Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  “There’s a report of an accident on the bridge,” Carpenter relayed from his position, leaning close to the radio speaker.

  “Bullshit. There’s no accident up there. Dean called this in as a distraction.” Shane was shifting, trying to find where Dean was.

  “One minute,” Carpenter announced.

  The door on the Town Car opened, and a tall, thin man with gray hair stepped out, holding a shiny metal briefcase. He was looking about, obviously unsure which direction Dean was coming from.

  The sirens were getting closer as Shane reached out with his free hand and grabbed the rifle.

  “You’re not going to shoot with cops around?” Carpenter asked.

  Shane could hear the sirens go by and saw the flashing lights reflected in the windshield. But his focus was on the bridge. The consigliere suddenly reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone and answered.

  “Dean’s making contact,” Shane said.

  “One state patrol car and an ambulance, reaching the ramp for the bridge,” Carpenter reported. “And I’ve got another police car in the side mirror coming this way.”

  This was definitely cramping his style. He couldn’t pop out the sunroof and blow Casey Dean away with one shot while the police were driving by. He squinted as the consigliere walked over to the side of the bridge and looked over the edge.

  “Oh, shit. Dean’s underneath.” Shane slid into the passenger seat and put the rifle across his lap. “Drive!”

  Carpenter threw the van into gear and pulled onto the road just as a sheriff’s car blew past. “Which way?”

  “Ahead and then-” Shane thought fast. They couldn’t go onto the bridge with all the cops around. He still had the scope to his eye and he saw the consigliere drop the case over the side of the bridge and get back in his car. There was one exit before they hit the on-ramp.

  “Take that exit,” Shane ordered.

  Carpenter turned hard right. The road curved around and then under the ramp, but there was dense, impenetrable vegetation between the road and the Savannah River.

  “We’ve got to see the water,” Shane said, powering down the passenger window.

  “Hold on.” Carpenter jerked the wheel hard and they skidded onto a dirt trail. The van’s specially built suspension grappled with the ruts and rocks as Carpenter accelerated down the narrow track.

  “Whoa!” Shane yelled as the Savannah River suddenly appeared ahead of them, a rusting chain-link fence indicating the end of the trail.

  Carpenter had hit the brakes even as Shane gave the warning, and the van skidded to a halt, the front bumper less than two feet from the fence. Shane was moving as it stopped, throwing open the door and jumping out, the rifle in his hands.

  He brought it up to his shoulder in the ready position, the muzzle resting on top of the fence, but he kept the eye closest to the scope closed, while he scanned with the free eye. There were three boats visible. An old tug chugging upriver, and two personal craft heading downriver. Shane put his gun eye to the scope and checked the farthest boat, a cabin cruiser about a half mile away. An old man and woman were visible in the flying bridge.

  Not Casey Dean.

  He shifted to the second boat, a smaller, faster craft that was kicking up quite a wake and expanding the distance between it and Shane’s gun at a rapid pace. A figure dressed in black, hood pulled up over the head, was at the center console.

  Shane aimed at the figure and his finger caressed the trigger. He could feel his heart beating and begin to slow down as he got in the rhythm for the shot.

  “You sure that’s Casey Dean?” Carpenter asked.

  “No,” Shane said.

  “Give me your phone and the card,” Carpenter said.

  Shane kept the rifle in place, one eye on the boat, which was fast getting out of range and approaching a bend in the river, where it would be out of sight. He knew exactly what Carpenter wanted to do and preempted his partner by using his off-hand to pull out the phone and card and then dialing the cell phone number as fast as he could. He kept his firing hand on the rifle.

  Shane was slightly surprised when there was a ring. Then another and another. The figure on the boat didn’t move. After four rings, a mechanical voice informed him he could leave a message.

  “Casey Dean,” Shane said. “I’ve got you in my sight.”

  The figure still didn’t move.

  The boat reached the bend in the river and was just about out of sight when the figure at the console put his right hand into the air and Shane could see the middle finger extended just as the boat gathered speed and disappeared.

