Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  Shane reached down and turned on the navigation system and punched in the address for the bakery in downtown Savannah. He was glad for the tinted windows as he drove into the city. Rocko was becoming more agitated as consciousness seeped into his brain, so after Shane double-parked in front of the bakery, he whacked him on the head again.

  Then he walked into the bakery.

  “Can I help you?” the woman behind the counter said.

  Shane checked the list. “I need fifteen pounds of fondue and-”

  The woman said, “Excuse me?”

  “It’s for a wedding cake.”

  “You mean fondant.”

  “Whatever. And…” He handed Agnes’s To Do List over to her. She squinted at it. “Is this the Agnes Crandall order?”

  “Yeah.”

  She handed it back. “She called it in. I thought she was going to pick it up later. Doesn’t matter. It’s ready.”

  Ten minutes later, two bags of miscellaneous cake stuff and three five-pound tubs of icing heavier, the Defender was heading north.

  He glanced over. Rocko was blinking the blood out of his eyes from the second whack. He had an incredibly thick skull.

  “Try not to get blood on that cake stuff.”

  “Fuck you,” Rocko said, shaking the blood off his face and onto one of the tubs of fondant.

  Shane sighed. “You set up the Two Rivers hit. Who hired you and who was the target?”

  Rocko turned his beady little eyeballs toward him. “Who are you?”

  Shane sighed. “My name is Shane.”

  Rocko spit on him. “Fuck you, Shane.”

  “Rocko, we can do this hard or we can do this easy. You got paid five thousand for a contract You subcontracted Vinnie ‘Can of Tomatoes’ Marinelli two thousand to do the actual job. He subcontracted it to a dumbshit named Macy for five hundred. Both Vinnie and Macy are dead. I killed them. The job isn’t done. So whoever paid you isn’t gonna be happy. Who paid you?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Shane crossed an old turn-bridge over the Savannah River. He saw a sign for the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and turned off, drove down a one-lane dirt road, then onto what could barely be called a track until he was pretty sure they were deep into the swamp. Then he stopped the Defender, got out, went around to the passenger side and opened the door, quickly stepping back, Glock at the ready. “Get out.”

  “You going to kill me?” Rocko demanded.

  “Not if you tell me what I want to know.” Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out an airline voucher. “Then you take this to the Savannah Airport, get on a plane, and no one around here ever sees you again. Got it?” He slapped the voucher down on the hood of the Defender.

  Rocko’s eyes shifted from the voucher to Shane. “Bullshit.”

  “Who gave you the contract and who was the contract on?”

  A very large alligator basking in the sun about fifty feet away was eyeing them, perhaps sizing them up for a snack. Shane squinted. The gator had a scar where one of its eyes should have been. It was a hard life everywhere, even in the swamp. The one-eyed reptile slid into the water with a splash and began to lazily move toward them.

  Rocko heard the splash and glanced over his shoulder. “I took an oath. I ain’t violating it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rocko frowned. “To make my bones with the mob, I gotta stick with the oath, right? I can’t violate the contract. It’s like, ya know, that doctor-patient thing. Or when a lawyer talks to a client.”

  Spare me from idiots, Shane thought. “That’s movie bullshit.” A mosquito landed on his neck and took a bite. Halfway from its resting spot, the gator had paused, sizing up the situation with one eye. Shane figured it had more brains than Rocko.

  Rocko’s head moved back and forth on his bull neck. “Can’t squeal. Mob oath.”

  “Mob oath. You telling me Don Fortunato hired you?” Shane asked.

  Rocko’s eyes widened. “You from the Don?”

  “If I was from the Don, would I be asking you if the Don hired you?”

  The furrow appeared in Rocko’s forehead as he tried to figure that out. “I’d like to work for the Don.”

  Scratch the Don, Shane thought. He saw the muscles in Rocko’s shoulders begin to bulge and he knew what he was doing and he also knew that the plastic flex-cuff probably wasn’t going to hold. The tattoos on Rocko’s arms were rippling now from the effort. A naked woman on the right bicep was swaying seductively.

