The Hitwoman and the Poisoned Apple (Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman Book 8) (2 page)

“It’s not going to hurt,” she cajoled. “I promise.”

I shook my head.

“Please, Maggie?” An almost pathetic note crept into her voice. “It’s important.”

Armani Vasquez, despite her run-in with a wayward Zamboni that cost her the use of one of her hands and caused her to limp, is one of the most beautiful, radiant, confident women I’ve ever met. Yet standing there, with the cemetery stretched out behind her as a depressing backdrop, she seemed to have lost some of her glow.

“I need your help,” she almost pleaded.

Which was why, against my better judgment, I got out of the car.

“Thanks, Maggie. You’re a good friend.” Flashing a shadow of a smile, she limped away.

“Where are you going?” I called after her.

Stopping, she peered over her shoulder at me.

“The family plot is that way.” I pointed in the opposite direction.

A real smile brightened her face as she turned around and hobbled toward me. “I knew you’d come around, chiquita.”

“I could have just let you wander around for an hour, searching for it,” I teased, falling into step beside her.

There were fresh flowers, gardenias, on my sister Teresa’s headstone. Nothing covered our sister Darlene’s stone.

“That’s weird,” I muttered.

“We’re in a cemetery. Things are supposed to be weird,” Armani replied.

I looked over at her and saw that she was chewing nervously on her lower lip. “You’re afraid of cemeteries?”

“You’re not?”

I shook my head. I actually found the quiet spot to be rather peaceful. Plus, I had some good memories of time I’d spent here with Patrick. Sure, on one of those visits I’d been erroneously convinced that he’d brought me here to kill me, but overall, we’d had some good times here. The thought of him etched frown lines between my eyes.

Tiredly, I rested my butt on the top of Darlene’s gravestone and waited for Armani to do whatever it was she was there to do.

What she did was gape at me, aghast. “Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”

“One,” I replied calmly, “she’s not here. Her body was never recovered. Two. Gypsy told me she’s not dead.” (Well technically Zeke’s ghost-seeing friend had told me that Teresa, who definitely was dead, had told her that Darlene isn’t really dead.)

Armani’s eyes widened. “Really?”

I nodded. It felt good to tell that to someone other than the lizard. Someone who believed communicating with the dead was really possible.

“And three,” I continued. “Even if she was dead and buried here, she wouldn’t mind. She was the sister voted most likely to share.”

Armani shook her head. “I don’t know how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“Survived three sisters.”

I glanced up at the five trees that framed the plot, remembering how the last time I’d been in the spot, my father had told me he and my mother had planted the trees in honor of their kids. Five trees. Four kids. The math didn’t add up. Now, just like then, I pushed the natural question away, having too much other stuff on my mind to even entertain it, let alone figuring out the riddle.

Oblivious to my distraction, Armani continued. “My brother was more than enough competition when I was growing up.”

“It wasn’t a competition.” In truth, we’d banded together to survive the insanity of our unstable parents and crazy aunts.

“If you say so.” With a sleight of hand that would impress a world class magician, Armani dangled a purple cloth bag in front of me. “Pull.”

Instinctively I leaned away. “Why me?”

“Because you’ve got all kinds of ancestral juju flowing through you in this spot. I told you I need you as my lightning rod.”

“The only ‘ancestor’ who’s here is my grandmother.” I pointed to her headstone, set slightly apart from that of my sisters. “And she didn’t like me. In fact, she delighted in calling me extraordinarily ordinary, so I don’t think she’s going to help us out. Plus the only reason she’s even here is that she bought the plot because she was afraid of being alone for eternity.”

Armani frowned. “That’s sad.”

“It’s pathetic.”

“Some of us are only afraid of being alone for a lifetime.” She shook the bag, making the wooden Scrabble tiles inside rattle like a macarena. “Pull.”

While I sympathized, all I could think was how much I’d like to be alone without my dysfunctional family, demanding pets, and crazy friends.

But there was no point in telling Armani that. I could tell from her expression that she was hellbent on getting this, whatever this was, done.

Reaching into the bag, I plucked out seven letters one at a time.

“Excellent.” Snatching the bag away, she headed back toward the car, leaving me to follow her.

I glanced at the letters I held: D, D, E, E, I, K, M, wondering what she’d make of them.

