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 covered with 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 I was 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 with a 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 wokeup 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. I want 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.”