Agnes and the Hitman

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 thought 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.”

“I want to stay,” he said, but he drew her down the steps and out across the lawn close to the drive where he’d parked his Cobra, so she knew it was all for show.

When they reached the car, he put his arms around her, and she leaned into his broad chest, trying to recapture the way she’d felt about him in the beginning, when it had felt like he was the perfect man for her. Was it just because he was such a good chef? she thought.

There must have been more. Well, the good sex. That was always a selling point. And he’d been sweet. And she’d been so damn lonely.

“I don’t know about having Maria’s wedding here,” Taylor said, rubbing her back. “It’s causing you so much stress, and this mess with this dead boy will ruin it anyway. You know how Evie Keyes hates gossip. If she finds out somebody died on the premises-”

“Her son isn’t getting married in the basement,” Agnes said, pulling away. “He’s getting married in the gazebo, which is beautiful and corpse-free.”

“I’m just saying.” Taylor tried to put his arm around her again, and she shrugged it off, feeling like a surly three-year-old. “You’ve been through a lot. Why don’t we just tell Evie to move it to the country club-”

“No!” Agnes stepped back from him, feeling betrayed. “Evie’s just looking for an excuse to drag her son’s wedding over there, and if she does, we owe Brenda three months’ back mortgage payments. That was the deal, remember? We do the wedding in exchange for the first three months’ mortgage? Do you have nine thousand dollars? Because I don’t.”

“Calm down,” Taylor said. “Brenda would let us work out a payment plan. I just don’t like seeing you stressed like this.”

“What’s making me stressed is the thought of moving the wedding to the country club.” Agnes clamped down on her… irritation. Yeah, that was it, irritation. I’m not angry. I’m annoyed. “The wedding stays here. The fact that the kid died here has nothing to do with me or the wedding. It’s not like I killed him-” She winced at the thought.

“A frying pan, Agnes,” Taylor said. “Jesus.”

“Go home, Taylor,” Agnes said. “You’ve comforted me enough.”

“I’m just trying to help you,” Taylor said. “You’ve been whining at me to get out here, and when I do-”

“Right.” She smiled up at him in the moonlight, trying not to bare her teeth. “Hey, you know what? I got the attic bedroom painted last week, and it’s the most beautiful pale blue, like water. And the bed’s all made up. It’s all ready for you to move in-”

“It’s hotter than hell up there,” Taylor said.

“Not with the windows open and the fan going,” Agnes said. “And the low light is beautiful on those wood floors. It’s so peaceful and beautiful and-”

“Agnes, I don’t have time to move right now,” Taylor said.

Agnes crossed her arms over her raspberry-stained T-shirt. “Listen, I’ve been killing myself trying to get this house and this wedding together and-oh, yeah-write my columns and pay the mortgage to Brenda, and you’ve been out here, what, maybe three times this last month?”

“Agnes, come on, honey,” Taylor said without putting much coaxing into the honey, and Agnes thought, Who am I kidding? This was a mistake from the beginning, and let her breath out in a huge sigh.

“Okay, I knew this was coming, but Iwas ignoring it because-” She looked up at his truly handsome face that was going to look great on their cookbook cover and thought, Because I live for my work and you were good for my career. “-because I really wanted this to work. But it isn’t.”

“Agnes, honey.” He reached for her.

“No,” Agnes said, stepping farther back. “It’s not just you. A guy with a gun broke into the house tonight, and you know who I turned to? Joey. I completely forgot about you until you showed up, all I wanted was Joey. That’s all I want now.” And Shane, she thought, and tried to ignore that one. “So it’s not just you, it’s both of us. I was just lonely and-”

“Agnes, you’re upset,” Taylor said, taking a step toward her, “but you’re forgetting something.” He gestured to Two Rivers. “We’ve got our dream, sugar.”

She looked back at the house, the white columns gleaming in the moonlight and the windows shining gold in the darkness. “I know. I’ve loved this house since Lisa Livia brought me home from school with her that first summer.”

Taylor tried to put his arm around her again. “Brenda said it was like having a second daughter when LL brought you home. That’s why we belong here, sugar. This is your family home.”

That was a complete crock, but Agnes liked the sound of it, just the same. “You know, I sat on the high dock and dreamed about owning a house like this some day, and cooking with butter just like Brenda cooked with butter, and marrying a fine Southern gentleman like Brenda married the Real Estate King.” She looked back at Taylor. “And when I saw you here on the lawn saying, ‘Agnes, marry me,’ I thought I was finally going to be just like Brenda. Or Scarlett O’Hara. With butter.”

“Agnes,” Taylor said. “You are Scarlett O’Hara with butter.”

“Taylor,” Agnes said. “You have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s my dream not yours, you hate this house, that’s why you’re never out here. So give me some time to find a way to pay you back for your half of the down payment and what you invested rehabbing the barn-”

“Oh, God, Agnes, I’m so sorry!” Taylor swept her into his arms, and Agnes found her nose smushed into Taylor’s shirt, which smelled faintly of butter and rosemary, which was probably another reason she’d said yes to him. “I’ve neglected you, sugar. I’ll move out here tomorrow!”

“No,” Agnes said into his shirt, but he kept talking.

“I’ll make it up to you, you’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be just like we planned it, I swear. We’ll be out here, living our dream, writing cookbooks that’ll make us even more money than Mob Food made you, we’ll have it all.” He let go of her just enough to get a line on her mouth and then he kissed her passionately, which Agnes went along with because he was a good kisser, but when he broke the kiss, she took a deep breath and stepped back.

“No, Taylor,” she said. “I-”

“We’ll talk about this next week,” he said, opening his car door, “sittin’ on our porch with a couple of juleps, talkin’ about the books we’re gonna write together, just you and me, Scarlett and Rhett at Two Rivers.”

“I already have a Rhett,” Agnes said, but he was sliding into the

Cobra.

“Tomorrow is another day, sugar,” he said, and then the Cobra roared to life, and he peeled off toward the bridge, and she watched his taillights fade into the darkness.

Maybe they could keep the business partnership going, and she wouldn’t have to pay him back. That would be good, since she had no money. And he was going to look so handsome on that book cover. Joey had looked really good on the cover of Mob Food, really authentic, but Taylor was young and handsome and, well, bankable. His picture was going to sell a lot of books.

She could use some bankable. Brenda’s house was a real money pit.

Rhett yawned, saying, “Ar ar ar,” which was probably a comment on Taylor, too, and then he shambled back toward the house, and she followed him. She could deal with Taylor after the wedding. Tomorrow was another day. Well, not tomorrow, either.

“I am so not Scarlett O’Hara,” she said to Rhett, and went back to the kitchen, where Xavier and Hammond were packing up to leave, promising to return later that day, Hammond telling her to please say hi to Maria for him.

When she’d handed them cupcakes, and they’d gone over the bridge into the darkness, Agnes turned to Shane and said, “I suppose you have more questions.”

“No,” he said, still expressionless. “I got most of it listening to Xavier. You’re tired. I’ll make a bed down here where I can stay close, and we’ll go over everything in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she said, struck by what a comfort that was, that he knew she was wiped out, that he was going to stay close all night, that he’d be there in the morning. “I’ll get you pillows and blankets,” she told him, but after she brought them to him, she stood there, not sure what to do or say next, grateful he was there, large and solid and standing between her and the rest of the world, resisting the insane urge to blurt, “Would you like to sleep in the bedroom with me?” because that might be misconstrued, and she might think it was all right if it was misconstrued, that it would be good to have that much strength wrapped around her or at least between her and the window, except she had enough trouble already without sleeping with a stranger who was armed. Plus, there was Taylor, she was technically still engaged, and she held strong views on cheating. Usually backed up witha frying pan. “Thank you very much for watching out for me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Agnes said, and went into the housekeeper’s room, holding the door open for Rhett. The last thing she saw was Shane, leaning against the kitchen counter, looking alert as all hell.

Okay, tomorrow is another day, she thought, and felt positively comforted and definitely not alone.

Shane woke up the next morning when Agnes tripped over him trying to get out her bedroom door. “Good morning,” she said, looking half-asleep and completely confused. “You slept on the floor?”

He picked up his air mattress. “If anybody came, I wanted to be close.”

Agnes nodded. “Oh. I would have let you sleep with Rhett if I’d known you were that worried.”

He thought about telling her that it wasn’t Rhett he was protecting, and then wondered if she’d have offered to let him sleep with her, and then wondered if that would have been a good idea. Then he watched her go around the counter and into her dangerous kitchen, wondering if she was naked under the thin red sweats she was wearing, which answered that question. At least for him it did. If it came to it, she’d have to do her own deciding.

Focus on the problem, he told himself. Then get back to work before Wilson blows a gasket.

Rhett flopped down beside Shane when he sat down at the counter. The table was right there, but he couldn’t watch Agnes from the table.

Agnes put on her red-framed glasses and opened the large double door refrigerator. She loaded her arms with food, and then she shut the refrigerator door with her hip and came toward Shane to dump the stuff on the counter in front of him and take down a pan from overhead, every move effortless and efficient and distracting, especially with all of Agnes moving softly under her sweats.

“So why would anybody want to kidnap Rhett?” Shane said, mostly to get his mind off Agnes, since he was pretty sure the answer was going to come from Joey. “Was anybody asking about him before this?”

“Kind of.” Agnes took a white apron off a hook by the door and put it on-it said cranky agnes’s mob food on it under a drawing of Agnes in her glasses-and tore open a package of sausages wrapped in butcher’s paper and tumbled them into the pan. Then she turned on the heat under it, took down a wicked-looking fork from the magnetic rack, and began to poke the meat with it, not looking at him.

“Kind of.” Shane watched her. She didn’t look happy.

She turned and bent to look under the counter for something, her sweatpants pulling tight over her round butt. Agnes would never make a supermodel. Agnes was, Shane thought with a great deal of restraint, pattable. “What kind of kind of?”

She put a bowl on the counter and took down a wire whisk. “Right before the kid got here, Joey and I were on the phone and he asked about Rhett. So Joey might know something if you ask him. Coffeemaker’s over by the sink if you want some.”

“Okay.” Fuck. Joey again.

Shane went around the end of the counter and found a big white coffeemaker and a coffee canister in the corner just as the meat in the pan began to cook. The smell hit him like a wave: Joey’s Italian sausage. Joey’s Italian breakfasts from when he was a kid.

Forget that. Shane opened the jar and stared at beans instead of powder. “Uh.”

Agnes came over, reached into the cabinet, took out a grinder, placed it on the counter, and then went back to her bowl. She splashed in a little cream and began to whisk the eggs, probably with more force than necessary. “I trust Joey. Joey is the best guy I know.

Joey would never hurt me. Joey called you to come protect me.”

“Yeah.” But the old bastard still knows something, and he’s gonna tell me about it. Shane hit the top of the grinder, probably with more force than necessary, and it burst into action, the odor of the ground beans filling the room, competing with the treacherous smell of the sausage while he tried to imagine what his uncle might be up to. When the beans were ground, he had to go past Agnes to fill the pot with water and was careful not to brush against her. Her hair was all tangled curls and she had no makeup on and her skin was rosy with sleep, and that was messing with his concentration, plus there was the damn Italian sausage of Joey’s. He’d been in a lot of treacherous places, but Agnes’s kitchen was topping them all.

He poured the water in the coffeemaker, closed the top, pressed the button, and leaned against the counter to wait, searching for a safe topic that might tell him more about the mess he was pretty sure she was in. “So who’s Taylor?”

Agnes frowned at him. “What do you mean, who’s Taylor? You met him last night.”

“He have anything to do with the Thibaults and the mob?”

“Taylor?” She took another pan down from one of the hooks above her head, set it on a burner, turned the heat low under it, and picked up the butter. “No. God, no. Taylor is a local boy making good. Well, he’s forty-four, so the boy part is probably pushing it. He’s worked his way up through the kitchens of most of the area restaurants, and now he’s chef on the best restaurant on the Island over there on the other side of the Intracoastal.” She nodded in the direction of the water. “He’s a real self-made man, a hard worker, and a truly good chef. We’re just about finished with a cookbook that’s going to be a bestseller because his recipes are great, and that’s going to set up the catering business he’s going to run out of the barn he just renovated here. He has nothing to do with the mob and absolutely no reason to send anybody after Rhett You choosy about your eggs?”

“I don’t want eggs,” Shane said. “You don’t need to feed me. Would he gain anything if you died?”

“I want to feed everybody.” Agnes flipped a chunk of butter into the pan. It slid across the surface and then began to melt slowly, lighting with the coffee and the sausage for Best Morning Smell, Kitchen Division. “If I died, he’d get Two Rivers. We have a partnership agreement for the cookbook and the catering business, so the survivor gets it all. But he needs me to finish the Two Rivers Cookbook-his future’s riding on that book. It wasn’t him.” She picked up the red pepper, ran a knife around the stem, twisted it, and popped out the core with one smooth motion.

Shane was impressed. “Did your mother teach you to cook?”

“Oh, please,” Agnes said, taking down a knife. “My mother barely ate. She had a waistline to maintain. I didn’t taste butter until my best friend’s mother melted a chunk of it in a pan in front of me right here in this kitchen when I was fourteen. After that, there was no turning back. Any boy with a milk shake and a cheeseburger could have me.”

“That explains Taylor,” Shane said.

“Humor. Har.” Agnes began chopping the pepper with machine gun-like efficiency.

“A catering business. I thought you were a newspaper columnist.”

Agnes shot a guilty glance at her laptop, and kept chopping. “I am. But Taylor wanted the catering business and I wanted Two Rivers. So we bought it from Brenda together. I can write anyplace.”

“Brenda,” Shane said, remembering Joey last night on the phone saying, “the old Fortunato place.”

“Brenda Dupres,” Agnes said, introducing the pepper to the butter. “The Real Estate King’s widow and the closest thing to a mother I ever had. Closer than the one I did have, anyway. She’s the one who fed me butter. Fabulous cook, throws terrific parties, knows-”

“Brenda Fortunato,” Shane said.

“That was before the Real Estate King,” Agnes said. “And before I knew her. Mr. Fortunato was sleeping with the fishes by the time Lisa Livia brought me home with her.”

Cousin Lisa Livia. Vague memories of an intense dark-haired girl time back. And Aunt Brenda. Good food, he remembered. Fancier than Joey’s, but that was before Joey had sent him to military school and everything in his old life had stopped like a slammed door.

Fuck that. He inhaled the melting butter and put his mind back on the problem at hand. “But this wedding will be Fortunato not Dupres. The bride’s mother is a Fortunato.”

“Lisa Livia? Yes.”

“What about her father?”

Agnes hesitated and then said, “He’s not around. LL never married him, so Maria’s a Fortunato, too.”

Great. All Fortunatos, all the time. “What happened to him?”

“Nobody knows,” Agnes said, turning away. “He was a bad choice. Twenty-seven-year-old wiseguy meets an eighteen-year-old high school senior. Lisa Livia went bananas for him until she caught him cheating. Then she went off on him and he hit her and that was it for LL.”

Shane felt pretty certain he was missing something. “That was it?”

Agnes nodded. “I had a scholarship to a college in Ohio, and we were graduating, so she decided to come with me. Johnny disappeared and we went to Ohio and Maria was born. The two of us raised her together until she was three and LL’s boss moved his company west and she went with him. It about broke my heart when they left.”

She looked bereft for a moment, and Shane wondered how many times people had left Agnes and how the hell she had the courage to keep inviting them back into her life. Once had been enough for him. “And nobody ever found out what happened to Johnny?”

Agnes turned back to the sink. “Nobody looked too hard. You could say he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.”

He was definitely missing something, but since it had happened eighteen years ago, it wasn’t something he cared about. “How many people are coming?”

“Not that many. About a hundred.”

“That’s a lot. And half of them are from Maria’s side of the family, right? Fifty Fortunatos? And Maria’s father’s family?”

