Hit and Run Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Further Titles from Sandra Balzo

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Further Titles from Sandra Balzo

  The Main Street Mystery Series

  RUNNING ON EMPTY *

  DEAD ENDS *

  HIT AND RUN *

  The Maggy Thorsen Mysteries

  UNCOMMON GROUNDS

  GROUNDS FOR MURDER *

  BEAN THERE, DONE THAT *

  BREWED, CRUDE AND TATTOOED *

  FROM THE GROUNDS UP *

  A CUP OF JO *

  TRIPLE SHOT *

  MURDER ON THE ORIENT ESPRESSO *

  * available from Severn House

  HIT AND RUN

  A Main Street Murder Mystery

  Sandra Balzo

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Sandra Balzo.

  The right of Sandra Balzo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Balzo, Sandra.

  Hit and run. – (The Main Street mystery series)

  1. Griggs, AnnaLise (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Birthfathers–Fiction. 3. Heirs–Fiction. 4. Murder–

  Investigation–Fiction. 5. North Carolina–Social

  conditions–Fiction. 6. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8394-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-541-3 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Jerry, my soul and Hart’s inspiration

  ONE

  AnnaLise Griggs couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Who did you say you intend to invite?’

  Seated on the opposite side of his massive antique desk, Dickens Hart grinned. ‘You’re the wordsmith, my dear, but I do believe the proper pronoun in that question would be “whom.”’

  AnnaLise clenched her teeth. ‘OK, whom did—’

  Hart nodded toward a stack of papers between them. ‘By now, you’ve probably already made a functional guest list yourself.’

  Of course, AnnaLise thought, a mite dazed. After all, didn’t every bastard child keep track of her philandering father’s conquests? Notwithstanding, of course, her own mother, Lorraine ‘Daisy’ Kuchenbacher Griggs, who had raised AnnaLise with absolutely no help from the indisputable bastard across the desk.

  AnnaLise raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry, Dickens. Did you say … “guest list”?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hart raked a hand through his wavy white hair, a perfected gesture combining impatience, arrogance and – mainly – vanity.

  Dickens Hart had regularly penned ‘Dear Diary’ journals for his private amusement. And AnnaLise, under contract to compile them into a publishable memoir, had begun slogging, then just skimming, her way volume-by-volume. According to her birth father’s many enthusiastic entries, he’d been quite the happening guy back in the seventies, especially after he’d opened White Tail Lodge, a North Carolina High Country rip-off of the Playboy Club concept.

  Situated on Sutherton Lake like the current palatial mansion where they sat, the lodge had been a ‘gentlemen’s club,’ featuring ‘fawns’ – essentially scantily-clad pseudo-Bunnies – supposedly to serve and entertain the clientele. Clipping after curled-corner clipping from local newspapers and glossy regional magazines showed Hart smiling down the lens as some young female’s manicured fingers toyed with his shaggy and darker hair.

  ‘You went through my journals,’ Hart was now saying. ‘You must have found my big black book.’

  ‘You’ve given me at least a dozen boxes of journals, diaries and memorabilia,’ AnnaLise protested. ‘Not to mention digital files on computer disks from back when they still were floppy. How could I possibly—’ She interrupted herself. ‘Your big black book? Don’t you mean little black book?’

  Hart shook his head and held his palms about six inches apart. ‘Big’ – sliding his hands out another six inches – ‘as in bigger, and even … biggest.’

  What a pig, thought AnnaLise.

  But said ‘pig’ had hired her for his memoir project, though admittedly before she knew he was her biological father. On an indefinite leave of absence from a reporter’s job in Wisconsin while she tried to sort out her Sutherton mother’s ongoing memory problems, AnnaLise was in no position to turn down a paying job.

  Especially a well-paying job. One hundred thousand dollars as an advance, with a fifty/fifty split of royalties, should there be any. As the saying goes, money can’t buy love. Or even respect. But, in this case, it could rent days – nay, weeks, if not months – of AnnaLise’s professional time.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t come across this book yet,’ she said, making a note. ‘You say it’s black?’

  ‘I was using a half-truth to make a joke. And probably a bad one at that.’ Hart shifted in his chair, at least having the decency to look uncomfortable, as though actually recognizing that he’d stepped over the line in conversation with a blood-child. ‘It has a black-and-white speckled cover with my name on the front in a juvenile’s handwriting.’

  Wait a minute. ‘You’re talking about a student’s composition book? Geez, Dickens, at what age did you start tallying—’ AnnaLise waved away her own question. ‘Sorry, none of my business.’

  ‘Oh, but it is exactly that. You’re writing my memoir, and even those early …’ H
art put out his hands again, this time fingers splayed, ‘… “peccadillos” are a large part of the story. One might even view me as a bit of a hound.’