  “Look on the positive side,” Carpenter said. “You know what

  Casey Dean looks like from behind, dressed in dark sweats with a hood over his head. That’s something to report to Wilson.”

  “Fuck,” Shane said, and got back in the van.

  “What do you mean, I can’t dissolve the partnership?” Agnes said into the phone ten minutes later. “He’s trying to sabotage it, Barry.”

  “Which is a damn good reason to dissolve it, Agnes,” her lawyer said. “But it’s a partnership. The two of you have to dissolve it together. And Taylor doesn’t want it dissolved. He already called.”

  “Barry, he’s trying to get the health department to shut down a wedding we’re catering,” Agnes said. “Isn’t that some kind of breach of contract?”

  “I’d sue him,” Barry said. “But then, I’m a lawyer.”

  Agnes heard the front door slam and turned to see Lisa Livia come into the kitchen with a shopping bag that said betsie’s bon ton.

  Rhett hadn’t even bothered to lift his head.

  “You got a truck coming across your bridge,” Lisa Livia said, and Agnes hung up on Barry and went to the front door to look, almost tripping over five pieces of Lisa Livia’s pink leather luggage in the hall on the way.

  “Brenda caught me going through her stuff and threw me off the boat,” Lisa Livia said. “She kept screaming about betrayal. Can I have my old room back?”

  “Sure,” Agnes said, heading out the front door. “What truck-?”

  It was already crossing the bridge, which groaned its displeasure, and then it was sweeping down the drive and over the lawn-”Will you stop that?” Agnes yelled at the driver-and then it stopped and the driver got out and opened the back and wheeled out a crate that looked familiar.

  “What the-,” Lisa Livia began, and then the chinless wonder of a driver who also looked familiar opened the crate and another flamingo staggered out, honking like mad, and Cerise went crazy.

  The driver came toward Agnes with his clipboard.

  “No,” she said. “You take them both back.”

  “I’m justthe delivery guy, lady,” he said, his rabbity face twitching. The patch on his uniform said, butch, but he so wasn’t.

  “I’m not signing that,” Agnes said. “Take them back. They need to be in a flock.”

  “Can’t do it,” he said. “Just sign this.”

  “No.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked at him closer. “You’re not from any delivery service. And you delivered Cerise. Downer paid you to do this. Who are you?”

  He met her eyes for a moment, and then bolted for the truck.

  “Come back here, you bastard!” Agnes started after him, but fear made him fast: He dived for the front seat and had the truck in gear and moving before the door was closed.

  She walked back to Lisa Livia, who was still carrying her Bon Ton bag, but who’d now picked up the clipboard he’d dropped.

  “This one’s name is Hot Pink,” LL said.

  Agnes looked down to the river. Hot Pink and Cerise were deep in honking conversation of mutual outrage, but Cerise didn’t seem to be as manic as before. “Is there a return address?”

  “No,” Lisa Livia said. “This is like an information sheet. Like a zoo might give out.”

  “A zoo.” Agnes closed her eyes. “Call that moron Downer and ask if h
e had these guys stolen from a zoo.” What “if”? Of course that idiot had them stolen from a zoo. Who sells flamingos? “Call Downer and tell him we know he hired Butch to steal Cerise and Hot Pink and if he has them taken back right now, we won’t have him arrested and shot.”

  “Right,” Lisa Livia said, taking out her cell phone. “Then we should talk. Brenda threw me out, but I’d already put some of her stuff in the car, so I brought it with me. Like all of her real estate stuff, including her house book.”

  “Her house book?” Agnes said.

  “Her scrapbook of everything she wanted to do to the house but never had the money for after the Real Estate King died.” Lisa Livia handed Agnes the clipboard. “It’s her dream house hook. I know we only have two days, but all we have to do is the outside of the house. She wanted black shutters. And black carriage lights. And pink hydrangeas and white lilacs. It would really fry her to show up on Saturday and see her dream house finished and know you had it and she didn’t. And then I stopped by Betsie’s Bon Ton and got us our mother-of-the-bride dresses.”

