Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  “She was up all night working on your dress for your granddaughter,” Lisa Livia snapped.

  “She was up all night ruining my wedding dress,” Brenda shot back.

  “Bless her heart,” Agnes said. Brenda jerked back to glare at Agnes.

  “I’ll have Shane and Joey put that clock in the truck and bring it out to your boat,” Agnes said.

  “That clock is the only heirloom from my family,” Brenda said. “You just leave it where it is.”

  “It’s in my house,” Agnes said.

  Brenda took a deep breath and then stopped, the blood rising in her face.

  “I think I’m going up to the gift bedrooms to change,” Maria said, her voice cracking. “It’s quiet up there. And I can look at my china. I’ll like that.”

  When she was gone, Lisa Livia said, “Come on, Ma, let’s go back to the boat and leave Agnes to work on the wedding in peace.” She shot a glance at Cerise, still honking her head off. “Sort of.”

  “Yacht, not boat,” Brenda snapped. And then she smiled, which was almost worse. “You go on, honey. I’ve got some things to do in town. But I could use a glass of water before I go. You don’t mind if I get it myself, do you, Agnes? I feel as though I still own the place, you know.” She turned on her heel and walked across the lawn and into the house.

  “My mother,” Lisa Livia said. “A complete waste of oxygen. Bless her heart.”

  “She’s insane,” Agnes said. “Normally, I’d just go berserk and scream at her, but I’m trying to be an adult and use the Dr. Garvin approach.”

  “I am no fan of Dr. Garvin, but in this case, yes. Play nice until we find something that we can nail her to the wall with.” Lisa Livia went toward the house, pulling Agnes with her. “Does she even know that you know? About Taylor and the swindle, I mean?”

  “Depends on whether Taylor’s had time to talk to her. He is a great avoider of conflict, so maybe not. Go get me something good from those boxes.”

  “You know, another place to look is here at Two Rivers,” Lisa Livia said, opening the screen door. “She might have left something behind somewhere.”

  “Left it? Like where?” Agnes said, and then stopped in the kitchen doorway, where Brenda was staring at the open doorway to the basement.

  “What do you mean, they’re down there looking for the tunnel?” she was saying to Joey, sheet white.

  Lisa Livia looked at Agnes. “Like in the basement,” she said.

  Shane looked around the rec room, trying not to linger on the Venus de Mildew and thought, The Fortunato taste in decorating. Probably causes genetic damage. Which would explain a lot about the family.

  “This is a great house,” Carpenter said as he flipped open the clasps on his large plastic case.

  “You think?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” Carpenter asked as he brought out a foot-long infrared wand. “Cut the light.”

  Shane turned off the light, and Xavier’s blood trail glowed. Carpenter looked like a ghoul holding the wand. He nodded. “Lot of blood. Someone cleaned it up, you can see the smears, probably with bleach.” Carpenter walked the trail from where the stairs had ended, across the floor, around the edge of the bar, to the wine rack. “Turn the light back on.”

  Shane flipped the switch. “Why do you think this is a great house?”

  “The vibe.” Carpenter ran his large hands lightly over the old wooden rack.

  Shane thought about Agnes, maybe in that cool blue bedroom at the top of the house. “Might be a good house to come home to.”

  Carpenter stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “It might be. You tired, my friend?”

  Shane wiped a hand across his forehead. “I didn’t get much sleep last night-”

  “Not that kind of tired.” Carpenter shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m tired. And you do the real dirty work. I’m willing to bet you’re real tired, deep inside.”

  Shane stared at Carpenter, surprised, and then thought about what Wilson had said out on the high dock. Taking Wilson’s job would mean he’d be out of the field. He’d be giving the orders rather than having to execute them-literally. Sending somebody else out to do what he did.

  Carpenter lifted the huge wine rack out of the way and put it to the side. Then he placed his hands on the wood-paneled wall. “There’s something that looks like a stethoscope in my case. Except bigger. And it has headphones.”

  Shane looked in the case and retrieved the device. He brought it to Carpenter, who placed the headphones on and then put the cone at the other end against the wall. He turned a knob on the control and began slowly sliding it along the wall in short swaths, working from the floor up to the ceiling.