  That struck AnnaLise as beneath the dignity of understatement. Even though she’d only skimmed through most of the handwritten journals so far, it was clear that the man had seen more tail than the proverbial last dog in a sled-team harness.

  She said, ‘As one progeny of your “hounding,” I’m curious about something.’ A pause. ‘Do I have any litter-mates?’

  Hart shifted again, his uncomfortable expression now approaching pained. ‘Honest answer? None with your mother, Lorraine – or “Daisy,” as I know you call her. But, otherwise, I’m not entirely sure. I was hoping you’d find any, if they exist.’

  ‘And, as I started to ask you, invite them to dinner here in your rustic, waterfront cabin?’ Horror at the idea made AnnaLise’s tone rise half an octave.

  ‘Actually, I thought a long weekend might be better, even optimum. With, of course, their respective mothers attending as well.’

  ‘You do understand that you’re out of your mind?’

  ‘I do. Or at least that my invitation could be seen as evidence of my being such.’ Dickens Hart suddenly appeared old. And very serious. ‘Listen, my dear. As disingenuous as it might sound, I truly want to do right by any children I may have fathered, even if they are unbeknownst to me.’

  ‘Unbeknownst?’ AnnaLise echoed incredulously, not managing to hurdle the what to get to the equally curious question of why – or, more particularly – why now? ‘Weren’t you there?’ Did the guy really think he was God, right down to the miracle of Immaculate Conception?

  A frown. ‘I’m just telling you that not one of the women I’ve been with ever told me about a pregnancy. Except, of course, for Ema Bradenham.’

  Ema Bradenham, mother of one of AnnaLise’s oldest friends, Sutherton mayor Bobby Bradenham. Ema was pregnant and needed money, making the rich “hound” an awfully tempting target. ‘But wouldn’t the other women, who actually became pregnant by you, have come—’

  Now an awkward, if theatrical shrug. ‘Your mother didn’t.’

  AnnaLise clenched her teeth again. Lorraine Kuchenbacher Griggs had made that ‘one mistake’ with her boss at the time, Dickens Hart, but never revealed her condition to him. Instead, she’d married Timothy Griggs, a good man who’d loved her. And loved Daisy’s child, as well, despite the fact he knew AnnaLise couldn’t have been his own.

  Decision time. ‘OK, I’ll dig out this “black book” of whatever size, but I’ll be damned if I track down your … girlfriends.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Hart said hastily. ‘I’ll have Patrick Hoag draft the letter of invitation.’

  Patrick Hoag, Esquire, represented Dickens Hart and not three weeks earlier AnnaLise had accompanied her birth father to the law firm of Hoag, Christiaansen and Weir. There, Hart had insisted on legally acknowledging AnnaLise as his daughter, though not before a DNA test – at AnnaLise’s insistence – which had come back as conclusive.

  ‘So, I drop the notebook off with Patrick?’

  ‘Ah, no. Given his law firm’s gleeful fee increases every time it sends me an invoice, I see my money better spent by having Boozer track down the leads first. He can then provide Patrick with names and current mailing addresses for the actual letters themselves.’

  Boozer Bacchus III was a broad-shouldered man of about sixty-five. AnnaLise had been told that he’d served Dickens Hart in one capacity or another since the opening of White Tail Lodge. Despite his name, or perhaps because of it, AnnaLise had never seen the man take a drink. The propensities of his grandfather and father – Boozers Sr and Jr – were, however, up for grabs.

  With a sigh, AnnaLise jotted another note on her pad. ‘OK, I’m to find your composition book and then give it to Boozer.’

  Hart squirmed, his expression now clearly pained. ‘Actually, I’d prefer that you study it first and generate a list of names with the most current, pertinent data for each. There are, I’m sure, certain personal … uhm, evaluations of my encounters that I’d just as soon not have come to his attention.’

  AnnaLise had a tough time believing that Boozer had missed many of his boss’s self-described ‘peccadillos.’ Maybe if Hart was so concerned about appearances, he should have kept his ‘peccer’ in his pants. ‘But you don’t mind that your own daughter sees these “performance grades”?’

  ‘As you’ve just resurrected, AnnaLise, we are, after all, family.’ A shadow crossed Hart’s face. ‘Though you might want to skip over any entries about Lorraine. And certainly don’t pass them on to Boozer.’

  All of a sudden, Mr Sensitive.

  AnnaLise reminded herself of the medical bills stacking up on the Griggs’ kitchen table for Daisy’s initial battery of neurological tests. And how many actual dollars her daughter might need to pony up toward covering the rapidly accruing twenty percent of those costs that Daisy’s insurance wouldn’t.