“Maria’s father is not around. It’s just the Fortunatos. But it’s not like you think. I know Maria. She’s not a mob princess. Lisa Livia raised her away from all that. She’s just a nineteen-year-old girl in love with a preppie golf course designer who’s got more money than God, and they’re going to have a nice wedding on my lawn and then go have babies dressed in Ralph Lauren. Nobody will be kissing the Godfather’s ring or whatever the hell that is. He’s going to have cake like everybody else and then leave.”

Shane went very still. “The Don. Michael Fortunato. He’s coming?”

“He’s Maria’s great-uncle, of course he’s coming.”

Shane rubbed his head. Fucking Joey. “You didn’t mention that.”

“Shane, I don’t think the kid last night wanted to take Rhett because the Don is coming. The Don’s never even met Rhett. They don’t move in the same circles.”

Shane took a deep breath, but then the coffeemaker beeped, and he took a Cranky Agnes mug from a hook under the cabinet and poured out a cup, deciding he’d said enough. “Coffee?”

Agnes looked over at his cup. “That looks like mud.”

“I like it strong.” He sipped the brew, heartened by the way it reached up into his brain and pressed go, and then he took his cup back to his seat at the counter, where he had a better view of Agnes, which was the only thing about this mess that was any good at all.

So there was another question for Joey. After You know anything about that old mob gun at Agnes’s, Joey? and You acquainted with that Thibault family, Joey? and Why did you ask Agnes about Rhett, Joey? he was definitely going to mention You think maybe the Don coming has something to do with this, Joey? Jesus. “Okay, anything else happen this week you want to tell me?”

“Nope.” Agnes stirred the red pepper in the butter, and the smell made Shane dizzy, sharp and sweet and pungent. Iwant eggs, he thought, and tried to get his mind back on the job.

“Think harder,” he said. “Anything this week that was out of the ordinary?”

“Sure, lots.”

Agnes was driving him crazy with the buttery pepper and sausage smells. She frowned down at the pan as she talked, her cheeks flushed from the heat from the pan, her sweats sticking to her with the humidity, and that wasn’t helping his concentration, either.

“The baker quit yesterday, so I’m making a wedding cake,” she was saying, “Golf Magazine did a rave article on Palmer’s latest golf course, the Flamingo, calling him a genius of green design, and he’s only twenty-eight, so we’re all very proud. Doyle told me I was going to have to replace the driveway bridge pretty soon or learn to swim, and I told him I have no money and to shore it up with whatever fell off the house next.”

“Doyle?”

“Handyman.” Agnes peered over her steamed-up glasses at the pepper. “I moved in and he showed up.” Shane focused. “How long ago?”

Agnes used the back of her hand to push her glasses back up her nose. “About three months. I don’t think he’s spent them sneaking up on Rhett, if that’s what you’re getting at.” She tipped the eggs into the pepper and butter and then picked up the pan, tilting it so that the egg covered the bottom. Then she looked up. “Listen, nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Well, except for the kid with the gun. And you.”

The phone rang and she answered it. “Good morning, Reverend Miller. Yes, I’m sure Maria’s a good Christian girl. What?” Agnes scowled, her face twisting behind those big red-rimmed glasses. “Of course she’s been baptized-she’s a Catholic. Yes, I know for sure, I’m her godmother, I was there.” She listened another moment, shaking her head the entire time. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right. You bet. You’re welcome. See you Saturday. Good-bye.” She hung up and said, “Moron,” and turned back to her eggs.

Shane decided to let that conversation pass. “Okay, let’s go back to the dog. How many people know Rhett is here?”

“Anybody who read the flyers I put up when I found him on the front porch. Anybody who’s been outhere in the past four months. Anybody who gets the County Clarion.” She stuck a spatula under the slowly cooking egg and lifted it so that the uncooked stuff ran underneath it, concentrating on it as if it were the most important thing in the world.

“The County what?” Shane said.

“The County Clarion. The local newspaper. One of the papers that prints my column. I did one on cooking for dogs, and instead of my usual column picture they ran a big one of Rhett and me.”

Shane sighed. “And you wait until now to mention this.”

“What? The paper?” Agnes looked up at him. “Big deal. I’m telling you, everybody around here already knew about Rhett. He rides with me in the truck every time I go into town. There’s nobody on the side of the road that hasn’t been hit with his flying spit. He is not a secret.” She picked up the cheese, took a grater from a hook on the wall, and began to grate cheese over the eggs in long pale strips.

Mozzarella, Shane thought. Memories of Joey’s diner sizzled in his brain. “When did this paper come out?”

“Yesterday morning.”

Shane closed his eyes. It was a damn good thing she was cute. “And you didn’t think this was significant?”

Agnes kept an eye on the cheese and the eggs, and at exactly the right moment, she flipped the omelet over and slid it onto a plate. She took down a knife, halved the omelet with one clean slice, and transferred half onto another plate. Then she piled sausage on both plates, the smell making Shane dizzy with memory and hunger. “No,” she said, handing the plate to him. “Salsa?”

“Yes, please,” he said, and she went around the counter and put a jar on the table and motioned him over. “So this paper-”

“Toast, English muffins, or bagels?” she asked as he moved to the table.

“Muffin,” Shane said, trying not to go headfirst into the omelet. It had looked so simple when she’d made it, but when he cut into it and tasted it, he realized he’d missed some stuff while he’d been making coffee. There were herbs in there or spices or something, and the egg was light-Fluffy, he thought- and the pepper still had crunch to it but was buttery, too. “This is good,” he said without thinking.

“Thank you.” Agnes sat down across from him with her omelet.

Then, having waited to show he was tough, he cut into the sausage and tasted it. “Damn.”

“I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it?” Agnes said. “I don’t know where Joey gets it, but it’s fabulous.”

Shane put his fork down. Fucking Keyes and memories. He picked up his fork again and began to eat. “So the paper-”

“Are you suggesting that somebody looked at the picture in the paper and developed a burning desire to own Rhett?” She shook her head. “You didn’t see the picture.”

“No, but I’d like to.” Shane loaded his fork with omelet and sausage together.

“I threw mine out, but Joey will have one.”

The muffin halves popped up from the toaster on the counter behind him, and she stood up to get them, the scent of her mixing with the hot yeasty smell of the muffins, and the buttery, peppery smell of the eggs, and the fat, spicy smell of the sausage, and Shane lost track of where he was in the conversation.

“What?”

“The Clarion.” Agnes put a hot muffin in front of him and passed him the butter. “Joey will have one.”

It was real butter. He’d been pretty sure it was from the smell when she’d cooked his eggs in it, but now he bit into the muffin and the taste exploded in his mouth. A man could get used to food like this. “Okay, was there anything in the article-?”

Agnes shook her head, her curls bouncing, and he stopped talking to watch her. “The article was about making your own dog biscuits. There was nothing about Rhett, the house, or anything else that would make anybody want anything here.”

He plowed through breakfast in a semi-trance, overwhelmed by the sharpness and the creaminess of it all, which was distractingly like

Agnes, and then his cell phone vibrated and he pulled it out. The letters that scrolled across the screen were unintelligible groupings of five. Wilson. The real world was calling. So was his breakfast. He put the cell phone away. He’d decode what the world wanted later.

“More coffee?” Agnes said, and when he nodded, she got the coffeepot and filled both their mugs, leaning closer to him to fill his. She smelled good, he thought. She smelled-he searched in his mind for a word. Delicious.

He also liked it that she didn’t ask him about the phone or the message.

A door slammed somewhere in the house, and Shane stood, his gun out.

Agnes stared at it. “Where did-?” Shane put a finger on her lips.

She leaned closer and whispered, “It’s probably Doyle.”

“Why-” Shane began, but then a loud voice with a thick Irish brogue echoed through the house. “Top of the morning, lass.”

Shane put the gun away just as a hulking man limped into the door from the hall. Probably a boxer in his youth, given the poorly healed broken nose and the old scars crisscrossing his ruddy forehead under his shaggy white hair and bushy beard.

“Morning, Doyle,” Agnes said. “Want some breakfast?”

“No thank you, lass, although it’s mighty tempting.” Doyle looked at Shane with piercing blue eyes. “And who is this fine strapping lad?”

“This is Shane, who is staying with me for a while. Shane, Doyle.”

“Pleased to meet-” the old man began, and then he caught sight of the tear in the wallpaper to his right and stiffened. “And what in the name of all that’s holy happened here?”

“Turns out I have a basement. Look.” Agnes went over and pushed on the wall so that the hidden door swung open. “A kid broke in and said, ‘I come for your dog,’ and then he fell into the basement and died.”

“Saints be,” Doyle said, his joviality gone, and went over to poke his head into the doorway.

Shane drank the last of his coffee and pushed his chair under the table. “Thank you for breakfast. I’m going into town to see Joey. If you think of anything else, let me know.” He looked around and picked up a piece of paper on the counter, turning it over to find a blank space. “Got a pen?”

Agnes reached into a cup on the counter by the back door and retrieved a pen. He took it and wrote down his cell phone number and gave it to her, thinking that now four people had it. A crowd. His life was getting complicated.

“Thank you for the number.” She took the paper, tore it in half, scribbled something on it, and held it out to him. “Here’s my numbers. Home and cell. What about Rhett? Should I keep him inside?”

Shane took the paper. “No, I’ll take him with me just in case anybody else comes after him.”

“He likes to hang his head out the window and snort the air,” Agnes said. “Sometimes the snot gets intense.”

“Great.” Shane whistled to the dog.

Rhett looked at him as if he’d said a dirty word.

“Go on, baby,” Agnes said to the dog. “Go with your Uncle Shane. He’s going to take you for a ride.”

Rhett lumbered to his feet, and Agnes bent to pet him, her sweatpants stretching against her butt again.

Uncle Shane turned his eyes away and headed for the hall door, Rhett padding obediently behind him.

He turned back to see Doyle watching him and Agnes standing in the sunlight from the back door, smiling at him surrounded by the scent of coffee and butter and sausage.

“Did you forget something?” she said.

Yeah, he thought I forgot this part of Keyes.

“Be careful today,” he said.

“You, too,” she said, and he nodded and left.

Shane had toured Two Rivers the night before, checking to see if anyone had been hiding there, and he checked allthe rooms again before he left, going through the empty, generously sized living and dining rooms on the first floor; the four comfortable if sparsely furnished bedrooms on the second floor, two of them filled with wedding presents; and the two rooms at the top of the narrow stair up to the attics, the front attic rough, but the back, riverside room now a finished bedroom with white woodwork and pale blue walls, the low windows in the half walls softly lighting the big, low, blue-satin duvet-covered bed. It would be nice someday, he thought now, as he double-checked the partially finished bathroom that flanked it. Hell, it was nice now, a lot better than the narrow housekeeper’s cell Agnes was sleeping in.

Not that he wouldn’t move in there in a second if invited. Breakfast had pretty much sealed that deal.

He went outside and walked around to the back of Two Rivers, shaking off the well-organized comfort of Agnes’s house. He felt the weight of the phone in his pocket and knew the message from Wilson was waiting and that an attempted dognapping was not his priority, but something was threatening the world that Agnes had created with her hot breakfast and her warm kitchen, and he had to take care of that before he went back to his own world.

Rhett watered the fence around the air-conditioning unit, which gave Shane a chance to see why the house was never cool-a place as big as Two Rivers needed a unit twice that size or at least another same-sized unit-and then the dog snuffled his way to the gazebo, its white wood freshly painted, its red roof neatly patched, one of the few things about the outside of Two Rivers that looked restored. The house was still stately with its double porches and tall columns, but it had been scraped in preparation for painting and it looked like it had a bad case of house mange.

He heard heavy footsteps behind him and turned, hand instinctively going for his gun, but he stopped when he saw it was Doyle lumbering toward him.

“Specialplace, isn’t it?”

“It’s something,” Shane agreed, moving on toward the river. “Special woman, our Agnes,” Doyle said, moving with him. “She’s something,” Shane said, moving on faster. “You be staying long?” Doyle asked, catching up. “Long as it takes.”

“To do what?” Doyle said, and Shane thought of Agnes on that blue bed upstairs and moved on before the old man could read his mind.

He stepped up onto the dock, which creaked ominously, and looked back at Two Rivers, ringed on three sides by tidal marsh and the deep waters of the Intracoastal and the Blood, cut off from the forested land on the farthest side by an inlet, the ancient bridge its only link to the road out. It was beautiful but isolated. Like Agnes-

“So how long will you be staying?”

Shane sighed. “Who would break in to steal the dog, Doyle?”

Doyle blinked at him. “That dog? Nobody.”

“Somebody did. Who would want to hurt Agnes?”

Doyle scowled. “Nobody. Everybody likes-”

“Somebody did. I’ll be staying until I find out what’s going on. If you don’t like it, take it up with Agnes.” He turned and walked along the edge of the property until he could see the bridge ahead to his right. He heard the sound of cars and moved to where he could see the road but be hidden by the foliage, his hand drifting toward the butt of his pistol.

Two cars appeared, a big white Lexus leading the way, followed by a baby blue ‘80s-era Cadillac. They crept over the wooden bridge and even at this distance, Shane could hear the creak of protests from the bridge supports. Both cars stopped in front of the house, and the driver’s door on the Cadillac opened first.

A curvy little platinum blonde wearing a fluttery blue dress got out and surveyed the place like she owned it, her hands on her hips. She turned and looked in his direction, and he recognized her despite the years: Brenda Fortunato. She was still a beauty, passing for early forties in full sunlight even though she had to be in her fifties. She tilted her head as she looked at the house, and she did not look thrilled, possibly because with most of its paint scraped off, Two Rivers looked like hell.

The other car door opened, and the driver of the Lexus stepped out. She was tall where Brenda was tiny, trim where Brenda was curvy, pale where Brenda was tan, tailored in beige where Brenda fluttered in blue, low-heeled where Brenda spiked, and she did not put her hands on her hips or look at Two Rivers as if it were hers; she just tucked her purse under her arm, nodded politely to Brenda, looked at the house and winced, and then began to walk toward the wide central steps. She oozed class and money, and Shane thought, Evie Keyes. Mother of the groom and First Lady of Keyes, South Carolina. Which was pretty much like being Queen of the Landfill, as far as he was concerned.

Then Agnes came out the front door and down the steps with a tray of drinks, dark curls bouncing and red-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose again, wearing some kind of red dress with straps that tied on her shoulders and a skirt that whipped around her legs in the breeze, and Shane’s thoughts jumped track until she led the other two women around the side of the house to the gazebo.

Agnes had damn good legs. And a great back. One pull on those ties- And she’d smiled at him, standing there in the morning sunlight. Might have been an invitation. Might not have been, too. Probably should make sure before he started untying things.

“You be a watchful sort of fellow,” Doyle said from behind him.

“Shouldn’t you be painting?”

“Shouldn’t you be doing something someplace else?”

Shane considered arguing, but since he was guilty of the thoughts that Doyle suspected him of, he called to the bloodhound and moved away, and Doyle headed back toward the house.

Rhett padded across the inlet on an old log and immediately lost himself in the palmetto on the other side, and Shane followed, so focused on what might be ahead that when the dog stopped suddenly, he tripped over him and hit the ground just as a branch less than six inches from his head exploded in splinters, the sound of the shot echoing through the vegetation.

From the prone, Shane fired twice in the direction of the intruder. Rhett bayed and charged forward, and Shane cursed, realizing the dog was moving into the line of fire. He squeezed off four more rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger, then lunged to his feet and sprinted after the dog, hunched over, not quite believing he was putting his life on the line for a dumb old bloodhound. He continued to fire, dropping the magazine out of the well as he moved, zigzagging, slamming a fresh clip home, firing once more. Then he dived onto Rhett, grabbing the dog’s collar as he rolled behind a log, holding the bloodhound to his chest.

Rhett bayed once more, then began licking Shane’s face. Shane stared up at the palmetto fronds above, half-expecting to see bullets whipping through them, but they were perfectly still. Since the initial shots, the intruder had not fired, which meant he was either waiting to ambush Shane if he got closer or else had split while the getting was good. Or Shane had hit him and taken him out, which he doubted, given he had fired mainly for cover not effect, having no solid target.

