Agnes and the Hitman Read online

  “Go on,” he said, but he blushed just the same. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she told him. “Kind of. This has been a really lousy day, but it’s almost over, the cops are going to take the body away, I’m not in any trouble… right?” She looked at him, trying not to seem anxious.

  “Right,” Joey said firmly, but his eyes slid away from hers. Oh, God. Agnes smiled at him as sanely as she could and headed for her bedroom, not relieved at all.

  Once in the housekeeper’s room, Agnes clutched her frying pan tighter and felt her way toward the bedside lamp.

  “I told you nothing happened in here,” she called out, looking around for the cop. “It was all out in the kitchen.” Not that I’m upset with you, sir. Please don’t arrest me.

  The wind blew the curtains away from the window by the bed, and she saw that the bedside table was tipped over, and then a hand clamped over her mouth and somebody said, “Shhhh,” and she swung the pan up over her head hard and connected with a smack that reverberated into her shoulders.

  He wrenched the pan out of her hand. “Stop it.Joey sent me.”

  She yanked away from him, and he let her go so that she tripped, falling against the bed, and then she fumbled on the floor for the light and clicked it on, breathing hard.

  He loomed up over her as her heart pounded, a big guy, dressed in black-black pants, black T, black denim jacket-looking like he’d been hacked out of a block of wood: strong, weathered face; black, flat eyes-shark eyes, she thought-cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, now a little bloody on the right; tense, hard, squared-off body, all of it alert and concentrated on her. But the thing she noticed most, as she tried to keep from having a heart attack, was that he looked like Joey. Younger than Joey, bigger than Joey, but he looked like Joey.

  She swallowed. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in here?”

  “I’m Shane. Joey sent me.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, no wasted movement. “Who’s out there?”

  Agnes got to her feet, wishing she had her frying pan back. “Shane. Okay, Shane, thank you for scaring the hell out of me, but this is my house, so I’ll ask the questions.” She took a deep breath. “Joey sent you. Why?”

  “I’m here to protect some kid. Little Agnes?”

  “That’s me,” Agnes said.

  There was a silence long enough to hear crickets in, and Agnes thought, If he makes some crack about me being not little, I’m gonna hit him again, and then he spoke.

  “I’m here to protect you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Unless you hit me again, in which case, whoever I’m supposed to save you from can have your ass.”

  “Protect me.” That wasn’t good. She’d been worried about the police finding out about her record, but Joey thought she needed to be protected from something else, something only somebody like this guy could stave off. Which meant something was seriously wrong. Not that the guy who was now a corpse in her basement hadn’t been a tip-off, but if Joey thought something was so bad that she needed this guy, it must be really bad, because a guy like this could protect her from… Anything.

  Out in the front hall, Brenda’s ugly black grandfather clock began to chime the hour in big gongs that sounded like Death’s oven timer, and Agnes looked at Shane again.

  Big. Broad. Dark. Strong. Handsome if you liked thugs. Looked like Joey. And he was here to keep her safe.

  How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

  Could be worse.

  “Okay, Shane,” Agnes said as Brenda’s clock gonged midnight. “I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

  tuesday

  cranky agnes column #62

  “Just Like Mother Used to Fake”

  Many of us have a recipe passed down to us by our mothers that pretty much sums up our childhood memories in an ingredient list. In my case, it was “One chilled glass, two parts Tanqueray, wave at the vermouth bottle, stir clockwise if you’re north of the equator, and for God’s sake, Agnes, don’t bruise the gin.” Yours was probably a can of cream of mushroom soup poured over a can of green beans. That mother who made baked Alaska from scratch? She also screamed, “No wire hangers!” Those overachievers always have a dark side.

  Shane had started in the kitchen, a big warm room with red walls and white counters that smelled of chocolate and raspberry, quiet except for the rumble of voices from the hall.

  “That’s Detective Xavier and Joey,” Agnes said, looking worried.

  Everything in Agnes’s kitchen was neat and professional, but nothing said big money, ransom kind of money. In fact, the only thing that had caught his eye was the row of gleaming razor-sharp knives stuck to the magnetic bars on the wall, and next to them long-handled forks that looked sharp as spikes, and beyond those more sharpened, shiny tools, every damn one of them lethal as hell.

