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The boat reached the bend in the river and was just about out of sight when the figure at the console put his right hand into the air and Shane could see the middle finger extended just as the boat gathered speed and disappeared.
“Look on the positive side,” Carpenter said. “You know what
Casey Dean looks like from behind, dressed in dark sweats with a hood over his head. That’s something to report to Wilson.”
“Fuck,” Shane said, and got back in the van.
“What do you mean, I can’t dissolve the partnership?” Agnes said into the phone ten minutes later. “He’s trying to sabotage it, Barry.”
“Which is a damn good reason to dissolve it, Agnes,” her lawyer said. “But it’s a partnership. The two of you have to dissolve it together. And Taylor doesn’t want it dissolved. He already called.”
“Barry, he’s trying to get the health department to shut down a wedding we’re catering,” Agnes said. “Isn’t that some kind of breach of contract?”
“I’d sue him,” Barry said. “But then, I’m a lawyer.”
Agnes heard the front door slam and turned to see Lisa Livia come into the kitchen with a shopping bag that said betsie’s bon ton.
Rhett hadn’t even bothered to lift his head.
“You got a truck coming across your bridge,” Lisa Livia said, and Agnes hung up on Barry and went to the front door to look, almost tripping over five pieces of Lisa Livia’s pink leather luggage in the hall on the way.
“Brenda caught me going through her stuff and threw me off the boat,” Lisa Livia said. “She kept screaming about betrayal. Can I have my old room back?”
“Sure,” Agnes said, heading out the front door. “What truck?—?”
It was already crossing the bridge, which groaned its displeasure, and then it was sweeping down the drive and over the lawn—”Will you stop that?” Agnes yelled at the driver—and then it stopped and the driver got out and opened the back and wheeled out a crate that looked familiar.
“What the—,” Lisa Livia began, and then the chinless wonder of a driver who also looked familiar opened the crate and another flamingo staggered out, honking like mad, and Cerise went crazy.
The driver came toward Agnes with his clipboard.
“No,” she said. “You take them both back.”
“I’m just the delivery guy, lady,” he said, his rabbity face twitching. The patch on his uniform said, butch, but he so wasn’t.
“I’m not signing that,” Agnes said. “Take them back. They need to be in a flock.”
“Can’t do it,” he said. “Just sign this.”
“No.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked at him closer. “You’re not from any delivery service. And you delivered Cerise. Downer paid you to do this. Who are you?”
He met her eyes for a moment, and then bolted for the truck.
“Come back here, you bastard!” Agnes started after him, but fear made him fast: He dived for the front seat and had the truck in gear and moving before the door was closed.
She walked back to Lisa Livia, who was still carrying her Bon Ton bag, but who’d now picked up the clipboard he’d dropped.
“This one’s name is Hot Pink,” LL said.
Agnes looked down to the river. Hot Pink and Cerise were deep in honking conversation of mutual outrage, but Cerise didn’t seem to be as manic as before. “Is there a return address?”
“No,” Lisa Livia said. “This is like an information sheet. Like a zoo might give out.”
“A zoo.” Agnes closed her eyes. “Call that moron Downer and ask if he had these guys stolen from a zoo.” What “if”? Of course that idiot had them stolen from a zoo. Who sells flamingos? “Call Downer and tell him we know he hired Butch to steal Cerise and Hot Pink and if he has them taken back right now, we won’t have him arrested and shot.”
“Right,” Lisa Livia said, taking out her cell phone. “Then we should talk. Brenda threw me out, but I’d already put some of her stuff in the car, so I brought it with me. Like all of her real estate stuff, including her house book.”
“Her house book?” Agnes said.
