Running on Empty (15 page)

'In a novel, I'd ask why you keep showing up at the scene of shootings. And drownings.'

'I did miss Mrs. Bradenham's bloodletting earlier this week,' AnnaLise pointed out.

'Nobody can be everywhere.' Chuck seemed out of sorts.

'Are you OK?' AnnaLise asked. 'You seem a little... touchy.'

'Touchy? Let's see: first, my predecessor-in-office-cum-town-drunk is found dead drunk
— as in, dead and drunk — in the lake with a bullet wound. Then a Japanese visitor
drowns, but with a contusion to his temple. Now... this.'

'Ichiro hit his head as he fell into the water?'

'Can't tell you what I don't know,' Chuck snapped. 'Katou's in autopsy. I'll send
you a full report with photos, OK?'

Ouch.

Chuck drew in a deep breath. 'Sorry, Lise. I don't mean to take this out on you. I
was with Bobby when this last call came in and... . well, you know how this town is.
Everybody's got an opinion about how I should do my job.'

AnnaLise didn't want to get in the middle of a disagreement between her two friends,
who just happened to be the town mayor and police chief of same.

She took advantage of an audible groan from Hart, who was jostled while being loaded
into the ambulance, to ask, 'So what do you think? Hunting accident?'

'Ordinarily, more like "poaching" accident.' Chuck shook his head. 'Yahoos can't wait
a couple of days for a legal season to start.'

'Lucky for Dickens. If that was an arrow rather than a bullet, it could have been
worse.'

'"Dickens"? Since when are you and the great benefactor so friendly?'

Come to think of it, AnnaLise couldn't remember anyone referring to the man as 'Dickens'.
It was usually Hart. Or Mr. Hart. Or occasionally, 'that pervert'.

'I'm practicing,' AnnaLise said. '
Dickens
hired me to write his memoirs and I wanted to set the ground rules right away. I'm
his collaborator, not his subordinate.'

'Write his memoirs? You really want to spend that kind of time with that kind of lech?'

Oh, yeah. and 'lech'.

'Hart... Dickens has been keeping journals for years.' She hooked a thumb toward the
overloaded Mitsubishi. 'I'm taking them with me.'

'All the way back to Wisconsin?' He walked around the car. 'You're going to bottom
out.'

'The car rides low-slung naturally, but you're right. Maybe I should ship the boxes
back. And charge Dickens.' She was only half-kidding.

Chuck raised his hand in a stop sign while he conferred with one of his officers holding
a plastic evidence bag.

When the woman had left, he said, 'While you're going through all those papers, keep
an eye out for someone who might have wanted to kill him.'

'Meaning you don't buy this as even a poaching accident?'

He pointed to the closing rear doors of the ambulance. 'The man's wearing a blazered
shirt—'

'Vermilion,' AnnaLise interjected. 'Kenneth Cole makes one, but this...'

Chuck looked skyward.

'What?' AnnaLise protested. 'It's still deep red, just with an orangish―'

'Lise?' Chuck interrupted. 'I know I'm gay, but please don't talk to me about this
crap. It freaks me out.'

'Oh,' she said, sheepishly. 'Sorry. Go ahead.'

'Thank you. I was saying that with Hart wearing a blaze-
vermilion
shirt, he's not likely to have been mistaken for a deer, even with the tan pants.'
A warning look toward AnnaLise. 'Besides, that officer I just talked with found a
shell casing at the edge of the woods. Which tells me somebody was laying in wait.'

'Lying in wait,' AnnaLise corrected reflexively.

Chuck gave her the look she deserved.

'Sorry.' Now
beyond
sheepish. 'But are you serious? Someone actually aimed for Hart?'

'Dickens.' His turn to correct her. 'And, yes. Or the shooter isn't worth a damn and
aimed for you and got Hart instead. Either way — ' he leaned over and kissed her on
the top of the head — 'I have work to do.'

'Chuck?' AnnaLise called as he walked away.

Over his shoulder he replied, 'Yes?'

'You're not serious, are you? I mean, you don't honestly think someone meant to shoot
me.'

'Of course not. I was just...' Then he stopped and turned back around. 'Why? Is there
a reason you think it's possible?'

'Me? Don't be silly.' When Chuck hesitated she waved him on. 'Go. Solve crime. Fight
evil.'

Chuck grinned and continued walking while AnnaLise moved to her car. There was no
one who wanted to hurt her... at least so far as she knew. Nothing she'd written could
possibly have offended someone here. All her bylines were in a Wisconsin newspaper.
Sutherton, no matter how broadened its horizons, was unlikely to carry a publication
so far removed from High Country.

AnnaLise looked at the cluster of uniforms examining the ground at the edge of the
woods.

Nah, no one would want to hurt her.

Right?

Pulling past her mother's parked car, AnnaLise stopped her own loaded-down Mitsubishi
nose-on-sidewalk in front of the old garage on Second Street that the Griggs shared
with an even-older neighbor, Mrs. Peebly.

Daisy had left her cream-colored Chrysler on the street, so AnnaLise could take the
garage. Given Hart's 'load', it worked out perfectly. AnnaLise wouldn't have to empty
out her Mitsubishi only to have to repack when she left Tuesday morning for the long
drive back.

