AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Agnes, stop fighting your nature. You’re a killer. Accept that and you’ll be a lot happier.”
“I’ve never killed anybody,” Agnes protested, and then stopped, realizing that might have sounded holier than thou, considering the people she was hanging out with.
“And with the grace of God you never will,” Lisa Livia said. “The important thing is, we know we can if we have to.” She finished her omelet and pushed her plate away. “So what are we doing today?”
“I have to bake the wedding cakes,” Agnes said, “and call in that cake supply order to the bakery in Savannah. And write my column. Clean up the Venus with you. And sometime in there, I’d like to go through your mother’s boxes and find something that will completely destroy her life so that she’ll never again feel the warmth of the sun on her face or know a happy moment.”
“There you go,” Lisa Livia said, and got up to take her plate to the sink.
“And then I have to make lunch,” Agnes said, and began to eat her omelet.
Shane pulled up to the old warehouse on the edge of the swamp on the east side of Savannah. He’d already decided subtlety was not the desired course of action. He just didn’t feel like it. He kept his sunglasses on and got out of the Defender into the humid heat just as a stocky man with the rippling muscles of a steroid-injecting weight lifter and the sloping forehead of Cro-Magnon man stepped out of a personnel door set in the larger sliding doors in the front of the steel building. He wore flip-flops, swim trunks, and a black muscle shirt, which showed off not only the aforementioned muscles, but also a dazzling array of tattoos from his wrists to his shoulders.
“Whaddya want?” the man asked.
“You speaking to me?”
“Yeah, I’m speaking to you.”
Shane shook his head. “You’re supposed to say: ‘I don’t see nobody else standing there.’“ “What?”
Shane sighed. No one watched the classics anymore. “The Torrentino brothers in?”
The man’s head jerked in what Shane assumed was a negative. “No, and you ain’t going in there.”
“Wrong,” Shane said, and hit the weightlifter in the throat with a quick strike of his fist, avoiding all the layers of muscles elsewhere on the body. Weightlifter’s hands flew up his neck as he gasped in pain.
Shane snap kicked into his groin, eliciting a squeal of pain, and the weightlifter went to his knees, curling over, his hands going from neck to balls. Shane did an elbow strike to the back of the man’s head and he was out, prostrate on the ground.
Shane checked the unconscious body for weapons and found none, but he did find a money clip, with “Rocko” picked out in rhinestones, holding twenty-eight crisp hundred-dollar bills. He flex-cuffed Rocko’s bulky arms behind his back just in case he came to before the business inside was done, and then went inside the warehouse, but the weightlifter had been telling the truth, the place was empty. He did a quick search and found evidence that the Torrentinos had been there, including two La-Z-Boys and a large-screen TV with an impressive collection of porn videos stacked to one side.
The Torrentinos as the masterminds behind the hits began to seem less likely than ever. But Rocko with those hundred-dollar bills ...
Shane heard cursing and abandoned the warehouse. Rocko was sitting up, moaning, for which Shane was grateful, doubtful he could toss that much unconscious weight into the Defender. It also meant Rocko had a very thick skull, which wasn’t surprising.
“On your feet,” Shane said, giving Rocko a quick poke in the back with the muzzle of the dock.
Rocko muttered something, but staggered to his feet. Shane guided him over to the Defender and shoved him into the passenger seat, his hands still awkwardly secured behind him with the plastic flex-cuff. Shane got in the driver’s seat. He threw the truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot. Then he remembered something. He dug in his pocket and pulled out Agnes’s To Do List.
Shane reached down and turned on the navigation system and punched in the address for the bakery in downtown Savannah. He was glad for the tinted windows as he drove into the city. Rocko was becoming more agitated as consciousness seeped into his brain, so after Shane double-parked in front of the bakery, he whacked him on the head again.
Then he walked into the bakery.
“Can I help you?” the woman behind the counter said.
Shane checked the list. “I need fifteen pounds of fondue and?—”
The woman said, “Excuse me?”
“It’s for a wedding cake.”
“You mean fondant.”
“Whatever. And ...” He handed Agnes’s To Do List over to her. She squinted at it. “Is this the Agnes Crandall order?”
“Yeah.”
She handed it back. “She called it in. I thought she was going to pick it up later. Doesn’t matter. It’s ready.”
