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“Let’s just invite the whole damn town.” Shane looked at his uncle. “You know, Joey, if we find Frankie in there, and anything at all points to you having killed him, there isn’t much I can do to keep Xavier off your ass.”
“I ain’t worried,” Joey said. “I didn’t kill him. I just want to know what happened that night.”
Xavier came up the porch steps, Doyle stomping up next to him.
“What can we do for you, Detective?” Shane asked.
“I understand there’s been some excavation work in the basement,” Xavier said. “I even heard a rumor there’s some sort of bomb shelter out there in the backyard and a tunnel that leads to it. And I heard that you fellows have opened up that tunnel and are getting ready to open the hatch to that bomb shelter.”
“You sure heard a lot,” Joey muttered.
“And where is Detective Hammond?” Shane asked, not wanting that doofus wandering around unsupervised.
“Detective Hammond appears to have taken a long lunch break,” Xavier said. “I believe at the marina. Missing all the excitement, that boy is. Sort of like when they opened Capone’s vault on TV.”
“There was nothing in Capone’s vault,” Shane noted.
“I’m hoping for better results here,” Xavier said.
“Some could say you was trespassing,” Joey said.
“Some say you might have some trouble if that bomb shelter gets opened,” Xavier said.
“Like who?” Joey demanded.
“Oh, there’s been a lot of talk.” Xavier pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his white coat. “For example. This here is Miz Agnes’s criminal record. I was quite surprised to note the contents. Turns out she’s wielded a frying pan before with violent effect.”
Shane looked at Joey and noted that shut the old man up for the moment.
“I also heard your Miz Agnes is pretty handy with a cooking fork to the neck.”
Fucking Taylor, Shane thought. There was going to be one fewer chef in the world shortly.
“Somebody swear out a complaint?” Joey said, still cool.
“No,” Xavier admitted, and Shane thought, Not Taylor then, somebody Taylor told. The detective scowled toward the river. “What the hell is that noise?”
“Flamingos,” Joey said. “So all you got is some gossip and some old paper, I don’t?—”
Agnes came out onto the porch with Lisa Livia and a trim brunette draped in cameras. Opening the shelter was not going to be the clandestine affair Shane had had in mind. He had indeed forgotten what Keyes was like. He looked toward the bridge, expecting to see the local high school marching band come across with cheerleaders and the rest of the town population.
“I brought a flashlight” Xavier cheerfully held up a heavy-duty light
“I rigged lights,” Carpenter said. “You won’t need it”
“Can we get this over with?” Lisa Livia said, and Shane could feel the edge coming off her, nothing like her usual voluptuous vibe. He glanced at Agnes and she nodded curtly, but her tension was for LL, standing at her elbow, and he remembered that for Lisa Livia, Frankie wasn’t some dead mobster, he was her father, and they might be about to open his tomb.
“You sure you want to?—”
“Yes,” Lisa Livia snapped, and Shane led the way into the house, past the kitchen table that held a box full of lurid pink pens with feather tops, and down the ladder, holding it in place as everybody else climbed down.
They all waited in the rec room while he and Carpenter went down the fifty-foot tunnel and manned the hydraulic jack. It was a complicated arrangement of cables and blocks of wood that Shane didn’t even attempt to figure out He had enough of a headache trying to figure out who was trying to kill who and why.
“Grab that,” Carpenter said. Shane grabbed the lever indicated. “Ready?” Carpenter asked. Shane nodded. “Let’s do it.”
In concert, they began to apply pressure. At first there was no obvious result except a tightening of the steel cables. Then an ominous creaking of the wood blocks, the cables ran over. “Don’t worry,” Carpenter said. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“Opened twenty-five-year-old bomb shelters?”
