Hit and Run (6 page)

The hand dropped. ‘There's Boozer. He'll give you an earful on what he thinks of all this.'

‘I already know, thank you very much.' AnnaLise waved at Bacchus, who appeared to be coming from the garages on the other side of the main house. In contrast to his usual uniform of khakis, Hart's right-hand man was wearing a pressed, dark suit. Raising his hand in response to AnnaLise's greeting, he hesitated, using the hand to shade his eyes as he peered up into a tall tree.

‘What's he—' Even as Joy started to ask the question, there was movement in the tree – a bending almost like a leafy springboard and then a gigantic bird emerged, wings beating, but nearly silent against the air currents.

‘Holy shit!' AnnaLise ducked involuntary despite the distance. ‘I'd forgotten how big our owls are. That thing must have a six-foot wingspan.'

‘Very nearly.' Joy tipped her head to watch as the bird gained altitude. ‘Amazing how quiet they are for their size, too, isn't it?'

‘I'm sure it comes in handy for sneaking up on a snack,' AnnaLise said dryly.

‘They have to eat, you know. And I bet the out buildings here are Mickey and Minnie-free.'

‘Mice don't bother me so much. It's more the squirrels and cats.' She shivered and returned to their earlier subject. ‘Boozer is the one who had to track down Dickens' tootsies.' She looked at Joy. ‘Present company excepted.'

‘“Tootsies”?' Joy repeated. ‘God, you
are
a throwback.'

‘What do you want me to call you all?'

‘Wait a second.' Joy devolved into mulling mode. ‘We need to define our terms more specifically for this lollapalooza of a weekend. The women he fooled around with can be Bimbettes; the ones, like me, who married him, Fools.'

AnnaLise's jaw was set. ‘My mother's not a Bimbette.'

‘Relax,' Joy said, punching her in the shoulder. ‘Daisy is, and always will be, just Daisy – a one-hundred-percent original. But we should get back. It looks like the curtain is about to be raised on Act One.'

AnnaLise followed her gaze toward the stretch limousine that was slowly making its way up the long drive. The valets and servers were lining up to greet the new arrivals like something out of an episode of
Downton Abbey
. ‘Do you know who they are?'

‘Your “tootsies”? Nope.' Joy started toward the front door, then stopped and swiveled, her still significant volume of wine wildly sloshing enough to make AnnaLise feel seasick. ‘Do you?'

‘Of course. My dear father,' she felt her lip curl at the word, ‘had me come up with the list of former lovers that Boozer then vetted as to whether they had children who might be his and thus be invited. Dickens approved the final list.'

Joy actually sighed. ‘I wish I could say that surprises me, but it doesn't. So dish, girl. Or do you want me to guess?'

AnnaLise handed her glass to Joy and dug through her purse, coming up with the list she'd jotted down when Bacchus had called her with the results of his efforts.

‘Is that a unicorn?' Joy asked, blinking at the brightly colored artwork at the top of the paper.

‘And a rainbow,' AnnaLise said, shaking out the list. ‘Daisy kept all of my old Lisa Frank pencils and notebooks and such. Bottom drawer, right next to the Beany Babies and Hello Kitty backpack purse.'

‘The nineties have a lot to answer for,' Joy said.

‘I can't argue with you there.' AnnaLise reclaimed her glass. ‘Now, can I assume you just care about the ones who are actually attending?'

‘Versus the ones he simply shtupped? Yes, please. Life is too short for a recitation of the entire
dis
honor roll.'

‘It's not as many as you might expect, particularly given the carrot he dangled.'

‘So to speak.'

AnnaLise felt herself blush, but continued. ‘The only ones coming are Rose Boccaccio and her son Eddie, Lucinda Puckett and
her
son Tyler, and Sugar Capri and
her
daughter—

‘Sugar?'

‘Yup, and her daughter is called Lacey.' AnnaLise shook her head. ‘Lacey Capri. Honestly, who would do that to a kid? Though I suppose if your own parents had named you something like Su—'

But Joy seemed more concerned about the mother than the daughter. ‘But Sugar herself is coming? Why?'

AnnaLise canted her head. ‘Presumably because she and Hart did the dirty, with Lacey the product. Remember? It's the theme of the party.'

‘But that's impossible. Not them doing the dirty part, of course. That's a given. But Hart met Sugar a full decade after he had his vasectomy.'

