Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

I
T IS IMPOSSIBLE
to feel that you are anything but the world’s biggest idiot during Insuring the Future’s quarterly staff meetings. It’s not because the information they’re passing along is difficult to understand, but rather it’s because they deliver it to you as though you’re a kindergartner.

Who’s been kept back.

Twice.

Patrick had insisted that I stick with my regular routine, meaning showing up for this mind-rotting, soul-sucking day at work, while he drew up a plan to deal with Gary the Gun.

While I sat in the World’s Most Boring Meeting Ever, I kept myself entertained by coming up with different ways to kill Harry, the World’s Most Annoying Boss Ever. My favorite so far was rigging that damn laser pointer he was so fond of to explode in his hand. I wasn’t certain that would kill him, but I did think it would be pretty damn satisfying to watch him screaming and bleeding.

Armani of course, strolled, or more accurately limped, into the meeting late, so we didn’t get to sit together. Midway through the first hour, she got up and walked out for a potty break. This pleased me because it was obvious that it irritated Harry, who followed her painfully slow progress out the door. When she came back in, she whispered something in the ear of one of my co-workers seated near me . . . Laura? Laurie? Lauren? . . . one of those, and handed her a folded up piece of paper.

What happened next made me feel like I was back in junior high, as the note made its way down the aisle in my direction, with every single person communicating to the next who it was meant for. When it finally reached me, there was silence.

I stared at the folded up sheet of paper remembering the time Alice had slipped me a note in homeroom telling me that she had a date with . . . funny, but I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but he’d been my secret crush for most of the school year . . . and that she hoped I wouldn’t be mad at her. I had been. Furious.

Even worse than her betrayal is that Kurt, my teenage nemesis, and Alice’s second-best friend, had offered me his condolences when he’d found out. I wasn’t sure who I’d hated more at that point in time Alice or Kurt. The memory made me squeeze the paper as though I was wringing the life out of it.

Harry said something about “customer satisfaction” which felt like a cold slap across the face, bringing me back to the present.

I unfolded Armani’s note and read the three words she’d scribbled down: Doomsday is coming.

I considered crossing it out and sending it back to her with a note of my own which would have read: “WTF???”. Instead I spent the rest of the morning session wondering if she was commenting on the state of the meeting, or if it was another premonition she’d had.

If it was a premonition, then things weren’t looking up for my take-down of Gary the Gun. When we finally broke for lunch (meaning Harry said, “You’re dismissed”) I headed straight for our favorite picnic table to wait for Armani. While I sat there I gave my cell a quick check to see if Patrick had called. He hadn’t.

Aunt Leslie had. She apologized for being such a poor guest (which insinuated she’d been invited over, which, for the record, she hadn’t) and had, as I’d requested in the note I’d taped to the shirt she was wearing, left her key for my place on the kitchen table. She sounded hurt that I didn’t want her having free rein to invade my privacy any time she felt like it.

I think it’s important to mention that I never gave Aunt Leslie, or the other two, the key to my place. My sister, Theresa, bless her almost-saintly soul, took it upon herself to do that after I gave
her
the key in case she ever needed to get away from Dirk the Jerk.

“Hey there, Chiquita,” Armani greeted me with such a fake note of cheeriness, I winced.

“Hey there yourself, Queen of Doom and Gloom.” I waved the paper she’d had passed to me. “What’s this about?”

Settling into the seat opposite me, she tossed her mane of dark hair dramatically.

I wasn’t impressed.

“I had another dream. In it, I kept hearing those three words. Doomsday is coming. Doomsday is coming.”

“And you know for sure they’re a warning for me?”

“They could be for the entire world, but I was thinking I should keep that, if that’s the case, to myself. I probably shouldn’t go around telling a whole lot of people because there would just be worldwide panic and chaos.”

“I never knew you were such a humanitarian,” I told her.

“Seriously though, Maggie, I think it’s meant for you.”

I shrugged. The way my life was going I figured the odds were good she was right, but I didn’t tell her that.

