Agnes and the Hitman Read Online Free PDF Page A

hane 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 covered with 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