Agnes and the Hitman Read online

  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.�€