The Hitwoman's Juggling Act Read online

  “Hold that thought.” I held up a finger to Darlene. “I might be wrong about the dead thing.”

  My sister crossed her arms over her chest, and I got the distinct impression she wanted to slap me. “You might be?”

  Dropping to my knees, I gingerly touched Brian Griswald’s neck, searching for a pulse. Sure enough, it was beating.

  “Well?” Darlene asked impatiently.

  “He’s breathing.” I let out a shaky sigh of relief. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I first envisioned. The cop wasn’t dead. That had to be a good thing.

  “How did he get here? What happened to him? What the hell are we going to do?” Darlene asked.

  I shrugged helplessly at all of the questions. I had no answers. “We should probably call an ambulance.”

  Darlene nodded grudgingly.

  At that moment, Aunt Leslie drifted outdoors. “Are you girls going to join me for sun salutations? There’s an eclipse this afternoon.”

  “Not today,” Darlene replied distractedly. “Why don’t you go back inside?”

  Leslie shook her head. “I prefer to greet the day outside, in nature.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Today may not be the best day,” I told her.

  She glanced over at me. For the first time, she noticed Brian Griswald lying there, prone on the ground. “Detective Griswald?”

  He, of course, didn’t answer her.

  I looked at Darlene. “Call an ambulance.”

  Leslie chuckled. “He doesn’t need an ambulance, he probably needs some coffee.”

  Darlene and I both turned on her.

  “What do you mean, he needs some coffee?” Darlene asked suspiciously.

  Leslie shrugged. “I made him some of my special hot cocoa last night.”

  I groaned. “You drugged a police detective?”

  Leslie shrugged. “He seemed so tense.”

  “You drugged a police detective?” Darlene asked, her voice rising. The way she said it made it sound way worse than the way I did.

  “He’ll be fine,” Leslie assured her.

  At that moment, Brian Griswald stirred.

  “See?” Leslie flashed us a bright smile.

  “She may be right,” I told Darlene.

  Griswald’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared at me hazily.

  I tried to speak in a reassuring tone. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  He struggled to sit up. I helped him, more because I was afraid he might fall back and injure himself than because I wanted him to recover. It would have been nice if Darlene and I could have come up with a story to tell him before he realized that Aunt Leslie had spiked his cocoa.

  “What? Where?” Brian shook his head, trying to get his bearings.

  Aunt Leslie crouched down in front of him. “I think you took a nap,” she told him firmly.

  “A nap?”

  Leslie and I helped him to his feet. He swayed unsteadily, but we managed to get him inside the kitchen. Propping him up in a chair, we all watched him carefully. DeeDee, who’d accompanied us back inside, licked his hand.

  Darlene got busy making coffee.

  “I don’t really remember much,” Brian said slowly.

  “You’re fine,” Leslie assured him. “Everything is fine.”

  Darlene and I exchanged a look across the kitchen. I could tell that she was just as impressed as I was at the way Leslie was handling this.

  “Everyone’s safe?” Brian asked. “My uncle was pretty concerned about your safety.”

  “Everyone’s fine,” I assured him.

  Darlene pressed a steaming cup of coffee into his hands. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

  We could hear faint knocking coming from the front door.

  “I’ll take care of that,” I told them, leaving Leslie, Darlene, and Brian in the kitchen.

  On my way to answer the door, I scooped up my frying pan, hefted its weight in my palm and prepared to do battle with whoever had shown up at such an ungodly hour of the morning.

  “Use your brain,” God warned from his marker box.

  I had no idea what he meant by that, but I was sure he didn’t mean it kindly.

  “Use the peephole,” Piss suggested.

  That was a much more helpful suggestion so I leaned forward, squinted, and looked through the peephole to see who was standing at the front door. I saw nothing.

  “You can be shot through a peephole,” God offered. “Bullet will go straight through your eye and into your brain.”

  I turned and looked at him incredulously.

  “I’m just pointing out it can be a deadly practice,” he said unapologetically.

  Ignoring him, I looked again. Still nothing.

  I whispered to the animals, “There’s no one there.”

  “There has to be someone there. Someone knocked,” God reasoned.

  “What if I open the door and it’s some kind of trap?” I asked nervously.

  There were three more knocks on the door.

  “Ian,” DeeDee woofed softly as she ran into the room and stuck her nose to the bottom of the door.

  “Are you saying it’s Ian out there?” Piss asked.

  “Ian!” DeeDee repeated.

  “You can always count on that one to be crystal clear,” God mocked.

  I tightened my grip on my frying pan, hid it behind my back, and slowly opened the door. Sure enough, Ian was standing there. He looked even more tired than I felt.

  “Take him home,” he begged.

  “Zippy?” I asked.

  “I can’t take him,” Ian confessed. “He stole Thurston’s reading glasses, my sneakers, and then he tried to replant a houseplant outside.”

  “You never can trust the furries,” God chuckled.

  “Seriously, Maggie,” Ian told me, his eyes wild. “Between his destructive nature and that never-ending attitude of his, I can’t take it anymore.”

  I nodded my understanding.

