Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  “So today we sink my mother’s boat,” Lisa Livia said.

  “I really don’t have time.” Agnes put more cakes on the griddle for her. “I have to decorate a wedding cake and a groom’s cake because your rattlesnake of a mother did something to the baker, remember? There’s a wedding tomorrow.”

  “Oh, right.” Lisa Livia sat down in Carpenter’s chair. “Maria’s bridesmaids come in today, don’t they?”

  “Bachelorette party is upstairs on the second floor, which is also where they’re staying tonight. Bachelor party in the barn.” Agnes watched the pancakes bubble. “Taylor talked Palmer into it so he could get the money for renting it twice. Rehearsal dinner first Joey’s taken over the catering, so that’s something, and Kristy just called and said she’ll be here tonight to take the pictures, and Butch swears he’ll get Cerise and Hot Pink out of here as soon as he gets his work done at the zoo and can sneak a truck out. This afternoon, I have to get the bows on the gazebo, but Garth is a fast learner so he can help, and most of the real prep will be early tomorrow morning. The rental stuff’s all here, so that’s not a worry. Really, as long as Maisie gets her daisies here and I get the cakes done and Joey gets the catering done…” She felt her stomach cramp as she thought about all the ifs between now and the wedding. “… we’ll be fine. Plus, you know, my column.” My career. Mother of God, I have to get my priorities straight. Once I figure them out.

  “I believe you.” Lisa Livia picked up Carpenter’s fork and began to finish off his breakfast. “My plan for today is just to get the mildew off Venus, so I have time to help with whatever you need. When do you plan to switch out the flamingo theme for the daisies-and-butterflies theme?”

  “I don’t know.” Agnes flipped the cakes. “I’m trying to take my cue from Maria because she doesn’t want to upset Evie after all the good flamingo work she’s done, but-”

  Lisa Livia’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it out and answered it. Her face went rigid while she listened. “What? I can’t be-” She listened again. “Give me your number.” She held out her hand and Agnes grabbed a pencil and her To Do List off the counter and handed it to her and she wrote a phone number down. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up, sheet white, and said, “Where’s your laptop?”

  Agnes pointed to the end of the counter and LL went and got it. “Internet?”

  “Wireless,” Agnes said. “Through the phone lines. What-” Lisa Livia shook her head, her breath coming faster, and began to hit the keyboard, typing fast She stopped and looked at the screen and said, “No,” and then typed again and looked at the screen and said, “No,” and typed again, and Agnes came around to see what she was doing.

  Bank accounts. One after another until it looked like there were ten open windows on the screen. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Lisa Livia said under her breath.

  “LL?”

  “She look it all,” Lisa Livia said, her breathing short and shallow. “All what?”

  Lisa Livia shook her head and Agnes looked at her and said, “Put your head between your legs. Now,” and forced her head down, just as LL started to slide.

  “Brenda took your money,” Agnes said, her hand on LL’s neck, keeping her head down until she got some blood back in her brain.

  “Not just mine.” LL’s voice was muffled. “Let me up.”

  Agnes stepped back and Lisa Livia straightened, some color in her face.

  “She must have gone onto my laptop,” Lisa Livia said. “When I was staying on that fucking boat, while I was asleep or out here, she used my laptop and somehow she figured out my password. She didn’t just take everything I own, she looted the accounts I manage for my clients. She did it because I was working with you, fighting her on this house. Because I said you were family, not her. She cried all over me that night about that. I told her she should have thought ahead before she killed my daddy.” She nodded at the laptop. “This is her payback.”

  “Oh, God,” Agnes said, and sat down hard. “How much?”

  Lisa Livia swallowed hard. “I’ll have to…” She drew a deep breath. “In a minute when I can do this without passing out, I’ll add it up. But somewhere around eight or nine hundred thousand.”

  “Dollars?” Agnes swallowed hard, too. “We’ll get it back. We’ll go out to that damn boat and-”

  Lisa Livia closed her eyes. “She’ll have it in the Caymans by now. I can’t even kill her to get it, that bastard Taylor will inherit.”