Before leaving I crouched down in front of Teresa’s gravestone, resting my hand against the cool, rough surface, I touched her engraved name. “I’m doing my best,” I whispered, hoping she could hear me on whatever spiritual plane she existed.  The responsibility of caring for her daughter weighed heavily on me. “But I’m scared, Teresa. I’m scared it’s too much for me.” Tears burned my eyes as I choked out, “I don’t want to let you down.”

Hanging my head, I allowed the tears to fall and spotted the gardenias on her tombstone again.

“Weird,” I muttered again.

Teresa had been terribly allergic to them. She hated gardenias.

After driving Armani home, I headed over to the hospital under the guise of visiting my niece, Katie. What I really wanted to do was to see if I could find out how Patrick was doing, but since he was in a completely different wing of the hospital, I wasn’t sure how I could do that without attracting unwanted attention.

I went to Katie’s room first, but the only occupant was Dominic, the little boy who lay unconscious in the other bed. Dominic is the grandson of Delveccio, the mobster I sometimes do work for. As a favor to me, Katie and Dominic share a room so Katie is better protected. But today I hadn’t spotted Delveccio’s hired muscle (and nephew) hanging around.

Feeling sorry for the little boy, I smoothed the hair off his forehead and whispered in his ear, “C’mon, Dominic. We’re all waiting for you. Just open your eyes.”

“She’s in physical therapy,” a woman said from the doorway.

Startled, I whirled to find my Aunt Leslie watching me.

“You’re here early.” She stepped inside, a book tucked beneath her arm.

“The office is closed. Some massive computer glitch shut everything down.” Personally I thought the technical difficulty had been caused by my lecherous boss, Harry, who was rumored to be taking off to Vegas to marry the animal control officer Armani had set him up with, but I wasn’t going to complain about an extra day off.

“That’s nice, dear.” Leslie sank into the chair beside Katie’s empty bed and stared off into space.

Against my better judgment, I found myself asking, “Something bothering you?”

“Susan.”

Aunt Susan, her older sister, is the most normal of my three aunts.

“What about her?”

“I’m worried about her.”

She wasn’t the only one. Recently I’d glimpsed cracks in the façade of the controlling woman.

“She doesn’t do well as a leg,” Leslie declared.

“As a what?” I asked.

“A leg. The side of a triangle. Didn’t you learn anything in school?”

“Math wasn’t my strong suit.”

“Geometry,” Leslie corrected.

“Math. Geometry. Algebra. All are not my friend.” Just the memory of equations being written on a chalkboard was enough to sour my stomach. “But I still don’t understand how she’s a leg.”

Leslie looked at me as though I was too dumb to have even made it through school. “In the love triangle.”

“Oh,” I nodded, suddenly understanding her reference. “The love triangle.”

For most of my life, my three aunts filled three roles. Leslie was the mellow druggie (but now she’s clean and mean), her sister Loretta was the nymphomaniac (but now it seems she’s found true love with her fiancé, Templeton), and Susan was the strict spinster (but now she was being chased by not one, but two men).

“You should talk to her,” Leslie suggested.

“And say what?”

“Help her choose between them.”

I shook my head. I liked both of Aunt Susan’s would-be suitors. I wasn’t sure why she broke up with Bob the Builder, but he was a nice guy. I even like the other guy, Griswald, who had become besotted with her, even though he was a U.S. Marshal, which, considering my considerable criminal behavior, could pose a problem for me.

“Somebody has to talk to her and Lord knows we don’t want Loretta spouting all her soulmate shit.”

I blinked, wordless. So shocked by the fact Leslie had just cursed in front of me, my vocal cords seized up.

“I have to read now.” Leslie thumped her book for emphasis. “Are you going to just stand there staring at me or are you going to make yourself scarce?”

I turned around and strode out of the room, thinking about how much nicer she’d been as a pothead.

I was wandering aimlessly down the hallway when one of the nurses stopped me. “There you are, Maggie.”

She was one of Katie’s favorite caregivers so I smiled at her. “How are you, Marissa?”

“Good. Good.  Stacy was here looking for you just a little while ago.”

“Stacy Kiernan, the social worker?” I asked.  I liked Stacy—she’d worked at the hospital when Katie was first admitted.