‘Huh?' AnnaLise, looking again at her list, frowned. ‘If so, I shouldn't have put her on here as a “possible.”' She re-scanned the names. ‘I hope I didn't make a mistake.'

But Joy Tamarack was already striding away from her across the green lawn: the long white limo was gliding to a stop at the mansion's main entrance.

A
nnaLise Griggs followed her friend, trying not to lose any of the fabulous wine still nearly filling her glass. When she reached the front of the house, though, Joy Tamarack had disappeared.

AnnaLise didn't quite know what to do or where to go. If Dickens Hart hadn't yet appeared to greet his guests, his acknowledged bastard-daughter certainly wasn't interested in playing hostess.

‘Psst.'

Joy and Boozer Bacchus were perched above her on the rail of the upper-floor veranda. Dodging the conga line of valets and drink-bearers, AnnaLise slipped in through the front door. Other than Hart's office, to the right of the vaulted-ceilinged and marble-floored foyer, she had seen very little of the house.

Safe to assume, though, that the sweeping staircase would bring her to the second-floor bedrooms. And that the first one to the right – directly above Hart's office – would provide access to the occupied balcony.

Climbing the steps, AnnaLise found herself on an unwalled, balustraded catwalk running the length of the house from north to south. The walkway overlooked the foyer to the east, or front of the house, and a lofty room with a view of the lake to the west. The latter featured, on the near wall, a fieldstone fireplace and cozy seating area with moss-green sofa and armchairs.

But that was pretty much where the ‘cozy' ended.

The center of the massive room had been cleared for a long buffet table, its top dotted with silver chafing dishes that would soon hold pre-dinner canapés. The wall opposite the fireplace – and probably forty feet away from it – was all glass and opened onto the patio and the lakeshore beyond.

‘Well, la-dee-dah,' AnnaLise said, and then turned her attention to the upper floor.

The open walkway where she stood morphed into a traditional walled hallway in both directions once away from the vaulted core of the house. Choosing north, AnnaLise opened the first door on the right and stepped into a lovely room with a four-poster bed. The polished rosewood table by the door held, appropriately, a vase of pink roses and beside that was a piece of parchment, folded into the shape of a pup tent and printed in ornate script: ‘Welcome to Hart's Head?' AnnaLise said, reading the legend on the paper as she stepped through the open French door to join Joy and Boozer Bacchus on the balcony. ‘I never knew this place had a name.'

‘Didn't till yesterday,' Bacchus said. ‘The boss had those things express-printed overnight.'

Joy shrugged. ‘I voted for “Dick Head” myself, but Caesar Disgustus overruled me.'

Bacchus smiled and turned to AnnaLise. ‘Good to see you, AnnaLise. Did Lorraine drive with you?'

AnnaLise had forgotten he knew Daisy from the days she'd worked in the White Tail Club's kitchen. Lorraine Kuchenbacher had never been a ‘fawn,' or at least so she'd assured her daughter. ‘She did. And Mama – Phyllis Balisteri – came with us, too.'

Bacchus seemed less happy to hear that last sentence, but before AnnaLise could wonder why, the threesome's attention was drawn to the limousine.

‘Holy shit,' Joy observed, as guests piled out. ‘Looks like the stretch version of a clown car at the circus.'

‘Should only be six of them,' said Bacchus, pulling at this grizzled mustache. ‘Less'n they brought friends.'

‘Six … seven,' AnnaLise said, counting. ‘Could one of them be Shirley, the other surviving ex?'

Joy gestured with her wine glass. ‘The age-appropriate one with the blonde helmet hair streaked by gray.'

‘Actually,' AnnaLise said, ‘most of them are surprisingly age-appropriate. Or at least closer to Dickens' age than I would have expected.'

‘I tried for a nice cross-section,' said Bacchus. He'd taken a silver flask out of his suit coat's inside lapel pocket.

AnnaLise ignored the flask. Who was she, with most of a half bottle of wine in her glass, to ask Boozer if he'd started – or resumed – well, boozing? ‘What do you mean? Didn't you or Patrick Hoag just send them all a letter?'

‘He did,' Bacchus said, unscrewing the attached lid and tipping the container to his lips. ‘But you know yourself there were sixty-plus women on that list. And the sad fact is, out of that whole group not one person responded.'

‘Imagine that,' Joy said, eyes wide and her tone sarcastic.