  Agnes worked in the Kitchen of Death.

  “You hit him with a frying pan,” he said to her. “How come you didn’t grab a knife?”

  “The frying pan was closer.” Her eyes slid away. “It’s not like I had time to pick a weapon. It’s not like the frying pan is my weapon of choice.”

  He nodded and moved to look at the revolver on the counter, stopping when he saw the dirty white tape around the pistol grip, an old mobster’s trick. Any old mobster in Keyes, South Carolina, was going to be somebody Joey knew. Fuck. There went any hope of getting out of there and back to work fast. Wilson was not going to be happy.

  Well, that made two of them.

  “Where’s the body?” he asked her, and she went over to the hall door and pushed on the wall next to it, and a concealed door swung back and forth while she watched. He reached inside his jacket and under his T-shirt and pulled a mini-Maglite out of the pocket sewn onto the outside of his body armor. “Can you stall this Xavier while I go down there and get a look?”

  “Sure,” Agnes said, not sounding sure.

  He moved past her to put one foot through the door onto the two-by-eight on the inside where the stairs had once been attached, and tested to make sure it was solid. Then he swung into the void until both feet were on the board. He bent down, put his fingers on the same piece of wood, and then slid his feet down the wall. Halfway down, he let go and landed lightly in the basement, and then went over to the body and put his mini-Mag on it.

  Angry welts on the face. Agnes and her hot raspberry sauce.

  Blood underneath the dirty hair. Agnes and her frying pan.

  Neck twisted and broken. Agnes and her unknown basement with no stairs.

  Joey’s Little Agnes didn’t need protecting, but he might stay and put up some warning signs for unsuspecting intruders. Something like BEWARE OF THE COOK or AGNES KILLS.

  He heard voices and waited to hear the door open wide, but instead he heard Joey say, “Xavier, this here is my little Agnes, Cranky Agnes, from the newspaper. You probably seen her picture over her column.”

  Shane bent down and began to go through the boy’s pockets.

  Upstairs he heard a Southern drawl say, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Agnes. Now, you do own this house, ma’am?” and Agnes, so clear she must have been right by the door, say, “Yes. I bought it from Brenda Dupres four months ago. I’ve been rehabbing it, but I’m still finding things. Mostly dry rot and bad plaster, so the basement was actually a step up. Well, not for the dead guy. Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee, Detective? I make a truly delicious cup of coffee.” Good girl, he thought, and played the flashlight around the room.

  An old pool table in the center, good solid mahogany, the felt now peeling up from the slate. A small bar tucked in one corner, fully stocked, as if somebody had just left it yesterday, the wood now coveredwith dust and mold. Behind it, a ceiling-high, four-foot-wide wine rack, still filled with bottles, now covered with dust and cobwebs. And a five-foot-high replica of the Venus de Milo tucked into the corner, now speckled with mildew. You’d have thou
ght they’d have taken this stuff out of here before they boarded it up, sold it for good money, he thought. Well, maybe not the statue.

  The door opened above him, and he heard Agnes say, “Cupcakes, then? Fresh out of the oven,” and Xavier’s voice loud in the doorway saying, “What the hell?” and Agnes saying, “Don’t shoot him, he’s on my side,” and Shane looked up to see the muzzle of a truly large gun pointed down at him and behind that a very powerful flashlight, blinding him.

  “What the hell are you doing down there?” Xavier said.

  Shane clicked off his own light. “Just making sure this boy didn’t need my help, sir.”

  The light went off, and Shane heard the clatter of metal as the edge of a ladder appeared in the hole and angled down until the bottom touched the concrete floor. Xavier climbed down, older than Shane expected, probably Joey’s age, his white suit gleaming in the dark, then Joey, then another man, younger, larger, blond, and goofy-looking.

  Joey came over to Shane and hugged him, then kissed him on each cheek, but Shane kept his eyes on Xavier and his gun. It was a revolver, which wasn’t cutting edge, but it was a.357 Magnum, which was impressive.