He waited, letting time tick away. He was in no rush and knew waiting put the burden on his opponent, if he was still around. If the guy was a pro, the wait could be long. After fifteen minutes, Shane turned to Rhett, who appeared to be sleeping, and poked him. Rhett opened one eye. Shane poked him again and the dog opened both eyes and took a deep sniff.

No baying. No alert.

Shane got to one knee, pistol still at the ready, and looked around. No sign of the intruder. Between his eyes and Rhett’s nose, he felt confident they were alone.

He walked forward, on alert, Rhett trailing him, and stopped when he saw his battered black Defender. He pulled out his remote opener and tapped the small status button and then watched as a small green light flickered green a dozen times, then surprisingly turned red and stayed that way. Shane stared at the Defender. Something or someone had set off the vehicle’s motion detector.

He slowly circled the truck, eyes going over every inch. Nothing seemed amiss, but given he had just been shot at, he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it. With a resigned sigh, he got down on his knees in the muddy ground, then lay down, sliding forward, feeling the damp soil ooze into his outer clothes as he angled himself so he could see the underside of the high-riding truck. Then he froze.

The shaped charge on one of the plates was easy to spot: it was directly under the passenger seat-whoever had put it there had not taken into account it was a right-hand-drive European vehicle. No wires. It looked like one of Agnes’s large mixing bowls painted black and stuck to the plate. A small red LED light glowed, indicating it was armed. Shane doubted it was on a timer since whoever had placed it wouldn’t know when he was coming back to the truck.

But no one should even have known he was here. At least no one who had the sophistication to make and plant such a device. The kid in Agnes’s basement wasn’t anywhere near this level of professionalism. But whoever had just shot at him obviously was.

Shane took a deep breath, then slid to where the bomb was right in front of his face. It couldn’t have been armed until it was in place, thus there was an arming mechanism. Which meant there was a disarming mechanism.

He placed both hands on the bowl and slowly twisted it counterclockwise. The bowl moved smoothly and Shane unscrewed it until he felt it give slightly. He carefully lowered the bowl of explosives inside the metal frame to the ground, exposing a small metal canister hung below the plastic top that had been glued to the bottom of the car and into which it had been screwed. He reached up and removed the battery that supplied power to the detonator.

He stuck it in his pocket, then ripped the plastic off the bottom of the truck. He pulled the entire contraption with him as he crawled out from under the Defender. He opened the rear of the truck and placed it all inside, then went around and opened the door.

“Come on,” he called to Rhett, who had watched the disarming of the bomb with no interest at all.

The dog jumped, feet scrabbling at the edge of the seat, and then he was in, moving over to the window, where he looked at Shane disapprovingly, a smear of snot on the dark glass.

“It’s bullet- and blast-proof glass,” Shane said, trying to explain why he wasn’t rolling down the window.

Rhett gave Shane a look that said, I just saved your life, but that’s okay.

Shaking his head, Shane violated standing operating procedures and lowered the passenger window. Rhett stuck his head out, a happy camper.

Shane spared a moment for what Wilson would say if he ever had to explain this-The dog wanted the window rolled down, and he’d saved me from being shot, so I violated procedure from gratitude-and then headed for Joey’s.

If he wasn’t careful, Keyes was going to be the death of him.

Agnes had heard the car doors slam and had said a fast prayer before she smoothed down the skirt of her red cotton sundress in an attempt to look like a lady or at least like Brenda, shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and picked up the tray of lemonade and sweet tea.

Then she’d carried the tray into the hall and out through the beautiful big carved double front doors, propped open now for some cross-ventilation because it was hotter than hell in the house; across the lovely veranda that would be even lovelier if it had some goddamn paint on it; down the wide gracious front steps that were a real bitch to negotiate with a tray that heavy not to mention sandals with heels, thank you; and over the front lawn to meet the new arrivals: Brenda, looking beautiful as ever in a full-skirted rayon number, and

Evie, looking cool and boring in white piped beige Chanel and pearls, all but screaming, I got good taste and you don’t.

“Agnes, you look lovely,” Evie said as she glided toward her.

“Evie, I’m sweating like a racehorse,” Agnes said. “Let’s have the tasting in the gazebo, shall we?”

“Certainly,” Evie said, changing course around the house toward the gazebo without missing a step.

“Oh, Agnes, honey,” Brenda said, slowing as she saw the front door open. “You shouldn’t leave that door open, sugar, it’s bad for my grandfather clock.”

You shouldn’t leave your grandfather clock here, it’s bad for my hall, Agnes thought, and then felt guilty because Brenda had given them such a deal on the mortgage, especially the first three months’ payments in exchange for holding the wedding there, so she just said, “Well, whenever you’re ready to move it out, Brenda, it’s right there waiting for you,” and steered them around the side of the house.

“The gazebo looks beautiful,” Brenda said, gliding along the flagstone walk in her three-inch heels, and Agnes smiled because it really did and because Brenda was pleased with it. Then Brenda added, “That fresh paint just gleams, Agnes,” and let her eyes slide to the scabby-looking house.

“Doyle’s putting the primer on the house today,” Agnes said, feeling guilt swamp her. “By Saturday, this place will look like Tara.” With butter.

“I do hate to see you go to so much trouble,” Evie said, sweetly, “when the country club is just-”

“No trouble,” Agnes said brightly. “Wait till you see the gazebo ceiling. It’s going to be perfect for the ceremony. Maria and Palmer will look adorable up there.” Did I just say ‘adorable’? She shook her head and led them across the lawn and up the steps to the table inside. “There now. Isn’t this lovely?”

“You know, it is,” Evie said, sounding surprised as she looked up at the rafters that Doyle had painted blue and Agnes had added gold-leaf stars to.

Brenda looked up at the ceiling and said, “Oh, Agnes, you do like things bright, bless your heart.”

Agnes smiled uncertainly and looked up at the stars again. She’d thought they were beautiful, like an illustration out of an old book. Maybe she should have checked with Brenda first…

“Well, I think they’re very nice,” Evie said firmly. “Neoclassical.”

Agnes blinked at her in surprise.

“Of course,” Brenda said, smiling at Evie. “Neoclassical. Maria’s coming with Palmer. They’re just so darling together, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Evie said, with a noticeable lack of warmth. Her face remained smooth, so it was hard to tell if the coolness was for Brenda for being too familiar with a Keyes or for Maria for having the audacity to marry into the family. Nobody could object to Maria herself, but it might very well be sticking in Evie’s craw that this wedding meant she was eventually going to be the grandmother of a child who shared a bloodline with Frankie “Two Hands” Fortunato, now deceased, the whereabouts of his body unknown but presumably shod in paving material.

On the other hand, Evie could rest assured that her grand kid would not be getting beat up on the playground nearly as regularly as his father had.

Brenda said, “Agnes, where is that sweet old bloodhound of yours?”

“Rhett? He went into town-”

The bridge rattled and gravel crunched, and Agnes looked back to see a plain dark sedan pull up and Detective Hammond get out.

Wonderful. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and crossed the lawn to tell him that he could do anything he wanted in her basement, not adding, as long as you stay away from the gazebo so they don’t hear words like attack and death. And frying pan.

She went back to the gazebo, and Brenda and Evie leaned away from each other, as if they’d been conferring about something.

Brenda looked past her and said, “Isn’t that Robbie Hammond? Whatever is he doing out here?”

“Checking on some things,” Agnes said. “Now, I’ll go get the cakes-”

“He was Maria’s first boyfriend,” Brenda said, sitting back with a fond smile. She turned to Evie. “They were very close.”

What the hell are you doing? Agnes thought as Evie’s eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything, a bright pink Mustang convertible came over bridge. “Mother of God,” she said, appalled at what had been done to a classic car.

Evie sighed. “The people at the Flamingo are very pleased with the golf course Palmer designed,” she said faintly. “So they sent the car.”

“It’s pink” Agnes said, still staring.

“Flamingo pink,” Evie said. “Palmer gave it to Maria.”

“He’s no dummy,” Agnes said without thinking.

“Well, isn’t it the cutest thing?” Brenda said, exchanging a glance with Agnes of mutual agreement that it wasn’t while Evie grew grimmer.

“I’ll just go inside and get the cakes,” Agnes said.

When she got back with the cake plate, Maria was in the gazebo, looking incredibly lovely, her long glossy dark hair caught up in a knot at the top of her head, making her big brown eyes and pointed features even more striking. For once, Palmer wasn’t staring at her adoringly, his slightly foolish features and slightly receding blond hairline fixed in her direction. Instead he was surveying Agnes’s extensive lawn, an unfocused look in his eyes, a dress bag draped over his arm as if he’d forgotten it was there.

“Agnes!” Maria threw her arms around Agnes.

“Hello, honey.” Agnes hugged back with one arm while she held the cake plate steady with the other. “How are you?”

Maria smiled at her at little too widely, her eyes a little too bright. “Fine, now that I know you’re doing the cake.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Can you really do this?”

“Yep.” Agnes sat the cake plate down to get better traction on the hug. “I have some ideas to cover up the fact that I’m not one of the world’s great cake artists, but I will bet you six M amp;M’S that you will have abeautiful cake anyway, and I swear it will be delicious, much better than Bern the Baker’s. His cake tastes like cardboard because he’s always concentrating on his sugar paste.”

“Six M amp;M’S. High stakes.” Maria grinned the way she had when she’d been little, and Agnes felt her heart tug at the memory. “You’re on.”

“Such a pity Bern canceled on you,” Evie murmured, watching her son from the corner of her eye, as if waiting for a sign that he wanted out of his engagement.

“I was shocked when Bern told me he wasn’t going to do it after all,” Brenda said, her lovely face growing serious. “Some people do not know their places.”

“So true,” Evie said, looking at Brenda.

Mean, Agnes thought, and moved closer to Brenda.

Off in the swamp, somebody fired a gun several times, and Agnes jerked around, expecting to see a guy in a bandanna come out of the swamp and demand her dog, but nothing happened except that Evie looked displeased. She didn’t legally own all of Keyes, but spiritually she did, and she clearly hadn’t put in an order for gunfire this morning.

“So we’ll all sit down,” Agnes said brightly to cover up her nerves and the gunfire that continued. Damn hunters. “And we’ll taste cake. Palmer, you sit here, and I’ll get another chair-”

“No, no.” Palmer turned and smiled, a genuine smile that surprised Agnes with its sweetness. “I tagged along and I don’t deserve cake. But I’d like to look at the lawn if you don’t mind.”

Brenda looked up, puzzled. “Why would you want to look at my lawn-?”

“Not yours,” Evie murmured.

“The lawn?” Agnes said. “Of course I don’t mind.”

Palmer kissed Maria’s cheek. “Pick a winner, darling,” he said, as if by rote.

Maria patted his shoulder. “I already did, baby,” she said, equally without warmth.

That doesn’t sound right, Agnes thought, but her real interest was in the woods where the shots had come from. All she needed was a stray bullet picking off a member of the wedding party, and there’d be hell to pay.

Palmer draped the dress bag over the gazebo rail and wandered off, and Maria sat down and said, “So. Cake. Chocolate raspberry?”

“The cupcakes,” Agnes said, concentrating on the important stuff, since the gunfire seemed to have stopped. “I know that’s your favorite, Maria, but the cake has to be strong enough to support the fondant, and that one’s pretty delicate. It’d be wonderful served with raspberry sauce at the rehearsal dinner, though. The raspberry sauce is in the silver bowl. The heart-shaped cakes are Italian cream cake and the round ones are pound cake, which is the only kind I’m positive will hold up the fondant. The square ones are a coconut pound cake that I’m trying out. I think it might work if you’re afraid plain pound cake is too boring, but I’m warning you now, I’m not an expert cake decorator, so the stronger the cake you give me to work with, the better chance you have of getting something that makes it through the reception.” Agnes picked up a plate.

“I have to confess that I am concerned that the house isn’t painted yet,” Brenda said as Agnes put cakes on the first plate, and Agnes flinched.

“It will be.” Agnes handed the plate to Maria. “Bride first.” Maria handed the plate to Evie. “Absolutely not. Mother of the groom first.”

Evie accepted the plate. “Thank you, my dear. You have such lovely manners.”

“Because if the house won’t be ready-” Brenda began.

“It will be.” Agnes plopped cake on a second plate and then shoved that plate at Brenda, wondering what her problem was.

Brenda frowned at the plate. “Now is this the china you’ll be using for the wedding, sugar?”

“No,” Agnes said, distracted again. “Taylor’s got china on order to stock his catering kitchen in the barn, and we’ll be using that.”

Brenda shook her head. “There’s an awful lot that isn’t in place -”

“It will all be here,” Agnes said firmly. “The china, the house, the cake, the flowers, everything. Which reminds me, I tried calling the florist this morning to double-check on the delivery times, but I couldn’t get through. That’s not like Maisie. Is she sick?”

“Oh, Maisie.” Brenda took the plate, shaking her head. “Poor old Maisie, always did have more boobs than brains, bless her heart.” She forked up a piece of the Italian cream cake, taking care not to drop any crumbs on her own significant cleavage. “You’re not going to believe this. She canceled.”

Agnes stopped filling the third plate, and Evie and Maria froze, too. “What?”

Brenda bit into the cream cake, hesitated, and shook her head. “Oh, I think that’s just a touch too sweet, Agnes, but then it’s too soft for your fondant anyway. What? Oh, Maisie. Well, you know how disorganized she is, incompetent really. She just felt overwhelmed by the whole thing and canceled.” She tasted the pound cake and pursed her perfect lips, although her forehead did not wrinkle. “I think the pound cake may be too dry. And you know you’ll have to cover it with the fondant at least the day before, probably two. So if it’s dry now…” She shook her head and then met Agnes’s eyes. “What? Oh, Maisie? Yes. I’m afraid you’ll have to do the flowers, too.”

Agnes felt her temper rise, took a deep breath, and put the last cake on the plate. This isn’t like Brenda, Brenda’s on my side, I’ll just stay calm and find out what happened later, everything will be fine. She turned to Maria, whose jaw was set, but who did not look surprised. “I’ll fix it, you’ll have flowers,” she said quietly, while beside her Evie looked grim.

Very good, Agnes. You control your anger; your anger does not controlyou.

The morning’s not over yet, Dr. Garvin.

Agnes turned and smiled at the table. “Look at this, I’ve been so anxious to get you all cake, I didn’t serve drinks. What have I been thinking?”

Evie picked up the lemonade pitcher and began to pour. “This coconut pound cake is just delicious, Agnes, you have outdone yourself. Lemonade, anyone? Or sweet tea?”

“You know, the chef at the country club does a nice cake,” Brenda said, taking a glass of lemonade.

“This chocolate raspberry cake is really good,” Maria said, straightening.

She had two bright spots of color on her cheeks and fire in her eye, and Agnes forgot Brenda’s betrayal for a moment because Maria was looking a lot like her mother. Lisa Livia may have grown up in the South, but she was descended from a long line of dons and hitmen and Brenda. And, Agnes thought with a sinking heart, Maria was descended from a long line of dons and hitmen and Brenda and Lisa Livia.

“So, the cake,” she said in her best aren’t-we-all-glad-to-be-here voice, waving her cake plate in Maria’s general direction to distract her from whatever was about to set her off.

“I’m just thinking with everything that’s gone wrong, the wedding might be better at the country club,” Brenda said, and Evie perked up.

Rot in hell, Brenda, Agnes thought, but before she could say anything, Maria said, “Did you hear about my dress?”

“Your dress?” Evie said, but Maria was smiling at Brenda. Fixedly.

Oh, God, what did Brenda do to the dress? Agnes thought, seeing the entire wedding go south as the bride killed her grandmother in the gazebo with the cake knife. Barbie Clue.

“Oh, yes, the dress.” Brenda sipped her lemonade, looking blonde and lovely as ever. “Maria had ordered one from New York, but there was no tradition in that, so I canceled it-”

“What?” Evie said, putting down her lemonade.

“-and I’m giving her my wedding dress to wear.” Brenda smiled fondly at Maria, who smiled back. Not fondly.