‘What did you do, Boozer?' AnnaLise asked.

‘Well, now, I took matters into my own hands, but seeing as I only have the two of them, I needed to be particular. Couldn't just knock on every woman's door and explain the situation. So I chose one or two a decade – ones who'd had youngsters that qualified time-wise, starting in—'

‘Will you look at that?' Joy was pointing to a tiny woman with pure white hair being helped into a wheelchair. A cloud of musky-scented perfume wafted up to their balcony. ‘Did Hart have a cougar? Or, maybe back in the day, they were still called saber-toothed tigers.'

AnnaLise quashed a laugh, thinking her friend might be smarting from Bacchus' ‘generational' approach.

‘Rose Boccaccio, age seventy,' said Bacchus, sealing and replacing his flask. ‘And the man with her is her son, Eddie, fifty-one and a dentist.'

Joy's head tick-tocked like she was juggling numbers in it. ‘So Rose is two years older than Hart, and her son's seventeen years younger. That means that Hart couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen when they danced the horizontal mambo.'

But AnnaLise was looking at Eddie, a handsome if thinning tow-head, who was probably about five-nine. A dentist, Boozer had said, and the right height and age for …

She mentally shook herself, taking a mouthful of the lovely wine. The last thing Daisy needed right now – sexy underwear aside – was a boyfriend. Especially one who might prove to be AnnaLise's half-brother.

‘Yup,' Bacchus was saying. ‘Most boys appreciate a skilled and steady hand on the tiller that first time and I'm sure the lieutenant was no different.'

‘Lieutenant?' AnnaLise managed around the cabernet, still unswallowed.

‘You forget me and your daddy went way back to the service?'

AnnaLise, nearly choking on her wine at the word ‘daddy,' also managed to shake her head.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Joy interrupted. ‘They were in the army together. Loyalty, honor and so on. But can we get back to the cast of our current play?'

AnnaLise shrugged apologetically, but Bacchus seemed fine with the somewhat cutting remark. ‘Joy's right. It's water over the dam, that's for sure. Now those two over there—'

They followed his pointing finger to a woman in her mid-fifties with carefully coiffed strawberry-blonde hair and a glass of champagne in her hand. ‘Lucinda Puckett,' Bacchus shifted his compass needle, ‘and her son, Tyler, age thirty-five.' The latter was smiling as he accepted a flute of champagne from a pretty server. ‘Lucinda is from the early days of Mr Hart's lodge.'

‘Like a stroll down the memory lane of Dickens' sex life,' Joy said dryly. ‘I assume Lucinda was a fawn?'

‘She was,' Bacchus said, nodding. ‘Going to the university back then. Mighty pretty girl, but she knew it, if you get my drift.'

‘You didn't like her?' AnnaLise asked.

Bacchus shrugged. ‘Had nothing against her personally, except that she broke up the boss' marriage to Shirley.'

‘Were they married long?' The journalist in AnnaLise wanted to get her timelines right.

‘Five years, maybe? The lieutenant met Shirley just after he got out of the service. And from the beginning they were good together. She was the one and only for him. Uh, no offense.' He bobbed his head at Joy.

‘None taken,' she said. ‘In fact, I wish you'd persuaded Hart of that way back then. Might have saved us all – me, especially – a lot of trouble.'

‘Oh, I tried, but you couldn't tell the boss anything and I'm starting to think nothing ever changed. It's like he just plain can't let himself stay happy.'

‘At least he's reaching out to make amends, however late.' AnnaLise couldn't believe she was defending the man.

‘Well, now, there can be a fine line between making amends and stirring things up,' Bacchus said, shaking his head. He landed his palm lightly on her shoulder. ‘He's got you in his life now, AnnaLise, and I know he's grateful for that. But—'

‘There she is!' Joy hissed urgently. ‘Sugar.'

Bacchus sighed. ‘She's the one I asked Mr Hart
not
to invite. Strictly speaking, she shouldn't be here – or her daughter.'

AnnaLise leaned over the railing to get a gander at Sugar and Lacey Capri.

‘Will you look at that?' Joy said, obvious envy in her voice. ‘She literally hasn't changed a bit, right down to the wardrobe.'

The two women below – both petite with lustrous blonde hair – could easily have been taken for sisters rather than mother and daughter. The elder had a vintage vibe in boots and denim jacket over a short baby-doll dress, while the younger wore simple jeans and a sweater.