Maggie Lee | Book 27 |The Hitwoman and the Body

by Lynn, JB

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said, putting his arms around my shoulders and giving me an encouraging squeeze. “Whatever it is, you’ll manage.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I felt like I wasn’t managing anything terribly well.

  “We probably won’t be able to see each other for a while,” Gino said. “But if you need me, you know you can call.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry this is such a mess.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he assured me. “But you do seem to attract trouble.”

  “I agree,” God muttered, “like a supercharged magnet.”

  24

  Piss padded into my bedroom to report when Griswald finally got in, after one in the morning. “Everything else is quiet,” she concluded.

  I rubbed behind her ear to convey my thanks. DeeDee, Piss, Matilda, and Percy were all patrolling the grounds, making sure that there was no threat to the family from Daphne. God and Piss had both insisted that I try to get some sleep tonight, instead of joining them. As Piss had said, “If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else.”

  She quickly left the room as quietly as she’d entered, leaving me to go back to sleep.

  I tossed and turned and huffed and puffed, but sleep was elusive.

  “Worried? Worried? Worried?” Benny, the white mouse, whispered from his box.

  “Yes,” I said on a heavy sigh.

  “And she should be,” God added.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That makes everything feel better.”

  “You’re in a very precarious position,” God reminded me.

  “I know.”

  I put my pillow on top of my head, to signal that I was going to try to sleep. Apparently, I did, because the sun was peeking into my room when I stirred the next morning.

  As I got out of bed, Piss, Matilda, and DeeDee took it over.

  I got dressed, scooped up God and headed into the kitchen looking for coffee.

  I let out a shaky sigh of relief when I realized that someone had already started the pot, and he was standing in the kitchen making bacon and eggs.

  “It’s a relief to see you here,” I told him.

  Templeton chuckled, and shook his head. “I’ll keep my promise to you, Maggie. I promised you three nights. You’ve got two more.”

  “Then what happens?” I asked, stealing a piece of bacon. It burnt my fingers, but I still stuck an end of it into my mouth and crunched down on the salty, fatty goodness.

  “Maybe I turn into a pumpkin,” Templeton joked. He handed me a cup of coffee. “If you sit down, you could eat a full meal.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Aunt Susan,” I said, raising my cup to him in a silent toast.

  He stared at me, aghast. “Well, you didn’t have to be so insulting.”

  I laughed at his joke, and said, “I’ve got a busy day. I’ve got to get an early start.”

  “Griswald got in late last night,” he revealed.

  “Did he?” I asked, playing dumb.

  Templeton nodded. “Do you know what he’s working on?”

  “I do,” I said carefully. “But I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you.”

  “Does it have anything to do with me?” Templeton asked, looking surprised.

  “No,” I assured him.

  “Does it have anything to do with Delveccio?” Templeton asked slyly.

  I shook my head.

  “Have you seen the news?” he asked gently.

  “Nope,” I said, again deciding to pretend like I didn’t know what was going on. “Don’t tell me that Loretta did another interview.”

  He shook his head. Taking my elbow, he gently led me over to the kitchen table and pushed me down into the seat.

  “I don’t have time for breakfast,” I reminded him.

  “I’ll make you a sandwich to go,” he said. “You’re going to want to read this.”

  He grabbed a newspaper that was lying folded on the opposite side of the table, and flipped it open so that I could see the headline.

  “Try not to get too upset,” he urged, turning away to make my sandwich.

  I stared at the story. It was about the body found in Delveccio’s trunk. But the headline was all about how Nelson was an ex-con. I scanned the story quickly, looking to see if there was any mention of my father’s name, but there wasn’t. Then, I made sure to double-check to see whether or not Jack Stern had claimed the byline on it. He had not.

  “Do you know what Jack Stern’s working on?” I asked Templeton, pushing the newspaper away from me.

  He glanced over his shoulder in surprise. “I don’t,” he said. “Have you asked Armani?”

  I shook my head.

  He looked at me for a long moment. “Would you like me to ask Armani?”

  “Would you mind?” I asked.

  “For you, Maggie, I’d do almost anything,” he assured me.

  Saying that, he handed me a foil-wrapped sandwich and a travel mug filled with steaming coffee.

  “You’re the best,” I said, getting to my feet and placing a quick kiss on his cheek.

  “No,” he said. “We both know I’m not the best. I’m just your favorite.” He winked at me, and then chuckled, turning back toward the stove. “Be careful, Maggie.”

  Hearing voices in the hallway, I quickly dashed out the back door of the kitchen, and ran toward my car, trying not to slosh the hot coffee on my hand.

  “You need shock absorbers?” God complained.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I told him. “I have to get out of here before anyone spots me.” I got into the car, put the coffee in the cup holder, put the sandwich on the front seat, and started the engine.

  Before I could even budge the car, DeeDee came racing toward me.

  “Look out!” God warned from his vantage point on the dashboard, seemingly concerned I’d run over our canine companion.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked the Doberman.

  “Go want I you with,” she panted.