  “Jesus,” Agnes said. “Can’t we go ransack the boat and find the numbers or something?”

  “She’ll have them hidden in one of the millions of places the Real Estate King had built into that damn thing. I wouldn’t even know how to look for them.” She shook her head, keeping her jaw set, fighting tears. “Pretty ironic. I spend my whole life working, neglect my kid to build up this safety net for us, and then because I want to be there for her at her wedding, I lose everything, including my future. And then I screw up her wedding by sticking her with flamingos.”

  “Lisa Livia, it’s not-”

  “I am such a fuckup.”

  “No, you are not.” Agnes put her arm around her. “You don’t even believe that. I have no idea how to fix this, but we will. We’ll get your money back. We’ll do your daughter’s wedding, then we’ll sink your mother’s boat, and then we will get your money, Shane and Carpenter and I, we’ll help you get it back. I swear to you, we will.”

  Lisa Livia looked at her. “You don’t even know how to sink a boat”

  “I am learning many new skills this week,” Agnes said. “Eat your pancakes.”

  To Do List, she thought. Throw Maria’s wedding. Return stolen flamingos. Clean up the Venus. Get Lisa Livia’s money back. Kill somebody named Casey Dean. She looked out the window to the dock where Shane and Carpenter were conferring with their boss. Sink Brenda’s boat. Write my goddamn column. Believe in Shane when he tells me what I’m dying to hear.

  She went to the pantry to get the wedding cakes.

  “I didn’t explain things to Agnes very well,” Shane said when they’d started down the path to the dock.

  “You have to speak from the heart,” Carpenter said.

  “The heart.”

  “Yes. You have to open up to the world and learn optimism, and the words will come to you, and you’ll tell Agnes how you feel.” Shane stopped. “What?”

  Carpenter looked at him, serene. “Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimism.”

  “Oh.” Shane frowned. “I told her I wanted to come back here. She seemed pretty happy.”

  Carpenter nodded. “That’s a start. Once you open yourself to the world, my friend, good things will come to you.”

  “I don’t think going to meet Wilson is the best time for me to get optimistic and, uh, open my heart.”

  “Indeed not. In some ways, your heart opening up is causing a lot of trouble and, I believe, precipitating this meeting.”

  He nodded down the dock to where Wilson was already sitting on one of the benches, dressed impeccably in his suit. Shane felt like he was walking the gangplank as they made their way down the long dock to him. Brenda’s yacht bobbed on the water, but there was a sleeker, much newer and larger boat just off the low dock: Wilson’s mode of transportation. A dark figure was on the bridge of the boat running the engines, keeping it in place against the tide. The jet boat Carpenter had driven the last time Shane met Wilson was tied down on the front deck next to a small crane.

  “I’m disappointed,” Wilson said as they arrived at the high dock.

  Cerise and Hot Pink chorused their disapproval, too.

  Without being asked, Shane sat down across from his boss while Carpenter took a seat beside him.

  Wilson looked at Shane, his eyes as sharp as ever. “You’ve had two opportunities to take out Casey Dean, and not only have you failed in both, you have allowed Don Fortunato’s consigliere to complete down payment for the contract.”

/>   Shane didn’t say anything, because he knew there was nothing he could say.

  “There has been another death here at the house, and the local police were involved once more. This is not the performance I would expect of the man who would replace me. One thing we have always prided ourselves on in the Organization is our discretion.”

  “I think you know much more than you’re telling me,” Shane said.

  Wilson looked at him without reaction. “Of course I know much more than I tell you. That is the nature of my job. To know, to give orders, and to take responsibility.”

  “I take responsibility-” Shane began, but Wilson cut him off.

  “You are answerable to me. I am answerable to many others and you are my responsibility. This is something you need to understand about my job.

  “The FBI is not pleased we took their information regarding Casey Dean and squandered it,” Wilson continued. “I do not like having to explain myself to the FBI. I am tempted to pull you from this operation. Casey Dean has been a thorn in our side for years, we gave you the two best opportunities we’ve ever had, and you fumbled both of them.”