“She’s at least a foot taller than you are,” Evie said, appalled. “You canceled that dress? She loved that dress. We all loved that dress!”

“It’s all right,” Maria said, still smiling.

It’s not all right, Agnes thought, trying to think of how she was going to get the dress back. And how she was going to get Brenda psychiatric help because she’d clearly gone round the bend. And how she was going to keep Lisa Livia from killing her mother, something that had been imminent all LL’s life anyway. “I-”

“In fact, I’ve been thinking,” Brenda said, and a silence fell over the table, even Evie turning to Brenda to see what was coming next. “What with Two Rivers not looking its best-I’m sorry, Agnes-and the florist quitting, and all, well, I have to agree with Evie that the country club is very beautiful, and they have flowers there anyway, so we could probably just use their flowers…”

Her voice trailed off as three women looked at her in horror.

“Well, it’s too late to get another florist, everybody would understand that, and we can’t have it here,” she said, the voice of reason. “This place isn’t even painted.”

You have lost your ever-lovin’ mind, Agnes thought.

“We cannot use the country club’s flowers,” Evie said firmly. “But I do agree that Two Rivers is a little shabby for a wedding of this stature, so I think that moving it to-”

Agnes said, trying to keep the panic from her voice, “Well, I think- “

Maria stood up. “You know, I just love my grandpa’s big old house. It’s just… the South, don’t you think?” She turned to look at it in all its scraped and scabby glory, Tara with leprosy, and turned back hastily. “And I do want a Southern wedding, in the fine old Keyes tradition. I do believe in tradition, don’t you, Mrs. Keyes?”

Evie nodded, not buying anything yet.

“But I do want a wedding that will make people sit up and take notice,” Maria said, looking at Brenda. “I want a wedding that says, Look at us, we have arrived, we belong. Right, Grandma Brenda?”

Brenda looked up at her, and for a moment she looked hungry, even vulnerable. Agnes thought, Shewonts to belong, she feels as alone as I do.

Maria moved between Brenda and Evie. “That’s what I want my wedding to be, tradition and innovation, the best of both worlds, having it all!”

The two older women looked at each other, united in confusion.

Agnes frowned. It was a nice picture, Maria uniting the two fighting houses, but she was Lisa Livia’s kid, and her cake, her flowers, and her dress had just been canceled, and now Brenda and Evie were trying to hijack the whole damn thing to the fucking country club.

Language, Agnes.

To the gosh-darned country club.

Agnes pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, and said, “Well, I think that’s wonderful, but you can just forget the country-”

“We’ll have it all,” Maria said, thrillingly. “My wedding in my grandpa’s house, which Agnes will get painted-”

Agnes started at the steel in Maria’s voice and then nodded.

“-and Taylor’s brilliant food, and Agnes’s wonderful cake, and Maisie Shuttle’s gorgeous flowers, which Grandma Brenda will get back for us-”

Brenda flinched.

“-and Evie’s cousin Wesley’s marvelous photographs, and Palmer’s fraternity brother’s uncle’s band, and it’s going to be so perfect, so traditional and yet new.”

“Well, that’s very sweet, Maria,” Brenda said, “but-”

Shut up, Brenda, Agnes thought, seeing the red light behind Maria’s eyes, so like the light in Lisa Livia’s before the carnage began.

“And it will be all of that,” Maria said, her voice rising, “because it will all be tied together by our theme, the symbol of Palmer’s and my future.”

“Theme?” Evie said, surprised.

“Theme?” Brenda said, confused.

“Oh, God,” Agnes said, bracing herself.

Maria smiled at Palmer, out on the lawn, gazing at the grass.

“Grass?” Agnes said, thinking, Green, I could fake green by Saturday.

“Flamingos,” Maria said.

“What the hell?” Brenda said, startled.

“You’re joking, of course,” Evie said.

“Pink,” Agnes said, thinking, Pink, I can fake pink by Saturday.

Maria opened her bag and took out an eight-inch virulently pink plastic flamingo and slapped it on the table. “Isn’t it just hysterical? It’s a pen. Dina Delvecchio sent it to me when she found out that Palmer’s big successful golf course is called the Flamingo. See, the feet are like the holder, and you pull the pen out-”

“Dina Delvecchio?” Evie said, grasping at straws since the flamingo was probably beyond comprehension.

“Maria’s maid of honor,” Agnes said, staring at the flamingo pen. “Bless her heart” Goddammit, Brenda, you had to open your mouth, didn’t you?

“-and we glue the place cards to the beaks,” Maria went on. “They’re only seventy-five cents each, so they’re cheap, too, Grandma. You’ll like that”

“That’s seventy-five bucks for place cards,” Brenda said, looking at the pink plastic with horror.

“And they double as party favors,” Maria said virtuously. “I already ordered them, Agnes. They’ll be here Thursday.”

“Maria,” Evie said, staring in horror at the plastic flamingo.

“So, flamingos,” Agnes said. It was awful, but it was at Two Rivers, so she was for it Marginally. “Arriving Thursday.”

“And here’s the best part.” Maria held up the dress bag. “My dress. Or Grandma Brenda’s dress.”

“Don’t call me Grandma,” Brenda said.

“The big trend now is in colored wedding dresses,” Maria said, unzipping the bag. “So…”

She pulled off the bag and revealed an old-fashioned meringue wedding dress with a huge puffy skirt canopied with lace and bows.

All of it dyed flamingo pink.

“That’s my wedding dress!” Brenda said, standing up and knocking over her chair.

“I know,” Maria said, beaming. “I’m going to wear it just like you wanted. Brenda.”

Okay, Agnes thought, sitting down in relief. There was no way in hell Maria would wear that horror of a dress anywhere. This was payback. She met Maria’s eyes and said, “Fabulous idea. It’ll be the talk of the county,” and Maria said, “Well, I think so.”

Fifteen minutes of cool reasoning and heated reproach later, Evie had left for the Keyes mansion in silent shock, and Brenda had gone back to the Brenda Belle, the Real Estate King’s yacht, in outraged fury.

Agnes grinned. “So, flamingos.”

“Of course not.” Maria stuffed the dress back in the dress bag. “The dress was the giveaway, wasn’t it?”

“I’d pay good money to see you in it,” Agnes said. “If I had any good money.”

Maria sighed. “Well, I had to do something. Evie’s being so snotty about everything that I’d tell her to fuck off if she wasn’t going to be my kids’ grandma someday. And she’s an angel compared to Brenda. Did you see that dress? She really expected me to wear it. And she really did cancel my dress, too, but Palmer ordered another one and they’re going to express it here Friday if that’s okay.”

Agnes nodded. “I’ll keep it for you.”

Maria shook her head. “I swear to God, Palmer told Brenda four months ago that he’d pay for the wedding, but she said no, I was her granddaughter and she was going to take care of it all, and now she’s pissed off the baker and the florist and wants to use the leftover flowers at the country club. Why did she offer to pay in the first place if she was going to act like this?”

“I don’t know,” Agnes said. “This is not like Brenda. I could see her insisting on wearing white to your wedding because it’ll look good with her tan, but meddling like this? She’s lost her mind.”

Maria picked up the dress bag. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve settled her hash.”

“So, just checking to make sure here, no flamingos?”

“Oh, the flamingo pens are coming,” Maria said. “I don’t know how far I have to carry my bluff. But the wedding is just like I planned it, white butterflies and daisies. I’m going to let them both stew for a while and then graciously agree to go back to the original plan, and they’ll be so grateful, they’ll get out of my way.” Maria looked out over the lawn and waved to Palmer, who obediently turned and trotted back toward them.

She watched him with an odd expression on her face, and Agnes felt a chill.

“Are you two okay?”

“Yes,” Maria said, and then frowned toward the house. “Is that Bobbie Hammond?”

“What?” Agnes said, and turned to see Detective Hammond coming out of the house. “Yep. So Palmer-”

“Robbie and I dated one summer,” Maria said, watching him instead of her fiancé, who was now approaching the gazebo.

Oh, great. “He doesn’t seem real bright,” Agnes said.

Maria scowled at her. “He’s a nice guy.”

“Not much of a future,” Agnes said.

“He serves and protects,” Maria said.

“I think he has a girlfriend,” Agnes said, having no idea what Hammond had.

“I’m engaged,” Maria said coolly.

“Okay, then.” Agnes began to clear up the cake plates. “Now I have to get Maisie Shuttle back on the job with the daisies and bake you some cake. What kind do you want?”

“Whatever holds up the icing,” Maria said. “The coconut was good.”

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “I’ll give you the chocolate raspberry for the rehearsal dinner.”

“Wonderful,” Maria said, but her voice was flat as she looked past Agnes to her intended, coming up the steps.

“Everything okay?” Palmer said.

“Yes, dear,” Maria said.

They looked at each other in fairly cold silence.

No, no, no, Agnes thought. “I have some cake,” she said to Palmer and prayed that whatever it was, they’d get over it by Saturday.

God, I’m shallow, she thought, and headed back to the house to make out her list of cake supplies and to work on her column. That had to be done by Saturday, too. Everything had to be done by Saturday.

Sunday’s going to be a good day, she thought.

Assuming she lived that long.

An hour after he left Two Rivers, Shane sat outside Joey’s diner in the Defender and worked at the message on his cell phone until he had it all decrypted:

WRONG TARGET HIT

CASEY DEAN STILL ACTIVE

CALL TO SET UP MEET TO DISCUSS ASAP.

“Fuck.” He’d killed the wrong guy. Too many intel screwups like this lately. Somebody needed to go in there and kick some ass. Wilson would have once, but he was getting old.

Rhett was hanging his head out the passenger window, looking miserable. I know how you feel, Shane thought. He slammed his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. First Joey and his little Agnes and his mysteries, and now this screwup.

Shane flipped open the cell phone and punched in number 2on the speed-dial. It was answered on the second ring.

“Wilson.”

“I’m in Keyes.”

“Why?”

“Personal business. What happened with the intel?”

Three seconds passed, which was a very long time in Shane’s experiencedealing with Wilson. The emptiness was tilled with clicking noises as the signal was encrypted, bounced between government satellites, and decrypted.

“I’ll meet you in Keyes this evening, twenty-two hundred hours,” Wilson said. “Location?”

Shane blinked. He always came to Wilson. “There’s a floating dock at the junction of the Blood River and the Intracoastal Waterway.”

The phone went dead and Shane closed it. He saw Joey lock up his diner and come slowly over, a newspaper in one hand. For the first time, he looked old to Shane.

“What’s in the back?” Joey asked, jerking his head toward the large box in the bed of the truck as he got in, shooing Rhett over at the same time.

“Air conditioner unit,” Shane said. “The one at Two Rivers isn’t enough.”

Joey raised his eyebrows. “Agnes come into some money, did she?”

Shane started the truck. “You shutting down for the day for real?”

“There’s someone I need to talk to,” Joey said. “Anybody I know?” Joey hesitated.

Shane figured he’d shown enough patience. “I got some questions, Joey. That’s just the first.”

Joey nodded. “Charlie ‘Four Wheels’ Thibault. Grandpa of the kid who died last night.”

Shane waited.

“I used to know him. Thinking I better go see him.”

Shane nodded. “I’ll drive you. Mind the slobber.”

“Nice ride,” Joey said, thumping the heavy side panel.

Shane pulled into the street and Joey pointed which way to drive. “So how’d you get to know this Four Wheels?”

“He was one of the guys back in the day,” Joey said. “How’s Agnes doing?”

Not subtle, Shane thought “She was with Evie Keyes and Brenda when I left.”

Joey shook his head. “Poor little thing.”

Shane thought of Agnes, round in those thin sweats, attacking that pepper on the chopping block, smacking him with the frying pan. Agnes was a lot of things, but poor and little weren’t two of them. “Why’d you ask Agnes about Rhett last night, Joey?”

Joey looked out the window. “I always ask about Rhett. I worry about them both out there all alone.” He turned back to Shane. “I’ve known her since she was a kid. She used to spend summers down here with Lisa Livia when they was in boarding school. They’d come into the diner and ask questions. Lisa Livia wanted to know how to run the place, she was all about the money.” He laughed. “That Lisa Livia, she’s no dummy. But Agnes, she wanted to know how to cook. All the time, wanting to know how to make this, why’d you put that in there, Joey?”

Shane kept his eyes on the road. He couldn’t get two words about the Thibaults, but about Agnes he was getting a book. Nice try, Joey.

“Then they grew up and didn’t come back anymore,” Joey went on, seeming almost wistful. “I get a Christmas card every year from Agnes, sometimes she’d send me stuff in the mail, stuff she finds she thinks I like, diner stuff. But then about three, four years ago, here Agnes comes again, asking questions ‘cause now she has a newspaper column, and she remembered me, she’s gonna write about me.”

Shane looked over at the old man. He was grinning like it was a joke, but he was proud.

“About me,” Joey repeated, shaking his head. “And then this editor in New York read the columns about me and said she wanted a book, and Agnes wrote one. The editor called it Mob Food. It came out last month, been selling real good, too, they say. That’s where Agnes got some of the money for her half of the down payment on the house.” He looked away, out the window. “My picture’s on the cover. Leaning on the diner counter.” He looked back at Shane. “I told her to forget about it, but Agnes said I had to be on the cover. And you know Agnes.”

Shane nodded. “I’m starting to.”

“She uses a lot of my stuff in her column, some other people’s, too. She got a lot of stuff from Brenda, too, see Brenda’s the one who taught her to cook-”

Enough. “So why did you ask Agnes about Rhett right before the kid broke in to take him?”

Joey looked out the window again. “Coincidence.”

Shane swerved to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, putting a hand out to keep Rhett from sliding off the seat. Rhett looked up at Shane, then at Joey, then sighed and put his head back down.

Shane stared at his uncle. “That gun at Agnes’s was an old mobster’s gun. That kid was the grandson of an old mob guy. There weren’t that many old mob guys who retired down here, Joey. Just two, you and Frankie Fortunato, and now I hear about this Thibault guy. And I have to say that you retired down here pretty fucking young. You couldn’t have been forty, either one of you. So I’m thinking there’s a lot going on here that I need to know. Are you going to tell me this story? Or we gonna sit here all day?”

The seconds ticked away as Joey met his eyes; then he turned and looked out the window at the dark green woods of the swamp. Shane waited. The seconds turned into a minute, then two, and Rhett sighed once more. Then Joey sighed, deeper than Rhett, and looked back at Shane. He had a wan smile and he did look old. “You grown up, haven’t you?”

“I grew up a long time ago, Joey. You saw to that.”

Joey nodded. “Yeah. That was the idea.” He looked out the window, still nodding, and Shane waited. When he turned back, the man Shane remembered was there. Solid. The shark smile. “Okay, Frankie and me was driving down to Miami to do a job for the old Don, Frankie’s father. Our engine blew up right outside of Keyes. We got stuck here for a couple of days and we liked it. So we kept coming back every summer and then when we decided to retire,

Frankie and I figured we’d come here, do some work for the Don on the side.

“Then Frankie and I got a tip, this would be about twenty-five years ago now, that there was a freight car full of cigs on the rail line, ready to load to go overseas. We made most our money boosting freight cars when the port was still active. We kick up half the take to the Don in Jersey, split the rest twenty/twenty/ten with Charlie ‘Four Wheels’ Thibault getting the ten percent ‘cause all he does is drive. Took Frankie’s Caddy ‘cause it had the big trunk. Went down to the rail siding, bust in, but no cigs, just a safe, and it has this box on top, got a necklace in it, made of big hearts, junky-looking thing.”

Joey shook his head. “I had a weird feeling about it. But the tip come from the Don, so we lift the safe out, and Frankie, he takes the necklace for Brenda because she’s on his case all the time, he says, ‘cause she thinks he’s cheating on her, which he is, but that’s Frankie for you. We throw the safe in the trunk of Frankie’s Caddy. Beat feet to Frankie’s place, where Agnes lives now. Park just over that damn bridge; it was in better shape then. Take the safe down to Frankie’s basement, open it up. Inside, no cigs. Five million dollars in nonsequential bills.”

