Maggie Lee (Book 23): The Hitwoman and the Exorcism

by Lynn, JB

  I nodded.

  “Good, because somebody with a taste for blood should always be a meat eater.”

  “I don’t have a taste for blood,” I said defensively.

  He considered me for a long moment, and then nodded. “No, you have a sense of what’s right.” He rolled down his window as a waiter on rollerblades approached the car. “What do you want?”

  “Anything’s fine,” I said, feeling the need to prove that I was not a wimpy non-meat eater.

  He ordered quickly two of everything, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and root beer floats.

  Personally, I’ve never understood the appeal of root beer floats. Ice cream is good. Soda’s okay. But the combination did nothing for me. But they were popular among a certain population, so I just nodded my fake approval.

  He rolled the window back up and turned in his seat to face me. “About the skull,” he began.

  “My dad said it’s cursed,” I blurted out.

  Gino raised his eyebrows and considered the announcement carefully before responding. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Then why did Delveccio have it?” I asked.

  “It’s who the skull belonged to when she was alive,” Gino explained.

  “It’s a she?” I asked.

  “Kind of sexist of you to have assumed it’s a male skull,” Gino joked with that grin that made him look like a schoolboy telling tales.

  I swallowed hard, trying to ignore how much I liked that look on him. “I assumed it belonged to some other mobster, and therefore assumed it was male.”

  “Not a mobster,” Gino said.

  “You know who it belonged to?” I asked curiously.

  “Some say it belonged to a witch,” Gino said.

  His words hung in the car between us and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious.

  “Oh, this can’t be good,” God muttered.

  Gino glanced down at my squeaking chest.

  “The lizard,” I explained.

  Gino nodded and didn’t make any effort to hide a smile. He has the kind of smile that makes me forget he could get the order to kill me at any time, and I found myself grinning back.

  “You’re an interesting woman, Maggie.”

  “People have said worse.” I liked that he didn’t seem to care that I talked to my animals and went around killing bad people. In some ways, I had the impression Gino knew me better than almost anybody else in my life.

  The server arrived with our food, rapping on the window and interrupting the moment. Gino shrugged ruefully and rolled down his window so the server could place the tray with all of our food down. When the server skated away, Gino handed me a root beer. “To finding the skull,” he said, raising his float in a toast.

  We attempted to clink our paper cups before sipping from the drinks.

  I did my best not to grimace at how sweet the ice cream and soda mixture was. We ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, neither one of us feeling the need to have a conversation. We were almost done eating when Gino said, “The skull belonged to Angel’s mother.”

  I almost choked on the last bite of hot dog that I was trying to swallow.

  Gino calmly handed me a napkin as I continued to splutter. Some of the hot dog roll had gone down the wrong pipe.

  “Why was he keeping his sister’s skull?” I finally managed to wheeze.

  Gino shrugged. “I don’t really know. That was before my time.”

  “So why does everybody want it so badly?” I asked.

  “Angel.”

  I stared at the bodyguard. “You’re going to have to give me more than that to work with.”

  Gino looked away and stared out the window. “The skull is evidence,” he said.

  “Evidence of what?” I said, though really confused. I didn’t see what Angel would have to do with his mother’s skull.

  “Her body was never found.”

  “But I’ve been to the mausoleum.” It had been a strange and uncomfortable meeting place, but I’d been there.

  “Yeah, but she’s not in there,” Gino said.

  “But they kept her skull?” I found myself asking again.

  “Some people keep ashes, the Delveccios keep skulls,” Gino replied like it was the most normal thing to do.

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with Angel,” I told him.

  “The skull just might be proof that he killed his mother,” Gino admitted quietly.

  I stared at him. “Angel?”

  “The Boy Scout?” God piped up from his hiding spot.

  “Yeah,” Gino said. “Apparently, Mr. Squeaky Clean killed her.”

  There was no way the man who had helped to care for Katie after her accident, the man who hated his family’s business, could kill anybody. “I don’t believe it. Not Angel. He’s not the kind.”

  Gino leaned back in his seat and considered me carefully. “I agree, he’s not. I don’t know what happened, I haven’t heard all of the details.”

  “How did she die?” I found myself asking. Not that I believed it, but I needed more details if I was going to make more sense of this story.

  “Apparently, he shoved her down the stairs,” Gino said. “He was just a kid at the time.”

  I thought about the marble staircase in Delveccio’s home and could imagine falling down it would result in death.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, trying to imagine Angel, as a boy, pushing anyone down those stairs. But the Angel I knew couldn’t hurt a fly. “Not Angel.”

  “Do we ever really know anybody?” Gino asked softly.

  I shook my head. “I guess not.”

  8

  I sat there, in Gino’s car, thinking I was going to throw up the hot dog, French fries, and onion rings I’d just eaten. Normally, I would have blamed it on the root beer float, but I knew it was because I was trying to accept the possibility that Angel had killed his own mother.

  All of a sudden, Gino began to laugh. A great big belly laugh, echoing off the walls of the vehicle.