  Carpenter leaned forward. “Third time is the charm.”

  “Unfortunately,” Wilson said, “I don’t-”

  “We’ve got a line on Casey Dean,” Carpenter said.

  Wilson stared at Carpenter in silence for several seconds then turned to Shane, who had used all the self-control he had to refrain from also staring at Carpenter. “And that is?”

  “Carpenter developed it,” Shane said, “so it would be best if he explained it.”

  Wilson folded his arms. “I’m waiting.”

  “We’ve got Casey Dean’s cell phone number,” Carpenter said. “And Casey Dean has called a blind number on Shane’s phone that he set up. Dean seems to enjoy taunting us. We can turn that against him. He’s using a bounce signal with his cell phone, so we can’t use towers to track his exact location. But I can set up three receivers in the area and triangulate his location.”

  “If he answers his phone,” Wilson said.

  “He’ll answer,” Shane said.

  “Why do you think that?” Wilson asked.

  “Because we’ve suckered him into being overconfident.”

  “Good plan,” Wilson said with a bland look on his face. Cerise and Hot Pink picked up some volume in their vocals, and Wilson’s eyes went past Shane. “We have company.”

  Shane looked over his shoulder and saw Joey ambling down the dock, dressed in his usual black slacks and red shirt.

  “How you guys doing’?” Joey asked as he arrived.

  “Mr. Wilson, this is my uncle Joey,” Shane said, getting to his feet to do the introductions. “We’re having a meeting, Joey,” he added pointedly.

  Joey nodded at Wilson and sat down on the bench. “You’re Shane’s boss.”

  “Yes. And you’re Joey Torcelli who used to work with Frankie Fortunate “

  “That was long ago.”

  “The past catches up to us.”

  “Something catching up to you?” Joey asked.

  “Time,” Wilson said, “catches up to everyone.”

  Shane glanced down at Carpenter, who raised his eyebrows. At any minute, Shane thought, one of them is gonna say, “The crow flies at midnight,” and then I’m gonna shoot them both.

  “Sometimes things come full circle,” Joey said.

  “Sometimes,” Wilson said.

  “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Shane asked. “And sometimes things change for the better,” Joey said. “People get a second chance.”

  “People don’t change,” Wilson said.

  Shane tensed as Joey leaned toward Wilson. “I think they do.”

  “Gentlemen,” Carpenter said. “My friend Shane and I have a job to do.”

  Joey stood. “I’m going with you.”

  “I don’t think-” Shane began, but Wilson nodded.

  “Some experience might be helpful.”

  What the hell? Shane thought.

  “We need the jet boat,” Carpenter said.

  “All yours.” Wilson stood. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Torcelli.”

  “I bet,” Joey said.

  Wilson moved off to his boat, Carpenter with him to claim the jet boat, and Shane watched Joey’s eyes follow them. “What the hell was that?” he asked the old man.

  “Nothin’ good,” Joey said, looking away.

  Shane stepped closer. “You’re fucking with my life here, Joey. If you know something about this, anything about this, you tell me now. This is life and death, not some old mob game.”

  “It was always life and death, Shane,” Joey said as Carpenter pulled up in the jet boat. “Guys like Wilson, they ain’t no different than the Don.”

  “Damn it, Joey-”

  “We’ll talk in the boat,” Joey said, remnants of authority in his voice that told Shane something of what he’d used to be.

  “You’re damn right we will,” Shane said, but he followed Joey onto the jet boat.

  Carpenter stayed at the wheel in the center console of the jet boat. Shane locked down an M6o machine gun on the front pole mount and loaded a band of ammunition into it. Along one side of the jet boat, Joey was securing an orange coast guard logo. He’d already put one on the other side of the boat as they pulled away from Wilson’s cabin cruiser. Carpenter pushed the throttle forward and they picked up speed until the boat planed out and they were cruising out of the Blood River onto the Intracoastal. “Why am I doin’ this?” Joey said.