  “Us?” Agnes said.

  “Yeah, you raised Maria with me for the first three years, you’re her mother, too. Wait’ll you see them. I got one for Evie, too. Betsie was having a sale.”

  “Them?” Agnes said. “LL, they’re not all alike?”

  “We’ll be cute as buttons,” Lisa Livia said. “Hot, too.” She opened the bag almost dropping her cell phone in the process. “And they had both a four and a twelve!”

  “What were the chances?” Agnes said, and Lisa Livia said, “Pretty good, they had them in all sizes.”

  She pulled the smaller one out and held it up against her. It was a hot pink halter dress with a ruffled sweetheart neckline and peplum bodice, also ruffled, ending in a pencil skirt, the whole thing covered in lighter pink hearts. “What do you think?”

  “It’s so… me,” Agnes said, stunned. She was going to look like a flamingo in that thing. A hooker flamingo.

  “Well, it should be you,” Lisa Livia said. “You can’t wear a Cranky Agnes apron to the wedding.” She held the dress out so she could see the front, and Agnes got a good look at the back. There wasn’t any.

  “I don’t really have the body for this, LL,” Agnes said.

  “Are you kidding?” Lisa Livia said. “Your ass will look fabulous in this. I have no control over Evie Keyes, but you’re gonna wear this dress. Well, you’re gonna wear the twelve.”

  “How did you know what size to get Evie?”

  Lisa Livia shot her a look of contempt. “Like every dress shop in Keyes doesn’t know what size Evie Keyes wears. Besides, it was marked down to fourteen ninety-five. I could afford to make a mistake.” She held hers out again. “We need hats. And pink fuck-me shoes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Agnes said. “That’s what we need. Give me the house book and call Maria to call Downer.”

  Lisa Livia shoved the dress back in the bag, handed the book over to Agnes, punched in Maria’s number on her speed-dial, waited a moment, and then raised her voice. “Maria? That dipshit Downer sent another flamingo.”

  Agnes took the book and headed for the house, thinking, Ibet Garth can landscape, as she tried to ignore the flamingos honking at each other behind her. Hot flamingos, she thought. Igot hot flamingos and a $14.95 Whore Mother of the Bride dress from Betsie’s Bon Ton. That can’t be good. Maybe. Shane would probably like it. Not that it mattered since that was over with. Only guys who hadn’t killed from now on-that was her motto.

  There was some progress: She’d broken up with a lying, swindling pig of an adulterer and stopped sleeping with the secretive but adept hitman who put acid in her basement.

  “Who says I never learn?” she told Rhett when she was back in the kitchen, and went to take her shower.

  Later that evening, after Shane had come back, monosyllabic and surly again, and Agnes had gone through the house book and made notes-Brenda really did have excellent taste-she finished the cake designs; made her To Do List for Thursday; packed up her engagement ring for resale; and fed ribs to Lisa Livia, Carpenter, Garth, Joey, and Shane (which was good, like feeding a large, demented, but sort-of-functional family). Then she and Lisa Livia cleaned the kitchen and socked away the leftovers while the men went down to the basement to bring up the Venus, making a lot more noise than just lifting a statue should have entailed, after which she left Carpenter and Lisa Livia on the screened porch discussing Greek art and automatic weapons with a bottle of bourbon; sent Garth out to the barn after telling him he should ask a girl to the wedding- “Me?” he said; “It’s the hottest ticket in town,” she told him, “and you’ve got a backstage pass.” -and took bourbon and coffee out to where Shane was sitting on the high dock.

  She sat down beside him. “So, how was your day?”

  “I’ve had better.” Shane took one of the mugs and the coffeepot from her.

  She opened the bourbon and held out her mug, and he poured coffee into it and into his mug, and then she topped off his mug with the bourbon and did the same for hers.

  “Listen,” she said. “About last night. You and me. I’m not really ready for… I mean, this thing with Taylor and all… I think I need…”

  “Okay,” he said.

  That was easy, she thought, not sure how relieved she should be about that.

