Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  “Evie,” Xavier said.

  Palmer’s swaying became downright dangerous, and Shane grabbed the front of his shirt and sat him down on the swing, which brought Shane close to Evie’s ear. “Walk Xavier to his car,” he whispered.

  Evie stepped forward. “Come on, Xavier,” she said, smooth as glass. “It’s dark out there. Walk me to my car.”

  Xavier started to speak, and she took his arm. “You can harass Shane tomorrow,” she said, and tugged him toward the screen door, and he shot Shane a glare full of suspicion and then he looked down at Evie, sighed, and went.

  Shane straightened Palmer on the swing. “You stay here and get to know your mother-in-law.”

  “Where are you going?” Lisa Livia said, almost in tears. “What about Maria? What about Agnes?”

  “I’m on it,” Shane told her.

  “It’ll be all right,” Carpenter said, his voice low. “We’ll be right back. And tomorrow, I’ll take care of the other thing for you. Rest.”

  Lisa Livia took a deep breath, nodded, and then turned to Palmer. “You’re an idiot. But I like you. I’ll make coffee.”

  Shane looked in the back door to the kitchen at Joey. “You take care of things here.”

  Joey nodded and patted the gun-shaped bulge under his T-shirt.

  Great, Shane thought. Just what we need. mure people with firepower. “What’s the plan?” Carpenter said.

  “We break Agnes out of jail,” Shane said. “Then I convince her that I wasn’t having sex with the stripper so she doesn’t kill me. Then we come back here and take care of the package and hit Casey Dean. Then we find proof that Brenda killed Taylor and give it to Xavier so he doesn’t prosecute Agnes for going AWOL. Then we make sure Maria marries Palmer. Then we meet Wilson and I get his job and you get a promotion and a big raise.”

  “Why does that sound like a To Do List?” Carpenter said.

  “Get in the van,” Shane said.

  Maria had come back with Agnes’s lawyer, Barry, who said the same thing about judges and holiday weekends as the blonde-”Told you so,” the blonde said-but who added that the prosecution was going to have a damn hard time explaining why Agnes’s fingerprints were on a meat fork that she’d committed premeditated murder with on the spur of the moment in the middle of her woods while she asked her alibi to wait on the footpath. “I don’t understand why they arrested you at all,” Barry said, his face cheerful through the bars. “Xavier’s usually smarter than this. We may even get a wrongful arrest out of this. I doubt it, but I can certainly try.”

  “Detective Hammond is hoping to seduce my goddaughter and break up her wedding and was trying to get me out of the way so he could do it,” Agnes said, throwing Hammond to the wolves, and Barry turned to Hammond, even happier to add sexual misconduct and alienation of affection to the list, and shortly after that, Hammond’s night got worse when Maria went back to Two Rivers to stay in the second bedroom upstairs because her mother had called her and read her the riot act about behaving like a slut the night before her wedding. Hammond had come back to the cell to complain bitterly when Maria was gone, so when Agnes heard footsteps at the cell door again, she ignored them until she heard a key scrape in the lock. Then she rolled over to see Shane pushing the door open.

  “You didn’t kill anybody to get in here, did you?” she said as she sat up.

  “Here? No.” He walked over to her and looked up. “About the stripper. That was not sex.”

  “I know. You wouldn’t do that to me.” He looked surprised, and she took a deep breath. “Is she dead?”

  “Yeah,” he said, clearly regrouping. “She was Casey Dean’s girl. She tried to kill us on the boat. She tried to kill me tonight.”

  “Then you had to do it.” Agnes began to climb down from the bunk, and he put his hand on her waist to help her down, sliding his arm around her as her feet hit the floor, and she leaned against him and let him take her weight because he wouldn’t let her down.

  “I heard about Taylor,” he said.

  She clung to him. “It was bad. He was still alive when I found him, it was a terrible way to die.” He nodded.

  “You know that cool, unemotional killer thing I was going to master? It ain’t happening. I’m just not the cool type.” He nodded.

  “But I’m not Crazy Rage Person anymore, either. I think I finally got what Dr. Garvin was trying to tell me.” He nodded.

  She tilted her head so she could see his face. “You okay there, silent guy?”