  So,’ AnnaLise said, ‘to sum up, I should give Boozer the “most current pertinent data” on each wom—’ AnnaLise looked up. ‘I assume they are all female?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hart’s surprise at the question turned to a blush of apparently genuine embarrassment. ‘I mean, I did once consider—’

  ‘Sorry I asked,’ AnnaLise said, to ward off any remainder of his answer. ‘What do you consider to be “pertinent data” so far as Boozer is concerned?’ Height? Weight? Bra size?

  Her father looked relieved to move onto safer ground. ‘My black-and-white notebook entries are, not surprisingly, chronological. You’ll find names, dates and, uhm … places?’

  AnnaLise looked up. ‘As in cities, states?’

  ‘Well, both. But more … specific details, too, such as rooms.’

  ‘Hotel rooms?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  AnnaLise began to wonder about the ‘specific’ aspect. Perhaps entries like Tuesday, October 3, 1974: 6 p.m., linen-topped table in dining area; 9:05, bearskin rug before a roaring fire near—

  Hart cleared his throat. ‘I think simply providing Boozer with each woman’s name and the date and location of my being with her should be adequate. You’ll find a cross reference of sorts in the back of the book.’

  ‘Cross reference?’ AnnaLise’s sometimes accursed reporter’s training made her reflexively ask cringe-inducing questions. Cringe-inducing for the questioner, at least.

  ‘By state and city, as you guessed earlier. Oh, and when necessary, by country also.’

  Now AnnaLise cleared her own throat and, not as successfully, her mind. ‘Might you also have noted where a given woman was from? And her age, at least approximately?’

  ‘So far as I knew at the time, yes. Which is just the kind of information Boozer should find helpful in searching for each, as opposed to—’

  ‘How good you thought she was in bed?’

  ‘Exactly.’ AnnaLise’s father, bless his lustfully dark heart, sounded relieved. ‘As a journalist, you’ll instinctively know what’s important.’

  Instinctively, AnnaLise thought, she knew the whole scenario stank to High Country heaven. ‘You had a vasectomy at some point after I was conceived?’

  ‘Yes, mid-eighties, roughly,’ Hart said. ‘But how could you – oh, from my journals. Of course.’

  It hadn’t been, though AnnaLise wasn’t going to tell the man that. Her friend Joy Tamarack had the misfortune of being Hart’s third – and last – wife more than a decade after his one-nighter with Daisy had resulted in AnnaLise’s conception. It was Joy who had been the not-so-confidential source on the operation.

  The fiery little blonde was also not the most discreet of people under any circumstance, but she really threw caution to the winds when it came to her ex-husband. Except, of course, for keeping hidden whatever tidbit of information Joy had on Hart that leveraged her high enough to receive pretty much whatever she wanted from him, starting with a handsome divorce settlement.

  AnnaLise h
oped to find out more about the ‘tidbit’ via Hart’s own journals, though she was less anxious to reach ‘My Vasectomy: The Inside Story.’ Especially if Hart wrote about it as extensively as he had about every other aspect of his life so far. Even after thoroughly studying the first half-dozen spiral notebooks crammed with boyish scribblings about classroom and playground triumphs, AnnaLise had barely reached the young man in seventh grade. All the chronicling and introspection made her wonder how much validation the thirteen-year-old had received from outside his own head. Like, for example, from his parents.

  Setting that question aside, as well, AnnaLise said, ‘I raise the snip-’n-clip only because, after that procedure, you couldn’t have impregnated anyone else. Do you want me to stop there?’

  ‘Why?’

  Either Hart was dense as a post or AnnaLise had become so. ‘I thought you wanted to find your natural children. Therefore, once—’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I see what you mean.’ There was a glint in the man’s eyes. ‘I have to admit, though, I wouldn’t mind seeing all my old flames, whether technically baby-mamas or not.’

  There was something very wrong about a near-septuagenarian warmly using the expression ‘baby-mama.’

  ‘Even your mansion here isn’t big enough for that size of a crowd,’ AnnaLise said, snapping her notepad closed and standing up. ‘So, I’ll find the appropriate information, pass it on to Boozer and he’ll carry the project from there.’

  Hart rose as well, rubbing an apparent crick from his lower back after their long, seated discussion. ‘Of course, you and your mother must come. And I’ll invite my ex-wives, as well as Bobby Bradenham, if only for old time’s sake.’

  ‘Old time’s’ being when Hart thought the young boy was his son. For his part, Bobby never knew the man living just across the lake thought he was his father. Good thing, given it turned out to be untrue, as confirmed by the paternity test Bobby had taken at the same time AnnaLise had hers. It was a push as to which of them was more disappointed by the results.

  ‘That’s very nice of you,’ AnnaLise lied, moving toward the office door. ‘And just when are you planning this soiree?’