  They sat back and watched the rest of the sun leave the sky and she could feel some of the tension leave his body in the peace of the evening.

  “What did Taylor want?” he said finally.

  “He brought the health inspector out to shut down the wedding.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No. He wants his engagement ring back, can you believe it?”

  “Yeah. No class at all. Want to tell me about the health inspector?”

  “Joey’s on it. But what exactly did you put in my basement?”

  “Acid,” he said. “It’s to open the bomb shelter down there.”

  “A bomb shelter wasn’t on the inspection checklist when I bought the house. Why do you want to open it?”

  She was surprised that Shane actually looked a bit sheepish. “There’s a chance Frankie Fortunato’s body might be in there. And the five million dollars he stole twenty-five years ago.”

  “Five million dollars,” Agnes nodded. “And you were going to tell me this when?”

  “I didn’t know until Joey told me yesterday.”

  “Did it ever occur to anybody to tell me that the reason people kept showing up in my kitchen with guns pointed at me was that there was five million dollars in my basement?”

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” Shane said and told her the story Joey had told him, part of which Lisa Livia had told her years ago anyway, except for the bomb shelter part

  “Lisa Livia is not going to be happy about this,” Agnes said, but a part of her mind slid to the fact she could have five million dollars in her basement.

  “We’ll know tomorrow,” Shane said.

  Agnes took a deep breath. “All right. So how was your day? You kill anybody?” She stopped, realizing with horror that he might have. “That was supposed to be a joke. You know, like you asked me if I killed Taylor. I don’t really want to know-”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “Agnes-”

  “I’m still sort of…” She searched for a word that wasn’t insulting. “… freaked… by your… job.”

  “Good,” he said. She jerked her head up. “Good?”

  He shrugged. “Some women get turned on by it. Not that I’m against that, but it’s not-”

  “Turned on?” Agnes looked out over the water. “Huh. Well, it wasn’t unappealing when you killed the guy who was trying to kill me. I mean, after I stopped throwing up, I was definitely on your side.” And if you find five million dollars in my basement…

  “Agnes-”

  “And I’m sure that anybody you’ve killed had done something to des
erve it-”

  “Agnes-”

  “Like John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank-”

  “Agnes, it’s okay.”

  “Did you ever kill the president of Paraguay with a fork?”

  “The fork is your weapon.” He took her hand. “If it helps, every target has known exactly why I was there.”

  Agnes swallowed as his palm touched hers, warm and safe, and then she nodded. “This very special organization you work for. Is it the mob?”

  Shane looked at her as if she were nuts. “No. Jesus, Agnes. I work for the U.S. government.”

  “You what?” She drew her hand away from him, stunned. “The government kills people?”

  “Yes, Agnes,” Shane said. “It sends them to war and it sends them to the electric chair, and sometimes, when it wants to be more efficient and merciful, it sends me. I’m much more precise and efficient than a bomb dropped from ten thousand feet.”

  “Isn’t there due process or something?” Agnes said. “They can’t just kill people.” He looked at her steadily, and she thought, Of course they can. “Never mind.”

  The ensuing silence was filled with flamingo honking. It had been going on all along, but it was easier to tune out now that there were two and the under-note of panicked loneliness was gone. The honking was now a duet of “Can you believe we’re stuck with these morons in this godforsaken backwater?” which was much better than Cerise’s earlier solo of “My God, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone…”

  “I’m glad you work for the government instead of the mob,” she said. “I mean, that’s a great retirement plan, right? Health benefits?” Shane put his arm around her.

  His arm was nice, a warm weight on her shoulder without really weighing her down. She let it stay there. It was a friendly arm, she decided, not a sexual arm. She wasn’t going back on her decision to not have sex with him by not moving away from him now. They were pals. That was it. That was a pal arm.

  She looked up at him. “Is it okay if I pretend you’re an insurance salesman for a while?”

  “Sure,” Shane said.

  “How was your day, dear?

  “I almost sold a policy, but the client gave me the finger.”