Page 25 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

There were more photos on the wall leading up the staircase. Black and white to start, then color. Women on the porch, women in the garden. Some men, too: gentlemen in finedress, with top hats, and canes. A standout of a man astride a tall, gleaming black horse, old Model Ts parked along the street.

They emerged on a broad landing done up as a sitting room. Long hallways ran off from it in either direction, flanked by wood-paneled doors and small half-tables set with vases of flowers. Ava started counting doors, and lost track somewhere after fifteen. Jesus. That was a lot of rooms to check in a short amount of time. Even if Tenny was the most competent assassin alive – he’d probably claim that, if given the chance – there was only so much one assassin and one furious mother could do against a whole team of security thugs when they inevitably started coming out of the woodwork. Places like this couldn’t function without tough guards.

Tiffany turned to the right and led them to the fourth door on the left. She gave a quick rap, then opened the door and motioned for them to go through with another debutante smile. “Here we are. Enjoy your meeting.” She winked, and then they were through the door.

Ava was dimly aware of it snicking closed behind them. Just as she was dimly aware that the room appeared to have a theme, and that theme was lavender: curtains, bedspread, rug, silk stalks in a vase on the dresser. This was peripheral, because all of Ava’s attention was caught and held by the fact that the woman sitting – legs crossed, robe half-open, one flat brown nipple flashing – on the edge of the bed was definitely not Regina Carroll.

Olive-skinned, black-haired, and slender, she pointed her bare, blue-painted toes at them and smiled in a slow, chin-tipped, cat-like way designed to enthrall. “Hey there.” Her drawl was as Cajun as Mercy’s, as smoky as her gray eye shadow.

“Hi,” Tenny said, playing at bashful. “Um. I’m Trent. This is my wife, Carrie.”

Ava stood inside the circle of Tenny’s arm, and all the panic she’d convinced herself was determination, was fierceness, was fearlessness, boiled up, that ugly black tide, and drowned her.

“You’re not who we asked for,” she blurted out.

The woman’s smile froze. Her brows lifted. “I’m – what?”

Ava tried to take a step forward, and Tenny’s arm tightened around her waist. She dug her nails into his wrist until he said, “Aw, fuck,stop.”

“Where’s Regina?” Ava demanded, her meager acting skills thrown to the wind, alongside her caution. “We specifically asked for Regina.”

“I…” The girl dropped her flirtatious pretense. Pulled the robe closed over her chest and held it there. “Regina doesn’t take clients anymore.” Her accent was gone, too. She sounded nasal, New Yorkish. “Not except for special cases.” Her look said they clearly weren’t such a case.

“Is she here?” Ava asked.

“Honey,” Tenny cautioned.

“Is she here now?” Ava said.

“I – no.” The girl’s eyes got wider. “No, I don’t think so.”

Ava dug her nails hard into Tenny’s wrist. He could have stopped her. Could have spun her around and incapacitated her and hauled her out of there. Instead, he muttered, “Ah, bollocks.” And turned her loose.

~*~

Tina Bonfils not only liked her job as a real estate agent, but was damn good at it, too. She’d always had a flair for feeling people out, for finding just what they were looking for, and then delivering. She liked helping homeowners with staging their homes to the best effect, and she liked watching the joy unfold on a buyer’s face when they walked through a house and startedenvisioning it as a home. She liked negotiating, and dealing, and fighting for her clients. She liked feeling like what she did every day mattered to someone.

She also liked the flexibility it afforded her.

Today, for instance, she had a two-hour gap between showings, and she decided to swing by home for a quick lunch, and a little time working on her front porch, which she’d decided to repaint after finding a few flaking bits on the rail where the morning glories continued their relentless assault. She left her car in the carport, let herself in the side door, and went to change into her painting clothes before throwing together a quick salad.

She was rinsing her bowl out at the sink when the doorbell sounded.

“Ugh,” she sighed, shutting off the water with her elbow and reaching to slot the bowl in the dishwasher. “Go away.”

But the bell sounded again, and again, and thenagain.

“Fuck me,” she muttered.

For the last two weeks, Jimmy Slate from three doors down had been going up and down the street passing out fliers for his new lawncare business. Calling it a “business” was a bit of a stretch, considering it was one teenager with a borrowed lawnmower. Tina had told him that he could mow her lawn on Saturdays, but then he’d come around two more times, wanting to mow her lawn multiple times a week. He had his eye on a Camaro he’d admitted, finally.

“Jimmy,” Tina said as she opened the door. “I’m sorry, hon, but youcan’tmow my lawn every day. You’ll kill the grass.”

But it wasn’t Jimmy’s pimpled, narrow face peeking at her from the shade of her porch. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with a leggy blonde in a too-short dress, huge sunglasses, and bright red nails that flashed like talons as she reached to push her shades up and reveal big, kohl-ringed blue eyes.

“Not Jimmy,” she drawled. “But you’re Tina Bonfils, I think.”

Tina wasn’t paranoid by nature, and she’d never backed down from another woman, certainly. But a prickling of unease moved up her back beneath her old painting sweatshirt, and, for some reason, her mind flashed to Alex, his consternation over his latest case. His brother.

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