Shane raised his eyebrows.

Joey nodded. “Yeah, too much money. Four Wheels, he’s scared shitless, he goes home. I go home. Frankie goes upstairs to Brenda. We figure we’ll lay low, work something out. Except the next day, Frankie’s gone, the safe’s gone, the necklace is gone, the five mil is gone. Nobody knows nothin’. Four Wheels moves out to the swamp and shoots anybody who comes close.”

“Where’d Frankie go?”

Joey shrugged. “Tahiti. Meet his maker. I dunno. Never seen or heard from again.”

“Anybody come after you?”

Joey rubbed the scar over his eye. “A couple of times.” He looked away.

There’s more, Shane thought. “What’s this got to do with Agnes?”

“This weekend, Agnes’s column is on cooking for dogs, so her picture is a special one with Rhett.” Joey held up the newspaper and gave it to Shane.

Shane spread it open. Inside was a column with a headline that said, cranky agnes and a picture of Agnes, smiling, big glasses and curly dark hair, with her arm around Rhett. Cute as all hell, Shane thought. “So?”

“Look at the dog’s collar.”

Shane peered closer. Rhett had a collar on that looked like it was made out of big junky-looking glass hearts.

Joey tapped the paper. “That’s the necklace Frankie showed us that night. No one’s seen it since that night, but there it is on Rhett. I think maybe the necklace and the five mil never left the house. And I think Four Wheels saw that picture and that’s what he thinks, too. And maybe Four Wheels told somebody that, like one of his dumb-shit grandsons.”

“Oh, fuck,” Shane said. All of Keyes County could be coming for little Agnes if they thought she was sitting on five million bucks; that was why Joey had called in the heavy artillery. “You couldn’t have told me this from the beginning?”

“I haven’t told anybody this in twenty-five years,” Joey said.

“Great.” This, plus he’d killed the wrong guy in Savannah. Not a good week. And it was only Tuesday.

Joey seemed a little more relaxed now that his secret was out. “Xavier was the responding deputy on the case. Hell, the entire police force of Keyes, all four of them, was on the case. Everyone except Xavier kinda gave up when Frankie’s Caddy was found abandoned at the Savannah Airport the next day and there was no sign of Frankie. But Xavier, he never gave up on it. It’s the one he never solved, and it was his biggest one and he thinks it kept him from becoming sheriff and marryin’ Evie Beale, Evie Keyes now. But Frankie wouldn’t have blown town without saying nothing to me. We was closer than brothers.”

“So who killed him and look the money?”

“No idea.” Joey nodded to the road. “This is about Agnes. We go talk to Four Wheels and find out if he sent that little bastard alter our girl and what the fuck he knows. Drive.”

Shane pulled back out onto the road, trying to find the wedge into Joey’s story. Anybody could have killed Frankie for five million, but what that had to do with Agnes now-

“Turn left on that dirt road,” Joey ordered.

A large no trespassing sign was tacked to a tree. It was barely legible given that it had been riddled with buckshot.

As soon as he turned, Shane reached down next to his seat and pulled out his Glock Model 20 and placed it on his lap. He wasn’t surprised when Joey pulled out his own pistol from his waistband and did the same. Shane recognized the make: a Colt Python revolver. Powerful and small. And the handle was wrapped with medical tape. Old dogs didn’t learn new tricks. Rhett must have sensed the mood change, because he was peering ahead, out the windshield.

The road they were on barely deserved the moniker as it narrowed into a rutted track. The trees overhead linked branches to form a green tunnel.

“I don’t like it,” Shane said.

“Don’t worry,” Joey muttered. “Four Wheels ain’t got-” He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out, as there was a sharp snap and a hairline crack appeared in the windshield. “What the fuck?”

Rhett let out a bark as Shane slammed on the brakes. There was a ping, and Shane threw the truck into reverse as he spotted two teenagers with caps on backward, firing away with rifles from behind a log about fifty yards up the road.

“What the fuck is going on?” Joey demanded.

“Couple of kids shooting at us,” Shane said as he gave the engine some gas and swiveled his head so he could negotiate the narrow track. Another ping, which he knew was a round hitting the armored front of the car. “More of the Thibault clan, I assume.”

Joey reached forthe door handle, but Shane had already overridden both the windows and the locks and the old man fumbled with it for several moments before realizing that.

“Open the fucking door, Shane.”

“Nope.” Shane saw the end of the track and the main road approaching, and he slowed down. No more shots; he assumed they were out of range and/or sight of the hidden firers.

“You just run away?” A vein was throbbing in Joey’s forehead.

“When the odds aren’t good, yeah.” Shane spun the wheel and they were back on the county road.

“They teach you that in the army?”

“No.” Shane looked at his uncle. “You did.”

Joey took several deep breaths, then he slowly began to nod, and a resigned smile crept across his face. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Always play the odds.”

“This is the second time today I’ve been shot at,” Shane said. “What?”

“First time was this morning in the woods near Agnes’s house.” Shane reached down and scratched Rhett’s head. He’d thought that the shooting had more to do with him than Agnes, given the message he’d decoded, but he was reevaluating that now. And the bomb was a wild card that he needed to factor in. He was fucking reevaluating everything. He loved his uncle, but the old man hadn’t put all his cards on the table yet, and that was troublesome. It looked like Agnes had bought more than just a lot of maintenance problems when she invested in that old mansion.

Joey’s alarm was obvious. “The shooter. Was he a pro?”

“Hard to tell,” Shane said.

Joey was staring out at the landscape whipping by. “I got you out of here when I sent you to school. I should have kept you away.”

“Don’t worry about it, Uncle Joey,” Shane said, thinking about Agnes in her kitchen. “I’ve been in a lot worse places.”

“Maybe you better go,” Joey said.

Shane shot him a glance. “Not until this is straightened out.”

“Shane, there could be pros out there. The Don’s guys. They could be gunning for you now, too.”

And there’s my last question. “Why would they be doing that?”

Joey looked away. “Figuring you were with me. You know.”

Another lie, Shane thought, and began to wonder if there was anybody he could trust.

“Maybe you better just stick close to Agnes,” Joey said.

“That’s my plan,” Shane said.

Agnes sat on the swing on the finished screened-in back porch with a bottle of wine, a splitting headache, her laptop, and a pad of paper, trying to finish her latest To Do List and write her column while the Chicks sang softly in the background. It was hard concentrating with all the distractions, not the least of which had been Robbie Hammond coming back to the house to ask, “Was that Maria Fortunato?” with an expression on his face that said that whatever happened that summer they’d dated had had a major impact on him. “Yes, and she’s getting married Saturday,” Agnes had said firmly, and he’d gone away, leaving Agnes feeling a little guilty, but not much. Back to work.

The Chicks were singing “The Long Way Around,” which seemed appropriate since the To Do List was getting the house painted, getting the bridge reinforced, finding an air conditioner on sale somewhere that also had really lax credit terms, ordering the cake supplies, and hunting Maisie Shuttle down to make her cough up a thousand daisies. The column was about the life-or-death importance of a cake that could hold up pounds of fondant and still taste like heaven when the guests chowed down, and Agnes loathed every boring word of it. She was trying to shoehorn in some insightful facts about the history of wedding cakes, but they were even worse-

“I can’t believe you bought this fuckin’ dump.”

Agnes looked up and saw a vision of petite southern loveliness- Southern Jersey, in this case-standing in the porch doorway: glossy brown ringlets framing big brown eyes, sharp features, and a wide red mouth, over a body built for a tube top and capri pants.

“LL?” Agnes felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, God, I’ve missed you!”

She got up from the swing, letting her laptop slide onto the cushions, and threw her arms around her best friend, knocking her glasses sideways in the process. Lisa Livia said, “Oh, honey, I’ve missed you, too,” and hugged Agnes tight for a minute. Then she let go, shoved her own oversized sunglasses farther back on her head like a headband, looked up, and said, “Agnes, you dumbass, you are so screwed.”

“Why?” Agnes straightened her glasses. “Did the bridge collapse?”

Lisa Livia threw her huge white patent leather bag on the old metal table and sat down on the swing, shoving the laptop back over to Agnes’s side as she turned down the CD player. “No. What the hell is this doing out here?”

“I’m writing my column. Did you know that the Romans used to break the wedding cake over the bride’s head?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. Italian men are hell on women. Pay attention here, I’ve been on that tub, the Brenda Belle, going through my mother’s stuff.”

“She’s been living there ever since she sold me Two Rivers.” Agnes sat next to her and poured her a glass of wine. “I don’t know why she hasn’t bought herself a nice condo. Iam so glad to see you. You missed the meeting with her and Evie Keyes.”

“That was my plan.” Lisa Livia crossed her killer legs, took the wine and sipped it, nodded, and then drank a good slug of it. “I know why she hasn’t bought herself a condo; she thinks she’s coming back here, and she’s trying to screw up my kid’s wedding to do it.”

“What?” Agnes said, looking at her over the wine bottle. “That’s crazy. Why would she come back here? Why would she hurt Maria’s wedding? That’s her big social coup, that’s her in!”

“Because, as I have been telling you for years, she’s a fucking nutcase.” Lisa Livia settled into the swing. “Ever since Maria’s been down here, Brenda’s been at her about Palmer, how much he’s like his dad, who married pretty little Evie Beale when she was just eighteen and has spent the rest of his life drinking and screwing everything in sight.”

Agnes blinked at her. “Palmer is like his father? That’s ridiculous, Palmer is Evie’s baby, Palmer wouldn’t say boo to a goose, let alone proposition one. I still don’t know how he got Maria into bed.” She hesitated for a minute. “Actually, I’m not sure he…”

“Yeah, he did,” Lisa Livia said. “I asked because I didn’t want her marrying him because he was sweet and rich and then getting bored in the first week. She said the sex was great and I should stop making assumptions and she was very happy. Now she’s not so sure, because Brenda’s planted this idea that he’s going to turn out like his father.”

“Why would she do that?” Agnes said, mystified.

“Because she’s trying to stop the wedding. This morning when I got into town, I waited until Brenda left the yacht, and then I went aboard and starting going through her stuff to see what she was up to.” Lisa Livia looked at Agnes over her wineglass, her big brown eyes huge. “She’s swindling you.”

“What?” Agnes frowned. “No. Not Brenda. I mean, I mean she’s being difficult, but I think that’s just because she’s having to deal with these people who have shut her out all these years. You should have seen her face when-”

“She holds your mortgage,” Lisa Livia said. “Why didn’t you go through a bank, you dumbass?”

“She gave us a better rate.” Agnes put her glass down. “Taylor had our lawyer look at the papers. They’re standard. I mean, they’re boilerplate. It’s the exact same contract that Evie gave Palmer and Maria for the house they’re buying next door to the Keyes place. The only clause Brenda added was that Maria hold her wedding here, and that’s not a problem, I want Maria’s wedding here, plus I get three months’ mortgage payments free if I do it. It’s a great deal.”

“I know it’s standard, and I know it’s the same one Evie gave Palmer.” Lisa Livia rolled her eyes at Agnes’s obtuseness. “The difference is, Evie loves Palmer. It’s also the kind used by crooked lenders to rip off buyers all the time. You think the Real Estate King became King by playing fair and square? Brenda learned everything she knows about selling houses from him. She’s taking you, Ag.”

This is ridiculous. Agnes pulled back a little. “LL, the contract just says I have to let Maria get married here, it doesn’t say she has to get married. I know you and your mother have your problems-”

“She’s a vicious bitch,” Lisa Livia said, and finished off her wine.

“-but she’s not a crook.”

“She killed my father,” Lisa Livia said. “Real estate fraud is a step up for her.”

Here we go again, Agnes thought. “Look, you’re the best friend a woman could possibly have until you get started on your mother-”

“Okay, you think I’m crazy, but just listen to me.” Lisa Livia put her glass on the table and leaned forward, her tube top shifting in ways Agnes could not possibly appreciate and yet somehow was glad that Shane was not there to witness. “You know that clause that says that if you’re in default of your payments for three months, the lender gets the house back?”

“Yes,” Agnes said patiently, “but that’s a standard clause, and we’re not in default.”

“But you will be,” Lisa Livia said, just as patiently. “If Maria doesn’t have her wedding here, Saturday, by noon, you are in default.” She picked up her bag and pulled out a paper and handed it to Agnes. “Remember this?”

Agnes looked at it. “Yes. It’s the wedding agreement. We’re having the wedding here in exchange for… the first three months’ mortgage payments.”

Lisa Livia nodded. “Those three payments are past due if the wedding doesn’t happen here.”

Agnes heard Brenda say, If we held it at the country club… “What?” Lisa Livia said, watching her face.

Agnes swallowed. “Brenda’s trying to move it to the country club. She even had some insane idea about using the flowers there.”

“What?” Lisa Livia said.

“And Evie wants to have it at the country club, but not use their flowers.” Idon’t believe this. Brenda would not do this to me.

“Jesus, 1 should hope not the country club’s flowers.” Lisa Livia sat back. “But there you go. Anything that keeps the wedding from happening here by Saturday noon means you lose the house and Brenda gets it back and she keeps your down payment. I knew there was no way she’d let this house go. She’s been hanging on to it for twenty-five years, but she’s broke, she’s in debt up to her ears, big debt, Ag, and she’s desperate for cash.” Lisa Livia shook her head. “1 told you, she learned this crap from that shyster she married. Real Estate King, my ass. People used to come to the house and threaten to kill him.”

“I don’t believe she’d do this,” Agnes said, looking at the paper. “It’s too far-fetched. I know you and she have your differences, LL, but she was good to me. She taught me to cook, for heaven’s sake. She’s like a mother to me.”

“She is a mother to me,” Lisa Livia said. “And I’m telling you, she’s doing it.”

“Lisa Livia, I have real problems.” Agnes poured herself another glass of wine. “A kid died in my basement last night after trying to kidnap my dog at gunpoint, and now I’ve got this wedding-”

“Died? As in dead? And you’re still here?” Lisa Livia’s face changed, and she straightened. “Wait a minute. Brenda sent him.”

“Oh, for the love of God, LL,” Agnes snapped. “Your mother is not responsible for everything.”

“She’s trying to scare you out so you can’t do the wedding so you’ll have to forfeit and she’ll get the house back. I betcha. Don’t you leave this house.” She drank more wine.

“I’m not.”

“You’re not staying here alone, are you? Get that worthless Taylor out here.”

Agnes shook her head. “Joey got his nephew to come stay. Shane.” Lisa Livia choked on her wine. “Shane?” she said, wiping her mouth. “Little Shane?”

Agnes thought of the guy filling up her kitchen that morning. “He’s grown.”

“This I have to see,” Lisa Livia said. “But I am not kidding about my mother.”

“You are overreacting,” Agnes said, and when Lisa Livia glared at her, she glared right back.

“There you are!” Brenda called through the screens as she came up the walk, Evie following with Maria behind her, looking cautious. “Evie and I had lunch and talked over things, and then we called Maria and came back out to see you all for a moment.” She came up the steps and caught sight of Lisa Livia. “And there you are, honey,” she said, smiling. “I was wondering when you’d get here.” She bent to kiss Lisa Livia on the cheek, but LL stiffened away so that it turned into an air kiss. When Brenda straightened, her smile was still in place, but it was tight and fixed.

Ouch, Agnes thought. Would it kill you to let her kiss you, LL?

“So, Ma,” Lisa Livia said. “How’s the country club? Tell you what, I’ll create a disturbance, and you grab the flowers.”

“Hello, Lisa Livia,” Evie said, with no warmth. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Keyes,” Lisa Livia said. “Always a pleasure to be here.”

Brenda smiled at Maria. “We brought Maria because we wanted to talk about the wedding. About her theme.”

“Theme?” Lisa Livia said dangerously. “What theme?”

“We feel strongly,” Evie said to Lisa Livia, “that a flamingo theme, while adventurous and young and… uh, funky, might be something Palmer and, of course, Maria might regret in years to come when they look back at their wedding pictures.”

