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“I opened a bank vault once that had been shut for sixty years.”
“What happened?” Shane said as he leaned into the level.
“Wall cracked a little,” Carpenter said, and Shane looked up at the arched ceiling above him.
“How much is a little?”
“I got it open. It’ll pop, just like-”
The hatch popped open with a whoosh and a creak of rusty hinges that echoed down the tu
Voices rose from the other end of the basement, a babble of questions and some contention.
“It’s all right,” Shane called back.
“No, it isn’t,” Agnes yelled back to him. “Brenda’s here.”
Brenda’s voice floated down the tu
“No,” Shane called back, but she came tapping down the long tu
The first thing he saw was a safe, its door wide open.
Inside the safe was a frying pan, its rim crusted with very old blood.
Inside the frying pan and piled around it in the safe were empty money wrappers. Lots and lots of them. Enough, Shane thought, to go around five million dollars.
“Oh, my God!” Brenda said, her voice full of drama.
“That’s not my frying pan,” Agnes said from behind him, and he turned and saw them, crowding the door, Brenda with her head turned away, Xavier and Agnes behind her, and next to Agnes, Lisa Livia looking pale and the thin brunette holding up her camera.
“I told you,” Brenda said to Xavier, her voice rich with distress. “I told you. Joey and Four Wheels killed him. I can’t bear to look.”
“Look at what, Miz Dupres?” Xavier said.
“At…” Brenda turned to look into the shelter, at first with dread and then with disbelief. “What… Where’s Frankie?”
“He’s not in there,” Lisa Livia said, her voice as stu
Lisa Livia turned and walked back down the tu
“She wanted her dad dead?” Shane asked, and Agnes shook her head, giving him a look that said she’d tell him later.
“Joey came in and moved the body,” Brenda was saying to Xavier, grabbing his sleeve. “Him and Four Wheels. They moved it!”
“How?” Xavier asked, but Carpenter had already moved past the safe and was looking up.
“Hmm,” Carpenter said, and began to climb up an old metal ladder welded to the side of the shelter.
Shane went to see what his partner had seen and realized that there was a door at the top, and when Carpenter pushed on the door and flipped it open, sunlight poured in, and above that, a ceiling, blue with gold stars.
“That’s my gazebo,” Agnes said from beside Shane.
Shane turned back to where Xavier was looking at the frying pan.
“Well, someone got whacked a good one,” Xavier said, and looked at Agnes.
“That is not mine,” Agnes said again.
“This is now a crime scene-” Xavier began and then the earth began to shake. “What the hell?”
“Did you order some trucks?” Carpenter said to Agnes from the top of the ladder.
“Trucks?” Agnes said.
“Five of them. Dump trucks. Heading for your bridge.”
“No,” Agnes said, ru
Shane went to follow her and caught a glimpse of Brenda. She looked like the news about the trucks was making her feel much better.
Agnes ran through the kitchen, past the Venus and Lisa Livia, who said, “What now?” as if she didn’t care, then out through the hall and across the lawn, waving her hands and yelling, “Stop, no, go back,” but the dump trucks kept rolling across the bridge; first one, bumping over the fragile supports, onto the drive, across the lawn and down to the riverbank, where Cerise and Hot Pink honked their rage; then another, the bridge groaning before the truck went to the river; then a third, the supports screaming this time before the truck went on; and then, inevitably, the fourth hitting the bridge, the supports splintering with a crash, that truck sinking into the cut, leaving the fifth and last truck marooned on the other side.
“What are you doing?” Agnes screamed as she got to the bridge, but the driver was just as furious, waving his paperwork at her, asking what the hell business she had ordering five trucks of sand to cross a substandard bridge. “I’m suing you people,” he yelled.
“I didn’t order this,” Agnes yelled back. “What the hell is it?”
The driver pulled out an invoice. “Eighty cubic yards of pink sand, for a wedding at Two Rivers mansion.”
“Pink sand?” Agnes said, dumbfounded.
“Who ordered it?” Shane asked, and she jerked back, surprised to find him beside her.
The driver squinted at the invoice. “A Brenda Dupres.”
Agnes turned and yelled, “Brenda,” but Brenda was already tapping down the steps in her spike heels, looking enraged, a tiny blond D-cup tigress.
“What did you do to my clock?” she said, stamping across the grass, pulling her spike heels out of the earth with vicious energy.
“Some shithead showed up last night to kill me,” Agnes said to her, “and he shot up your damn clock instead. Now what the hell is all this pink sand?”
“Maria wanted a flamingo-themed wedding,” Brenda said, reining in her temper as she drew herself up. “I thought pink sand would fit right in with everything else here. I know how nasty the shore can look when the tide is out. But I never dreamed it would break the bridge.” She looked down to the river, where the first three trucks were dumping their sand on the shore, Kristy dutifully snapping pictures of it all. “One, two, three…” She blinked her eyes at the truck stuck in the cut. “Four. There should be another truck-oh, yes, there it is.” She waved at the driver on the road to the bridge. “Five.”
“There ain’t nothing more coming out here, lady,” the driver from the wrecked truck said, “except a tow truck.”
“Oh,” Brenda said, sadly. “Looks like it’s the country club for the wedding then.” She smiled at Agnes. “Fiddle-dee-dee.”
Agnes turned on her. “No, it is not the country club.”
Anger is not your friend, Agnes.
Neither is Brenda Fortunato, Dr. Garvin.
Brenda smiled. “Agnes. Honey. The baker canceled. The florist canceled.” She took a step closer. “The photographer sent an assistant who doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing. The health inspector won’t let you serve di
Agnes felt her breath go, felt the old dizziness take hold as the red washed over her again, and then she heard Lisa Livia in her head again, saying, Face it, Agnes, you’re a killer, thought of Shane, putting those two bullets in the guy in the laundry room, walking through the kitchen firing at the guy in the hall until his gun was empty, never losing his temper, no expression on his face at all. Another part of her brain knew that Shane had his arm around her waist, ready to haul her off if she went for Brenda’s throat, but the part of her brain where the red mist lived was changing course, looking at Brenda now, knowing that professional killers did not get mad. They just ended things.
“You listen to me,” she said to Brenda, her voice like ice. “On Saturday at noon, the cake will be beautiful, the flowers will be magnificent, the photographer who is taking pictures of the sand right now will be taking pictures of the bride, the catering will be amazing and legal, and the bridge will not only be back, it will be so strong that twenty trucks could cross it. And the house will be the house you have always dreamed of having, and, as God is my witness, will never have because I will defeat you utterly and completely, I will grind your face in the dust, I will make you nothing before the world, Brenda Dupres, and my kitchen will not be a crime scene because I will have proved that you picked up that goddamned frying pan in that goddamned bomb shelter and whacked your goddamned husband with it twenty-five years ago, and you will spend the rest of your life in an orange jumpsuit in prison where there is no moisturizer and your face will look like old luggage and the only man you’ll be able to seduce is a guard named Bubba with no teeth, so go back to your boat and pray, Brenda, get down on your knees and pray to whatever obscene and vicious god that made you that you do not cross me again because I will destroy you.”