  Shane waited, wondering what mischief Agnes and Lisa Livia were up to upstairs. And why all of a sudden he and Carpenter were having conversations instead of short exchanges about packages and cleanups.

  “There is indeed a void behind here,” Carpenter said, removing the headphones.

  “You can hear a void?” Shane asked.

  Carpenter handed him the equipment. “It sends a pulse out, like sonar.” He was staring at the paneling as if it were going to speak to him.

  “What-” Shane began, but Carpenter held up a hand indicating silence. Shane figured he was waiting for the vibe to speak to him again. Or maybe the void.

  Carpenter looked left, then right, atthe ghastly imitation of the Venus de Milo. He reached out and began to run his hand over the statue.

  “Carpenter?” Shane said when his friend put his hands over her breasts. Maybe the rhinestones had gotten to him. “I think Lisa Livia wants that.”

  Carpenter pressed both breasts and at the same time took the toe of his boot and jammed it under the floorboard of the paneling in front of him. There was a slight noise, and Shane moved forward and knelt, putting his fingers next to Carpenter’s boot. He hooked them under the floorboard and lifted. A section of the paneling slowly began to lift, protesting against the inertia of the years it had been stuck in place.

  “I am curious.” Carpenter went over to his case and pulled out two headbands with flashlights attached to the front of them and tossed one to Shane. “Frankie was the older son, but not the Don. Stuck down here with his Venus de Milo Bomb Shelter. And your uncle, he’s worried, but he’s not saying anything. Doesn’t strike me as the type to scare easy, your uncle.” He turned on his light and faced toward the void.

  Shane did the same, feeling very troubled. Joey didn’t scare easy, but something had kept him quiet and stuck in Keyes for a long time.

  The tunnel was about four feet wide going up to a rounded roof slightly over six feet high. It was lined with brick, very old brick, and it was deep, black as hell beyond the light cast by Carpenter’s beam.

  “Let’s see what lies ahead.” Carpenter started in, and Shane followed. He couldn’t see past Carpenter’s bulk as they moved down the long tunnel, and he almost bumped into him when he came to an abrupt halt after fifty feet. The cleaner moved aside so Shane could see that the passage abruptly ended in a steel wall. No, a steel door, Shane realized as he saw the metal wheel in the center and the outline of a hatch.

  Carpenter knelt and examined a keyhole to the left of the hatch, probing it with a long flexible rod he pulled out of one of the many pockets on his coveralls.

  “Not pickable,” Carpenter decided. “Plus, the moisture down here has rusted whatever mechanism is in there solid anyway.”

  “Blast it?” Shane suggested.

  Carpenter rolled his eyes. “Always using the hammer when finesse will work. Wait here.” He edged past Shane and went back down the tunnel.

  Shane looked at the steel hatch and rapped on it with his knuckles. Solid. Blasting it would probably bring the house down on top of them. That would piss Agnes off. Don’t want Agnes pissed off, Shane thought. Fiery, okay. Pissed off, no. At least not at him. If Taylor came by and infuriated her again, he was willing to lend a hand. Or whatever she needed. He began to wonder if Agn
es was alone upstairs-

  Carpenter was coming back.

  “You know,” Shane speculated, “if someone whacked Frankie Fortunato and didn’t have Joey’s skills as a cleaner, this would be a good place to stash the body. And if Frankie had put the safe with the money in here already and that person had shut the door with the key on Frankie’s body and then found out the five mil was in there, that person might have been getting pretty steamed over the past twenty-five years.”

  “Why kill Frankie if not for the money?” Carpenter carefully placed a wooden box on the floor and opened it, revealing several glass vials. He also laid out a long green nylon case. He peeled open the Velcro holding it shut, revealing steel rods.

  “Maybe the killer thought the money was elsewhere,” Shane said. “Maybe in the trunk of Frankie’s Caddy. And when the killer found out that five million was in here, he was screwed because he couldn’t get in without getting noticed and that would bring attention to the body, so…”

  “You say he,” Carpenter said as he began setting up what looked like an IV drip holder. “You have your suspicions.” He angled a glass tube into the keyhole.

