Page 56 of Agnes and the Hitman

“A bomb shelter?” Shane was still trying to wrap his mind around this development.

“Government surplus,” Joey said. “Survive-a-nuclear-blast type of thing. Foot-thick, steel-reinforced concrete walls. Fucking indestructible. Loaded with food and all sorts of survival stuff. Frankie was a little bit paranoid.”

“You think?” Shane leaned forward in the chair. “And Frankie had the only key to the shelter?”

“Yeah. Big damn thing almost six inches long. He kept it next to his gun.”

No stairs. The entrance covered. The blood trail. The bomb shelter with only one key. Shane thought about strangling Joey with his bare hands. “Four Wheels is coming for the necklace because he thinks Agnes opened the bomb shelter and found the five million bucks from the robbery. That’s why you called me in. You knew it wasn’t a dognapper and you knew it wasn’t just anybody thinking maybe the five million was here. You knew exactly what it was.”

“Maybe,” Joey said.

“Maybe we need to open the bomb shelter,” Carpenter said, and they both looked at him in surprise, Joey probably because he was talking, but Shane because opening a bomb shelter was not in the mission statement.

“Wilson,” Shane said to him.

“I am a curious man,” Carpenter said.

“You can’t do it without the key,” Joey said. “That door is thick. And the lock?—”

“Eat your breakfast,” Shane said, knowing Carpenter could open anything he damn well wanted to. “We need to go look for a tunnel.”

Agnes and Lisa Livia had taken their coffee out onto the back porch and sat down on the swing.

“So how about this,” Agnes said. “Traditional wedding cakes had white icing because refined sugar was the most expensive, so white cakes were the most expensive. Now the most expensive ones are the elaborate ones that come in all different colors. Irony. Great column hook, huh?”

“Taylor’s my fucking stepfather?”

“Yep.” Agnes gave up on her column, put her coffee on the table, and turned to face Lisa Livia, prepared to be supportive in the fury to come. “He married Brenda the day before we signed the house papers.”

“That makes sense,” Lisa Livia said.

Agnes looked at her in disbelief. “That makes sense?”

“Well, yeah.” Lisa Livia gave the swing a shove and they began to move back and forth, creaking in the summer breeze. “If you accept the insanity that my mother sold the two of you this house with the intention of swindling you out of it and he was in on it, he’d have to marry her. That way when he lost the house to her, he’d get it back because he was her husband. It’s the only way he profits from the deal.”

“Jesus wept,” Agnes said, feeling her rage rise again.

Angry language, Agnes.

It’s a Bible verse, Dr. Garvin.

“So of course he’s married to my mother,” Lisa Livia said grimly. “But he’s gonna pay in ways he can’t even begin to dream of. She’ll probably kill him, too, just like she killed my daddy. So if you’re thinking revenge, just wait. It’s coming right up on its own.”

“You really think she killed your dad,” Agnes said, more willing to believe it today than she’d ever been before.

“He’d never have left me,” Lisa Livia said. “He loved me.”

“Well, you were right about the swindle, so I’m inclined to believe you about this one.” Agnes picked up her coffee and blew on it and then sipped it. “Poor Taylor. I almost killed him last night and now Brenda’s going to off him anyway.”

“You almost killed him?” Lisa Livia’s eyes widened. “When he told you about Brenda?”

“Went for him with a meat fork.” Agnes shook her head at her own insanity. “Shane took it away from me. Thank God.”

“You owe Shane big,” Lisa Livia said. “You realize that if you’d killed Taylor, Brenda would have inherited half of this place back?”

Agnes sat up. “Oh, God.” Then she stopped. “No, she wouldn’t have. I would have. We have a survivorship agreement. If one of us dies, the other gets everything. We have to survive the other one by twenty-four hours and then we inherit, so if Brenda had managed to off me, she’d have gotten the whole place but?—”

“You wouldn’t have inherited.” Lisa Livia shook her head over her coffee. “You’d have killed him and you can’t profit from your own crime. So she’d have gotten it.”

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