Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, The

by Crusie, Jennifer; Dreyer, Eileen; Stuart, Anne

  “He’s a fine healthy-lookin’ bloodhound,” Joey said hastily. “He looked real good in his picture in the paper today. You did, too.” He paused, his voice straining to be casual. “How come old Rhett was wearing that stupid collar in that picture?”

  “The collar?” Agnes frowned at the phone. “It was just some junk jewelry—”

  The oven timer buzzed, and she said, “Hold on,” put down the phone, and took the now madly bubbling berries off the heat with one hand. Rhett picked up his head and barked as she reached for the oven door to get the tray of cupcakes inside, and Agnes turned, raspberry pan in hand, to see what he was upset about.

  A guy with a gun stood ten feet away in the doorway to the front hall, the bottom half of his face covered with a red bandana.

  “I come for your dog,” he said, pointing the gun at Rhett who was now baying at him, and Agnes said, “No!” and slung the raspberry pan at him, the hot syrup arcing out in front of it like napalm and catching him full in the face.

  He screamed as the sauce and then the pan hit him, pawing at the scalding fruit and dropping his gun to rip the bandana away as Rhett went for him. Agnes ran around the counter and scooped up the pan as Rhett barreled into him, and the guy went down flailing in the doorway, hitting the back of his head on the marble counter by the wall and knocking off every cupcake she had cooling there.

  “Goddamn it,” Agnes said, standing over him with her pan, her heart pounding.

  The guy didn’t move, and Rhett began to hoover up cupcakes at the speed of light.

  “Agnes?” Joey shouted from the phone on the counter. “What the fuck, Agnes?”

  Agnes kicked the gun into the housekeeper’s room and peered at the guy, trying to catch her breath. She was pretty sure that if he were conscious, he’d be twitching from the hot syrup, not to mention the slobber that Rhett was flinging his way.

  When he didn’t move, she backed up to grab the phone off the counter. “Some guy just showed up here with a gun and tried to take Rhett,” she told Joey, breathing hard. “But it’s okay, I’m in control, I’m not angry.” Goddammit.

  “Where is he?”

  “On the floor, in the hall doorway. He hit his head and knocked himself out. Joey, why would anybody want Rhett?”

  “Fuck that,” Joey said. “Get the hell out of there. Take Rhett with you.”

  “Like I’d leave him,” Agnes said, outraged. “I can’t get out. I told you, the guy’s lying across the hall door. I’ve seen those horror movies. He’ll come to and reach up and grab me.”

  “Get out the back door—”

  “I can’t, Doyle’s got it blocked with screen and boards. I’m going to hang up and call nine-one-one.”

  “No,” Joey said. “No cops. I’m comin’ over.”

  “What do you mean, no cops? I—”

  The dognapper stirred.

  “Wait a minute.” Agnes put the phone on the counter and held the frying pan at the ready, hands shaking, as she craned her neck to look closer at the dognapper.

  Young, just a teenager. Short. Skinny. Limp dirty dark hair. Stupid because if he’d had any brains, he’d have grabbed Rhett when he went out for his nightly pee. And now that he was unconscious, pretty harmless-looking. She probably outweighed him by thirty pounds.

  As she calmed down, she could hear Dr. Garvin’s voice in her head.

  How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

  Well, Dr. Garvin, I’m feeling a little angry that this punk broke into my house with a gun and threatened my dog.

  And how are you handling that anger, Agnes?

  I never touched him, I swear.

  The boy opened his eyes.

  “Don’t move.” Agnes held up her pan. “I’ve called the police,” she lied. “They’re coming for you. My dog is vicious and you don’t want to cross me, either, especially with a frying pan; you have no idea what I can do with a frying pan.” She took a deep breath, and the kid glared at her, and she looked closer at his face, seeing the lurid welts of singed skin where the raspberry had struck. “That’s gotta hurt. Not that I care.”

  He worked his battered jaw, and she held the frying pan higher as a threat.

  “So, tell me, you little creep,” Agnes said, “why were you trying to kill my dog?”