  “There are suspects. If Frankie is in there.”

  “Do you suspect your uncle?” Carpenter put a glass tube with a stop-cock on the bottom onto the IV drop holder.

  “No. Joey has his faults” -a lot of them-“and he’ll lie to you without blinking, but his oath is good. Hell, the mob calls him Joey the Gent.” But Joey was lying about something else. And that meant he must have a damn good reason for lying.

  Carpenter very carefully turned the stop-cock until a single drop of the liquid dripped into the long tube and slid down it, disappearing into the keyhole. There was a hissing sound, and a small puff of smoke appeared.

  “Don’t breathe the fumes,” Carpenter advised. “Poisonous.”

  Shane stepped back.

  Carpenter looked at his watch. Several minutes passed. A second drop of acid dripped down with the same result. Carpenter nodded. “All right. I’ll have to adjust the tube a few times, but I estimate this will burn through the locking mechanism by around noon tomorrow, give or take an hour. Then we’ll know if Frankie’s in there.”

  “Noon tomorrow,” Shane said. “Helluva lot can happen before then.”

  “Like finding Casey Dean?” Carpenter said. Right. The mission. “That was my next move,” Shane lied, and headed back down the tunnel, focusing once more.

  When Lisa Livia had followed a shaken Brenda over the bridge, Agnes went down to the river to see what she could do about calming a hysterical five-foot-tall pink bird with a honk like an amplified mutant duck. When she got there, Cerise looked her in the eye and honked louder, flapping her wings and going nowhere, splashing in the Blood, agitated and miserable, and Agnes began to feel for her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Whatever it is, I’m really sorry, and I will get you back home as soon as I can, I swear, and I will have that idiot Downer roasted slowly over hot coals while I’m at it, but please stop honking-”

  “She’s lonely,” Garth said from behind her, and Agnes turned to see him standing there, as gawky as before in the same dirty denim,

  but now frowning with purpose, holding a bunch of papers. “I looked it up, like you said, on the Internet.”

  “What?” Agnes said, dumbfounded, Garth and the Internet not compatible in her mind.

  “They taught us in school,” Garth said, indignant. “Computers. I graduated elementary school and junior high.”

  “Of course you did,” Agnes said, feeling awful for feeling surprised. Bad grammar did not mean bad brains, she knew that. “Uh, congratulations.”

  Garth nodded. “I’d go back next year, but Grandpa says there’s no use for it.”

  “Hey,” Agnes said. “There’s use for it. You go back.”

  “You could talk to Grandpa about it,” Garth said, looking away. “That would be right nice of you. Like in the movies.”

  “Uh,” Agnes said, wondering what the hell movies Garth had been watching. Probably something where the nice lady got shot. “Yeah. Let’s cross that bridge later. Flamingos first.”

  Garth went back to his Internet printouts. “I went and Googled flamingos. And flamingos, they ain’t ever alone, they’s always in big bunches, lots of them. It ain’t right that there’s just one.”

  He looked at the still-vocal Cerise with real sympathy, miserable for her, and when Agnes looked back at Cerise and saw the wildness in her eyes, her heart clutched, too.

  “Fucking idiot Downer,” she said as her throat closed, and then she pulled her cell phone out and punched in Maria’s number, listening to Cerise, who wasn’t honking anymore, not to Agnes’s ears- now Cerise was moaning, “Alone, alone, alone, I’m so alone, alone, alone…”

  “Oh, God,” Agnes said, and thought about all those damn nights in that little housekeeper’s room, waiting for that rat bastard Taylor to come out so they could move up to that lovely cool pale blue room in the attic because moving up there would mean they were starting their new life, and if she didn’t wait, if she moved up there alone, it would mean she’d be alone forever-

  Alone, alone, alone, alone…

  And before that, those lonely nights after her engagements had broken off when she’d wondered what was wrong with her that men always lied to her and left her alone, and before that those miserable days after Lisa Livia had taken baby Maria and followed her job west with her lying boss, who’d promised never to move his business, and before that those godawful holidays alone in boarding school before Lisa Livia had come along, brassy and defiant to anybody who’d tried to make her miserable and who’d brought her home to beautiful Two Rivers and Brenda for every summer and holiday after that so that for a while Agnes hadn’t been-

  “Hello?” Maria said, answering the phone.