  “You really do believe me?” He held on to her tighter. “I really wasn’t having sex with her, I swear, but you really do believe me?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. You’re the guy I believe in.”

  He bent and kissed her, and she held on to him, so grateful he was there, she could have cried. The blonde got up and began to sidle toward the door, and he reached out and grabbed the back of her shirt and put her back on the bunk, but he never let go of Agnes.

  “Let’s go home,” he whispered, and she nodded, the words hitting her hard.

  “Yes, please,” she said, and they went out the door, his arm still around her.

  Shane turned back to the blonde. “Sorry,” he said, and closed and locked the cell door behind them.

  “Damn,” the blonde said and lay back down. “I didn’t kill anyone. How come you guys get to leave?”

  “Clean living,” Agnes said, and headed back to Two Rivers with the guy she trusted, thinking fast.

  Two Rivers looked calm as they walked up to it, Shane thought. No police cars, no parties going on, just the glow of lights from the windows and the occasional raucous honk from the river. Peaceful enough that you might forget that two people had just died there in the past six hours.

  “I’ll get the package,” Carpenter said as Agnes walked up the back porch steps, and then Agnes said, “Shane?” her voice too high as she looked through the back door.

  Shane took the steps two at a time to look over her shoulder.

  Joey and Doyle were standing on opposite sides of the table with the Venus between them: Joey had his revolver out pointed at the old handyman, Doyle had a gun in his hand pointed back at Joey, and the Venus looked off into the distance, disavowing all knowledge of their presence.

  Shane pushed past Agnes. “What’s going on?”

  “Ask him,” Joey said, nodding at Doyle.

  Shane felt Agnes behind him, and now she moved around him, looking at the two old men. “What are you doing?”

  Joey gave his sharklike smile, but the gun didn’t waver. “Agnes Crandall, meet Frankie Fortunato.”

  “Great,” Shane said. “Just great.”

  saturday

  cranky agnes column #116

  “Sedate Your Family with Love and Gravy”

  In an attempt to bring health to the holidays, I adapted a recipe for dressing using olive oil and high-fiber whole-wheat bread, and ended up with a pan of something that had a definite this-is-good-for-you vibe that lacked the all-right-I’ll-go-to-hell flavor of true celebration food. But it doesn’t matter, because while I like dressing a lot, it’s really just a delivery system for the gravy. In fact, the Cranky Agnes Theory of Holiday Cooking can be summed up in two words: More Gravy.

  You son of a bitch.”

  Shane turned to look at the door to the hallway and saw Lisa Livia dressed in white pajamas with baby chicks on them, looking ready to kill as she stared at Doyle, two high spots of color on her cheekbones.

  “Top of the evening, lass,” Doyle called out, but his heart obviously wasn’t in it

  Shane looked closer at him, seeing past the beard now, the white hair, the smashed nose, the different-colored eyes, the fake accent, the extra weight, twenty-five years of damage and disguise.

  “You son of a bitch.” Lisa Livia said, her voice close to breaking. “Now, lass-” Doyle began; then he sighed as Shane took a step toward him, and gave up the pretense and the accent. “All right, all right, jeez, I’m sorry already.” Frankie
Fortunato looked back at Lisa Livia. “Hi, Livie. Daddy’s home.”

  “Fuck you,” Lisa Livia said.

  Shane looked at Joey. “How did you figure it out?”

  Joey looked at Frankie, murder in his eye. “He told me.”

  “And you drew down on him?”

  “He’s got some explaining to do,” Joey said.

  “You took off and left me,” Lisa Livia said, still standing in the doorway, as if she were afraid to come in the room. “My daddy. The one who loved me, the one who’d never leave me, you left me with Brenda. You son of a bitch.”

  “She tried to kill me,” Frankie said, as if that explained everything. “She hit me right in the face with that frying pan, broke my nose, look-”

  “Now why would she do that?” Agnes said, her hands on her hips, lightning in her eyes, and Shane thought, Oh, hell, here we go.

  “She thought I was cheating on her,” Frankie said, rolling his eyes.

  “You were,” Joey said, keeping his gun hand steady.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lisa Livia said, and leaned on the doorframe.