  “I mean, if you tell me what address he belongs to, I can take him myself,” Ian offered. “I just need to get rid of him.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll do it.” The last thing I needed was Ian running into Herschel. Life was complicated enough without opening that particular can of worms. “Just let me tell Darlene that I’m leaving for a while.”

  I kind of closed the door in my brother’s face.

  I worked my way into the kitchen. Darlene was practically force-feeding coffee into Detective Brian Griswald, who was holding his head and looking the worse for wear. Glancing out the kitchen window, I spotted Aunt Leslie performing her sun salutations, oblivious to the problems she had caused.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told Darlene.

  She grimaced. “Of course, you do.”

  “It might not be safe,” Brian Griswald warned. “I mean, that’s why I was here, to check on you, and then your aunt made me hot cocoa…” He trailed off as though trying to put the pieces together.

  I didn’t want to be here when he did.

  “I’m sorry, Darlene. If it wasn’t an emergency...”

  Darlene shrugged. “Go.”

  I considered asking her for a cup of to-go coffee, but I thought that might be pushing my luck, so instead I gathered the animals, remembering to retrieve Benny from underneath the couch, and hurried out to my car.

  Ian was waiting beside it, holding onto a leash that was attached to Zippy.

  “You want to go home?” I asked him as pleasantly as I could.

  “Kidnapper!” the little white dog barked excitedly at me.

  I flinched. For just a brief second, I wondered if he knew what I had done with Patrick Mulligan. Then I realized that wasn’t possible.

  Ian gave me a sympathetic look. “See what I mean? You were trying to help him, and he is accusing you of a crime.”

  “I’ll take him home. It will all be fine.”

  After the animals all piled into my car, I got behind the wheel. I looked around to see if I could spot any of Delveccio’s m
en, or Griswald’s, or the hidden enemy that I’d made that I didn’t even know who it was. Nobody looked out of place. But with the way car windows are tinted, I couldn’t really see inside any of the vehicles.

  “Are we just going to sit here?” God asked impatiently, scrambling up onto the car’s dashboard.

  I started the engine. “I’m going. I’m going.”

  “Say it one more time, and you’ll sound just like Benny,” the lizard mocked.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” Benny looked up at me from the cup holder where he had curled up.

  “Ignore him,” I told the little mouse. “I do.”

  Piss let out an amused hiss.

  I drove as quickly as I could, without breaking any laws, to Herschel’s place. Half the time, my eyes were glued to the rearview mirror, trying to see if anyone was following me. No one seemed to be. But, then again, as Patrick has told me, I’m not the best at spotting tails.

  I turned down the decrepit road to Herschel’s place, wondering if I was making a mistake. As far as I knew, it was a dead end. A dead end that seemed to end in the middle of nowhere didn’t seem to be the best place to be if someone was after me. Still, I had to return Zippy to his home.

  26

  “Home!” Zippy barked excitedly as we pulled up to the barn.

  The moment I opened the car door, he was out like a white flash, racing toward the faded red structure.

  “He’s not in there,” I told him, assuming Herschel was still at the hospital.

  The dog obviously didn’t believe me because he just kept on running.

  “Do not leave me in here,” God warned.

  Against my better judgment, I extended my hand so he could run up my arm and perch on my shoulder. I looked down at Benny. “You good there, or do you want to come along?”

  “Good. Good. Good.”

  DeeDee and Piss also emerged from the car.

  “While we’re here, I might as well feed the animals,” I mused.

  Zippy raced back out of the barn, in search of his master.

  “You are such a bleeding heart, Maggie Lee,” God complained. “Don’t you have anything better to do than feed the beasts?”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than complain?” Piss asked. “I’ll go get you some crickets. Maybe that will improve your foul mood.” With that, she bounded off into a nearby pasture.

  “Finally, someone cares about my well-being,” God announced dramatically.

  “Up shut,” DeeDee urged. “You care of takes Maggie.”

  I smiled down at the dog, touched that she took my side in this whole thing.

  I slowly made my way into the barn, DeeDee trailing closely behind. “Good morning, Irma.”

  She brayed back. “Good morning.”

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  “Always,” she confided, “but I’m trying not to pack on the extra pounds. I really don’t get much exercise in here.”

  A soft ominous thumping approached.

  “Hide,” God urged on a desperate whisper.

  I grabbed a nearby pitchfork, thinking it made a better weapon than most things I usually had to use. It was way better than a frying pan.

  DeeDee and I went and hid in a distant shadow of the barn. I held my breath as the quiet thumping got closer. The hay in the barn made me want to sneeze, and I wrinkled my nose in protest, afraid I’d give away our position.

  The shadow of a man with a rifle pointed down at the ground entered the barn.

  “Fitting that you’re going to die in the company of an ass,” God whispered. The barn door swung open, allowing more light in. I blinked against it, trying to focus. I tightened my grip on the pitchfork, ready to fight for my life.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a male voice asked.

  It was then I was able to focus on the figure. It was Herschel, and he wasn’t carrying a rifle; he was carrying a crutch. That was what had made the quiet thumping noise as he’d limped along.

  I slowly lowered the pitchfork. “Good morning.”