  Joey let him go and gestured to the guy with the gun. “Shane, this here is Detective Simon Xavier. An old acquaintance of mine. And his partner, Detective Hammond.”

  Xavier holstered the gun and nodded, and the young blond guy behind him nodded, too, looking friendly. “So, Mr. Shane, you felt you had the right to come down here and bespoil my crime scene because…” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

  “I thought he might need assistance,” Shane lied.

  “And the untoward angle of his neck did not tell you that he was beyond any earthly assistance you might render?”

  “I’m not a doctor, sir,” Shane said.

  “Neither are you a miracle worker, son,” Xavier said. “Should you find any other bodies in my jurisdiction, you will refrain from attempting to raise them from the dead.”

  “Yes, sir,” Shane said.

  Joey looked down at the body, no recognition in his eyes.

  Good, Shane thought.

  “Know him?” Joey said to Xavier.

  Xavier reached into the dead man’s pockets, pulled out a wallet, and flipped it open. He stood up slowly and straightened. “Thought so. Jimmy Thibault.”

  Joey grew very still.

  Not good, Shane thought.

  “Aka Two Wheels Thibault,” Xavier said genially.

  Hammond peered at the corpse. “Yep, that’s a Thibault. They breed like rats out there in the swamp. Two Wheels’s got more cousins than a dog’s got fleas.”

  Xavier smiled at Joey, showing some teeth. “Oh, Joey knows the Thibaults, don’t you, Joey?”

  Joey’s face closed. “Nah.”

  Bad lie, Shane thought. “Why would Joey know him? This kid doesn’t look like anybody who’d come into the diner.”

  Joey nodded. “Yeah, this kid never came into the diner. I never saw him before.”

  Xavier looked at Shane, thoughtful now. “The diner. You wouldn’t be that boy who used to work in the diner, now, would you?”

  Shane nodded.

  Xavier cocked his head, interested. “Now, where you been all these years, son?”

  “Here and there,” Shane said.

  “Who you work for now?”

  “Joey. He called me to help his friend Agnes.”

  “And you came riding into town all dressed in black?”

  “Seemed the right thing to do. She’s pretty vulnerable out here alone.”

  Xavier’s eyes were flat on Shane. “And you’re gonna keep her from being all alone, are you?”

  “Yes.” Until I find out what’s going on here and get Joey the hell out of it.

  Xavier stared at him for a moment more without comment and then bent back to the body, going through the pockets in silence.

  Not much in there, Shane thought. The kid must have been dirt poor.

  Agnes called down from the doorway above. “Doc Simmons is here. Okay if I have him look at Rhett while he’s waiting for you? Rhett ate a lot of chocolate, and that’s not good for dogs.”

  “Sure, Miz Agnes. Then get him down here,” Xavier said.

  “Dogs?” Shane said to Joey.

  “The coroner is elected here,” Joey said to Shane. “Only guy who ran for it was a local veterinarian named Simmons whose business was going under.”

  Only in Keyes, Shane thought.

  “Hammond,” Xavier said. “You stay here with the body and wait for the coroner.”

  Hammond nodded.

  “You,” Xavier said, looking at Joey, “I’m going to want the pleasure of your company for some conversation later.”

  You and me both, Shane thought, and followed his uncle and the detective up the ladder, determined to find out what a boarded-up basement, a moth eaten old bloodhound, and a food writer with a nice ass could have to do with his ex-mobster uncle before his notoriously unsympathetic boss terminated his career.

  By one thirty Tuesday morning, Agnes had answered the same thirty questions at least a thousand times, grateful none of them had been, “Exactly how many men have you struck with a frying pan, Miz Agnes?” since the answer now stood at four, if you counted Shane. Hammond had thrown some variety into the mix by asking about Maria’s upcoming wedding- “She still as sweet and pretty as ever?” – and Doc Simmons had looked at Rhett and said, “Nothin’s gonna kill that ole hound, certainly not your most excellent cake, Miss Agnes,” and then, almost as an afterthought, pronounced the Thibault kid dead. Agnes had said, “Thank you, Doc,” put some cupcakes in a bag for him, and waved him off into the night, watching as he followed the ambulance crew with the body down the lane and over the rickety bridge to the main road. “Rest in peace, I guess,” she said to the tail-lights and went back to the kitchen, but she’d barely gotten there when the door chime went again.

