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“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.
