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 coveredwith 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.”