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

houses built on the sides of mountains. ‘
    ‘Good to know,’ Daisy said. ‘Aren't you glad you hired Eames for the garage, AnnaLise?’
    But her daughter wasn't listening. She was watching the silent TV image of a barely recognizable yellow Porsche being tow-lined onto the ramp of a flatbed truck.

Nine
    ‘It's my fault, you know,’ Daisy was saying to Phyllis Balisteri the next morning.
    ‘Yours? Why?’
    AnnaLise’s surrogate mother held up the coffee pot to offer her a refill, but the younger woman shook her head. Seated with Daisy in Mama's private booth, she'd barely been able to keep the first cup of java down.
    ‘I told that woman to take the bridge,’ Daisy said, turning to face AnnaLise across table. ‘You were right about it, you know. The thing's a death trap.’
    ‘Daisy Lorraine Kuchenbacher Griggs,’ Mama said, ‘you're making yourself all too important in this drama. The woman – from what, Minny-sota?’
    AnnaLise forced herself to offer, ‘No, Wisconsin.’
    ‘Same difference. She didn't know the mountain and went barreling back down too fast and ran off the road, pure and simple, with plenty of examples beforehand. That's her fault, not yours.’
    Mama did have a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Whether you wanted it separated or not.
    ‘Well, then they should put up a railing along that stretch, Phyllis. AnnaLise and I nearly went over at the identical spot on the opposite end of the bridge, didn't we?’
    ‘So what would you have the town do, Daisy, fence off the entire mountain? And then there's the lake, all them college kids and tourists wandering in and drowning? Maybe we should build a stockade around that, too.’
    Phyllis put the carafe back on the heating element of the coffee brewer and came back, moving a copy of Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars, 1979 , before sliding in next to AnnaLise across from Daisy. ‘’Round here, we don't figure it's our job to protect people from their own stupidity.’ She twisted her head toward AnnaLise, ‘No offense.’
    ‘None taken.’
    Ever since Ida Mae Babb had dropped them off at Mama's restaurant earlier that morning, the accident had seemed the main topic of conversation. The media coverage hadn't identified the woman whose body was found in the car, confirmed as a Porsche with Wisconsin plates, but everyone seemed to know. In Sutherton, both news and conjecture traveled at warp-speed.
    ‘Had to be the mother of that girl who's dating Joshua Eames,’ Mrs Peebly, Daisy's next- door neighbor and garage co-owner, was seated at the booth across from them, her aluminum-frame walker blocking the aisle.
    Weird, AnnaLise thought. The people of Sutherton seem to know more about the Rosewood family than she did. ‘So Josh and Suzanne are a couple?" she asked, thinking back to the two talking outside Mama's. "Since when?’
    ‘I think it might be stretching it a bit to say they're dating,’ Daisy said. ‘Though I did see that girl with Joshua last year during U-Mo's open-house week.’ She looked at Mama. ‘We helped with refreshments, remember?’
    ‘I do.’ Phyllis bobbed her head. ‘Though I can't say I've seen the girl between then and now.’
    Mrs Peebly snickered. ‘Don't mean they haven't been seeing each other. There's this thing they call the Internet now, you know, and Skope.’
    ‘The mouthwash?’ Mama seemed puzzled, and that didn't happen often.
    ‘I think she means Skype,’ AnnaLise forced herself to participate. ‘It's – ’
    ‘Hell's bells, I know what Skype is,’ Mama said. ‘You think I was born yesterday, AnnieLeez?’
    More like a half-century of yesterdays, though Mama and Daisy seemed less set in their ways at fifty than AnnaLise was at the age of twenty-eight.
    ‘Love at first sight, those two,’ Mrs Peebly was saying. ‘Nice girl, even if her father and mother, bless her soul, come on uppity. Sheree Pepper says the woman was nothing but trouble.’
    ‘Well, it