  “It explains the machine gun mounted in the prow of the boat to anyone stupid enough to ask questions of a boat with a machine gun mounted in the prow,” Shane said, and then called to Carpenter. “Where are we putting the first receiver?”

  Carpenter pointed at the GPS screen on the console in front of him. “On the eastern tip of Barataria Island. Second one, here on Middle Marsh Island, southern tip. Third one to the south, on Bull Island. That will give us good coverage.”

  “Why are we looking on the water?” Joey asked, finished with his task.

  “Casey Dean was on a boat the last time we saw him,” Carpenter said. “I think it makes sense he’s probably living on a boat. Makes him mobile in this area, and he can hide among the thousands of barrier islands and waterways.”

  “This Wilson guy,” Joey said. “You like working for him?”

  “I might not be working for him much longer,” Shane said.

  Joey smiled. “You going to stay here?”

  “No, I’m in line to get his job.”

  The smile disappeared. “You want that?”

  “It’s a step up,” Shane said.

  “To where?” Joey asked.

  Shane glared at his uncle. “You’re the one who sent me away twenty-five years ago to military school. This is the path you put me on. Why are you asking me questions about it?”

  “I sent you away to protect you,” Joey said.

  “From who?”

  Shane was surprised as his uncle seemed to grow smaller in the swivel seat “Shane, what’s going on now, it’s all part of stuff that was never taken care of twenty-five years ago. There’s been a truce all those years. But this Wilson guy, that ain’t where you should be. You don’t want to be like him.”

  “A truce between who?” Shane asked.

  Joey hesitated. “The Don and me.”

  “And now the truce is over?”

  “I don’t know. But it wasn’t no coincidence you was in Savannah when I needed you.”

  Considering he’d been working overseas 90 percent of the time in the previous five years, Shane didn’t think it was a coincidence, either. “Why would Wilson want me in the area? I’m getting a little tired of you old men playing me. Why is the truce breaking down now? What’s at stake?”

  “You’re at stake,” Joey said.

  “First transmitter goes in here,” Carpenter announced as he slowed the boat to slide the prow of the boat onto the tip o
f an island. Shane didn’t move. “What do you mean, Joey?”

  Joey sighed and ran a hand across his coarse beard. “Your father…” He stopped and shook his head. “This ain’t good. You don’t need this now.”

  “My father.” Shane stood over his uncle, looking down at him. “You never told me a damn thing about my father. You’ve always acted like he never existed. That he was some fly-by-night guy who got my mother pregnant. Big family secret.”

  “Nah,” Joey said. “Your father was a stand-up guy. He treated my sister right. I promised them both when you were born, if anything ever happened, I’d take care of you.”

  “And then you sent me away,” Shane said, anger pulsing in his veins.

  “I sent you away to save you.” Joey stopped and shook his head.

  Shane grabbed his uncle’s T-shirt, pulling him close. “Enough.” He could feel the blood pounding in his head, a rushing in his ears, Carpenter coming close to him, but his focus was on Joey. “Enough with the fucking games, Joey.”

  “You’re a Fortunato,” Joey said, talking faster. “Your father was Roberto, the oldest brother, the one who was supposed to be the Don. You’re the Fortunato heir, Shane.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Shane said, and let Joey go.

  Agnes was rolling out grass green fondant and swearing at it, when Rhett growled at the hall doorway, and she looked up, ready to pulverize anybody with a gun.

  Instead it was Taylor, equally pulverizable, looking like hell.

  “Your murdering slut of a thieving wife is out on her boat,” Agnes said, jerking her head toward the dock. “Next time, don’t come through the house.”

  “I’m sorry,” Taylor said, and his voice was low, not the coaxing, flirting tease she’d come to loathe. “I truly am sorry, Agnes. I’ve screwed up everything.”

  “True. Get out.” Agnes rolled the resisting fondant over the pin and moved it to the first layer of Palmer’s groom’s cake, smoothing the top and then beginning on the sides, where things quickly went wrong. You can do this, she told herself Goddamn fondant.