  Herschel shook his head. “Zippy said you were here.”

  I nodded. “He really wanted to come home.”

  “He’s a demanding little sucker, that one,” Herschel complained. “That’s why nobody will adopt him.”

  “But you did,” I said with a hopeful smile. For a horrible split second, I thought he was going to try to saddle me with the little monster.

  “I give all of these animals a home,” Herschel said with a shrug.

  I stared at him for a long moment. “Do you know who I am?” I wasn’t sure what I wanted his answer to be. If he did know who I was, it meant that my grandfather had known about my existence and never acknowledged me. If he didn’t know who I was, it meant that he’d left my aunts and mother and never looked back. I wasn’t sure if there was a way for him to win with his reply.

  “Did you tell anyone about me?” he asked instead of answering.

  I held my ground, waiting for a response to the question I’d asked. We stared at each other for a very long time, neither one of us wanting to give in.

  “Oh, answer the girl already,” Irma, the donkey, finally interjected.

  “You have Mary’s eyes,” Herschel said finally.

  I guess it was as close as he was going to come to as an admission. He knew who I was.

  “They all think you’re dead,” I told him.

  He had the good grace to look pained. “It’s what your grandmother wanted.”

  “And she’s been dead a long time now,” I told him. “So that excuse won’t fly.”

  Herschel shrugged and looked away. “The damage had already been done.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d made mistakes, mistakes I thought I wasn’t able to come back from, but I’d been surprised over and over again by both my own resilience and that of the people whom I loved.

  Herschel squinted at me. “You look worse than I feel. Do you want to come in and have a cup of coffee?”

  I nodded.

  We walked slowly back to his house, neither of us speaking. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was trying to sort through the million questions in my head. Sure, my grandmother was a pushy woman, but how had she convinced him to give up his relationship with all of his children? Had he ever loved them? Why was he living here by himself, so close to the B&B and not making contact?

  He led me into the house and into the kitchen. He pointed at a chair, indicating that I should sit down, and he poured two cups of coffee.

  “I don’t have any milk or sugar,” he said. “I don’t really entertain much.”

  “It’s fine,” I told him.

  Limping over to the table, he put a cup down in front of me.

  I wrapped my hands around the cup, finding comfort in its warmth.

  He slowly lowered himself into a nearby chair and gave me a long look. “So, what are you going to do?”

  “About what?” I asked, trying to buy myself some time to think.

  “About my secret?” he said.

  “You deserted your family,” I said slowly.

  He hung his head. “My biggest regret in life.”

  “You could fix it,” I said hopefully.

  He shook his head, sipped his coffee, and said in a voice that was tight with emotion, “They’re not the forgiving types.”

  “You don’t know that,” I countered. He hadn’t seen them in decades. How could he know what they were or weren’t capable of?

  “I don’t want to cause any more pain,” Herschel said quietly. “I did enough damage when I left. They’re healed now, no use tearing off that scab.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t think that they were healed. As someone who had a less than stellar father, I could pretty much attest to the fact that even as an adult, we all still struggle with our childhood traumas.

  Herschel leaned toward me. “I have to ask you to keep my secret, Maggie.”

  I sat back, needing space to thi
nk. “My sister Darlene says secrets tear people apart.”

  Herschel let out a bitter chuckle. “Darlene? She’s the one who disappeared, and everyone thought she was dead for years, right?”

  I nodded. “But everyone forgave her. Everyone has welcomed her back.”

  Herschel frowned. “Everyone has been through too much with the destruction of the Bed & Breakfast. I can’t blow up their lives. Again.”

  27

  When I got back to my car, I found Piss and God sprawled out on the ground in front of it, groaning.

  For a moment, I worried if something had happened to them. Had they been poisoned?

  “You okay?” I asked worriedly.

  They both stirred sluggishly.

  “I can’t believe I ate all of it,” God moaned.

  “Ate all of what?” I asked.

  “The cricket feast.” He closed his eyes and groaned at the memory.

  “And what about you?” I asked Piss.

  She stretched lazily and purred with satisfaction, “I feasted, too.”

  “On crickets?”

  “No, sugar,” she meowed. “I had a feast of field mice.”

  “Hungry,” DeeDee whined, as it occurred to her she was the only one who had not eaten.

  “Hey, doll,” a voice called from above.

  I looked up, searching for Mike.

  He landed on the hood of my car, making it easy to find him. “You going to check on Boy again soon?”

  I nodded.

  Satisfied, he flew off.

  “Everyone in the car,” I ordered.

  Once the animals were settled in the vehicle and I was driving down the deserted driveway of Herschel’s place, God asked, “So what happened?”

  “He asked me if I would keep his secret that he’s still alive,” I revealed.

  “And what did you tell him?” God asked.

  I sighed. “I didn’t really say one way or the other.”

  “In other words, you caved,” God said, not bothering to disguise his disgust.

  “I didn’t cave. I’m just not sure that now is the time to reveal life-changing information to the family. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re struggling.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re struggling,” God said.

  “Hungry,” DeeDee reminded us, making it clear what she thought was important about the whole thing.