Agnes and the Hitman (22 page)

Agnes and Lisa Livia looked away from each other and shut up.

“So have you talked to Maisie Shuttle?” Evie said to Agnes, after they’d discussed the weather and hoped it would hold for the weekend, and how the weatherman was predicting that it would, and how the gazebo was certainly looking lovely.

“Who’s Maisie Shuttle?” Lisa Livia said.

“Florist,” Agnes said. “Not yet, I’m still getting her machine. Don’t worry. Maria will have her flowers, which I’m thinking will still be white, with maybe tiny pink accents—”

The screen door slapped open, and Maria came out in Brenda’s dress, but it was Brenda’s dress reborn, the hoop skirt and lace overlay gone along with the meringue sleeves and poufy overskirt and all the other froufrou. It was still flamingo pink, but lighter. Evie must have soaked it forever to rinse out part of the dye and now the cut was streamlined and strapless, with just an edge of netting along the top of the bodice, the skirt still full but with a crinoline not a hoop. Maria looked lovely. Pink as all hell, but lovely.

“That really did take you all night,” Agnes said, looking at all the work that must have gone into just
removing
fabric.

“I wanted to apologize
today,”
Evie said. “I didn’t want Maria to think I wasn’t... I didn’t want her to feel... I...” She looked at Maria. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. After Brenda and I went to lunch yesterday and talked, I—”

“Brenda,”
Agnes snarled, imagining what that lunch had been like, Brenda dripping poison into Evie’s ear.

Maria took a deep breath. “Thank you, Evie, this is a beautiful dress and I’ll think of you when I walk down the aisle.”

Oh, hell,
Agnes thought as she heard somebody walk through her kitchen. “You know what would make this dress perfect?
An all-white backdrop with just tiny pink accents—”

Maria turned to her eagerly, and then the screen door from the kitchen slapped and Brenda stepped onto the porch, invading from the house. “Well, here I am, Evie,” she said, looking like she hadn’t slept well. “What was so important?” She caught sight of Agnes and smiled, looking predatory. “Agnes, sugar, you had the front door open again, and you know that’s bad for my clock, so I just closed it for you. And you’ve got a big ol’ truck coming across the bridge, too. Is that a good idea?”

“It’s about time you got that clock out of my hall,” Agnes said, and watched Brenda’s face sharpen, and then a beat later, she thought,
A truck? The bridge can’t support a truck.
“No,” she said, and started for the door, only to be blocked by Brenda, staring at Maria’s dress.

“Where did you get that?” Brenda said to Maria.

“It’s your wedding dress, Grandma,” Maria said, smiling bravely. “I’m wearing it for my wedding.”

“My wedding dress?” Brenda said, her pretty face darkening.

“Where’s my Italian lace? Where’s my bouffant sleeves? Where’s my
goddamn hoop skirt?”

The same place as your goddamned morals, you worthless tramp.
“It’s been modernized, Brenda,” Agnes said. “When you pass something on to someone else, you have to expect changes.
You don’t get it back.”

Brenda glared at Agnes. “I can expect my wedding dress to stay my goddamn wedding dress.”

“Ma, it’s beautiful,” Lisa Livia said.
“Evie and her dressmaker worked on it all night. We’re really grateful.
All of us.”

Brenda turned on her, glaring. “Well, I’m not grate—”

The air was split with the sound of honking, frantic honking, as if a giant duck were being turned inside out, and Agnes said, “What the hell?” and shoved Brenda out of the way to see what was going on.

There was a deliveryman on her back lawn setting loose a large pink bird.

“What is that?”
Agnes went out through the screen door and down toward the bird as it broke free of its crate and bolted for the river. It was at least five feet tall, and while she actually did know what it was, she was having trouble accepting the fact.

“Delivery for Maria Fortunato and Palmer Keyes,” the delivery-man said, giving up on catching the bird. “They here?”

“Maria!” Agnes yelled, but Maria was right behind her. “Did you order a flamingo?”

“No,” Maria said, staring at the bird as it loped, honking, toward the water, but she signed for it when the uniformed chinless wonder with the blond crew cut jabbed the clipboard at her. Then he handed her an envelope and drove off, leaving the crate and the bird behind as he made Agnes’s bridge groan again in his getaway.

“That’s a flamingo,” Lisa Livia said, coming up behind them as Maria opened the envelope, and Agnes said, “Yes, it is,” staring in equal disbelief.

“It’s a wedding gift from Downer,” Maria said, reading the papers from the envelope, and her inflection on “Downer” told them all they needed to know about how she felt about Palmer’s best man. “Its name is Cerise.”

“What in God’s name?” Doyle said, and Agnes turned to see him and Garth crossing the lawn, gaping at the bird, which was still honking frantically, now knee deep in the Blood River.

“Flamingo,” she told him. “How’s that house painting coming?”

“We need sprayers,” Garth said. “That’s a flamingo. Hot damn.”

“They eat shrimp,” Maria said, still reading the papers. “What are we going to do with a flamingo?” Her voice quivered on
flamingo,
and Agnes realized that after the dress and her grandmother, the big pink bird was probably the last straw.

“Jimbo can get us all the shrimp we want,” Garth said, and Agnes took the papers out of Maria’s hands and gave them to him.

“You are now chief flamingo wrangler,” she told him. “Take care of Cerise until we figure out where she belongs so we can send her back. Feed her lots of shrimp. Maybe that will shut her up.”

“Cool,” Garth said.

“And paint the house,” Agnes added.

“On it,” Garth said, and was gone.

Agnes turned to Maria. “You really do look beautiful in that dress, honest to God, and the flamingo will be gone by your wedding, I swear.”

Maria nodded, trying to smile, and then Agnes turned to the rest of the group, raising her voice to be heard above the honking.

“So, who’s for a mint julep?” It wasn’t quite ten yet, but it was definitely turning into a drink-your-brunch day. If Cerise didn’t shut up soon, she was going to get a julep, too. With a syringe if necessary.

Evie shook her head, trying to look away from the flamingo and failing. “Thank you, Agnes, but I’m going home to bed.” She finally tore her eyes away, kissed Maria on the cheek, halfway between a real kiss and an air kiss, smiled weakly at Lisa Livia and Brenda, and tottered off to her Lexus.

“She’s startin’ to show her age, bless her heart,” Brenda said
with
satisfaction.

“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.

“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, at
the 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 Agnes 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.