  “I’ll get it,” Joey said, sliding off the counter stool. “You tell Detective Xavier here whatever else he needs to know so he can go home.” He patted Agnes’s shoulder and kissed her cheek and then ambled out to get the door while Agnes turned to smile at Xavier, radiating innocence.

  “You know everything about me already,” she said to Xavier, but a minute later, Taylor strode in looking blond, handsome, and concerned, and she had to say, “Except for him. Detective Xavier, this is my fiancé, Taylor Beaufort. Taylor, this is Detective Xavier.”

  “Detective,” Taylor said in his soft drawl as he slid his arm around her. “Sugar, what the devil is goin’ on out here? Are you all right?”

  “I’m just fine,” she said, a little rattled that she’d forgotten he existed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard somebody broke in,” he said, his drawl getting less soft as he scowled in Shane’s direction.

  Shane looked back with the same expression he’d had since she hit him with the frying pan: none.

  “And how was it that you heard about the break-in?” Xavier asked.

  “Everybody in town heard, Detective,” Taylor said. “Doc Simmons stopped for coffee on his way out here and mentioned it to his waitress who mentioned it to Maisie Shuttle who told my waitress when she stopped by the Inn for dessert.” He moved his hand up to Agnes’s shoulder. “Agnes, you must have been scared to death.”

  “I’m fine.” He sounded truly worried, and Agnes tried to feel comforted by that.

  “A boy broke in and tried to steal your fiancée’s dog, Mr. Beaufort,” Xavier said. “Would you know anything about that?”

  “He tried to steal Rhett?” Taylor said, looking at Shane with astonishment.

  “Not Shane,” Agnes said. “A boy. Shane is Joey’s nephew. He’s here to look out for me. Joey asked him to come.”

  “I see.” Taylor didn’t look happy. “Well, no, I don’t see. Why would anybody want to steal Rhett? And why would Joey call his nephew? What-?”

  “The house is isolated,” Shane said. “
She shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  Yeah, Agnes thought, and then felt like a wimp. Brenda had been just fine out here alone.

  “Keyes is a safe community,” Taylor said to Shane. “The former owner lived on her own out here without any problems. I don’t see-”

  “A kid broke in with a gun and threatened Agnes,” Shane pointed out.

  “Just a prank,” Taylor said stiffly. “She’s not laughing,” Shane said. “And he’s dead.”

  “Dead!” Taylor looked down at Agnes. “I thought they just arrested him. What happened?”

  “He fell,” Agnes said, skipping the pan where she’d swung the frying pan in case Taylor felt moved to blurt out her history with cookware as weaponry.

  “He threatened your fiancée with a gun, and she defended herself,” Xavier said.

  “Yeah,” Hammond said. “With a frying pan. Can you believe it?”

  “What?” Taylor said, alarmed.

  Agnes grabbed Taylor’s arm and yanked him toward the hall door. “It’s late. Let me walk you to your car.”

  “Wait a minute.” Taylor stopped and mouthed the words frying pan? at her.

  She scowled at him. You just shut up about that frying pan.

  “She won’t be alone,” Shane said. “I’m staying with her.”

  Taylor straightened, forgetting the frying pan entirely, which made Agnes feel absolutely warm toward Shane.

  She tugged Taylor toward the door again. “It’s ail right, he’s Joey’s nephew,” she said, trying to move him. “It’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t know,” Taylor began at the same time Xavier said, “Where is Joey?”

  Taylor looked back at the detective. “Oh, he said to tell you it was getting too late for him, so he was going on home.”

  Xavier swore.

  “Come on.” Agnes pulled Taylor out the door and into the checkerboard hall, and once they were there, momentum helped her get him through the front door. “Look, really,” she said to him once they were outside on the wide front porch, “it’s okay. Shane’s just here to make sure nobody else breaks in.”