“Oh, hell,” Agnes said, and then her baser self took over and reminded her that she really did the need the house painted and God knew what else was going to turn up before the weekend. And with a Thibault on the premises, maybe the rest of the clan wouldn’t show up to shoot her. And he liked her cooking.

Well, he probably liked anybody’s cooking, but it was a real pleasure to see that boy eat.

“Yeah, sure, you can stay a couple of days,” she said, knowing she was going to hell for exploiting the bathroom-less and then thought about the rest of her day.

To Do List, she thought. Feed cast of thousands, several of whom are killers and one of whom is an underage dognapper now living illegally in my barn. Plan flamingo wedding. Remember not to screw hitman’s brains out again even though he’s really hot. Find nice normal guy without gun permit.

The back door opened and Lisa Livia came in, looking gorgeous in pink capris and a black T-shirt that said expensive in rhinestones. “So,” she said to Agnes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that conversation had just stopped and six pairs of male eyes were now riveted to her rhinestones. “What’s the plan?”

Take revenge on the sleazy bitch who’s trying to swindle me out of my dream house.

It was going to be a very busy day.

Shane escorted Xavier outside without giving Agnes a chance to invite him to breakfast, and made sure the detective actually got in the boat and cast off, puttering away down the Blood River, before he returned to the kitchen, where he found his uncle at the table with the rest of the people Agnes had collected. He thought about dragging Joey out onto the porch, and then decided to sit back and watch. He learned a lot by watching.

There was Lisa Livia, looking damn good, and there was Carpenter, surveying the kitchen population as if they were part of the mission, and Doyle, looking at Three Wheels without much enthusiasm and at Lisa Livia with a wistfulness that was almost sad, remembering lost days maybe. Three Wheels, eating ham and pancakes at the speed of light and watching Agnes with no intent to kill, although, some other kind of intent maybe-try anything and die, kid-and Rhett, asleep under the table once again, like a particularly lumpy brown rug. And Joey…

Joey met his eyes and then looked back down at his cakes and ham.

Agnes put a plate full of pancakes and ham in front of Shane. “Eat.” She poured coffee and put that in front of him, too.

He began to eat, only half-distracted by Agnes’s food this time- the ham crisp and sweet, the cakes thick and light, studded with pecans, the syrup falling in ropes to mix with the melting butter-but getting in the way was Joey, who was up to something that was probably going to get them all jailed or worse.

Doyle looked from Shane to Joey and back again and then said, “Garth, my boy, it is time we began our work day,” and removed a reluctant Three Wheels from the warmth of Agnes’s stove, Three Wheels slapping a slice of ham between two pancakes as he went. Agnes and Lisa Livia took their coffee out onto the porch, and Carpenter sat back, relieved from the distraction of the rhinestones, and watched Joey and Shane finish off their breakfasts.

Joey evaded Shane’s eyes in the ensuing silence until he couldn’t stand it anymore. “There’s really an old blood trail down there?”

“What the fuck?” Shane exploded. “You think I’d just stand there and let him bullshit you if there wasn’t? I was down there for half an hour watching him sniff around. I’m surprised he didn’t take an ax to that wall, but he’s a smart cop. He’s playing this straight and legal. You telling me you don’t know anything about that blood trail or what’s behind that wall?”

“Oh, come on, Shane,” Joey pleaded.

“Don’t fuck with me, Joey. You been lying to me since you called me. Is Frankie Fortunato behind that wall?”

Carpenter raised his eyebrows and sipped his coffee.

“Damned if I know,” Joey said. “I told you what happened that night.”

Shane glared at his uncle. “Is someone else behind that wall, then? You guys whack someone way back when and put the body there?”

“You think we were that stupid?” Joey asked. “Put a body where somebody’s gonna find it someday?”

That Shane believed. “All right.” He pointed a finger at Joey. “You swear to me right now, on your beloved Angelina’s soul, that you don’t know what happened to Frankie Fortunato.”

Joey closed his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. “I swear on my dear wife’s soul. I don’t know what happened to Frankie Fortunato after I left him alive and well with that safe that night.”

Shane sighed. There was still a seed of doubt in the back of his mind, and he tried to take apart the way Joey had phrased it to see if his uncle had built in wiggle room with the oath. “Okay, you didn’t put anybody behind the wall.”

“Well, thank you for that,” Joey said, all injured dignity.

Shane fixed him with a stare. “What is behind that wall?”

Joey sat very still.

Carpenter grinned behind his coffee cup.

Joey shifted in his chair, clearly thinking Oh, fuck. He sighed deeply. “Frankie’s bomb shelter.”

Shane straightened. “What?”

“Frankie’s fucking bomb shelter. But you can forget about getting in, ‘cause Frankie had the only key.”

Shane pushed his plate away and tried to will some patience. “What ‘fucking bomb shelter,’ Joey?”

“Frankie put a damn fallout shelter in the backyard.” Joey jerked his thumb toward the river. “Had it brought over on a barge and lifted by crane at high tide at night into the yard; then he covered it up and built the gazebo on top. Even if Xavier knocked the wall down, he ain’t gonna find a body. He’s gonna find a fifty-foot tunnel ‘cause Frankie used a tunnel to go from the rec room to the shelter. Only people who knew about it were Brenda and me and Four Wheels.”

“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.”