  “Rocko,” Shane said with a deep sigh. “I really don’t want to kill you. But I will if you come at me. Think, damn it. There’s no mob oath if you’re not working for the mob. So you can tell me.”

  The flex-cuff went with an audible pop and Shane shot Rocko in the left thigh as he started to charge at him. Cursing, the weightlifter grabbed the leg and hopped about.

  “I told you not to do that,” Shane said.

  The gator was moving forward again, smelling blood.

  Shane moved toward the truck. “Rocko, we need to get out of here.”

  “Fuck you,” Rocko said, hopping away from the Defender. “I can’t believe you fucking shot me.”

  “I’ll shoot you again if you don’t tell me who the contract was on. Agnes Crandall?”

  Rocko was in too much pain to hide the look of recognition that flickered across his face at the name.

  “Okay, got that. Now tell me the guy who hired you and I’ll get you back to the truck before the gator gets you,” Shane said, and when Rocko looked even more stubborn, he added. “I’m telling you, you dumb fuck, there is no mob oath.”

  “Hey, she made me take it, right there on the phone. I took the mob oath-”

  “She?” Shane said.

  Rocko glared at him. “Fuck you, I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ and I ain’t breakin’ the oath, neither.” He turned and began a limping run along the edge of the swamp.

  “Damn it, Rocko!” Shane yelled, but it was already over, the gator came out of the water, an explosion of green scales and big teeth, and closed the ground between them in seconds, its jaws snapping shut on Rocko’s leg. Rocko screamed, and Shane fired a couple of rounds into the gator, feeling bad for it, but the bullets seemed to have no effect as it rolled with Rocko into the dark water, dragging him into the depths.

  The surface of the water boiled for a few seconds, then became still.

  Shane waited to see if Rocko would reappear, but after a couple of minutes he knew Rocko was sleeping with the gator.

  He got back into the Defender, pulled onto the dirt trail, and accelerated, heading for the refuge exit. They don’t make ‘em like Rocko anymore, Shane thought as he drove back toward Keyes. Darwin had pretty much explained why. He’d have felt bad except that Rocko’s next stop would have been heading to Two Rivers to drill Agnes in exchange for five large after having sent two assholes to terrify her two nights running. For that, the dumbfuck deserved the gator.

  And now nobody else would be showing up to shoot Agnes.

  One more stop at a jeweler Joey knew to cash in Agnes’s engagement ring for top dollar and then he could go home and see what was in the bomb shelter. First guess, Frankie’s body. Second guess, five million dollars. Third guess, a bunch of bad survival food and a dozen Playboy magazines from 1982. The third one was the most likely-

  Shane’s sat phone rang, the tone designating the cut out number he had used to call Casey Dean. Shane looked at the text message:

  sorry i missed your call.

  enjoy the wedding.

  see you there. cd.

  “Humor,” Shane said to the phone. “Har.” He punched the jeweler’s address into the GPS and wondered what Agnes was making for lunch.

  “I know a little more than I did before I left,” Shane said as he drank the tall glass of lemonade Carpenter had brought out onto the porch after lunch. “I know the Marinelli/Macy contract was let on Agnes. I don’t know who let the contract, except that a woman made the
call, and Rocko thought it was mob related. Whatever that means.”

  “Well, that’s a help,” Joey muttered.

  Shane turned on his uncle. “Don’t start with me, Joey. You called me into this mess and you’re still holding something back from me. I think the contract is defunct, given that I’ve taken out the food chain, but I still want to know who hired Rocko in case whoever it is decides to try again. Plus we’ve still got your old pal Four Wheels out in the swamp sending his descendants in here.” He looked at Carpenter, who was leaning back with his lemonade, smiling as he listened to Agnes and Lisa Livia talk in the kitchen. “And then I got this.” Shane handed his cell phone to Carpenter, letting him read the text message from Dean.

  “Interesting,” Carpenter said.

  “What’s the status of the hatch?” Shane asked him.

  “The lock’s burned through,” Carpenter said. “I rigged a hydraulic jack to pull it open when you got back, so whenever you’re ready.”

  “Who’s in there?” Shane asked, nodding toward the house.