  “I weren’t tryin’ to kill the dog,” the boy said, outraged. “I wouldn’t kill no dog.”

  “The gun, Creepoid,” Agnes said. “You pointed a gun at him.”

  “I was just gonna take him,” the boy said. “There weren’t no call to get mean. I weren’t gonna hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt nobody.” He touched the sauce on his face and winced.

  The boy closed his eyes, and Agnes was reaching for the phone again when he rolled to his feet and lunged for her. She yelped and smacked him hard on the head with her pan, and he staggered, and then she hit him again, harder this time, just to make sure, and he fell back onto the floor, blood seeping down the side of his face, and lay still. She felt a qualm about that, but not much because it was self-defense, and he’d broken into her house, he’d scared the hell out of her, he had no right—

  Violence is not the answer, Agnes.

  That depends on the question, Dr. Garvin.

  —and she was not out of control, she was not angry, she was calm, she was shaking, but she was perfectly fine, and anyway it was a non-stick pan, not cast-iron, so she was fairly certain she hadn’t done any permanent damage.

  Fingers crossed, anyway.

  Beside him, Rhett collapsed, overcome by the number of cupcakes still on the floor.

  “I hate you,” she said to the unconscious boy. Then she picked up her phone, and said, “Joey?”

  “Don’t do anything, Agnes!” Joey yelled, the sounds of traffic in the background. “I’m on Route 17. I’m almost there.”

  “That’s good,” Agnes said, realizing her voice was shaking, too. “He’s just a kid, Joey. He said he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody—”

  The kid lunged to his feet, and Agnes screamed again and dropped the phone to swing the pan again, but this time he was ready for her, ducking under her arm and butting her in the stomach so that she said, “Oof!” and fell backward against the counter. She scrambled to her feet as he tried to backhand her, and she ducked and swung the pan again and hit him in the head, really hating him now, and then she hit him again, and then she couldn’t stop. She hit him over and over, gritting her teeth, and he yelled, “Stop it, stop it!” and grabbed for her while she pounded him, driving him back toward the hall door. She heard herself screaming at him, “Get out, get out, I hate you, get out of my house, get out of MY HOUSE!!!” as he lurched back, his arms across his head, and stepped in Rhett’s water dish and fell back into the wall, all of his weight hitting it, and then he fell through it, screaming.

  Agnes froze, the frying pan raised over her head, as he disappeared, and then the wall was solid again, and she heard a thud, and the screaming stopped, cut off.

  She stood there with the pan over her head for a moment, stunned, and then she lowered it slowly and clutched it to her chest, warm raspberry sauce and all, her heart beating like mad. She stared dumbfounded at the wall, waiting to see if he’d come rushing back through, like a ghost or something. When nothing happened, she went over and pushed cautiously with the pan on the place where the kid had disappeared.

  It swung open and shut again, the hideous wallpaper that had covered it now torn along the straight edge of a door frame.

  “Oh,” Agnes said, caught between amazement that there’d been a swinging door behind the wallpaper and fear that there was also a crazed moron behind there.

  “Agnes!” Joey yelled on the phone.

  Agnes took a deep breath and stepped back to the counter and picked it up. “What?”

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “There’s another door in my kitchen, right next to the hall door.” Agnes went back and pushed it open again, avoiding the rusted, broken nails that lined the doorway edge, and p
eered into the black void. “Huh.”

  “Where’s the kid with the gun?”

  “Good question.” Agnes dropped her wimpy non-stick skillet on the counter, yanked open the utility drawer by the door, and got out her heavy-duty flashlight. She turned it on, shoved the door open with her shoulder, and pointed it into the void.

  “What are you doing?” Joey yelled.

  “I’m trying to see what’s behind this door. I didn’t even know it was here.”

  “Agnes, you can explore your goddamn house later,” Joey said. “Take Rhett and get the hell out of there.”

  “I don’t think the kid’s a problem anymore.” Agnes held the phone with one hand and peered down into the pool of light the flashlight cast on the floor below as Rhett came to join her, pressing close to her leg so he could peer, too. “He fell into a basement. I didn’t even know I had a basement back here. Did you know—” She played the light around the floor and then froze when it hit the moron. “Uh-oh.”