  “Get that shithead Downer to send this poor bird back where it belongs,” Agnes said, close to tears. “They’re never supposed to be alone. Her heart is breaking. She’s not supposed to be alone.”

  “Oh, no,” Maria said. “I’ll kill him. I’ll get Palmer on it right now.”

  “Thank you,” Agnes said, and clicked off the phone.

  “I called Jimbo for some shrimp,” Garth said over Cerise’s moaning. “He should be bringing it right up to the dock any minute now. Maybe food will make her feel better.”

  “Not even three pints of Dove’s Caramel Pecan Perfection,” Agnes said from experience, staring miserably at Cerise, who stared miserably back.

  Alone, alone, alone…

  Lying bastards.

  When Shane climbed up into the kitchen, he found a new long To Do List on the counter that was headed “Paint sprayers.” He put it in his pocket and went out to the side of the house, where he heard hysterical honking. From the front of Carpenter’s van, he could see down onto the riverbank, where Agnes and Garth seemed to be trying to feed something to a giant agitated pink bird.

  Carpenter came out to join him, Rhett at his heels.

  “That’s a flamingo, right?” Shane said as he watched Agnes start toward the house, her red sundress flipping around her legs in the breeze again.

  “Yeah,” Carpenter said, looking as bemused by the whole thing as Rhett did.

  “Thought so.” He watched her move up the path, the ties of the sundress jaunty on her shoulders, and he wondered why she’d bothered with ties since she didn’t have to untie anything to get it off, the whole thing just slipped off over her head. Probably so he’d think about untying it. Which he was doing right now-

  His phone vibrated and he checked it and saw a text message from two hours ago. He pulled out his sat phone and punched in speed-dial l and Wilson answered on the first ring.

  “Where have you been? I transmitted the intelligence to Carpenter’s van two hours ago.”

  Eating pancakes. Checking out a bomb shelter. Thinking about ways to get Agnes alone. “Checking out what I can here.” What intelligence?
r />   There was a long silence, which indicated what Wilson thought of that.

  “Check the intelligence ASAP” The phone went dead.

  Shane closed the phone. “Wilson sent some intel, probably on Casey Dean. Can you check and prep it for me?”

  “Roger that,” Carpenter said, and nodded to the drive. “Isn’t that Agnes’s fiancé?”

  Taylor’s Cobra was coming down the road followed by a van with the county logo stenciled on the side. They bumped over the bridge and parked at the side of the house, and Rhett ambled down the path to investigate.

  “Yep, that’s him.”

  The county van meant some kind of inspector. That was going to annoy Agnes. Maybe even make her furious.

  Carpenter looked at him with interest. “You don’t seem to mind him being here.”

  “Nope.” Shane watched Taylor get out and confer with the selfimportant little man who’d gotten out of the van. Agnes was going to hate him, too. Anger, coming right up. “I’m feeling pretty cheerful right now.”

  Carpenter shot him an odd glance, then shrugged. “So about the intel?”

  Shane looked at his watch. “I can give you half an hour. Then I’m going to have to save this idiot’s ass again.”

  He went over to the van and climbed inside with Carpenter who got the air-conditioning going full blast. One wall of the van was lined with computers, communication equipment, and other machines Shane didn’t know the purpose of. The other side was lined with lockers holding the various tools of their trade.

  Shane sat in one of the swivel chairs bolted to the floor while Carpenter took his in front of the large computer screen and brought up the intel that Wilson had sent.

  “The FBI intercepted a call to Don Fortunato,” he said, looking at the screen. “Traced back to a pay phone in Savannah directing the Don to go to a pay phone away from his house and await a call in fifteen minutes, which would have been untraceable, but Wilson had a tail on the Don with a directional mike. The tail followed him to the pay phone and picked up most of the Don’s end of the conversation.”