  I wanted to tell her to stay here, and to sleep, but I also understood that she felt like she was being left out of most of my adventures lately, because she’d been on guard duty.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Snatching up the sandwich, I leaned across the car and opened the passenger door so that she could jump in. Once she was inside, she barked loudly. “Shotgun!”

  “There’s nobody else to take that seat, you furry slobbering simpleton,” God muttered.

  “Hungry,” she said, sniffing the air.

  “You can have half,” I told her, reaching around her to pulling the passenger door closed, almost giving myself a hernia in the process. “I’m hungry, too.”

  “And once again, they’re talking about food,” God complained.

  Ignoring him, I headed up the driveway. We’d almost reached the road when a man jumped out in front of us.

  “Look out!” God warned again.

  I slammed on the brakes just before I hit the man.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” I yelled through the windshield at him.

  He lumbered over to the driver’s side window, which I rolled down so that he could see that I was giving him a death glare. “I almost killed you,” I told him.

  “Nah,” he said. “Not my Maggie May. You’ve got great reflexes.”

  God, on the dashboard, began to laugh so loudly, that Dad peered in to see what was making the squeaking noise.

  “Do you take him everywhere?” my father asked.

  “I take him a lot of places,” I admitted grudgingly.

  By now, the lizard was gasping. “Great reflexes!”

  “Not!” DeeDee barked in agreement with him.

  I got out of the car, and stalked away from it, leaving the animals behind to laugh at me. I waited for Dad to follow me.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as I led him into the woods.

  Once I was convinced that we were far enough away that w
hatever listening device was in the car couldn’t pick up our conversation, I asked, “What do you want?”

  “Have you had a chance to talk to Loretta about the job?” he asked.

  I put my hands on my hips and gave him a hard look. “Are you really looking for a job, or did you just use that as an excuse to get close?”

  He blinked, looking hurt. “What are you talking about?”

  “Were you just using me to keep tabs on Delveccio?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, Maggie May,” he said sadly. “I thought maybe you’d help me.”

  I refused to feel guilty. His timing was just a little bit too suspicious. “You know the body found in Delveccio’s car was your ex-cellmate, right?” I asked.

  He paled. Even a con-artist, even one better than my dad, can’t pale on command. “Which one?” he asked worriedly.

  “Nelson.”

  He looked away, his chin wobbling. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Was,” I corrected. “He was. He is no more. Somebody chopped off his head and his hands.”

  “You need to stay away from this, Maggie,” Dad warned.

  I nodded. “But first I have something else I have to go take care of.”

  “Tell Delveccio I didn’t do it,” Dad called after me.

  I stumbled. Was that him asking me to help him, or had I heard a note of guilt in his voice? I didn’t look back. I really didn’t want to know.

  When I got back in the car, the lizard and dog had finally stopped laughing.

  “Where to now?” God asked.

  “I think I need a makeover,” I told them.

  25

  “It probably would have been a good idea to scan the obituaries before you drove all the way over here,” God said.

  I knew he was right. We were parked across the street from the Carson Funeral Home. There was a line of cars waiting to leave the parking lot.

  “This shouldn’t take too long,” I assured him.

  “It’s as if you don’t even see all those cars,” he felt the need to point out.

  I unwrapped the sandwich that Templeton had made for me and tossed the promised half to DeeDee, who wolfed it down, seeming to not chew it.

  “You’ve never been to a funeral,” I told the lizard. “Funeral directors are some of the most efficient human beings on earth.”

  “But there’s no time clock for their clients,” God pointed out.

  “The dead aren’t the ones that are paying them,” I reminded him. I took a bite of the sandwich, and a sip of coffee, as we watched the hearse start to pull away from the funeral home.

  “Told ya,” I murmured, my mouth full.

  God watched the entire procession with fascination.

  “Where are they going now?” he asked.

  “To a cemetery, I’d imagine,” I said. “That lead car had a coffin in it.”

  “You haven’t been to a cemetery in a while,” he said.

  I let out a sigh. “The last time I was in a cemetery, somebody almost killed Griswald and my dad,” I reminded him.

  “True,” he said.

  As the last car pulled out of the lot, I rolled up the foil and dropped it into the cup holder.

  “You should have a better place for your trash than that,” the lizard lectured.

  “Well, do you want me to be a litter bug and throw it outside?” I asked.

  DeeDee bent to sniff at it. I bopped her nose. “Do not eat that. I don’t need to take you for a vet visit on top of everything else that’s going on.”

  “Eat won’t I,” she promised.

  I eyed her suspiciously. “You promise?”

  “Promise.” To seal the deal, she licked my nose.

  “Okay,” I told her. “You wait here. We’ll try not to be too long.”

  “We’ll be a while,” God told the dog as I let him run up my arm.

  “Not that long,” I promised her.

  “Nap,” she said, seemingly unconcerned with however long I was going to be gone.

  “That’s a good idea,” I told her.

  Fighting back a yawn, no doubt a reaction to her suggestion, I headed toward the funeral home.

  “What if no one’s there?” God asked from his place on my shoulder.