  “I’d have hit you with the frying pan, too,” Agnes snapped.

  “You listening to this?” Frankie said to Shane.

  “I’m not planning on cheating,” Shane said. Especially on Agnes.

  “Oh, but if you could have seen Maisie back then,” Frankie said, shaking his head.

  “Maisie Shuttle?” Agnes said, distracted for a second. “Well, that explains why Brenda threatened her with death.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Lisa Livia said weakly, evidently stuck in second gear.

  Carpenter appeared in the doorway to the porch, a body bag over one shoulder and-when he saw the firepower at the kitchen table- a gun in his free hand.

  Everybody turned to look at him and there was a moment of silence, and then almost by mutual consent everybody turned back to Frankie as the more interesting option.

  Frankie sighed. “Brenda saw the necklace and yelled, ‘Is that for that bitch Maisie?’ and swung that pan and knocked me cold, and when I woke up I was locked in that shelter covered in blood, left for dead-”

  “Totally understandable,” Agnes said, and went around the counter toward the fridge, as if she’d given up on him completely. Shane sympathized but kept his eyes on the guns. “-and I almost did die in the river, getting away. I even got a plate here.” Frankiepointed to his head. “Shoulda been dead, but us Fortunatos, we got thick skulls.”

  “Jesus,” Joey said, shaking his head but still keeping his gun steady. “You sure fooled me. You musta put on fifty, sixty pounds, you tub o’ lard.”

  “Used to have black hair, too,” Frankie said, scowling at him. “Look at this.” He popped a blue contact out of one eye with his free hand, then out of the other, revealing the Fortunato trademark: shark black eyes. “You were a lot lighter twenty-five years ago, too, Joey. We all changed.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Lisa Livia said again, but she sounded tired now, and when Shane pulled a chair up to the table for her, between the newly scrubbed Venus and Joey, she came in and sank down into it and just stared at her father, sad and lost.

  “I’m sorry, Livie,” he said, but he sounded more uncomfortable than sorry.

  “Between you and my mother-” Lisa Livia just shook her head.

  Shane cleared his throat. “I suggest we put the guns away. There are a lot of secrets here. And I’m tired of them.”

  Frankie nodded at him, keeping his gun out. “So, you know about your parents?”

  “What about my parents?” Shane frowned as Frankie looked at Joey. He caught Joey glaring, raising the gun a little, and he stiffened, but Frankie spoke again.

  “You know. That I’m your uncle Frankie. Your good uncle, not your lying snake of a shit-head rat-fuck uncle, the Don.”

  “Jesus, you’re a bad liar,” Shane said, and Frankie started to swing the gun his way, and Joey raised his even more, and Carpenter said, “Guns away, gentlemen,” from the doorway, in that deep voice that brooked no argument, and then Agnes came around the counter, her arms full of food, looking like she had every dish in the refrigerator, and dumped it all on the table between them.

  “This is my kitchen,” she said, an edge of hysteria in her voice, “and enough goddamn people have been shot in it. You are my family, you’re the only family I’ve got, so you’re going to put those guns away and eat something right now. Or there’sgonna he hell to pay.”

  She slapped a loaf of bread down on the table and looked at them both, blood in her eyes, and Joey and Frankie both hesitated. “You do not want me angry,” Agnes said, and they both nodded once and, like the unhappy, dysfunctional family they were, they put the guns away together.

  Rhett sighed and went to sleep.

  “And now you’re gonna eat,” Agnes said.

  “What’d you come back for, Frankie?” Shane said as Joey began to help Agnes take the covers off the dishes.

  “My granddaughter’s wedding, of course,” Frankie said, craning his neck to look into the bowls. “I read about it in the paper and I thought it would be nice. Hey, are those ribs-?”

  “Cut the crap,” Shane said. “Where’s the five million? And what score are you settling with the Don?”

  “I was wondering about the five mil myself,” Agnes said as she slung plates around the table like she was dealing cards, clearly still mad as hell. “And the necklace. That was a lousy thing to do to me, Doyle.”

  “Aw, Agnes,” Frankie said.

