AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know,” Agnes said, but Carpenter walked away from both of them, as if neither of them were there, out through the porch and down the steps to meet Shane.
“What the hell?” Lisa Livia said, and Agnes went out onto the porch, where Joey was standing, also watching Shane, who was striding toward Frankie in the gazebo.
“This is bad,” Joey muttered.
“What?” Agnes asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer as she went down the back stairs and across the lawn to meet Shane. She was vaguely aware that Joey was right behind her, but all she cared about was Shane.
Frankie had climbed down and was waiting for him.
“My parents.” Shane said it with a fury Agnes had never heard. He was glaring at Frankie, who said nothing, and, as they came up, he burned Joey with the same look.
“That bum Wilson tell you?” Joey asked.
“It’s true?” Shane said.
Joey nodded.
“What?” Agnes asked.
Shane met her eyes, the cold, controlled man she’d met five days before obliterated by rage. “We’ll be back.” He looked at Carpenter. “You take care of things here.”
Carpenter nodded once.
“What’s going on?” Agnes said, but Shane was already crossing the lawn to the van, Joey and Frankie following him, their shoulders squared with the same determination. “What the hell—” she began, but Lisa Livia touched her arm.
“Let it go,” she said, and Carpenter nodded, too, and Agnes swallowed and thought, Well, he didn’t lie to me, and said, “Pineapple-orange muffins for breakfast,” and went back to the house, praying that nobody was going to die, especially Shane.
“Do you know where the Don is staying?” Shane asked, working hard to keep a cap on his anger. He was driving Carpenter’s van, Frankie and Joey in the captain’s chairs behind him, looking like two old extras for some mob movie. Except they were the real deal.
Joey nodded. “Yeah. The Rice Plantation B-and-B. The Don likes quiet, classy joints. The rest of his men are at the Victory Motel with the hookers.”
Shane looked back at Joey. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If I’d of told you, you’d have gone after the Don and gotten yourself killed.”
“I’d rather have heard it from you than Wilson,” Shane said.
“I was more worried about keeping you alive,” Joey said. “Wilson tells you stuff to control you.”
“Give me the short version,” Shane said as they turned onto the main road out of Agnes’s driveway.
Frankie had been talking into his cell phone, and he turned it off before saying, “I just talked to the broad who runs the B-and-B. She says the Don and another guy, most likely his consigliere, are just wrapping up breakfast. So that’s good. They gotta come this way for the wedding.”
Shane nodded and drove to the B&B, following Joey’s terse directions. Half a mile from the place, he pulled the van off the road, then backed into a narrow dirt trail.
“We’re gonna stop the Don’s car and I talk to him.” He climbed between the seats, opened one of the lockers, and grabbed a platter-shaped device and a remote that went with it. Then he opened the side panel and climbed out. “You guys stay here,” he told Joey and Frankie.
He went out to the narrow road and lay the platter down in the center, then grabbed a piece of Spanish moss and covered it.
When he was back in the van, he pulled out his Glock and checked the round in the chamber. Then he said, “Tell me what happened.”
“We came down here for vacations every year,” Frankie said. “Roberto, Michael, me, and Joey. And the families. Your parents went out fishing one day on a small boat, never came back. We got the call from the rental place that the boat hadn’t come back; we went out looking, nothing. No one ever found your parents or the boat.”
“But we know Michael did it,” Joey said with loathing. “He was supposed to be in Savannah when they went missing, but when he showed up again he was different. Confident. Cocky. The son of a bitch.”
“You let him get away with it?” Shane said, disbelief in his voice.
“What was we gonna do?” Joey said. “We had no proof. Everyone suspected, but nobody could say for certain, ‘cause nobody knew nothin’ about it. And I mean, nothin’. And where would a guy like Mikey get that kind of bomb on his own? He had to have help, smart help. And not just that snake of a consigliere of his, although he was down here then, too. We couldn’t figure it out. And we couldn’t whack Michael, or Don Carlo would be all over us. And you were in danger, you were his next hit. So we made a deal.”