Slipping the gear shift into park, AnnaLise climbed out and went to lift the closer
of the two heavy, traditional wooden garage doors. There was no electric-opener on
either, despite AnnaLise's repeated suggestions that both Daisy and Mrs. Peebly would
benefit.

'You know there's no electricity in that old hulk, AnnaLise,' Daisy would say.

'Whatcha going to do? Run an extension cord?' From Mrs. Peebly.

Cue raucous laughter. Times two.

While it was true that adding electrical service to the free-standing garage wouldn't
be cheap, not only would an automatic opener be a real convenience, but an overhead
light was nearly a necessity. The dome-shaped, battery-operated
closet light
Daisy had found in a dollar store was hung on a nail between the doors and, despite
its advertised promise to 'push-on/push-off', the thing was perpetually dead as...
well, a doornail.

Thankfully, as AnnaLise steadied the door at its apex, the late-day light was still
slanting in the single window of the cinder block rear wall. Through it, AnnaLise
could see the patch of lawn where she had played as a child and over which Daisy still
hung laundry to dry. The pale pink and blue flowered sheets billowing on the clothesline
were the ones from her old room.

Smiling at the prospect of sleeping on fresh, air-dried linen tonight, AnnaLise turned
and nearly collided with a shrunken woman of about ninety leaning on a walker.

'Mrs. Peebly, I'm so sorry,' AnnaLise said, her hands coming up to keep the aluminum-framed
walker vertical.

'Don't you worry, AnnaLise,' their neighbor said, bouncing the contraption up and
down a couple of times, 'this thing ain't going nowhere.'

Nor was Mrs. Peebly, at least anytime soon, if free will had anything to do with it.
Larry Peebly had wanted his elderly mother to move in with him for years, but the
old woman's eyes still burned with intelligence and, so long as her body held up,
she had voiced every intention of staying in her own home.

The walker, though, was a new, and somewhat worrying, sign. And it tickled something
at the back of AnnaLise's mind.

She hugged Mrs. Peebly, careful not to crush fragile bones. 'I'm so glad to see you.
You're well, I hope?'

Again, the older woman picked up the walker and for a moment AnnaLise thought she
was going to press it overhead like a barbell, tennis-ball-covered aluminum feet pointing
skyward.

'Aside from this thing, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much.'

'You don't seem to be having balance problems,' AnnaLise said, smiling.

'I'm not. Doc said this is 'pro-phy-lac-tic.'' She intoned the syllables like they
amounted to a dirty word.

'He probably means it in the sense of preventative,'' AnnaLise said. 'Not, umm...'

'Hell, I know
she
don't mean it's a rubber,' Mrs. Peebly said, emphasis on the gender of the physician
involved. 'You kids think you're the only ones who keep up?'

Properly chastised at her presumptive use of the male pronoun, AnnaLise opened her
mouth to answer the rest of the indictment, but Mrs. Peebly was on a roll. 'And every
last one of you ought to be grateful we
didn't
have all the contraceptive paraphernalia that's out there nowadays. Otherwise, half
your generation wouldn't even be here.'

Bested again, AnnaLise held up her hands in surrender. 'Then count me grateful. But
back to you — you're all right? You didn't fall or anything?'

'Not yet, knock on aluminum.' Mrs. Peebly was leaning down, one hand on the walker,
the other reaching for the door handle of her garage door, a twin to the one AnnaLise
had just raised.

'Stop!'

Startled, Mrs. Peebly looked up, back still bent and now twisted at the waist like
the center strip of a pretzel.

'Sorry,' AnnaLise said. 'I meant, let me get that for you.'

The moment she had the door high enough for Mrs. Peebly to fit under, the woman pushed
a button on her key fob and crab-walked to a black Cadillac that answered 'tweet-tweet'.

Another brain tickle.

'You lock your car when it's inside the garage?' Typical some places, but rare to
unheard-of in Sutherton, at least from AnnaLise's experience.

'You sound like your mother. "You're too trusting, Daisy", I say to her. "You ain't
lived near as long as I have. Nor seen what I seen."'

'Daisy doesn't listen?'

''Course not.' Mrs. Peebly tried the passenger door and, when it didn't open, pushed
on her key fob again. 'Though we wouldn't have to lock our cars, if these old garage
doors still locked. They need fixing.'

AnnaLise saw her wedge. 'They
need
replacing. New doors and electronic openers.'

'Waste of money,' Mrs. Peebly said. 'But I have to admit I'm getting mighty tired
of ruining my umbrellas.' She gestured toward the wall next to the door.

'Umbrellas?' Sure enough, AnnaLise saw a green and white golf umbrella resting there
on a mangled metal tip. 'What happened to it?'

'Got bent, that's what. You think it's easy getting it through that track nice and
snug?'

AnnaLise looked at the vertical track assembly and then the door itself, overhead.

'Ohh, I see,' she said as light — though dim and battery-operated — finally dawned.
'The metal bar that slid through the track to secure the door is missing, so you're
replacing it with... an umbrella?'

'I am, and Daisy would be wise to do likewise. I even offered to buy her the equipment.
But your mother, if you don't mind me saying, is obstinate as a mule. During the day,
I don't even bother locking up no more. What good does it do, if her side is wide
open?'

A point, but: 'If you
both
... lock them from the inside, how do either of you get out?'