  Glaring at him, I said, “It’s not funny.”

  He shook his head, seemingly overcome by whatever was amusing him. He laughed and laughed until he was gasping for breath, tears coming out of the corners of his eyes.

  The more he laughed, the angrier I became. The fact that he wasn’t taking this seriously, that I had to find this skull, in order to protect Angel, was weighing heavily on me and he found the whole thing amusing.

  Finally, he gasped. “Your paranoia is one thing, but boy, I didn’t realize how gullible you were.”

  I froze for a moment as his words tried to sink into my psyche.

  “What?” I asked with a lack of eloquence.

  “Angel didn’t kill his mother.” Gino laughed. “I was just winding you up.”

  “And he did a very good job of it,” God remarked.

  I wanted to smack Gino and crush God at that moment. “Wait,” I said, still not able to wrap my mind around what was going on. “Are you telling me you just made all of that up?”

  “Well, not the part about the boss still wanting the skull,” Gino admitted. “But everything else, yeah. If you could have seen your face…”

  He began to chuckle all over again.

  I smacked his shoulder. “Shut up.”

  That just made him laugh harder.

  “So, whose skull is it?” I asked, throwing up my hands.

  Gino shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “But you said you knew it was cursed.”

  He shook his head. “You said it was cursed, and I just went from there. You don’t really think it’s cursed, do you?”

  Considering he already knew I was paranoid, and gullible, I didn’t think adding insane to the list was a good idea, so I shook my head.

  He peered closely at me. “Yes, you do.”

  I turned and looked away from him, staring out the window angrily. He had fooled me about something so important, seemingly just because he wan
ted to get a laugh out of it.

  “Why are we here?” I let my tone convey my annoyance.

  “Because every other time I see you, something’s always going wrong,” Gino said. “I wanted to see what it would be like to just sit and talk to you for a bit.”

  “And you thought making fun of me was the way to do it?” I asked.

  “I thought you’d find it funny,” Gino said quietly. “You’re always so serious, I was just trying to make you laugh.”

  I turned to look back at him and fixed him with a hard stare. “Yeah, well, you were wrong.”

  “I hadn’t realized you were that hung up on Angel,” he admitted.

  He began gathering the trash from our meal and putting it back on the tray that was balanced on the window of his car.

  “I’m not,” I said defensively. “But that doesn’t mean I want to see him go to jail.”

  Gino turned back and looked me in the eye. “What about me, Maggie? Do you want to see me go to jail?”

  I gulped and shook my head. I wasn’t sure what was happening between us. Our relationship had always been strictly professional, but lately I’d gotten the impression that he wanted something more from me. Making me look like a fool wasn’t the way that was going to happen.

  As though he recognized that, Gino turned his head away and sighed. “The boss really does want the skull back. Maybe I can help you find it.”

  It wasn’t like I could tell him that Zippy had buried it in Ian’s yard somewhere.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked. “Do you have a line on it? Did your mom tell you something?”

  “Don’t you even mention my mother,” I told him angrily. “I understand that you watch me, and you see who I talk to, but no one, not you, not your boss, nobody has the right to talk about my mother.”

  “You really are as loyal as the boss thinks you are,” Gino said with wonderment. “It’s one of your more redeeming qualities, according to him, but I’m not sure it’s not a weakness.”

  “Along with my paranoia and gullibility?” I asked, still stinging from being fooled.

  Gino shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Let’s say I find the skull,” I said. “I give it back to you, and Delveccio forgets that it was my father that took it from him in the first place?”

  Gino shrugged. “That’s not my call.”

  I frowned, staring out the window, trying to figure out how I could possibly win in this situation.

  “If the boss wanted your dad dead, he’d be dead,” Gino said.

  I looked at him. “Would you be the one to do that?”

  Gino shrugged. “For the most part, I’m there to protect him. He has other…assets, that would do that kind of work.”

  I frowned, knowing that Patrick Mulligan and I were among his assets.

  “I’m not sure he feels the same way about your brother,” Gino warned. “You need to make sure he doesn’t give the skull to the M.E. that he’s seeing.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t particularly enthused about the idea of my half-brother Ian dating the medical examiner, either.

  “Have you met her?” Gino asked expectantly.

  I shook my head. “We don’t really go on double dates or anything.”

  “You should.”

  “I don’t date,” I muttered, exasperated.

  “No,” Gino said, “you didn’t understand what I meant. You should meet her.”

  I looked at him closely. “Why?”

  With a look I couldn’t quite figure out, he said, “So you can understand how complicated this situation really is.”

  I got the distinct impression that he knew something I didn’t. That he was trying to warn me about something, without endangering his position with Delveccio.

  “Are you paying attention?” God asked suddenly.

  Gino’s eyes widened at the squeaking noise, but he also noticed that the server was returning to pick up the tray and receive payment. He reached for his wallet.