  “An even better chance to look around,” I murmured.

  I walked through the front door of the funeral home, glancing around. I didn’t see anybody. I stopped moving and held my breath so that I could listen. I didn’t hear anything, either.

  “I wonder if this is considered to be trespassing,” God whispered.

  I didn’t answer him.

  Then, I heard a very faint sobbing.

  I followed the sound, wondering who was there. I found Harp, sitting in an empty viewing room, her head in her hands.

  Her shoulders were shaking as she cried.

  “Are you okay?” I asked gently.

  Startled, she let out a scream, jumped to her feet, and knocked over a folding chair.

  Once that toppled, the entire row began to tip like a series of dominoes. They made a horrific noise as they all crashed to the ground one after the other.

  “I am so sorry,” I said, hurrying to help her right the chairs. We worked quickly to put them back into their normal position.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” I told her.

  “I’m just on edge,” she said. “My cousin Josh’s friend, Nelson, the one I told you about? He’s dead.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped, putting a hand to my chest.

  “Sensitive skin,” God muttered from inside my bra. “And maybe tone down your melodramatic acting a little it.”

  Harp, didn’t appear to hear the squeaking sound.

  “What happened?” I asked, once again deciding that playing dumb was the best course of action.

  “Oh, it’s horrible,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Suddenly, she eyed me suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

  I looked away, trying to appear to be embarrassed. “It sounds stupid, now.”

  “What does?”

  “Well, you offered me a makeover…” I said, trailing off awkwardly.

  “Excellent!” she cried.

  Glancing up at her, I saw that a big smile had lit up her tear-stained face. “Let’s do something positive. Can I cut your hair?”

  I raised a hand defensively to my locks. “My boyfriend kind of likes it the way it is,” I lied smoothly.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s kind of mousy, let’s put you in a wig.” She grabbed my arm and began to lead me downstairs to where she normally did makeup on the dearly departed.

  “Mousy,” God mocked. “Mousy. Mousy.”

  I knew that he was, at once, making fun of both me and Benny. I considered what kind of damage I could do to his sensitive skin if I picked him up and hurled him across the room.

  “A makeover will make you feel better,” Harp said. “Especially a great smokey eye. I make my own smokey eye with all-natural ingredients. You’ll never find anything like it in a store, guaranteed.”

  I watched her carefully, wondering why she thought I needed to feel better.

  “You’re stressed,” she said as though she was answering the unasked question. “I can see it in your eyes. You’ve got stress lines around them.”

  Self-consciously, I patted the corners of my eyes, wondering if she was right.

  “You know who else is stressed?” she asked.

  “Who?” I asked, hoping that she was going to reveal something about Nelson’s case that I could then further explore.

  “Mrs. Hallangen,” she said, patting a stool, indicating I should sit on it. “She was back here again, arguing with Mr. Carson.”

  “Arguing about what?” I asked, taking a seat.

  “The missing ashes,” Harp revealed. As she spoke, she gathered my hair in a loose ponytail and pinne
d it to the top of my head.

  “Why was she arguing with him?” I asked curiously.

  She turned away and rummaged in a dark cabinet. “I don’t know,” Harp revealed. “I just heard her say something about Madison.”

  “As in, the town?” I asked, wondering what business the Hallangens had in the town of Madison, New Jersey.

  Harp shrugged, and then put something that felt a lot like I imagined an itchy dead beaver would feel like on top of my head.

  “No one will recognize you in this,” she promised.

  I hoped not. Because I had a plan. And I needed this makeover to provide me the disguise that would be necessary to pull it off.

  26

  “What was that about?” God asked as I walked back to the car.

  “I needed a disguise,” I told him.

  “For what?”

  “To put my plan in motion.”

  “What plan?” the lizard asked suspiciously.

  When I unlocked my car, I disturbed a sleeping DeeDee. She sat up, barking, “Guard! Guard!”

  “Good girl,” I said, sliding into my seat and patting her head. I placed the lizard on the dashboard and started the car.

  “What plan?” God reminded me.

  “The one you said I needed. The thing you raged that I have to do.”

  “You have a plan about Daphne?” he asked.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “Well, let’s hear it,” God said.

  I shook my head, put my finger to my lips, and then pointed to my ears, indicating that the car could be bugged.

  “Charades!” DeeDee barked excitedly.

  “It’s not a game, you moron mutt,” God thundered.

  Frightened, the dog tried to jump into the back seat. When she did so, she slammed into my shoulder, which almost caused me to drive into oncoming traffic. There was a lot of swerving and swearing and God screaming as he slid from one end of the dashboard to the other. Finally, I got us back on course.

  “That’s why you’re supposed to have your dog restrained when it’s in a car,” God said. “You know it’s the law in New Jersey, right?”

  I bit my tongue, not pointing out that I don’t follow most laws.

  I drove the car to the log cabin where Gino had led me to the last time, and parked it on the side of the road. I grabbed the lizard and ushered the dog to come along with me. Leaving my car behind, I squeezed the key fob that Gino had given me.