“A flamingo theme?” Lisa Livia said, looking staggered.

“Forgot to mention that,” Agnes said to her. “There was a lot to catch you up on.”

Evie nodded. “And that, in fact, this entire wedding has gotten out of hand. So Brenda and I have decided that something more classic-”

“At the country club,” Brenda said, patting Maria’s arm.

“-would be more appropriate,” Evie said. “Wait a minute,” Agnes said, rising from her chair as fast as her temper.

“And since I am not without influence in the community and over my son,” Evie was saying, intent clear in her voice, “I am in a position to insist. I’m sorry, Maria, but there will be no flamingo theme, and the wedding will be at the country club.”

The hell it will. Agnes opened her mouth, but Lisa Livia got there first.

“My daughter wants a flamingo theme here,” Lisa Livia said quietly. “And I believe it’s her wedding.”

“Ma,” Maria said, warning in her voice.

Agnes shook her head slightly at Lisa Livia. Fight for the location not the theme. The theme’s a joke. “So we’ll compromise,” she began, and Maria nodded, but Evie overrode them.

“Maria is very young,” Evie said, smiling at Lisa Livia with the kind of smile that came on crocodiles. “She needs guidance. No flamingos.”

Maria opened her mouth, looking eager to agree, but Lisa Livia missed it, crossing her arms under her red tube top. “Guidance, you say,” LL said softly.

“We need to talk about this,” Agnes whispered to Lisa Livia, trying to signal her off.

“Oh, no, it’s decided,” Brenda said, happily. “And really, darlings-”

“The hell it’s decided,” Agnes snapped at her, and Brenda blinked at her, shocked.

“Maria wants flamingos.” Lisa Livia smiled at Evie, the Fortunato smile that had launched a thousand cement overshoes.

Maria evidently saw the same thing, because she said, “No, Ma, it’s okay, I-” just as Agnes said, “LL, you-”

Lisa Livia jerked her head up toward the second floor of the house. “You know that second window from the right up there?” she said to Evie in a conversational tone that fooled no one. “That was my bedroom window when I was a kid. I got stuck up there a lot when Ma had her parties. You wouldn’t believe what I saw.” She tilted her head, looking Evie right in the eye. “Like Simon Xavier feeling you up underneath our big oak tree. And that wasn’t all…”

Brenda said, “Lisa Livia!” Evie stiffened, and Agnes sat down and poured herself another glass of wine.

“I’m trying to remember if you were married then or not,” Lisa Livia was saying to Evie, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I’d have to ask around. You know. For guidance. To get my dates straight.”

“Wine?” Agnes said to Maria, who nodded and sat down next to her, equally resigned, picking up her mother’s wineglass.

Evie pressed her lips together so tight, they made a white line in her face.

“It’s not the kind of thing I’d ever do,” Lisa Livia went on. “I mean, ever do, talk like that, I mean, unless somebody, you know, tried to fuck my daughter over on something she wanted, because in that case, if that happened, I would pour lye over every single fuckin’ inch of this town. You think Sherman did some damage on his march through here? I’d make him look like fucking Merry Maids, what I’d do to you and everybody in this godforsaken hole if you or anybody else fucks with my kid, or her happiness, so if she says she wants fuckin’ flamingos, she gets fuckin’ flamingos right here at Two Rivers. The wedding will not be at the country club, it will be here and it will have flamingos and anything else my kid wants, do you understand?”

Agnes drank some more wine and so did Maria. She was pretty sure Evie understood. The First Lady of Keyes might not be Caesar’s wife, but she was Jefferson Keyes’s wife, and Jefferson Keyes’s wife did not get felt up under an oak tree by a cop or, God forbid, laid, not even twenty-five years ago.

A quiet fell over the group.

Then Evie stood up. “Very well.” She nodded to Maria. “I think this is a terrible mistake, but your mother is correct, it is your wedding. You may have your flamingos here at Two Rivers.”

“Now wait a minute,” Brenda said, but Evie turned and walked down the steps and around the corner of the house to her Lexus, her dignity unspoiled even if her reputation had a dent in it.

Brenda turned to Lisa Livia. “Well, that was certainly a disgusting display worthy of your father’s family.”

“Shut up, Ma,” Lisa Livia said, her hands on her hips. “Like you weren’t born in the Bronx, and the Fortunatos weren’t a big step up for you. Now you listen to me. You try to move this wedding away from Two Rivers again, I’m gonna clean every skeleton out of every closet you got and make them dance, you hear me? I’ll dig up everything you ever buried, including my daddy, and then I’ll sink that beat-up rowboat you’re living on so you’ll be out in the street with nothing. Do not fuck with my kid and do not fuck with my friend, they are all the family I got, and they are off-limits to you. Understand?”

Brenda drew back as if she’d been slapped, and then she glared at LL, and for a moment they were mirror images, two curly-haired mini-furies, one blonde and one dark, little but lethal. Then Brenda said, “I’m not going to listen to that kind of talk from my daughter,” and turned to Agnes. “I’d like to speak with you before I go,” she said coldly, and went into the house.

“I thought she’d never leave.” Lisa Livia turned to Maria, who was sitting on the porch swing beside Agnes, her arms crossed in mirror image of her mother, the third fury in the triumvirate, although she looked more exasperated than enraged. “You got your flamingos, baby,” Lisa Livia said, her voice doting.

“I don’t want flamingos, Ma,” Maria said. “I was just trying to make them crazy so they’d give me the wedding I really do want. I’d have talked them back to Two Rivers with the butterflies and the daisies and everything I wanted, but now thanks to you, I got flamingos.”

Lisa Livia stared at her daughter for a long moment, and then she said, “I hope someday you have a daughter, and when you do, I hope she breaks your heart the way you just broke mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Maria said, and went into the kitchen.

Agnes held out the wine bottle to Lisa Livia. “We tried to head you off. Wine?”

“Fuck that,” Lisa Livia said. “Get me a bourbon.”

“Kitchen,” Agnes said, and they both went in.

Brenda was just inside the door, staring openmouthed at the kitchen wall, where the outline of the basement door could be seen easily now since so many people had gone through it.

“Agnes, what is that?” she said, as if Agnes had done something vile.

“The door to the basement I didn’t know was there,” Agnes said. “Your husband’s old den is down there. Which you failed to mention when you sold me the house.”

“Daddy’s rec room?” Lisa Livia said, and went over to it. “Is the Venus still down there?” She pushed open the door and poked her head through. “My God, I’d forgotten all about this.” She sounded ready to cry, which was not like Lisa Livia.

“Ma?” Maria said to her, momentarily distracted from her own anger.

Agnes got out the bourbon. “Coming right up, LL.”

“If you don’t want the Venus, can I have it?” Lisa Livia said to Agnes.

“God, yes,” Agnes said. “You can have everything that’s down-”

“Why is this door open?” Brenda said.

“A boy named Thibault fell through there and broke his neck,” Agnes said.

“Thibault?” Brenda put her hand on the counter to steady herself.

“He came to dognap Rhett,” Agnes said.

Brenda sank down on the counter stool. “Oh, my God.”

Agnes took the bourbon to Lisa Livia, who was still peering into the basement, biting her lip now. “You okay?”

“My daddy loved this place,” LL said, and took the glass. “Just loved it. My God. And the Venus is still down there?”

The front door slammed, and somebody walked across the hall, and then Shane came into the kitchen, Rhett trailing behind him.

When he saw the four of them standing there, he paused, and Rhett flopped down beside him.

He looked tall and broad and dangerous, all dressed in black. He looked damned good, in fact

“Joey?” Brenda whispered, dead white now.

“This is Shane, Joey’s nephew,” Agnes said. “Shane, this is Brenda Dupres. Fortunato-”

“Shane, oh, my God.” Brenda put her hand over her heart. “Shane. Of course, what was I thinking? Well. You’ve grown up since the last time I saw you.”

“That’s Little Shane?” Lisa Livia whispered to Agnes. “Who knew he was gonna grow up to be that?”

Shane eyed them all warily.

Lisa Livia waved to him. “Hi, Shane. Remember me, Lisa Livia?”

“Hello,” Shane said, still cautious, which was something, given the effect Lisa Livia and her tube top usually had on men.

“You think the next time you’re in the basement, you could bring up that Venus statue?” Lisa Livia said.

“It’s a crime scene, LL,” Agnes said, trying not to watch Shane’s face. “We’ll get it to you, I promise.”

“Welcome home, Shane,” Brenda said, holding on to the counter now. “Whatever are you doin’ back in Keyes? Something for Joey?” Her voice shook a little on Joey.

“Looking out for Agnes,” Shane said. “We were wondering why nobody cleared out the basement before it was boarded up.”

“Cleared out?” Brenda said, her voice a little higher than usual.

“You got a bar full of booze down there, racks full of wine, a good pool table, and that real nice statue of the Venus de Milo-”

“Real nice,” Lisa Livia said, while Maria looked at her in disbelief.

“-but it all got boarded up. Why?”

Brenda blinked at him. “Oh, Frankie. It just all reminded me so much of Frankie, so I just nailed the door shut and papered over it after he disappeared.”

“My ass,” Lisa Livia said in Agnes’s ear. “She killed him. She probably buried him down there, that’s why she’s so spooked it’s open again. She’s probably got him buried under the Venus.” She sighed. “He’d have liked that.”

“Shh,” Agnes said, praying that was a joke. “Brenda, what did you want to talk to me about?”

Brenda looked back at her, as if she wasn’t quite sure who Agnes was. “What? Oh, Agnes. Well, about the wedding, of course. I was hoping you’d be reasonable about moving it to the country club since you’re never going to get the house painted in time but-” She looked back at the wall and then at Shane. “-I think I’m just going back to the Brenda Belle now and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.” She smiled weakly at Shane. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

“It always is,” Agnes said.

“I’ll go with you, Grandma,” Maria said, and Brenda didn’t say a word about the “Grandma.”

Shane moved aside, and Brenda glided past him, tottering a little on her heels, still beautiful, but very pale. For the first time, she looked close to her real age.

Maria shot one last baleful look at her mother and followed Brenda out the door.

“What’s the Brenda Belle?” Shane asked when they were gone.

“Her yacht,” Agnes said. “She’s been living on it since she sold me this place.”

“It’s an old tub,” Lisa Livia said and looked at Agnes. “Do you believe me now?”

“Maybe,” Agnes said. “Believe what?” Shane said.

“I’ll tell you later.” Agnes picked up the phone and dialed. “I have to tell Taylor first” Lisa Livia rolled her eyes, but Agnes said, “It’s his personal business, LL.” She listened to the phone ring once and then Taylor’s answering machine clicked on. When she heard the beep, she said, “I need to talk to you tonight. No excuses. Nine o’clock is good.” She hung up and turned back to Shane. “So Maria went mental on Evie and Brenda, then Lisa Livia told Evie she saw Xavier feel her up twenty five years ago, and now it turns out there’s a chance I’m going to lose this house, and I’m definitely going to be up to my ass in plastic flamingos by Thursday. How was your day?”

“I talked to Joey, I got shot at twice, and I got you an air conditioner. Why are you going to lose the house?”

“Shot at?” Lisa Livia said.

“This morning while Evie and Brenda were here?” Agnes said. “Because I heard shots then.”

“They missed. Why are you going to lose the house?”

Then the other shoe dropped. “You got me an air conditioner?” Agnes swallowed hard. “You got me an air conditioner?”

He looked taken aback. “Well, you were having trouble with the central air unit you had-”

“It’s too small for the house,” Agnes said.

“-so I checked it before I left and you needed another one. It’s no big deal, Agnes.”

“Oh, my God,” Agnes said. “You got shot at and you still got me an air conditioner.”

“Agnes, it’s an air conditioner, not a kidney,” Shane said, and she wanted to say, It’s better than a kidney, after all that, you still remembered me? but all she said was, “Thank you very much. I’ll pay you back.”

“No, you won’t,” Shane said. “Think of it as room and board. What’s for dinner?”

“Joey brought me a tenderloin last night and I put it to marinade this morning,” Agnes said. “That’s easy and then we’ll have sandwiches from the leftovers for a while.”

“That’s worth an air conditioner,” Shane said.

“I’ll do more,” Agnes said.

“You’re easy, Agnes,” Shane said.

You have no idea. Take me. “An air conditioner. My God.”

“So what happened with the house?”

“That’s what I have to talk to Taylor about first.”

“If you tell me, I’ll fix it,” he said, and she almost told him, just because he was there, and because he bought her an air conditioner, and because he could do anything, she was pretty sure. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she lied.

“I’ll go put the air conditioner in,” he said, nodded to Lisa Livia, and went out the back door.

Agnes turned to start dinner and caught sight of Lisa Livia watching her with her arms folded. “What?”

“Finally, something good is happening to you.”

“Yes,” Agnes said firmly. “I got an air conditioner.”

“That’s not all you’re getting,” Lisa Livia said. “And that fathead Taylor is toast. Couldn’t happen to a shallower guy, either.”

“Don’t get all starry-eyed on me,” Agnes said, heading for the refrigerator. “Shane is not staying.”

“I know, that’s the beauty of it. He gives you an air conditioner, evicts that airhead from your life, gives you great sex, and then leaves. My God. The perfect man.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” Agnes asked with studied politeness.

“No,” Lisa Livia said. “He might decide to take you before dessert. I wouldn’t want to be in the way. I’ll come back tomorrow for leftovers after I’ve rummaged around on the Brenda Belle to see if Brenda’s got anything incriminating packed away. She’s about as smart with money in general as you are, so outside of scamming you for this house, I doubt she’s much ahead of you on anything.”

“I’m smart with money,” Agnes said.

“You’re an idiot with money,” Lisa Livia said. “So is Brenda or she wouldn’t be in this cash bind now. You’re the genius with words; I’m the genius with money. We should do something together with that. But not tonight. Tonight you’re going to be playing footsie with the hotsie.”

“You’re disgusting,” Agnes said, trying not to grin.

“Yeah, but I’m going to save your butt,” Lisa Livia said. “I’m not kidding about that Venus. I want it.” She took one more look at the basement door and left, and Agnes sighed.

That made two people who were going to save her butt. The place was filling up with people who wanted to save her.

She tried to feel exasperated about that, but she grinned instead. Then she went to make dinner.

Shane spent the rest of the afternoon wrestling with the new air-conditioning unit and with the idea that his good old uncle Joey was still keeping something from him. Considering what he’d already been told, it had to be something pretty serious, which did not bode well for his getting back to his regular employment, something that didn’t bother him as much as it would have the previous night. Doyle came by but didn’t offer to help with the AC, saying he needed to focus on the house painting, although Shane figured it would be at least a decade before he got the place painted at the rate he was going. About seven, he went inside and cleaned up, and Agnes fed him tenderloin and fresh corn and new potatoes and ice cream with homemade hot fudge, and he thought about telling her he didn’t eat that much and then plowed through all of it. She said, “I think I’m going to make a golf course cake with flamingos for Palmer’s groom’s cake,” and he said, “Okay,” because there wasn’t much else to say after that, and watched her finish her next day’s To Do List. It was long. Then she opened her laptop to work on her column, muttering about wedding cake, and he went out and finished getting the unit hooked up. After that, he sat on the back porch steps and watched the sun set with Rhett and then waited in the moonlight for Wilson to show up, all of which would have been peaceful if Agnes hadn’t been so tense and if Wilson hadn’t been coming to him. It was unheard of for Wilson to come to him. Plus it was well past nine and that waste of a human being Taylor hadn’t turned up yet. Everything was wrong.

At ten minutes to ten, he stood up to walk down to the dock and realized that Rhett wasn’t collapsed beside him anymore. He whistled and then, since that never worked anyway, he went around to the front of the house to find the dog and saw that the front door was open. Fuck.

He took out his Glock and moved silently into the hall and heard Agnes say, her voice tight, “You’re dead, I saw you die!”

“I just need to get the dog, lady,” somebody pleaded, and Shane relaxed a little as the voice cracked. A kid.

