Agnes and the Hitman Read online

  “I mean it,” Taylor said, coming into the kitchen and making Rhett growl louder. “She just said all the right things, Agnes.”

  “She’s good at that. Leave.” Agnes frowned as she smoothed the fondant. It looked so easy when they did it on TV-

  “She killed that old man, didn’t she?” Taylor said, and Agnes looked up. “I heard about it. They were talking about it in town, that she drove right into him. Almost into you. She was aiming for you, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Agnes said, watching his face. He did look truly miserable. “And she stripped Lisa Livia of everything she had, and now she’s trying to destroy her granddaughter’s marriage. She’s a real fucking prize, your wife.”

  “She stole from Lisa Livia?”

  “Taylor, she was going to steal this house from me, why is it so hard to believe she’d rip off Lisa Livia?”

  “Geez.” He paused. “Well, I won’t lie to you, Agnes-”

  “Sure you will,” Agnes said, and went back to her rapidly hardening lurid green icing.

  “I was going to help her cheat you out of this house.” Taylor shook his head. “I figured you were going to do another book, you’d have plenty of money, what the hell.”

  “Fuck you,” Agnes said, bent over the edge of the cake.

  Angry language, Agnes.

  Fuck you, too, Dr. Garvin.

  You’re an idiot, Agnes. Anybody can say “Fuck you.” Do something smart for a change.

  Agnes straightened and stared at her fondant. Did you just call me an idiot, Dr. Garvin? Dr. Garvin?

  “But I’d never have helped her kill you,” Taylor was saying. “Jesus, Agnes, you’re worth twenty of her.”

  “Twenty thousand.” Agnes looked at Taylor, perplexed, trying to figure out what it was about him that she was missing, that Dr. Garvin thought she should be paying attention to.

  Tall, blond, gorgeous, desperate. Nope, he was the same complete waste of humanity she thought he was.

  She went back to the cake. Maybe she could put the flamingos over the lumps. Maybe the lumps would make the flamingos look three-dimensional. Always a silver lining.

  “You’re right,” Taylor was saying. “You’re twenty thousand times better than her. Agnes, if you’ll take me back, I think we can make it work.”

  Agnes jerked her head up. “What?”

  “You and me, honey. We can make it work.” He came closer, his face eager. “I was so damn dumb, I didn’t see that I already had it all with you. Two Rivers, the Two Rivers Cookbook, that cool blue bedroom upstairs…” He cocked his head at her and smiled the smile that had curled her toes a week ago. “Come on, sugar, we were great together.”

  “I’ve had better,” Agnes said, and went back to her fondant. “Since when?” Taylor said, outraged, and Rhett barked at him, a little snarl in there for garnish. Taylor took a step back.

  “Since this week.” Agnes patted a fondant lump gently to smooth it out. No dice, it was going to have to be a flamingo.

  “That Shane guy? Jesus, Agnes, did you even wait a minute after you stabbed me with that fork before you went to bed with him?”

  Agnes stopped patting fondant to think about it. “Couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”

  “Agnes!”

  Agnes straightened. “Taylor, you are in no position to become indignant. You got engaged to me to swindle me out of my life savings, and now you’ve discovered you married a murdering whore, and you’re trying to dump her and latch on to me to save yourself. It’s not going to work. Even if I were stupid enough to take you back, you think

  Shane’s going to come home, find you in his bed, and just say, ‘Oh, okay, no problem’? Do you know what the man does for a living?”

  “No,” Taylor said. “But I think if you explained that we’d reconciled-”

  “Yeah, well, we haven’t.” Agnes picked up the cake round and turned to take it to the pantry and saw Brenda staring at them through the screened door. Oh, sweet Jesus, she thought, almost dropping the cake. “If you’ve come to borrow a cup of sugar, the answer is no,” she called to her. Although I’ll trade you a cup for those account numbers in the Caymans.

  “I came to see what Taylor was doing in here,” Brenda said, coming into the kitchen and fixing him with a basilisk stare.

  Rhett growled again, but this time he crawled under the table.

  Smart dog, Agnes thought.

  “Hello, Brenda,” Taylor said weakly.

  “We were just talking about the catering,” Agnes said, taking the fondant-covered tier to the counter by the window. As she got closer to Brenda, she could hear her breathing. She was almost hyperventilating. Anger, she thought. Been there, done that.

  “I thought Taylor had decided he couldn’t do the catering,” Brenda said through clenched teeth, staring at her husband.

  “He was just reiterating that,” Agnes said. The stupid son of a bitch.

  “Yes, I was,” Taylor said, trying to sound stern.

  “And I was telling him that I understood that.” Agnes picked up the next cake tier and brought it down the counter. “So now you can both vacate my premises so I can finish this cake for Palmer.”

  “Green?” Brenda said, contempt all but curling from her mouth.

  “Golf course.” Agnes unwrapped her next ball of grass green fondant. “With flamingos. He’s going to love it.”

  “Well, nobody ever accused you of having taste,” Brenda said. “Bless your heart.”

  “Taylor,” Agnes said. “You can go now. You and the whore you rode in on. Bless her heart.”

  Brenda exhaled through her teeth.

  Taylor looked helplessly from Agnes to Brenda while Agnes began to roll fondant, the heat of her anger making her strong and the fondant smooth.

  “We can go into town now if you want, Brenda,” he said.

  Brenda lifted her chin. “I suppose. I do hate picking my way across that dangerous splintered old bridge, though. I surely don’t see how anybody’s going to get to the wedding now. So I’ll call Evie-”

  “Oh, the bridge is fine,” Taylor said. “Sturdy as all get-out. Much better than the old one. I drove right up to the house, so you just have to walk along the path.”

  Brenda’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  Agnes smiled as she rolled fondant like a maniac. “That Shane. He sure is a miracle worker. Got that bridge in last night. It’s a beauty. And after that he hung the prettiest black shutters you’ve ever seen on every single window in Two Rivers. If you didn’t notice them, you make sure you look, Brenda, because they certainly are gorgeous. Check out the carriage lamps, too.” She beamed at Brenda. “Now get the hell out of my house.”

  Taylor went over to Brenda and ushered her out the back door, turning as she went out to give Agnes one last look.

  “No,” Agnes said, and he nodded and went out, a lost soul, which was what he deserved.

  She rolled the fondant onto the rolling pin, lifted it over the cake, and flipped it on. “Don’t give me any crap,” she told the icing and smoothed it swiftly down over the sides.

  Perfect

  “No flamingos for you,” she said, and went to get the next layer, wondering exactly how much Brenda had heard and exactly how much trouble Taylor was in.

  And why her subconscious thought she was an idiot.

  Shane knew Carpenter was behind him, perfectly still. He could almost sense his friend’s calmness in the face of his own surging anger.

  Fortunato. Fuck.

  “What happened to my father?” Shane asked finally. “And my mother. You told me she died in a boating accident.”

  “She did,” Joey said. “The same accident your father died in. I couldn’t tell you who he was, because that would have made you a threat to the Don, as the son of the eldest brother. He’s got no kids, he ain’t gonna have any, so you’re the heir, that’s no good. So I made a deal with him. I’d raise you, tell you nothing of your father, and he’d leave