Hit and Run Read Online Free Page B

‘Why isn’t this thing working?’
    â€˜Sorry, dear, I forgot. I had to pull out the doo-hickey this morning to open it.’
    The ‘doo-hickey’ being the cord that hung above each car’s space and allowed a person to disengage the automatic garage door openers that AnnaLise had had installed at some expense and one gigantic helping of aggravation from both Daisy and Mrs Peebly.
    â€˜You …? Why?’ AnnaLise put the Chrysler into drive and pulled forward to the curb.
    â€˜The electricity was off, and I needed to go to the store.’
    â€˜It was? The power, I mean?’ AnnaLise frowned, trying to imagine her tiny mother hitching herself up on the car to reach the cord. ‘I didn’t notice.’
    â€˜The house was fine,’ Daisy said, opening the passenger door. ‘I’ll get the door.’
    â€˜Oh, no you won’t,’ AnnaLise said, swinging the driver’s side open as well. ‘That thing weighs a ton.’
    â€˜I’m fifty, not a hundred and fifty, and you and I are the same height,’ her mother said. ‘If I can lift the thing I can certainly lower it.’
    â€˜But—’
    Too late, her mother was pulling on the garage door, which rolled down with a thud, nearly catching Daisy’s foot like a guillotine for toes.
    â€˜They had to take the springs off when they installed the automatic opener,’ AnnaLise explained as Daisy climbed back in.
    â€˜More trouble than it’s worth. And I recall telling you not to bother in the first place.’
    She had indeed, as had Mrs Peebly even more vociferously. In fact, AnnaLise wouldn’t put it past the older women to have sabotaged the garage’s electricity to unfairly advance their point of view.
    When AnnaLise had decided to have the door installed, she’d intended to be safely back in Wisconsin on her reporter beat while the cranky Mrs Peebly came to terms with the technology. But AnnaLise’s month-long leave of absence to deal with her mother’s troubles – and to
not
deal with her own, up north – had stretched to nearly twelve weeks now.
    With Daisy safely back in the car, AnnaLise pulled the hulking Chrysler away from the curb and to the stop sign at the corner. Turning left onto Main Street, she promptly pulled into an angle parking spot on the beach side of the road across from Mama Philomena’s.
    â€˜Spooky, isn’t it?’ Daisy said, looking out the car’s rear window toward the restaurant.
    AnnaLise nodded, taking in the battened-down shades of the restaurant and the hand-drawn ‘Closed ’til Monday’ sign behind the plate-glass window. The two-foot-high letters overhead that usually spelled out Mama Philomena’s in green neon were dark. Three p.m. on a Wednesday and the place was shut up tight. ‘Spooky doesn’t begin to capture it.’
    â€˜In all these years,’ Daisy said slowly, ‘I can’t remember Mama’s ever being closed for an entire weekend, much less a five-day one.’
    â€˜Well, then she certainly does deserve a vacation.’ AnnaLise tapped the horn to signal to Phyllis that they were waiting. While they all had gathered regularly in both the restaurant and Griggs Market when it was open, Mama guarded her privacy to the edge of zealotry. AnnaLise could count on her thumbs the number of times she herself had actually entered the small apartment behind the restaurant.
    â€˜Deserves a vacation, yes,’ her mother said. ‘But that’s entirely different than taking one. I don’t understand why Phyllis … well, she kind of invited herself along, now, didn’t she?’
    â€˜To be fair, I included her. I figured she’d be able to convince you to come to Hart’s shindig.’
    â€˜Did you think I’d let you go by yourself?’ Daisy asked, crinkling her sun-freckled nose.
    â€˜No, I thought you’d guilt me