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Agnes stepped back and Lisa Livia straightened, some color in her face.
“She must have gone onto my laptop,” Lisa Livia said. “When I was staying on that fucking boat, while I was asleep or out here, she used my laptop and somehow she figured out my password. She didn’t just take everything I own, she looted the accounts I manage for my clients. She did it because I was working with you, fighting her on this house. Because I said you were family, not her. She cried all over me that night about that. I told her she should have thought ahead before she killed my daddy.” She nodded at the laptop. “This is her payback.”
“Oh, God,” Agnes said, and sat down hard. “How much?”
Lisa Livia swallowed hard. “I’ll have to ...” She drew a deep breath. “In a minute when I can do this without passing out, I’ll add it up. But somewhere around eight or nine hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?” Agnes swallowed hard, too. “We’ll get it back. We’ll go out to that damn boat and?—”
Lisa Livia closed her eyes. “She’ll have it in the Caymans by now. I can’t even kill her to get it, that bastard Taylor will inherit.”
“Jesus,” Agnes said. “Can’t we go ransack the boat and find the numbers or something?”
“She’ll have them hidden in one of the millions of places the Real Estate King had built into that damn thing. I wouldn’t even know how to look for them.” She shook her head, keeping her jaw set, fighting tears. “Pretty ironic. I spend my whole life working, neglect my kid to build up this safety net for us, and then because I want to be there for her at her wedding, I lose everything, including my future. And then I screw up her wedding by sticking her with flamingos.”
“Lisa Livia, it’s not?—”
“I am such a fuckup.”
“No, you are not.” Agnes put her arm around her. “You don’t even believe that. I have no idea how to fix this, but we will. We’ll get your money back. We’ll do your daughter’s wedding, then we’ll sink your mother’s boat, and then we will get your money, Shane and Carpenter and I, we’ll help you get it back. I swear to you, we will.”
Lisa Livia looked at her. “You don’t even know how to sink a boat”
“I am learning many new skills this week,” Agnes said. “Eat your pancakes.”
To Do List, she thought. Throw Maria’s wedding. Return stolen flamingos. Clean up the Venus. Get Lisa Livia’s money back. Kill somebody named Casey Dean. She looked out the window to the dock where Shane and Carpenter were conferring with their boss. Sink Brenda’s boat. Write my goddamn column. Believe in Shane when he tells me what I’m dying to hear.
She went to the pantry to get the wedding cakes.
“I didn’t explain things to Agnes very well,” Shane said when they’d started down the path to the dock.
“You have to speak from the heart,” Carpenter said.
“The heart.”
“Yes. You have to open up to the world and learn optimism, and the words will come to you, and you’ll tell Agnes how you feel.” Shane stopped. “What?”
Carpenter looked at him, serene. “Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimism.”
“Oh.” Shane frowned. “I told her I wanted to come back here. She seemed pretty happy.”
Carpenter nodded. “That’s a start. Once you open yourself to the world, my friend, good things will come to you.”
“I don’t think going to meet Wilson is the best time for me to get optimistic and, uh, open my heart.”
“Indeed not. In some ways, your heart opening up is causing a lot of trouble and, I believe, precipitating this meeting.”
He nodded down the dock to where Wilson was already sitting on one of the benches, dressed impeccably in his suit. Shane felt like he was walking the gangplank as they made their way down the long dock to him. Brenda’s yacht bobbed on the water, but there was a sleeker, much newer and larger boat just off the low dock: Wilson’s mode of transportation. A dark figure was on the bridge of the boat running the engines, keeping it in place against the tide. The jet boat Carpenter had driven the last time Shane met Wilson was tied down on the front deck next to a small crane.
“I’m disappointed,” Wilson said as they arrived at the high dock.
Cerise and Hot Pink chorused their disapproval, too.
Without being asked, Shane sat down across from his boss while Carpenter took a seat beside him.
Wilson looked at Shane, his eyes as sharp as ever. “You’ve had two opportunities to take out Casey Dean, and not only have you failed in both, you have allowed Don Fortunato’s consigliere to complete down payment for the contract.”
Shane didn’t say anything, because he knew there was nothing he could say.