“Did you meet the guy?”

“I’m meeting a guy for a dinner date. The one I told you about, the cop.”

“So this is like the third date with him, right?”

I nodded. I’d given her an abbreviated version of the debacle of a date Aunt Loretta had invaded.

“So you must really like him.”

And that was the million dollar question. Did I like Paul? On the one hand he seemed overly sure of his sexual attraction and had the nerve to order me a meal without even consulting me. On the other hand, he hadn’t yet been scared off by my crazy family, and he’d been awfully kind to Aunt Leslie.

“He brought me flowers. I hate them.”

“Flowers are a point in the winner column,” Armani mused. “And he took you to Angelo’s, that’s another thing in his favor.”

I nodded, but was thinking that God didn’t trust him.

“And he is hot enough to melt an iceberg.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I guessed. I mean you did agree to go out with him during your first meeting.”

“I’ve freed my inner Chiquita, and I’m living dangerously,” I said dryly. At least the living dangerously part was true, though if her doomsday prediction was on the money, I might not be doing that for too much longer.

Chapter Thirty-Six

S
TACY
K
IERNAN, THE
social worker who’d spilled her guts to me, was laying in wait when I got to the hospital for my daily after-work visit with Katie. To the untrained eye it probably looked as though she was just joking around at the nurse’s station, but I knew from the way her eyes darted in my direction the moment I walked through the doors that she was like a lioness after prey.

There was a time, not that long ago, when remarkably unremarkable Maggie Lee would have been alarmed by this development, but now I regularly interacted with hitmen and mobsters. . . . I ate hospital administrators for breakfast now.

“Maggie? Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” I followed her to the waiting area, amused that she chose the same seats we’d used last time. “How are you?”

“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I never really got the chance to thank you, but after our talk . . .” She glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

They weren’t. Why would they?

“After our talk my life got so much better. It’s done a complete turnaround.” She smiled an ear-to-ear grin as though that would prove that she was deliriously happy.

Considering it had only been a few days, I thought she was probably exaggerating. “That’s nice.”

“No, you don’t understand.” She grabbed my hand. “Everything’s changed. I inherited a house, I met a great, new guy, and I got a new job.”

“Congratulations. I’m happy for you.” I wasn’t. I was wondering if somehow she’d managed to transfer her bad luck to me, like you’d see in a movie or something.

“And I owe it all to you, Maggie. That’s why I’m sorry to bring this up.”

She let go of my hand, sat back, and put on her reading glasses, her own personal Bat-signal that she meant business. “About your niece’s bill . . .” She waited, one of those long expectant pauses that probably usually compelled whoever she was dealing with to blurt out a reply.

Just to fuck with her life-is-so-freakin-great head, I held my tongue. Not because I disliked her, but because I was sick to death of having everyone, Harry, Delveccio, Gary the Gun, call the shots.

She was finally forced to ask, “Have you come up with the money?”

“I’m waiting to find out if an investment I made will pay off.”

“Will you know soon?”

“In the next couple of days.”

She nodded approvingly. “Good. Good. I gave notice and leave in five days.”

“Your new job isn’t here?”

She shook her head. “No. I hate this job. I never wanted this,” she waved her hands as though to encompass the whole hospital. “I want to help people. Like you helped me.”

“Oh.” Now I was feeling guilty for messing with her.

“I’m going to bury Katie’s paperwork as best I can, but at most, you’ll probably only have a week or so.”

“You’re going to do that for me?” I’ve got to admit I was surprised by her generosity. I’d only let the poor woman cry on my shoulder that one time, and here she was doing this incredibly generous thing for me. I felt guilty for my earlier thought about eating her.

“Oh course,” she said, flashing that huge smile again. “That’s what friends are for. It’s against company policy for us to socialize, but I hope that once I’ve left, we can get to know each other better.”

“I’d like that.”

“Okay, like I said, I’ll do what I can to keep her.” With that, Stacy hurried over to another patient’s family.

I made my way to Katie’s room. “Hey there, Baby Girl.”