  “What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’?”

  The boy was splayed out on what looked like a concrete floor, and he did not look good.

  “I think he’s hurt. He’s definitely not moving.”

  “Good,” Joey said. “He fall down the stairs?”

  “There are no stairs.” Agnes squinted down into the darkness as the light hit the boy’s face.

  His eyes stared up at her, dull and fixed.

  Agnes screamed, and Rhett scrambled back, stepping in the raspberry sauce, which he began to lick up.

  “Agnes?”

  “Oh, God,” Agnes said, as her throat closed in panic. “Joey, his neck’s at a funny angle, and his eyes are staring up at me. I think I killed him.”

  “No, you didn’t, honey,” Joey said around the traffic noise in the background. “He committed suicide when he attacked an insane woman in the stupid house she bought. I’m almost there. You stay there and don’t open that door for anybody.”

  “He’s dead, Joey. I have to call the police.” This is bad. This is bad. This is not going to look good.

  “The police can’t help you with this one,” Joey said. “You stay put. I’m gonna get you somebody until we figure this out.”

  “Some body. Right.” Agnes clicked off the phone and looked back down at the dead body in her basement.

  He looked pathetic, lying there all twisted and dead-eyed. Agnes swallowed, trying to get a grip on the situation.

  How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

  Shut the fuck up, Dr. Garvin.

  Don’t say “Fuck,” Agnes. Angry language makes us angrier.

  Gosh darn, Dr. Garvin, I’m feeling …

  She put the beam on the boy again.

  Still dead.

  Oh, God.

  Okay, calm down, she told herself. Think this through.

  She hadn’t killed him, the basement floor had.

  You hit him many times in the head with the frying pan, try explaining that one.

  Okay, okay, but he’d attacked her in her house. It was self-defense. Yes, he was young and pathetic and heartbreaking down there, but he’d been a horrible person.

  Why do you always hit them with frying pans, Agnes?

  Because that’s what I always have in my hand, Dr. Garvin. If I were a gardener, it’d be hedge clippers. Think how bad that would be.

  She punched in 911 on her phone, trying to concentrate on the good things: Rhett was fine, Maria’s wedding was still on track, her column would be finished eventually, Two Rivers was starting to look beautiful and it was hers, well, hers and Taylor’s, pretty soon she was going to be living her dream, and her cupcakes were burning but she could make more cupcakes—

  There’s a dead body in my basement and I lost my temper and I hit him with a frying pan many times, I was not in control—

  “Keyes County Emergency services,” the police dispatcher drawled.

  “There’s a dead body in my basement,” Agnes said, and then her knees gave way and she slid down the cabinet to sit hard on the floor as she tried to explain that the kid had broken into her house and had been going to hurt her dog, while Rhett drooled on her lap.

  “A deputy is on the way, ma’am,” the dispatcher said, as if dead bodies in basements were an every evening occurrence.

  “Thank you.” Agnes hung up and looked at Rhett.

  “I have to make cupcakes,” she said, and he looked encouraging, so she got up to get the blackened cupcakes out of the oven and clean the floor and get back to work, thinking very hard about her column and Maria’s wedding and her beautiful house and everything except the dead body in her basement and the goddamned frying pan.

  Shane sat on a bar stool, in a shady nightclub on the wrong side of the tracks in a bad part of Savannah, Georgia, and tried to estimate how many people he was going to have to kill in the next hour. Optimally it would be one, but he had long ago learned that optimism did not apply to his profession. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out with his free hand, expecting to see the GO or NO GO text message from Wilson. There were only three people who had his number, and they never called to chat. One of them was across the dance floor from him, which left two options. He glanced at the screen and was surprised to see JOEY. Jesus. First time ever and he calls in the middle of a job.

  Shane hesitated for a moment, then thought, Hell, you gave him the number for emergencies, and hit the ON button. “Uncle Joe?”

  “Shane, you on a job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Savannah.”

  “Good,” Joey said. “Close. I need you home.”

