He leaned down and picked up the guy’s gun. “Shouldn’t you wait for Xavier for that?” Agnes said. “We’re not calling Xavier.”

“Oh.” Agnes put a hand out to steady herself but there was nothing there. “You sure?”

Shane looked at her. “What do you think Xavier is going to do about another body here after the kid in the basement?”

“Well…” Be pretty suspicious about it, but that wasn’t why they weren’t calling him, Agnes was pretty sure. Still she wasn’t going to argue with the guy with the gun, even if she had just had sex with him. She just didn’t know him that well.

“What are we going to do with the body?” She had visions of dragging it into the swamp, whispering, “Here, gator, gator,” and she made a little sound of distress at the thought.

“I’ll take care of it. From now on, I take care of anything like this. No more Xavier.”

“What do you mean, ‘from now on’? You think there’s going to be more of this?”

“It’s possible.” Shane rolled the dead man over on one hip, found his wallet, and flipped it open. “Wallace Macy.” He pulled out five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and frowned.

Well, he wasn’t the only one frowning. He should be having her evening. Jesus wept.

Shane pulled out his fancy phone and punched in a number. “Carpenter,” he said into the phone. “I have some woodwork.” He listened for a moment, then flipped it shut.

“Who is Carpenter?”

“He’s a man of many talents.” He looked up at her, and she remembered she was naked. “You might want to get dressed. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“Is he going to try to kill me?”

“No.”

“Already I like him,” Agnes said, and went into the bedroom.

She picked up her sundress, patted Rhett, straightened the bed, went into the bathroom, took off her glasses, washed her face, and combed her hair. Then she threw up until it felt as though she’d lost everything she’d ever eaten in her entire life.

When she was done, she splashed cold water on her face again and realized she’d been crying the entire time, ever since Shane had fired those two shots into the dead guy, ever since she’d seen those two holes in his forehead.

“Two holes,” she said to her reflection. “I almost killed Taylor. Just like that. Only that didn’t seem real. This was real. I could have done this. Oh, God.” She put her forehead on the cold mirror and swallowed hard and tried to think what the hell had happened to her life. She’d been writing a successful food column, and engaged to a terrific chef, and living in a great house, and now she was sleeping with a killer, and somebody was trying to take her house, and she’d almost killed her fiancé…

“Ex-fiancé,” she told her reflection. “I’m pretty sure that’s over.”

And then there was the flamingo wedding.

She started to laugh. She couldn’t help it, she had to, and then she couldn’t stop, even when Shane knocked on the door and said, “Agnes?” she still couldn’t stop, and he rattled the door but she’d locked it, so he kicked it in and came in and held her and said, “It’s okay,” and she held on to him and said, “I know,” and cried and then after a while she stopped, and he kissed the top of her head and patted her back, and she said, “That was bad,” and he said, “Yeah,” and she said, “I won’t do it again,” and he said, “I thought you meant the shooting,” and she said, “That, too,” and let go of him and got dressed and put on her glasses.

When she had herself together again, she went out to the kitchen and got Rhett a dog biscuit in case he’d been traumatized. “At least it won’t ever get any worse than this,” she told him. He seemed comforted by that.

Then as Brenda’s goddamned son of a bitch ugly black grandfather clock gonged midnight in the front hall, she went out onto the porch to wait for somebody named Carpenter to come and clean the blood out of her kitchen.

cranky agnes column #75

“It’s His Fault You’re Fat”

Heartache often drives us to consume things we wouldn’t otherwise, such as an entire pint of Caramel Pecan Perfection high-fat ice cream, covered in ganache, the crack cocaine of frozen dairy. Twelve hundred calories per pint, six hundred and eighty of which are fat calories, but it only dulls the pain for the moment, there’s that carb fog while you’re standing at the sink shoving it in your face, and then it’s over and you feel… used. Like a cheap pickup the Dove people seduced and abandoned in your kitchen, leaving you with sticky hands and an empty cup and a still-broken heart, except now you’re mad at Dove, too.

Shane could hear Carpenter whistling inside the house, a good sign. He could also feel Agnes shivering beside him on the porch swing, not a good sign. He still wasn’t sure what had happened with Taylor to set her off with the meat fork, but he knew that being shot at by a strange man shortly after having angry sex, shortly after having tried to kill your fiancé, shortly after having a dognapper point a gun at you was a bad night for anybody, even a woman as tough as Agnes. Although she’d certainly been up for the sex. Energetic woman, Agnes. He hadn’t been surprised when she’d come unglued there at the end of it all, but he had been surprised that she’d managed to get it all over with in about ten minutes. Energetic andefficient. One in a million.

She shivered and he put his arm around her.

“So you and Carpenter,” Agnes said. “You’re like, partners?” She shifted on the swing so she could look up at him through those ridiculous red-rimmed glasses. Her lips were very close, and her curls brushed his neck, and she was warm against his arm, and she was bra-less in that strappy dress, squished against him…

“Okay, then,” Agnes said when he didn’t answer her. “Who do you work for?”

“We work for a very special organization,” Shane said, trying to sound noble.

“That sounds so… UNICEF-ish.” She looked back toward the kitchen. “It’s not UNICEF, is it?”

Carpenter came through the screen door, a body bag over his shoulder, and Agnes’s big eyes got wider. “I’ve got the package ready for removal and the scene cleaned. I’m sure you checked the wallet and saw the half a dime. Not a professional. Four shots-overkill, don’t you think?”

“I was annoyed,” Shane said. The shithead fucked up my afterglow.

Agnes looked from one to the other. “I was just going in,” she said. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Carpenter, thank you for cleaning up my kitchen.” Then she got up and left, taking her warmth with her.

Shane stood, too.

Carpenter said, “What does she know?”

“Now, nothing,” Shane said. “Shortly, probably too much. She’s in the middle.”

“Wilson won’t like it.” Shane stood, silent

“You would make a good department head,” Carpenter said. “I would enjoy working for you.”

“With,” Shane said. “This job could end it.”

“This job could make it. Wilson told me Casey Dean’s hit will be here.”

Carpenter considered that. “Casey Dean is a professional. He’d never have anything to do with this-” He shook the body bag ever so slightly.

“True,” Shane agreed. “So something else is going on.” Carpenter looked back inside to Agnes, who now appeared to be talking to the wall over the table. “What about her?”

“Someone appears to want her dead.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You sure she was the target for this guy?”

“Not positive.”

“Is it our business if she is?”

“It’s my business.”

Carpenter nodded back toward Agnes. “There’s a kid in the basement. Connected to this?” He jerked the body bag on his shoulder as if it were full of feathers and not dead meat.

“I don’t think so. This guy was coming to shoot. The kid was like another one who came last night, after something.”