No response.

I read
Where the Wild Things Are
to her for about the hundredth time, wondering if she heard me, wishing I knew whether or not she even knew I was there.

I fussed with her bedclothes, making sure she was tucked in just like she liked, with the covers pulled up to her chin, but not tucked too tight. I tried to tuck Dino under her arm, but I couldn’t find the stuffed toy. I looked under the bed, felt the sheets to make sure he hadn’t gotten lost under them, and even searched under the visitor’s chair. He was nowhere to be found, so instead I took her sagging hand and began singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

I remembered how she’d been giggling over the song when the car accident had occurred. It came back to me in flashes. Her crooked smile. Her twinkling eyes.

The skid. The roll. The screeching and squealing of metal. The impact. The pain.

I closed my eyes, trying to tamp down the remembered terror that was making my heart race.

“Quite the touching scene.”

Opening my eyes, I whirled to find Gary the Gun standing in the doorway.

“Fuck you!”

“If you want, but I’m not knocking any money off what you owe me.” He grinned, amused by his own joke.

“Get out!” I raised my voice, hoping it would attract the attention of a nurse or orderly.

“But I just got here.”

“You said I had seventy-two hours.”

“Indeed I did. I just wanted to see if you were sticking to your regular schedule.”

A chill skittered down my spine. This animal knew my schedule? “You’ll get your money.”

“As long as we understand one another.”

I didn’t reply; I just glared at him.

He didn’t look particularly intimidated.

“Oh hello,” Aunt Loretta called from the hallway. “Are you a friend of our Maggie?”

For once I was grateful for her interfering.

“Get out of my way,” Gary growled, pushing past her and stalking away.

I sagged weakly against Katie’s bed.

I couldn’t take much more of this.

“What a rude little man,” Aunt Loretta complained entering the room. “Is he a friend of yours?”

I shook my head.

Tilting her head, she examined me closely. “Are you feeling all right? You look . . . funny.”

That was probably because I was feeling sick to my stomach after my exchange with Gary. “I’m just tired.”

Aunt Loretta pressed her lips to my forehead and held them there for a long beat. This was her tried-and-true method of determining if one was running a temperature. “No fever,” she declared.

“I told you, I’m just tired.”

“That’s because you’re burning the candle at both ends, working, coming here, dating . . . how did your date go with that nice young man?”

So that was how she wanted to play it, like she hadn’t joined us uninvited, told him my father’s in the big house, and then fled the table in tears.

“It was nice.” I played along, and then because she was apprehensively eyeing me as though waiting for me to rip into about her meddling, I let her off the hook. “We’re going to have dinner again tonight.”

Before she could finish opening her mouth to speak, I told her, “And no, I’m not telling you where we’re going.”

She had the good grace to look away.

“Did Aunt Leslie make it home okay this morning?”

“About that . . .” Aunt Loretta didn’t often get cross with me . . . or with anyone for that matter. So when she did, it was something to behold. She crossed her arms over her barely covered chest, tapped her stilettoed foot impatiently, and gave me a look that would have made Aunt Susan proud. “She said you took her key away.”

“I asked her to leave it.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“I need my privacy.”

“That’s what you said when you moved out,” Aunt Susan complained from the doorway.

Loretta and I both spun in her direction. Neither of us had been aware of her arrival.

“Yes, that’s what adults do,” I countered. “They grow up. They move out. They value privacy.”

Strolling over to Katie’s bedside, Susan said, “You make it sound as though you were forced to share a room with twelve other orphans.”

Aunt Loretta chuckled at her sister’s joke. I did not.

Growing up, I’d shared a room with Theresa. Even though she had been older, I’d been the first to move out. My aunts had never forgiven me for “breaking up the family,” even though Marlene had actually been the first to jump ship, running away after her twin Darlene died.