  “Agnes, Lisa Livia, and some woman named Kristy,” Joey answered. “Wedding photographer. A box came full of flamingo pens with pink feathers on their heads, and they’re lookin’ at ‘em.” He seemed bemused by that.

  “Why-” Shane stopped when he spotted Xavier pull up to the bridge and park just short of it and Doyle come crawling out from underneath the bridge like some kind of troll. “What the hell is Xavier doing here?”

  “Damned if I know,” Joey said.

  Xavier got out of his car and came over the bridge, where Doyle met him, but the detective’s focus was on the house as he crossed the lawn, Doyle following, yammering at him.

  “Let’s just invite the whole damn town.” Shane looked at his uncle. “You know, Joey, if we find Frankie in there, and anything at all points to you having killed him, there isn’t much I can do to keep Xavier off your ass.”

  “I ain’t worried,” Joey said. “I didn’t kill him. I just want to know what happened that night.”

  Xavier came up the porch steps, Doyle stomping up next to him.

  “What can we do for you, Detective?” Shane asked.

  “I understand there’s been some excavation work in the basement,” Xavier said. “I even heard a rumor there’s some sort of bomb shelter out there in the backyard and a tunnel that leads to it. And I heard that you fellows have opened up that tunnel and are getting ready to open the hatch to that bomb shelter.”

  “You sure heard a lot,” Joey muttered.

  “And where is Detective Hammond?” Shane asked, not wanting that doofus wandering around unsupervised.

  “Detective Hammond appears to have taken a long lunch break,” Xavier said. “I believe at the marina. Missing all the excitement, that boy is. Sort of like when they opened Capone’s vault on TV.”

  “There was nothing in Capone’s vault,” Shane noted.

  “I’m hoping for better results here,” Xavier said.

  “Some could say you was trespassing,” Joey said.

  “Some say you might have some trouble if that bomb shelter gets opened,” Xavier said.

  “Like who?” Joey demanded.

  “Oh, there’s been a lot of talk.” Xavier pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his white coat. “For example. This here is Miz Agnes’s criminal record. I was quite surprised to note the contents. Turns out she’s wielded a frying pan before with violent effect.”

  Shane looked at Joey and noted that shut the old man up for the moment.

  “I also heard your Miz Agnes is pretty handy with a cooking fork to the neck.”

  Fucking Taylor, Shane thought. There was going to be one fewer chef in the world shortly.

  “Somebody swear out a complaint?” Joey said, still cool.

  “No,” Xavier admitted, and Shane thought, Not Taylor then, somebody Taylor told. The detective scowled toward the river. “What the hell is that noise?”

  “Flamingos,” Joey said. “So all you got is some gossip and some old paper, I don’t-”

  Agnes came out onto the porch with Lisa Livia and a trim brunette draped in cameras. Opening the shelter was not going to be the clandestine affair Shane had had in mind. He had indeed forgotten what Keyes was like. He looked toward the bridge, expecting to see the local high school marching band come across with cheerleaders and the rest of the town population.

  “I brought a flashlight” Xavier cheerfully held up a heavy-duty light

  “I rigged lights,” Carpenter said. “You won’t need it”

  “Can we get this over with?” Lisa Livia said, and Shane could feel the edge coming off her, nothing like her usual voluptuous vibe. He glanced at Agnes and she nodded curtly, but her tension was for LL, standing at her elbow, and he remembered that for Lisa Livia, Frankie wasn’t some dead mobster, he was her father, and they might be about to open his tomb.

  “You sure you want to-”

  “Yes,” Lisa Livia snapped, and Shane led the way into the house, past the kitchen table that held a box full of lurid pink pens with feather tops, and down the ladder, holding it in place as everybody else climbed down.

  They all waited in the rec room while he and Carpenter went down the fifty-foot tunnel and manned the hydraulic jack. It was a complicated arrangement of cables and blocks of wood that Shane didn’t even attempt to figure out He had enough of a headache trying to figure out who was trying to kill who and why.

