Free Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2) by Sandra Balzo Page A

Lux,’ AnnaLise read on the screen. ‘Nice website.’
    ‘Joy Tamarack put it up,’ Daisy said. ‘That's why Sheree Pepper talked her into helping with the Sutherton Visitor site.’
    ‘I imagine Joy didn't take much convincing,’ AnnaLise said, writing down the phone number. ‘Both of them are businesswomen and have a stake in Sutherton's future.’
    ‘And they embrace it, something you might try sometimes.’
    ‘Embracing Sutherton's future?’ AnnaLise asked with trepidation. No matter how long she needed to stay in Sutherton for Daisy, she clung to the belief that she'd be back at her job in Wisconsin, sooner rather than later.
    ‘No, not Sutherton 's future, just the future. You know, modern times. Honestly, sometimes I think you're the mother.’
    AnnaLise wouldn't say it, but sometimes she felt the same, and had since she was five and Timothy Griggs had died.
    ‘OK,’ said AnnaLise, taking the sticky note she'd written the phone number on. ‘I'm going to call to see if Joy is at the spa. If she is, can I use your car?’
    ‘Sure,’ the real mother said, starting up the stairs. ‘I'm just amazed you want to drive up there so soon after our accident.’ She made the turn at the landing where Timothy Griggs' gun cabinet still stood, and disappeared.
    ‘Wanting and having are two different things,’ her daughter called after her.
    ***
    As it happened, no drive up the mountain was necessary, because Joy had ‘gone home,’ according to the young man who answered the Spa phone.
    With Joy still not answering her cell phone, AnnaLise was left with one option: tracking her friend down at home. The only problem was that for the time being, Joy was living at the Sutherton Inn – the very same place the man AnnaLise planned to warn her against also was staying.
    District Attorney Ben Rosewood did not believe in accidents. If something happened – a person killed or hurt – then someone must be responsible and made to pay. It was the way the man ran his office. And his life. Only now his wife was the decedent and AnnaLise feared it would be Joy who paid.
    Pulling on a light jacket against the fall weather, AnnaLise called up to Daisy that she was leaving and stepped outside.
    The inn was only a few blocks down Main Street and on a beautiful day, with the leaves changing, it should have been a nice walk.
    But instead, AnnaLise was thinking about a stormy morning in Wisconsin this past spring, when a sixteen-year-old girl's car slid on wet pavement and jumped a curb, killing her best friend who she was going to offer a lift.
    To Ben, it was a crime – vehicular homicide, to be exact. To AnnaLise, it was a heartbreaking accident that had already taken one young life and now threatened to ruin another's. The issue wasn't the only thing the two disagreed on, but it was one that made AnnaLise begin to re-examine their relationship.
    Climbing the steps to the front porch of the Sutherton Inn, AnnaLise said a little prayer of gratitude for Sheree Pepper, who'd saved the graceful structure from the wrecking ball and converted it into a money-making venture that made the most of the building's charm. The California bungalow was built on the east shore of Lake Sutherton in 1916 by a wealthy cotton broker so he and his family could escape the heat of Charlotte's summer. Other wealthy moguls followed, but though ‘McMansions’ like Bradenham and Preston Place still lined the west shore of the lake, most of the truly original palatial homes that graced the east had been long-since razed.
    Not that this sad fact stopped tour-boat operators from taking unsuspecting visitors out for ‘historical’ cruises of the elegant lakeside estates only to be subjected to two hours of, ‘See that stump? That's the spot where the legendary (fill in the blank)'s home stood . . .’
    AnnaLise tapped on the stained-glass panel of the inn's door, and then tried the knob, which turned. Stepping into the lobby, she gave a shout: ‘Anybody