  “What he’s told you, is that he likes you,” God continued, oblivious to the fact that he shouldn’t be talking right now. “And he’s trying to warn you about something. He’s never done anything but look out for you. You should be paying attention to what he’s saying.”

  Thankfully, the lizard stopped talking as Gino finished with the server.

  He turned back to me. “I’ll take you back to your car.”

  “Thanks.”

  He started the engine, but before he could put the car into gear, I reached out and touched his arm.

  He looked over at me, surprised.

  “I really do appreciate all the help you’ve given me,” I said quietly.

  “I try,” he said. “But you have to remember something, when it comes down to it, keeping you alive isn’t part of my job description.”

  9

  I was driving home from the mental institution when God asked the question, “How do you know that Zippy is possessed?”

  I glanced over at the dashboard where he was resting, then brought my eyes back to the road in front of me. “RV told me. You heard her.”

  “But what if you’re being naïve about that, too?”

  “Listen, buddy,” I told him angrily, still smarting from the way Gino had fooled me. “I didn’t hear you piping up at any time to say that it couldn’t possibly be Angel’s mother’s skull.”

  “I was being respectful and not interrupting,” the lizard countered.

  “You, who can’t keep your mouth shut most of the time, were being respectful,” I snorted. “Who are you fooling? You were just as taken in by Gino’s story as I was.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” he said snootily. “That doesn’t mean RV has been telling you the truth.”

  “Could be.” I squeezed the steering wheel even tighter. “But you have to admit that Zippy is a little terror.”

  “No doubt about that,” the little lizard said. “And I’m not saying he’s not possessed, just that how do we know for sure?”

  “Maybe we can get Armani to run some kind of test,” I said slowly. I wasn’t looking forward to broaching the subject that RV might be fooling all of us. Armani seemed to be in awe of what she called the other woman’s powers.

  “We should do it now rather than later,” God said.

  “We?” I asked. “Are you going to interject yourself into conversations? Or are you just going to continue to be respectfully silent?”

  “Sarcasm is not a sign of intelligence,” God said haughtily.

  It was relatively quiet when we got back to the compound. The pink RV was parked at the top of the driveway, but the owner wasn’t running around it in circles. Nobody was yelling. No animals were scurrying about. It seemed peaceful, like a normal home. That made me really nervous.

  Armani stepped out of the main building and limped toward me as I got out of the car. “There you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  “Did you go to see your mother?”

  I nodded.

  “And…?” Armani peered at me eagerly, wanting to know what her Scrabble tile prediction had resulted in.

  “It was a good visit,” I admitted. “I was glad I went. Thank you. Mom was lucid.”

  “That’s great,” Armani beamed. “Maybe being in RV’s general vicinity is strengthening my powers.”

  I glanced in the direction of the camper van, then looked around us, and determined that nobody else was around. “About RV,” I said carefully.

  Armani’s gaze narrowed and she scrunched her nose a little, as though she knew she wouldn’t like what I was going to say. Maybe she had more psychic powers than I was giving her credit for. “What about her?”

  “How do we really know that Zippy is possessed?”

  Armani blinked. “Because she told us so.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just her word against his.”

  “Oh,” Armani said. “Did you ask him if he’s possessed?”

  I shook my
head, knowing that most of my conversations with the little white dog did not go well. “Not yet.”

  Armani shrugged. “If RV says it, it must be true.”

  I frowned, not liking her blind dedication to the woman she barely knew. “There must be some way to figure it out.”

  Armani tapped her foot impatiently and gave me a hard stare. “You’re serious about this?”

  I nodded.

  Scowling, she gave the matter thought for a few moments, then said, “You’ll need Herschel’s help.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was going to need Herschel’s help because he was Zippy’s owner, or because he was my grandmother’s ex. Either way, I wasn’t sure involving him was the best plan.

  Armani waved at a car that was coming down the driveway toward us. “I figured you’d be too busy to help out at The Corset, so I recruited another judge.”

  The car stopped in front of us and the driver lowered the window. A familiar face stuck her head out, “Hi, Maggie.”

  “Hi Tara.” I smiled at the animal control officer who’d ended up with my old boss Harry, he who always smelled like pepperoni. “How’ve you been?”

  “Good, great,” she replied. “You should come by and see some of the jobs we’ve done.”

  I nodded, remembering that she and Armani had gone into the decorating business together. “I’ll do that.”

  “Get Herschel to help,” Armani reminded me, before getting into Tara’s car.

  “Hey, sugar,” Piss purred, emerging from around the corner as they drove away. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Is Katie okay?” I asked.

  “She’s taking a nap,” the cat said. “DeeDee is with her.”

  “And what about Zippy?” I asked.

  “The pig kept trying to befriend him.” Her whiskers twitched with amusement. “I guess after a while, he just couldn’t take it anymore and now he’s disappeared.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing. Maybe if Zippy has disappeared, all of our problems would be solved.

  As though he read my mind, God reminded me, “You need him to find the skull to make Delveccio happy.”

  I sighed.

  “Maybe Herschel can convince him to give it back to you,” Piss suggested.