He edged closer to the door and saw the kid from the back, his jacket shabby, a Confederate Army cap on his head, a gun in his hand. Not good. And his hand was shaking. Even worse. An amateur.

“You are not getting my dog,” Agnes said. She was behind the counter, unarmed but looking plenty outraged, with Rhett in the open space beside the counter, looking unconcerned. And there were knives and frying pans all within her reach, so it could turn into a major mess fast.

Shane moved up silently behind the kid. Agnes put her hand out to the counter, and Shane saw that it was shaking just as he heard a boat out on the water. Wilson. Enough, he thought, and grabbed the kid by the neck and smacked his head into the doorframe.

The kid said, “Urp,” and dropped the gun and Shane shoved the swinging door to the basement open, lowered the stunned kid by the back of his shirt into the hole.

Then he pocketed the gun and grabbed the kitchen table and shoved it across the basement doorway just as he heard Taylor’s Cobra rumble across the creaking bridge.

“My meeting is here,” he said to Agnes, nodding out toward the dock. “And your fiancé finally got here. Keep that table across the door and don’t tell anybody the kid is down there. We’ll find out from him what’s going on after we get done with these guys.”

“Okay,” Agnes said, looking a little rattled, but determined.

“That’s my girl,” Shane said, and went out the back door, remembering too late that she wasn’t.

He had to get out of Keyes.

Agnes watched through the open back door as Shane walked out to the dock, calm as anything in spite of having just disarmed somebody and dropped him in a basement. They just didn’t make guys like him anymore, she thought, and then Taylor came into the kitchen carrying a large box that was heavy from the way he huffed as he put it down on the table Shane had just shoved across the basement door. He didn’t seem to notice that the table had been moved. Well, he hadn’t been in the house enough to really know where the furniture went.

Keep your temper, Agnes.

“What’s he still doing here?” Taylor said, jerking his head toward the dock, and she looked back out to where Shane was silhouetted against the last of the sun.

He looked wonderful out there, although it was a little disconcerting that he held his business meetings on her dock at night. Kind of made her wonder what kind of business he was in.

“I don’t like it that he’s living here,” Taylor said.

I do.

“I mean it, Agnes,” Taylor said. “He has to go.”

“He brought me an air conditioner. He can stay forever as far as I’m concerned.” Not to mention he just saved me from another damn dognapper. Agnes turned her back on the window and looked at Taylor in the dim light of the kitchen. He seemed indistinct, fuzzy, and not just because the light was dim. She flipped on the overhead light, and he still seemed not quite there, a little too blond, a little too round at the corners.

Maybe it was because Shane had such sharp edges.

“Well, if you’ve got him out here, I don’t see why you needed me,” Taylor said.

“We need to talk,” Agnes said, trying to decide whether to break the engagement and then tell him that Brenda was swindling them, or tell him she thought they were being conned and then dump him.

“Not now,” Taylor said, opening the flaps on the box. “I’m in a hurry. Look at this.” He pulled out a plate.

Agnes pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and came around the counter to squint at it. It was a plain white plate, cheap pottery with a thin glaze, nothing to make a snob like Taylor get excited. “So?”

“Aren’t they the greatest?”

Agnes looked at him in disbelief. “Taylor, you wouldn’t feed Rhett off this plate. Are you telling me this is what you want to use for the catering here?”

“God, no,” Taylor said, and then recovered. “I thought you could use this as the china for the wedding. Save some money.”

Agnes took it. “It’s not china at all; it’s pottery.” She turned it over. “Incredibly cheap pottery. I can’t believe you’re not spitting on this.”

“I told you, it’s for the wedding.”

“No.” She handed it back. “It’s not. Take it back. Listen, we have a problem.”

He looked floored. “I can’t take it back. Agnes, you’ll save a fortune. Look at it again. Look at the bowls.” He pushed the box toward her. “They’re a nice shape and…”

He kept talking, and Agnes tuned him out and looked in the box and saw the receipt stuck down the side. She reached in and pulled it out to see just how cheap this junk was. If it was more than $ 1.98 for the whole damn box, he’d been ripped off good.

She unfolded the paper and saw scrawled at the bottom of the Visa slip a signature: Brenda Dupres.

“Brenda sent you out here with this,” she said as her throat closed. “What’s going on? Why are you working with Brenda? What is this?”

“Uh,” Taylor said.

Agnes felt herself flush, heat rising with her temper. There was a plan here, Lisa Livia had been right-Brenda was up to something- except that LL had missed that Taylor was part of it and this horrible thin, ugly pottery with a cheap thin grainy glaze was part of it, she was supposed to use this horrible junk instead of the lush creamy china Maria deserved, and Brenda would have made sure somehow that Evie found out, Brenda had asked about the china that morning, and then Brenda would have looked at Evie and said, “The country club has beautiful china…”

Brenda was trying to swindle her out of Two Rivers and Taylor was helping her. Agnes put her hand on the table, furious that he’d lied to her-

Steady, Agnes.

– incredulous that he could be that fucking stupid. “Agnes?”

Agnes took a deep breath, controlling her anger with everything she had.

What was he getting out of it? He was going to lose the house, too, the dimwit. What had Brenda promised him? “Agnes, what’s wrong?”

You fucking moronic lying bastard, you sold us both out. Angry language makes us angrier, Agnes.

Agnes took a deep breath, trying to keep her voice steady. “You sold us out to Brenda.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taylor said, his eyes shifting left.

“You lie.”

Taylor took a step back. “Agnes!”

Physical exercise is often a good way of defusing anger, Agnes, just walk away now.

Agnes gritted her teeth. “I don’t know what promises Brenda made you, you treacherous idiot, but if I lose this house, you lose this house.”

Taylor drew himself up. “There’s no need for insults, Agnes.” Running, Agnes, weight lifting, swimming…

“There’s every need, you dumbass. You’re screwing both of us and you don’t seem to see that!” Bowling, assault, battery…

“Agnes!” He shook his head. “You’re really out of line. Last night, trying to break off our engagement, and now accusing me of betraying you…”

Defenestration, castration…

“I have to tell you, Agnes, I’m not pleased.”

“Shot put,” Agnes snapped, and shoved the hall door open with her shoulder and picked up the plate and slung it into the hall, where it smashed beautifully on the black-and-white-tiled floor.

Shane placed the pistol next to him on the wooden bench and tried to relax, but the sound of breaking dishes back in the house had him on edge. That, plus he knew he was a conspicuous target sitting in the moonlight on the fixed high dock at the end of the wooden walkway, just above the metal gangplank leading down to the floating dock.

A sniper with a thermal or night-vision scope could nail me without breaking a sweat, Shane thought. He glanced back toward Two Rivers as he heard another crash, but he could see the lights glowing in the kitchen windows and Agnes looking just fine through the back door as she threw things into the hall and yelled at that idiot Taylor, and he realized he’d rather be out here chancing a sniper than in there chancing Cranky Agnes in a rage.

Shane turned back toward the water as the darkened silhouette of a boat painted flat black skirted the near bank of the Blood River, a hulking figure behind the center console, a smaller figure sitting erect to the right rear. Shane stood, sliding his pistol into the holster, and walked down the metal gangplank to the floating dock.

He grabbed the line the driver threw him and quickly tied the jet boat off. It was low to the water and when the engine was cut, the sounds of the low country descended once more.

“Carpenter,” Shane acknowledged the driver.

“Shane.” The tall black man dressed in a one-piece camouflage flight suit looked around and smiled. “Nice digs.”

The sound of more china shattering came floating through the night, and Carpenter’s smile disappeared. “Trouble?”

“Not mine.”

Wilson, dressed as always in a well-cut gray suit, climbed up on the floating dock, said “Good evening, Mister Shane,” walked up the gangplank to the high dock, and took a seat, and Shane followed him.

Wilson had a Boston accent, enriched in some Ivy League school and fostered among the good old boy network of the World War II hotshots from the Office of Strategic Services, of which he was just about the last one standing. Shane knew he was in his early eighties, but the man was as spry as someone twenty years younger, and despite the evening’s heat, there wasn’t a drop of sweat on the slightly wrinkled skin on his forehead.

“I’m considering retirement,” Wilson said.

Shane blinked at the unexpected opening.

“I must consider who my replacement would be. My position has special requirements. An absolute devotion to duty without any personal considerations is one of them.”

“That goes without saying,” Shane said.

“You made personal considerations a priority last night This makes me question my inclination to make you my successor.”

Shane straightened a little. Running the Organization could do a lot to alleviate the boredom he’d been feeling lately.

“You were not at the debriefing.”

“I had a family emergency to attend to. The first in my career.”

Wilson’s head turned toward the house, as if just noticing the ongoing crashing inside. “It appears the emergency is still in continuance.” He turned back toward Shane. “The individual you killed in Savannah was a mid-level mob contact who was to transfer the payment for Dean’s hit”

“Then why did the intel indicate Dean was at that club?”

“A mistake from one of our lesser agencies. It’s surprising they got that close to Casey I Dean.”

“It wasn’t very close,” Shane observed.

“You took out Dean’s source of payment. That will upset Dean.”

“Who is Dean’s target?”

“You have no need to know.”

Shane had heard that answer more times than he could count in his time working for Wilson. If he got Wilson’s job, he’d know a lot more.

“We believe Dean will still try to fulfill the contract.”

“Without being paid?”

“We believe the contractor will still pay.”

“Who is the contractor?”

Shane braced himself for another No Need To Know. But instead Wilson turned and looked out at the low country. “Don Michael Fortunato. He’s coming here for a wedding. We think the Don is doing a preemptive strike, taking out someone who’s a threat to him while he’s here for the ceremony. It appears the Don fears a rat.”

Shane stared out at the swamp. Fucking Fortunatos.

“The nuptials should be quite lively,” Wilson said.

“Agnes!” Taylor had said as Agnes had picked up the next plate and slung it after the first one into the hall, where it smashed onto the tile floor. It had been satisfying, but it had lacked form somehow. “I need a point system,” she’d told Taylor, and was working one out-ten points for a dinner plate, maybe eight for a soup bowl, triple that if any of them hit his lying fatheaded skull-when he tried to take the box from her

“Hey.” She yanked it back, and started grabbing dishes from it and slinging them out into the hall as fast as she could, one after the other, while he yelled, “Goddammit, Agnes, what the hell are you doing?”

How are you feeling right now, Agnes? Bite me, Dr. Garvin.

“I hate a liar, Taylor,” she said as she sent the last of the teacups after the dinner plates and started on the saucers. “You’ve been lying to me, just like you’re lying to me about these crap dishes, you’ve beenlying to me about Brenda, and that makes me mad.”

He tried to grab the box from her, but she was in hyperdrive by now, diving to the bottom for soup bowls.

“Because Idon’t get it. I don’t get why some people are so goddamn selfish”-a bowl went flying-”that they think it’s all right”-and another-”for them to lie in their goddamn teeth”-and another-”so that they can get what they want.” She stopped for a moment to breathe and looked him in the eye. “Why do you and Brenda get to lie and cheat and everybody else has to play fair?”

“Agnes, it’s not what it looks like-”

“Hold it,” Agnes said, plate in hand, hot anger going cold in an instant. “Do not even think about pulling that line on me, you and your fine Southern gentleman crap-”

Taylor’s face darkened. “Now wait a minute-”

“-because you are no gentleman, betraying a commitment-”

“-I keep my commitments-”

“And you expect me to be your wife?” Agnes shrieked in his face, forgetting she was about to dump him. “Some fineSouthern gentleman, betraying his own wife-”

“I haven’t betrayed my wife!” Taylor snapped.

“What?” Agnes said, stopped in her tracks, and then as Taylor’s face grew slack with the realization of what he’d just said, she sucked in her breath and said, “You’re married? You’re already married to somebody else?”

“Now, Agnes,” he said, and as a red haze flooded the kitchen, she lunged for the counter and grabbed the nearest thing at hand.

“You’re my obvious replacement,” Wilson said to Shane as he prepared to go. “A seasoned professional, an unblemished record, and, we thought, no personal ties to distract you from your work.”

“My uncle is hardly a personal tie,” Shane said. “He’s called me for help once in twenty-five years.”

“Right before you made the only mistake of your career,” Wilson said, no expression in his voice at all.

“The mistake was not mine,” Shane said.

“You’ve caught bad intel before,” Wilson said. “You should have caught it this time. Can you honestly say you weren’t distracted by personal issues?”

Shane met his eyes squarely. “I-”

His cell phone rang.

Since he was staring at one of the four people who had the number, and the second one was in the boat, watching him with nonjudgmental eyes, and the third was in the house, throwing dishes, it had to be Joey.

Wilson waited and Shane knew it was a test.

It rang again.

Shane answered it. “Yeah?”

“Agnes okay?” Joey asked.

“She’s in the house throwing dishes at Taylor.” Take a cue from my voice and hang up, Joey.

“Shit. If that hairball says the wrong thing, she’ll kill him.”

“You’re exaggerating.” Shane met Wilson’s eyes. He wasn’t passing the test.

“She’s on probation already,” Joey said. “She’s bashed two fiancés and had one dead guy in her basement. As long as she’s throwing dishes, she’s probably okay, but she ends up with another assault charge or, God forbid, another body, and-”

“Hold it,” Shane said, and listened.

The house was silent.

“Fuck,” he said, and sprinted for the back door.

Agnes stood very still as the kitchen swung around her. There was a faint roaring in her ears, and the floor rocked, and she let the box fall off the counter and onto the tile, where the rest of the dishes in it smashed. “Agnes?” Taylor said.

“Your wife.” She took a step forward and raised her hand, surprised to find a meat fork in it.

She’d been expecting a knife.

“Agnes.” Taylor tried to move away, but she put the fork on his Adam’s apple and pressed hard and he stepped back against the table, arching his back to get away from her until his shoulders touched the swinging door to the basement.

“Behind you is the door the kid fell through last night,” Agnes said calmly. “He died, so I think you should stay very still right now.”

“Ag-” He tried to turn his head and sidle away, and she pressed harder, breaking the skin.

“Do you know how sharp this fork is? Of course you do. Stand still and talk fast. How long have you been married to Brenda? You are married to Brenda, right? You didn’t bring another woman into this just to mind-fuck me?”

“Agnes, it doesn’t mean-”

She pressed a little harder and the blood began to drip down his neck. “Did I ever tell you about my anger problem, Taylor?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding along the tine of the fork. “Yes.”

“How long have you been married to Brenda?”

“Not long.”

“You lie.” She pressed harder.

Taylor’s voice came out strangled, probably because he was afraid to swallow. “May second.”

“The day before we signed the house papers.” He knew all along, he’s known about the swindle from the beginning, he lied and lied and I believed him, he lied-

“Agnes, honey, it was a terrible mistake.” He swallowed again, sweating now. “I knew it right away, but I couldn’t leave her, it was the only way I was sure of keeping the house. For us. For us.”

Agnes could hear herself breathing hard, just like in the horror films. Almost like watching herself, listening to herself. He knew all along, he lied to me, he lied.

“I did it for us, sugar.”

You son of a bitch. She clenched her jaw and there was a rushing in her ears as she tried to shove the fork through his goddamn throat, but her hand wouldn’t move. She threw her shoulder into it, and itstill wouldn’t move.

“No,” Shane said from behind her.

“Thank God you’re here,” Taylor said, still pinned to the wall. “She’s nuts. Get her away from me and call the police.”

Shane was holding on to her wrist; that’s why her hand wouldn’t move. That was annoying. “Let go of me,” Agnes said through her teeth.

“No,” Shane said to Taylor, still holding Agnes’s hand. “You will not call the police.”

“The hell I won’t,” Taylor said, and then realized belatedly that he was still forked. “Get her off me.”

“I won’t kill him,” Agnes said to Shane, trying to sound calm and reasonable through the red mist. “You can let go.”

“Don’t do it,” Taylor said. “She almost killed her last fiancé.”

“He’s fine now,” Agnes said. “He has a plate in his head. He can’t walk under magnets, but how often does that happen? You can let go.”

“If the police should ever hear of this,” Shane said to Taylor, “she will be the least of your problems.”