  Shane frowned. Home? You send me away at twelve and now you want me home? “What’s the problem?” he said, keeping his voice cold.

  “I got a little friend needs some help. She lives just outside Keyes in the old Two Rivers mansion. Remember it?”

  Fucking Keyes. Armpit of the South.

  “Come home and take care of my little Agnes, Shane.”

  You adopt another kid, Joe? Gonna take better care of this one? “I’ll be here in an hour.”

  “I appreciate it.” Joey hung up.

  Shane pushed the OFF button. Joey needing help taking care of something. That was new. Old man must be getting really old. Calling him home. That was—

  “I’m a Leo—and you?”

  Shane turned to look at her. Long blond hair. Bright smile plastered on her pretty face. Pink T-shirt stretched tight across her ample chest with the word PRINCESS embroidered on it in shiny letters. Effective advertising, bad message.

  “What’s your sign?” she said, coming closer.

  “Taurus with a bad moon rising.” The hell with Joey. He had a job to do. He looked at the upstairs landing.

  Two men in long black leather coats and wraparound sunglasses appeared on the landing. They took barely visible flanking positions at the top of the metal stairs, just as they had the previous evening at approximately the same time, which meant the target was in-house.

  At home, so to speak.

  “Do you come here often?” Princess asked, coming still closer, about three inches too close. He scooted back on his stool slightly.

  “Never.” Except for the reconnaissance the previous evening. He looked up again. Too many people had seen The Matrix, he decided as he took in the bodyguards’ long jackets and shades.

  The Matrix probably hadn’t even played in Keyes yet.

  Princess came in closer, her breasts definitely inside his personal space. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a painter.”

  That’s what Joey used to tell people. I’m a painter.

  Enough with Joey.

  Shane glanced across the room. Carpenter was in place, his tall, solid figure near the emergency exit, the flashing lights reflecting off his shaved ebony skull. I paint them, Carpenter cleans them. Shane nodded toward the guards ever so slightly. Carpenter nodded back.

  “That’s cool.” P
rincess began to scan past Shane, probably looking for somebody who’d play with her. She must have found him because she smiled at Shane blankly and backed off. “Have a good one,” she said and was gone into the crowd.

  The phone buzzed once more, and Shane glanced at the screen: GO. Finally. He secured the phone in his pocket, nodding once more at Carpenter, who reached into one of his deep pockets. Princess was over by the bar now, dialing on her phone with a blank look on her face as she tossed her head to get the hair out of her eyes. Then she frowned and pulled the phone away, staring at it. Shane knew no one’s cellphone within two hundred feet would work as long as Carpenter kept the transmitter in his pocket working, jamming all frequencies.

  He wove his way through the sweaty dancers to the bottom of the staircase and walked up, Carpenter falling in behind him. Both bodyguards stepped out, forming a human wall that he estimated weighed over four hundred and seventy pounds combined with another ten pounds or so of leather coat thrown in. Which meant they trumped him by over two hundred and seventy.

  Fortunately, two hundred and ten pounds with brains could usually beat four hundred and eighty pounds of dumb.

  “Private office,” the one on the right growled.

  Shane jabbed his right hand, middle three fingers extended, into the man’s voice box, then grabbed the face of the man on the left and applied pressure at just the right places with the fingertips of his left hand, thumb on one side, four fingers on the other. The man froze in the middle of reaching under his jacket, unable to move, while Carpenter caught the man to the right.

  “Tell me the truth and live,” Shane whispered as he leaned close, ignoring the other guard’s desperate wheezing attempts to get air down his damaged throat as Carpenter took him back into the darkness of the landing. “Lie and die. Is Casey Dean here?”

  “Uggh.” There was the slightest twitch of the head in the affirmative.

  “Alone?”

  “Uggh.” A twitch side to side.

  Shit. “Left foot,” Shane said. “How many are in there? Tap your foot for the number.”

  The foot hit the ground twice, then halted.

  “Good boy.” Shane shifted his fingers slightly and pressed. The man dropped unconscious to the floor. Carpenter already had the other man down, sleeping with the leather. At least they’d be warm.