  “Grab that,” Carpenter said. Shane grabbed the lever indicated. “Ready?” Carpenter asked. Shane nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  In concert, they began to apply pressure. At first there was no obvious result except a tightening of the steel cables. Then an ominous creaking of the wood blocks, the cables ran over. “Don’t worry,” Carpenter said. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  “Opened twenty-five-year-old bomb shelters?”

  “I opened a bank vault once that had been shut for sixty years.”

  “What happened?” Shane said as he leaned into the level.

  “Wall cracked a little,” Carpenter said, and Shane looked up at the arched ceiling above him.

  “How much is a little?”

  “I got it open. It’ll pop, just like-”

  The hatch popped open with a whoosh and a creak of rusty hinges that echoed down the tunnel and through the house.

  Voices rose from the other end of the basement, a babble of questions and some contention.

  “It’s all right,” Shane called back.

  “No, it isn’t,” Agnes yelled back to him. “Brenda’s here.”

  Brenda’s voice floated down the tunnel. “Is the shelter open?”

  “No,” Shane called back, but she came tapping down the long tunnel in her heels, and the rest of them followed her. He sighed and turned toward the open hatch and stepped over the lower edge.

  The first thing he saw was a safe, its door wide open.

  Inside the safe was a frying pan, its rim crusted with very old blood.

  Inside the frying pan and piled around it in the safe were empty money wrappers. Lots and lots of them. Enough, Shane thought, to go around five million dollars.

  “Oh, my God!” Brenda said, her voice full of drama.

  “That’s not my frying pan,” Agnes said from behind him, and he turned and saw them, crowding the door, Brenda with her head turned away, Xavier and Agnes behind her, and next to Agnes, Lisa Livia looking pale and the thin brunette holding up her camera.

  “I told you,” Brenda said to Xavier, her voice rich with distress. “I told you. Joey and Four Wheels killed him. I can’t bear to look.”

  “Look at what, Miz Dupres?” Xavier said.

  “At…” Brenda turned to look into the shelter, at first with dread and then with disbelief. “What… Where’s Frankie?”

  “He’s not in there,” Lisa Livia said, her voice as stunned as Brenda’s, and Agnes put her arm around her friend.

  Lisa Livia turned and walked back dow
n the tunnel.

  “She wanted her dad dead?” Shane asked, and Agnes shook her head, giving him a look that said she’d tell him later.

  “Joey came in and moved the body,” Brenda was saying to Xavier, grabbing his sleeve. “Him and Four Wheels. They moved it!”

  “How?” Xavier asked, but Carpenter had already moved past the safe and was looking up.

  “Hmm,” Carpenter said, and began to climb up an old metal ladder welded to the side of the shelter.

  Shane went to see what his partner had seen and realized that there was a door at the top, and when Carpenter pushed on the door and flipped it open, sunlight poured in, and above that, a ceiling, blue with gold stars.

  “That’s my gazebo,” Agnes said from beside Shane.

  Shane turned back to where Xavier was looking at the frying pan.

  “Well, someone got whacked a good one,” Xavier said, and looked at Agnes.

  “That is not mine,” Agnes said again.

  “This is now a crime scene-” Xavier began and then the earth began to shake. “What the hell?”

  “Did you order some trucks?” Carpenter said to Agnes from the top of the ladder.

  “Trucks?” Agnes said.

  “Five of them. Dump trucks. Heading for your bridge.”

  “No,” Agnes said, running for the tunnel.

  Shane went to follow her and caught a glimpse of Brenda. She looked like the news about the trucks was making her feel much better.

  Agnes ran through the kitchen, past the Venus and Lisa Livia, who said, “What now?” as if she didn’t care, then out through the hall and across the lawn, waving her hands and yelling, “Stop, no, go back,” but the dump trucks kept rolling across the bridge; first one, bumping over the fragile supports, onto the drive, across the lawn and down to the riverbank, where Cerise and Hot Pink honked their rage; then another, the bridge groaning before the truck went to the river; then a third, the supports screaming this time before the truck went on; and then, inevitably, the fourth hitting the bridge, the supports splintering with a crash, that truck sinking into the cut, leaving the fifth and last truck marooned on the other side.