“All right,” Taylor said, keeping his eyes on Shane. “Let go of the fork,” Shane said to Agnes. “I want him dead,” she said.

“Eventually, he will be,” Shane said. “Let go of the fork.”

“He lied to me,” Agnes said, her breath coming hard. “I want him dead now.”

“Not your decision. Let go of the fork or I’ll take it.”

She looked into Taylor’s clueless, cheating, lying face, the same dumb, smug, cruel face a million women had probably looked into that day-it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, it’s your imagination, I can explain, it’s not what it looks like-and thought, If we killed them all when they did it, they’d stop doing it, and tried to lunge, which was when Shane yanked her hand back and almost broke her arm as he dragged her behind him.

Taylor grabbed his throat and turned to run, and Shane hauled him back with his free hand as Agnes clutched her arm and tried to get to Taylor again.

Shane lifted Taylor up off his heels, holding Agnes at arm’s length.

“Remember,” he said calmly. “No police. If the police come asking anything at all about tonight, Agnes and her fork will look like a pat on the back compared to what I will do to you.”

“You don’t scare me,” Taylor said, looking terrified.

“Then you’re dumber than I thought,” Shane said, and threw him into the hall.

Taylor scrambled for the front door, slipping on the black-and-white tile floor and cutting himself on the pieces of broken china there, and Agnes thought, No! and started after him, but Shane still held the arm with the fork and yanked her back, dragging her into the housekeeper’s room and slamming that door behind them while she kicked at him, toppling them both onto the bed.

“Knock it off,” he said, pinning her to the mattress while he tried to take the fork from her, but she held on to it with a death grip, so frustrated she wanted to stab it into a wall, and he finally snaked one arm underneath the hand holding the fork and around her neck, applying pressure to get it away from her. He pressed her down on the comforter, her shoulder and neck hurting as he pried at her fingers. “Let it go, Agnes,” Shane said, and she tried to writhe free and then she heard Taylor’s car engine start, rev up, and then fade away, and she thought, Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT, as Shane yanked the fork away from her, almost breaking her wrist.

“Go to hell!” she said, snarling with rage and frustration and pain, and he said, “Oh, give it up,” and eased back. She rolled under him and struck out savagely, so damn mad at men that she wanted to pound him, and he dropped the fork and grabbed her wrists and jerked them over her head, slamming her back down on the bed, on top and in control again.

“Will you give up?” he said, as if she were just an annoyance, and she tried to knock him off, jerking under him, breathing hard, and watched his eyes change, grow darker and hot as she moved.

Oh, right, she thought, goddamn men, and then she felt the weight of him on top of her, felt all that rage fuse in her body in a need for hard contact, and all her frustrated fantasies about him hit her, all the lust she’d buried because she’d been engaged, damn it, and suddenly she wanted payback, wanted to cheat on Taylor, wanted to pound somebody, wanted to fuck somebody, and her anger kicked into something lower and sharper and a lot more focused.

Physical exercise is a good way of defusing anger, Agnes.

Way ahead of you, Dr. Garvin.

Shane let go of her wrists and straightened away from her, and she reached up and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and yanked him back down, rolling so that he was under her.

He didn’t fight her much.

She straddled him, holding wads of his T-shirt in her fists. “I’m really mad,” she said, gritting her teeth, her breath coming hard as she smacked his chest on every word. “Really, reallyFURIOUS.”

“Yeah,” he said cautiously.

She leaned down on her fists, practically growling at him, her teeth clenched. “My court-appointed psychiatrist says I should vent my anger in nonviolent physical exercise.” She smacked him in the chest again, and he winced and caught her wrists.

“You know, Agnes, that’s not the hottest thing any woman has ever said to me.”

She yanked her wrists free and pounded her fists into his chest again, then let go of his shirt to strip off her dress and throw it on the floor.

He stopped frowning. “Course, it’s not the worst thing any woman has ever said to me, either.” He ran his hands up her sides to cup her breasts.

“Don’t take this personally,” she spat. “This is rage, not lust.”

“This would be better if you didn’t talk.” Agnes rolled off the bed to shove off her underpants. “Never mind.” Shane sat up to strip off his shirt. “Say anything you want.”

“No, I’ll be quiet,” Agnes said, breathing hard as he stood up to take off his jeans. “I mean, I’m mad as fucking hell-” She kicked the bed as she thought of that incredible dickhead Taylor getting engaged to her to swindle her, lying to her, the rat bastard. “-but I realize you’re doing me a favor here. I can be accommodating.” She glared at him. “What do you like?”

“Women.” Shane kicked his jeans away and reached for her. “I can do that.” Agnes shoved him back on the bed. “I was thinking more along the lines of special requests, style, execution-” She straddled him again, naked this time, nestling herself against him and watching him shudder at the contact. “-any particular act or function you’re partial to-” She ran her fingernails down his torso, trying not to rake too deeply and making him wince anyway. “-anything that especially turns you on or makes your eyes roll back in your head-” Thinking of how he’d feel hard in her, wanting to pound on him, wanting him pounding in her, wanting to just pound the hell out of the goddamn world and smacking her fists into him because of it. “-because, and I know you’ll think less of me for this, especially since you just watched me spit my ex-fiancé on a toasting fork like the limp bagel he is-” His eyes were closed now, maybe because she was rocking, but she really couldn’t help it, he was so damn hard against her. “-but basically all I want is my brains fucked out.”

“Right,” Shane said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “If you could just wait a minute.”

“Condom. Not a problem. Hold on.” She leaned over him to reach the bedside table, and he curled up and took her breast in his mouth, and she shuddered at shock of him, feeling the pull in her groin, the suck deep inside her. She gritted her teeth and ran her fingernails through his hair, pressing his head to her harder, rocking harder with the rhythm of his mouth, and his hand shot out and fumbled for the drawer, and she remembered what she’d been doing and let go, yanking the drawer open and finding the condom, while his hand took her other breast. She grabbed onto the headboard and thought, Ishould have gotten mad last night, and then just went with his rhythm, sliding against him, feeling how broad his body was between her legs, how hot his mouth was on her, using the headboard to pull herself up over him until he flipped her over on her back and took the condom from her.

He began to move down her stomach, licking and kissing, and she grabbed his hair and yanked up. “Later,” she said, needing full body contact, none of that passive lying around, getting serviced, “fuck me now,” and he said, “Right. Now,” and put the condom on, shaking his head, but the hell with him, she knew what she needed, she needed to pound somebody, somebody was going to pay, goddammit. When he reached for her, she moved over him, straddling him again, and he guided himself into her as she sank down, shivering at the shock of penetration, grabbing on to the headboard and jerking against him because he felt so damn good, thinking damn it damn it damn it damn it damn it, banging hard into him with each curse, working off all that frustration and rage while he gripped her hips and held on. She ground into him, not even realizing she’d let go of the headboard and was pounding his shoulders with her fists until he grabbed her wrists and rolled her over, pinning her down while she writhed under him. He rocked inside her and the heat built, but it wasn’t enough, she wanted to move, wanted to be the one punishing, and she smacked her head against his shoulder, writhing and biting hard in frustration until he said, “Damn it!” and slid out of her. “No,” she said, clawing at him, but he flipped her over, and before she could swing on him, he’d pulled her up and slid into her from behind, his hand stroking down her stomach and into her, and she sucked in her breath as he pushed farther up into her, trapping her against him as he rocked. “Harder,” she said, pounding on the mattress, and he slammed into her, and she gasped as lust finally wiped out rage, and the full impact of what she was doing with a semi-complete stranger hit her.

Wait a minute, she thought, but the heat was everywhere and so was he, his hands on her, his body wrapped around her, in her, her skin itched and crackled and she couldn’t stop shuddering, it was too late, and he wasn’tstopping, his breathing ragged and out of control behind her, she couldn’t even see him, massive behind her, surging into her, and the pressure built, and her blood pounded, the tension everywhere, her breath coming in little gasps as she writhed under his hands and his weight, and then he shifted and rocked into the perfect spot, and she screamed, “Oh, God,” and came her brains out, rattling the headboard so hard, she woke up Rhett and made him bark right before she collapsed onto the mattress with Shane on top of her. A moment later, the electricity went out.

In the darkness, all she could hear were the crickets and somebody breathing really hard. That was her. Shane was so still, he was immobile, completely silent, for minutes, hours maybe, while Agnes felt her body spiral back from the good stuff, and then he relaxed, sucking air as hard as she was. He’d been listening, she realized. For what, God knew. Maybe another dognapper.

He pulled out of her and put his hand on her back. “Are you okay?” he said after a minute, still breathless.

Agnes thought about it. “Yes.”

She moved away carefully, assessing the damage she’d brought on herself. There was surprisingly little, considering how much banging around she’d been doing. Mostly it was just that every-cell-I-have-has-just-collapsed feeling that a really good orgasm gave her. She breathed for a while, trying to sort things out, and then she said, “How are you?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, sounding bemused. She heard him sit up in the dark and she did the same, cautiously. “Sorry?”

“No. No complaints. What happened to the lights?”

“Sometimes they do this.” She tried to catch her breath. It seemed to have gone permanently. “The circuit breaker blows. Or on hot nights sometimes the grid goes.” Well, this is weird. And how was it for you? She drew another deep breath. “I’ve got flashlight lanterns stashed all over the place.” More breathing. “There’s one by the door and a couple more in the kitchen.” She could see the paler moonlit blue squares of her bedroom windows now that her eyes were accustomed to the dark. Her body was coming back, too. It was her mind that was leaking out her ears. “Usually when the circuits blow, it’s because there’s too much power being drawn, but we weren’t using any power.”

“Oh, there was a surge there at the end.”

As pillow talk, it wasn’t much. On the other hand, her foreplay had been trying to kill somebody. Definitely time to go back to therapy. “Thank you for taking the fork away from me.”

“You’re welcome.” He got up and put on his jeans, and she could have sworn he’d picked up his jacket and taken out a gun. He put whatever it was in his waistband. “We need to get that kid out of the basement and ask him who sent him, although my money’s on Grandpa Thibault. Then tomorrow I’ll go take care of whoever it is, and you’ll be safe again.”

“Oh. Good.” Agnes squinted at him, still trying to see what he’d put in his waistband. It wasn’t like he needed guns. He was terrifying all by himself. Which reminded her. “Thank you for threatening Taylor.”

“My pleasure.”

“Listen, did I do anything awful to you? I mean, just now?”

“No, Agnes,” Shane said, sounding exhausted. “You had sex with me. I’ll take pretty much anything that comes with that.”

“Okay.” She slid down a little in the bed.

“So we don’t have power, which means we don’t have air-conditioning,” Shane said.

“Right.” Agnes realized that sweat was already dripping between her breasts. “Oh, hell. And you got me a new unit, too. Well, it’s the thought that counts.”

“Doyle got the screens up on the back porch before he left.”

“Yes.”

He moved and she saw his silhouette against the window as he looked out. Big guy. Well, she knew that. She tried to move and felt the effects of him everywhere. Really big guy.

“After we deal with the kid, let’s sleep on the porch.”

“We’ll have to wake up early,” Agnes said. “I always do,” Shane said.

“Okay.” Agnes got out of bed and picked up her pillow. “You know, I wouldn’t have killed Taylor.” Probably.

“Hell, Agnes, you almost killed me.” Shane picked up his pillow.

“Humor. Har.” Agnes gathered up the comforter and opened the door, turning back to get her clothes. “I-”

Shane pointed a gun and fired straight at her twice, the muzzle flash lighting the room, bullets cracking past her ear, then a thud-

Shane went by her, his face expressionless, his hand on her shoulder, pushing her down. “Stay there,” he said, and she turned on her knees and saw a guy lying in the moonlight in the kitchen, his arms splayed out at his sides, a gun in one open hand, and Shane, firing twice more into the man’s chest as he went past on his way out the back door.

Agnes nodded, even though he was gone.

As near as she could tell, the guy with the bullets in him was big. Older. Not skinny like the kid who’d died in the basement last night. This one outweighed her. He’d have shot her even if she’d thrown raspberry sauce at him.

Not that it was a problem now. He was dead.

She saw her glasses on the floor there, where they’d fallen off when she’d been fighting Shane on the way into the bedroom. She crawled forward gingerly and picked them up, not sure why she was being careful since the guy had four bullets in him. He wasn’t getting up again.

She put her glasses on.

Those last two bullets. Just fired right in as he went by. Agnes put her head on her knees and shook.

After a while Shane came back in and said, “He did something to the power. We’ll get it back tomorrow.” He went over to the body and put the flashlight on the face. “You know him?”

Agnes stood up very carefully and went to look, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. He was older, grizzled hair, broad ugly face, two bullet holes in the center of the forehead, two more in his chest. Two holes. Like in Taylor’s neck. “No.”

He leaned down and picked up the guy’s gun. “Shouldn’t you wait for Xavier for that?” Agnes said. “We’re not calling Xavier.”

“Oh.” Agnes put a hand out to steady herself but there was nothing there. “You sure?”

Shane looked at her. “What do you think Xavier is going to do about another body here after the kid in the basement?”

“Well…” Be pretty suspicious about it, but that wasn’t why they weren’t calling him, Agnes was pretty sure. Still she wasn’t going to argue with the guy with the gun, even if she had just had sex with him. She just didn’t know him that well.

“What are we going to do with the body?” She had visions of dragging it into the swamp, whispering, “Here, gator, gator,” and she made a little sound of distress at the thought.

“I’ll take care of it. From now on, I take care of anything like this. No more Xavier.”

“What do you mean, ‘from now on’? You think there’s going to be more of this?”

“It’s possible.” Shane rolled the dead man over on one hip, found his wallet, and flipped it open. “Wallace Macy.” He pulled out five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and frowned.

Well, he wasn’t the only one frowning. He should be having her evening. Jesus wept.

Shane pulled out his fancy phone and punched in a number. “Carpenter,” he said into the phone. “I have some woodwork.” He listened for a moment, then flipped it shut.

“Who is Carpenter?”

“He’s a man of many talents.” He looked up at her, and she remembered she was naked. “You might want to get dressed. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“Is he going to try to kill me?”

“No.”

“Already I like him,” Agnes said, and went into the bedroom.

She picked up her sundress, patted Rhett, straightened the bed, went into the bathroom, took off her glasses, washed her face, and combed her hair. Then she threw up until it felt as though she’d lost everything she’d ever eaten in her entire life.

When she was done, she splashed cold water on her face again and realized she’d been crying the entire time, ever since Shane had fired those two shots into the dead guy, ever since she’d seen those two holes in his forehead.

“Two holes,” she said to her reflection. “I almost killed Taylor. Just like that. Only that didn’t seem real. This was real. I could have done this. Oh, God.” She put her forehead on the cold mirror and swallowed hard and tried to think what the hell had happened to her life. She’d been writing a successful food column, and engaged to a terrific chef, and living in a great house, and now she was sleeping with a killer, and somebody was trying to take her house, and she’d almost killed her fiancé…

“Ex-fiancé,” she told her reflection. “I’m pretty sure that’s over.”

And then there was the flamingo wedding.

She started to laugh. She couldn’t help it, she had to, and then she couldn’t stop, even when Shane knocked on the door and said, “Agnes?” she still couldn’t stop, and he rattled the door but she’d locked it, so he kicked it in and came in and held her and said, “It’s okay,” and she held on to him and said, “I know,” and cried and then after a while she stopped, and he kissed the top of her head and patted her back, and she said, “That was bad,” and he said, “Yeah,” and she said, “I won’t do it again,” and he said, “I thought you meant the shooting,” and she said, “That, too,” and let go of him and got dressed and put on her glasses.

When she had herself together again, she went out to the kitchen and got Rhett a dog biscuit in case he’d been traumatized. “At least it won’t ever get any worse than this,” she told him. He seemed comforted by that.

Then as Brenda’s goddamned son of a bitch ugly black grandfather clock gonged midnight in the front hall, she went out onto the porch to wait for somebody named Carpenter to come and clean the blood out of her kitchen.