  “I mean it. I worried about you, I fussed over you. I fed you-” She smacked the container with the ribs down in front of him hard. “Darlin’, I know it-”

  “And you put a necklace on my dog and almost got me killed.” Agnes finished almost throwing his plate at him. “What the hell was that about?”

  Frankie looked shamefaced but relieved, Shane thought. Doesn’t want to talk about the Don.

  “That was just a joke,” Frankie told Agnes. “Justice for Brenda. I been knocking around all over the world while she stayed here livin’ the good life, never paying for half-killing me, never losing one night’s sleep over it, so I thought, ‘That bitch needs some payback.’ So I put the necklace on Rhett so she’d see it and start to worry-”

  “Jesus.” Lisa Livia sighed and look the cover off the turkey bowl. “You are a piece of work.”

  “What?” Frankie said, picking up a rib. “I just-”

  “Because of you,” Agnes said, her voice like cut glass, “Four Wheels sent his grandson here to die. Because of you, Four Wheels came here and died. Because of you, Brenda thought there was five million dollars here and hired hitmen to kill me.”

  “What the hell?” Frankie said, jolted. He looked at Joey, who nodded. “That bitch hired those hairballs?”

  “Because of you, she got so desperate, she killed Taylor tonight with a meat fork,” Agnes went on savagely. “I don’t even know what the collateral damage is, what happened when Shane went to Savannah that got blood all over my fondant, or if that body bag over Carpenter’s shoulder is part of this-”

  “No, no, this is professional,” Carpenter said.

  “-but your joke killed at least five people-”

  “Six,” Shane said, thinking of Rocko.

  “-so forgive me if I’m not slapping you on the back right now.”

  “Aw, hell,” Frankie said, waving the rib at her. “I didn’t kill them, Brenda did.”

  “You’re missing the point, Frankie,” Shane said, thinking it probably wasn’t the first time. “But I’m a lot more interested in your first lie.”

  “Hey,” Frankie said, and bit into the rib.

  “The one about how you came back for Maria’s wedding.” Shane met the old man’s dark shark eyes, hooded now as he bent over to demolish the rib. “You didn’t come home for the wedding; you came home to turn state’s evidence. You came home to roll on the Don. Which means you’re the one he hired Casey Dean to hit.”

  “
Ah, fuck.” Frankie dropped the stripped rib bone on his plate, annoyed. “Goddamn Wilson must be getting old, he leaks stuff like that.”

  Silent Carpenter got more silent as Shane shut down any reaction he might have had, to say, “He is.”

  Frankie reached for another rib, shaking his head, and Lisa Livia got up and headed for the microwave with the entire bowl of gravy.

  “Save some for me,” Agnes said, dropping into the chair on the other side of Joey.

  “Get two straws,” Lisa Livia said, and slung the bowl into microwave.

  Shane turned to look at Carpenter. Fucking Wilson knew. Carpenter met his eyes for a long moment and then nodded and headed for the basement with the body bag, moving past Frankie without looking at him.

  “That means that body bag over Carpenter’s shoulder is your fault,” Shane said. “In fact, we can pretty much trace the entire body count back to you.”

  “Now wait just a fuckin’ minute,” Frankie said, trying to look indignant with barbecue sauce on his face.

  “So now you make it up to us,” Agnes said quietly from her seat beside Joey.

  Frankie said, “Huh?” and Shane almost did, too, but Joey just put his hand on the back of her chair, one hundred percent behind her as always.

  “We have many problems, Frankie,” Agnes said, calmer now. “I need this wedding to happen tomorrow. Shane needs to take out Casey Dean. Lisa Livia lost everything she had and more when Brenda emptied the accounts she managed.” Frankie turned to LL as she sat down with her hot plate and heated gravy, but Agnes kept on talking. “And Brenda needs to go down for Taylor’s murder. So you’re going to help us with all of that.”

  “How?” Frankie said, mystified but not unwilling.

  “You’re going to give the bride away tomorrow,” Agnes said.

  “Yeah?” Frankie brightened. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  “That should slow Brenda down long enough that with any luck she won’t kill anybody during the ceremony,” Agnes went on. “If we get real lucky, she’ll have a heart attack.”