The thought of Marlene squeezed my chest and caused my eyes to burn. Yet another loss I was never going to recover from. I’d spent so much time searching for her that first year after she ran away. Trying to find her, desperate to make things right. But every lead had resulted in a dead end. And when we didn’t hear from her after a couple of years, I gave up any hope she was still alive, let alone ever going to come home.

“Leslie is family,” Loretta reminded me, as though I hadn’t been aware of that little fact. “It’s not like she’s a stranger or something.”

“Aunt Leslie can’t be coming over to my place and passing out in front of my front door. If Paul hadn’t been there, I don’t know how I would have gotten her inside.”

“Who’s Paul?” Susan asked.

“Paul was there?” Loretta asked simultaneously.

“Paul is not the point!” I snarled.

“Just as I told you, she’s in an ill temper.” Loretta said to Susan who nodded in agreement.

If I’d had any doubts about whether or not they’d planned to gang up on me, now I was certain, when at that instant, Aunt Leslie stumbled in, “Sorry I’m late.”

“Only two visitors at a time,” I called, as though it could somehow ward off whatever spell the three witches were about to cast. I know you think that I’m exaggerating, or maybe just plain crazy, but when the three of them put their heads together about something, or in this case someone, which unfortunately meant me, they’re extraordinarily evil in their own “helpfully” meddlesome way. Okay, maybe not evil like Gary the Gun or Alfonso Cifelli, but they can make mere mortals, such as me, do things they normally wouldn’t.

As head of the coven, it fell to Aunt Susan to mutter the ancient incantation, “We want you to move home.”

“No.”

They looked a bit surprised that their spell hadn’t worked right off the bat, but, undaunted, the twins chanted the spell together. “We need you to move home.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I shook my head. “No way. And who are you,” I asked, pointing at Aunt Loretta, “to ask me to move home, when you’re practically selling the place out from under Aunt Susan?”

“But I’m not, Darling.”

“You’re not?” I looked to Susan for confirmation. She was nodding serenely.

“You dumped the rat?” I asked hopefully.

Loretta blinked her mascara-heavy eyes. “Templeton? Of course not.”

“Of course not,” I muttered dejectedly. That would have been too much to ask for.

“And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call him that.”

Bringing the conversation back on track with icy efficiency, Aunt Susan said, “We want you to move home. For a while. Nothing permanent. Just until things settle down.”

I shook my head. I was already going around killing people and talking to a lizard; moving in with these three would surely buy me an express ticket to Crazyville.

I looked at their hopeful faces. Loretta and Leslie were looking at me like kids hoping to receive permission to get a puppy, and Aunt Susan was regarding me with undisguised curiosity.

I wanted to shout,
Hell no!
Instead I said, “Thank you for the offer. I do appreciate it, but I just can’t accept.”

Loretta and Leslie looked crestfallen. You’d have thought I’d told them that
The National Enquirer
isn’t a real newspaper or something. Usually I felt annoyance when it came to my aunts, but at that moment all I felt was guilt for letting them down. After all, they had done a lot for me over the course of my life, and now all of them were showing up with regularity for Katie. “I will however make an effort to visit . . . and more . . . and more regularly.”

“Oh Maggie, that’s wonderful!” Aunts Loretta and Leslie cried out simultaneously, enveloping me in what they called an “L-and-L hug” when I was a kid.

“Family dinners!” Leslie cried.

“Sunday breakfasts,” Loretta declared.

While being smothered by the twins, it occurred to me that Aunt Susan hadn’t said a word. Craning my neck to peer around my other aunts’ arms, I looked for her.

When we made eye contact, she mouthed, “Thank you.” Then she hurriedly left the room, leaving me in the embrace of my two more emotional aunts.

And in that moment I felt pretty damn good.

And then Templeton the Rat sauntered in, his face still bruised from the attack by Aunt Loretta’s portrait.

He looked awfully damn smug.

“Look what I found,” he called, breaking up our family hug. He held up Dino and waved the stuffed toy like it was a winning lottery ticket. “It was in the waiting area.”

I eyed him suspiciously. I hadn’t seen it while I was with Stacy Kiernan. How had it gotten there?