“Yeah,” Marissa said. “Her boyfriend’s brother is in the ICU, so she came looking for you while he’s down there. I told her I didn’t think you’d be in until this evening.”

“Computer problems at work,” I explained.

“Lucky you. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know. She’s probably still sitting around in ICU.”

I barely contained the joy that welled up inside of me. This was the perfect excuse to check up on Patrick. “Thanks, Marissa. I’ll go find her.”

“See ya later.” With a quick wave, she was gone and I set out for the previously forbidden wing of the hospital.

I hurried to the end of the hospital, intent on finding Patrick. It was easy to identify which room he was in. I just followed the dull roar that emanated from one of the hallways. A dozen or more cops, some in uniform, some not, milled around talking to one another in low tones.

I gulped. If I wasn’t very careful, it would be easy to violate the
Don’t Get Caught
rule. I was about to oh-so-nonchalantly continue my stroll down the hallway, when they suddenly fell silent. My curiosity got the better of me and I paused to find out why.

A woman in a wheelchair rolled out of one of the rooms, her expression grim. I guessed she was Patrick’s wife. My assumption was verified when a young man stepped behind the wheelchair. I recognized Patrick’s son immediately from a photograph he’d once shown me.

A surge of guilt had me turning away. I had no right to be there, checking up on the man they both considered family. I took a step away as shame over my relationship with the redheaded cop flowed through me. But the opportunity to study the woman who was married to the man I was pretty sure I was in love with had me turning back.

I hadn’t turned around for more than a second before I spotted Brian Griswald, a police detective who happened to be related to one of the members of Aunt Susan’s love triangle standing in the hallway. I ducked away, hoping he hadn’t noticed me.

Frustration tightened every muscle in my body. There was no way I’d get to Patrick with all of those potential witnesses hanging out in the corridor.

“There you are,” a friendly chirped from behind me.

Turning, I found the social worker formerly assigned to Katie, standing there. “Hi, Stacy.”

Throwing her arms around me, she crushed me to her. “I was looking for you.”

“So I heard. That’s why I’m here.” I tried to gently disentangle from her rib-crushing embrace. “Is your boyfriend okay?”

“His brother was trimming trees and the chainsaw got away from him,” she replied.

It sounded pretty awful to me, but she sounded matter-of-fact about it.

“But he’s not my boyfriend.” She waggled her fingers under my nose, showing off a sparkly diamond ring. “He’s my fiancé.”

“Congratulations.” I offered her a genuine smile. Sure she could be overly chipper most of the time, and she’d once cried on my shoulder about how much she hated working at this hospital, but I actually liked the woman. “How far you’ve come.”

“I know.” She grinned like a kid on Christmas before growing serious. “And I hear Katie has come really far too.”

“She has.” Instinctively, I glanced over at the cops, half-expecting one of them to know how I paid Katie’s hospitalization bills. “You were right when you advised me to keep her here.”

“And you did it.” She clapped her hands together in delight, a move that brought a smile to my lips. “I don’t know how, but whatever you did to keep her here was worth it.”

I nodded, hoping my smile didn’t slip. What I’d done to ensure Katie receiving the best medical care was I’d murdered someone. Two someones actually. Two bad someones, but my choice still weighed heavily on me.

“You look tired,” Stacy remarked. “Are you okay?”

“No rest for the wicked,” I joked weakly.

“Is there anything—?”

“Hi, Maggie,” a familiar male voice interrupted.

I turned slowly to face him, suddenly wanting to throw up as part of my brain reverberated with
Don’t Get Caught!
Plastering on my best fake smile. “Hey, Brian. What are you doing here?”

The police detective studied my face carefully. “You don’t know?”

I shook my head, afraid if I spoke, he’d hear the lie.

“Patrick Mulligan is a patient. He was poisoned.”

“Oh!” I gasped doing my best to appear shocked. “That’s terrible.”

“Is he a friend of yours?’ Stacy butted in.

Grateful for the opportunity to turn away from Griswald’s prying eyes, I pivoted toward the social worker. “He saved my dog’s life.” Since that’s true, I didn’t think the detective would find it suspicious.

“Wow,” Stacy sounded suitably impressed.