't need to see an eye-roll. Shaking his head, the visitor recrossed the
street to the beach.

'Ambulance chaser,' Mama muttered.

Not giving Daisy an opportunity to point out, again, that there was no immediate need
for an ambulance, AnnaLise stood. 'I'm going to see Chuck over there. Be right back.'

Making her escape, she found Sutherton's chief of police leaning down, talking to
the driver of a second patrol car through the window.

Straightening, he saw AnnaLise. 'Hey, Lise — good to see you. Sorry I didn't return
your call.'

'No problem,' AnnaLise said. 'I just assumed you were getting an arrest warrant for
my mother.'

He gave her a quick kiss on the lips. 'Well, the possibility did bring you back to
us.'

Chuck Greystone's face combined the strong planes of his Cherokee grandfather with
the auburn hair and green eyes of his Irish mother. It was a devastating combination.
One that still could make AnnaLise's heart melt, despite the fact that she'd literally
and figuratively moved on.

She gestured toward the knot of people close to the water. 'College student?'

'Nope, looks like Rance Smoaks. Though he's been chewed on some, so he's got some
chunks missing.'

Lovely, if not unusual in the High Country.

Chuck's voice was neutral, despite the fact that he and Rance shared a long history.
A long and bitter one, partly because Rance Smoaks was a son-of-a-bitch and partly
because Chuck had replaced the man as Sutherton's chief of police.

Rance's father, Roy, had preceded his son in the office. And Roy's father before him.
The Smoaks family hadn't taken kindly to Chuck's breaking their line of ascent to
the throne.

'I have to tell Kathleen,' Chuck continued.

Kathleen was Rance's wife. She had been a classmate of BobbyBradenham, which made
her a year older than AnnaLise and fifteen years younger than Rance. Plenty young
enough not to have seen past the police uniform to the mean drunk that lay beneath.

'She'll be devastated,' AnnaLise said. And the new widow would be. Kathleen Smoaks
was a good woman who had the misfortune of falling in love with a bad man. A shame
— especially since AnnaLise knew Bobby had asked Kathleen to marry him just out of
high school. If only she'd accepted, life could have been so different for both of
them.

Not that AnnaLise was exactly a poster child for wise choices.

She gestured toward the blue tarpaulin that was being used to shield the body from
onlookers. 'He was plastered as usual, I assume?'

'Probably. We'll know more when the lab work comes back.' Chuck put his hat on, squared
it over his forehead. 'You'd think people, at least our locals, would learn to stay
away from the lake when they're drinking. Especially someone as experienced as Rance.'

'Chief.' A voice rang out from the waterline. 'We got us an entrance wound.'

'Damn it all.' Chuck swung away and then turned back to AnnaLise. 'I need to talk
to you.' A glance toward the tarpaulin. 'When we both have some time.'

A chill ran up AnnaLise's spine. Something to do with Daisy? Maybe the idea of an
arrest warrant was no far-fetched fantasy.

'I'll be here through Labor Day,' she said. 'Is this...'

But Chuck was already moving away. 'Good. If I don't see you tonight at Sal's, I'll
call you tomorrow.'

'OK, but...' AnnaLise realized she might as well be talking to the wind. All attention
was focused on the body.

AnnaLise turned toward Mama's, waiting for a white Mercedes-Benz to dawdle past, the
driver rubbernecking the commotion on the beach.

An 'entrance wound' meant that Rance Smoaks had been shot. During hunting season,
accidental shootings weren't all that unusual. But deer season didn't commence until
the day after Labor Day, meaning three days from now. And even then, only bow-and-arrow,
not rifle, was permitted.

A tap of the Mercedes' horn.

'AnnaLise,' Mrs. B's voice called from the driver's window. 'Pay attention, please.
I have been waving you on for eons.'

An exaggeration, yes, but an explanation seemed in order to appease the woman. 'I'm
sorry. I was thinking about this — ' she waved back at the beach vaguely, knowing
she shouldn't name the victim until after the family had been notified — 'incident.'

'Another drowning,' Mrs. B said, shaking her head. 'And, likely, another newspaper
editorial tomorrow, calling for fencing off portions of the lake. Whatever happened
to personal responsibility, I want to know.'

'In this case, it doesn't appear to be the victim's fault. He was shot.'

'Certainly not on purpose?' The way Ema Bradenham said it made it clear that such
a thing wouldn't be tolerated in her tidy world.

Which, of course, made AnnaLise want to muddy it up more. She moved closer to the
car, confidingly. 'I don't see how it could possibly be an accident. After all, deer
season doesn't start until Tuesday, and as for gun―'

'Please,' Mrs. B interrupted with a shiver. 'I know they are held sacred up here,
but firearms lost their fascination for me a very long time ago. When Bobby took up
deer hunting last year, I was just filled with trepidation. The whole idea is just
so... déclassé.'

'My mother doesn't like hunting either,' AnnaLise said, seeking common, yet not too
'common', ground. 'My father's deer rifles are locked in a cabinet, and I don't think
they've been touched since the day he died.'

'Exactly where they belong. The thought of hunting one of those beautiful creatures
to hang its poor head on a wall...' She shook her own head, as if words failed her.

Apparently it had never occurred to Mrs. B that some people actually ate the venison
to get some protein into the family's diet, a distinction that made a difference to
AnnaLise.