Further Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (5 page)

“No, it’s not a game. You almost killed me. You can’t—”

Ignoring my protestations, she enthusiastically licked my face. “Maggie love. Maggie love.”

Pushing her away, I struggled to my feet. “Don’t do that again. You almost broke my wrist.” I held it up, pointing at the red welts where the leash had cut into my skin. “See what you did?”

Doomsday hung her head.

I glared at her. “You hurt me.”

“Sorry.” The apology came out as a pathetic whine.

My knees hurt, my wrist ached, and I’d almost gotten fired. I had every right to be pissed at the badly behaved mutt. Didn’t I?

Doomsday pawed at my shin. “Doomsday sorry.”

“Margaret?”

I closed my eyes. Like my day wasn’t bad enough.

“Margaret?”

I turned around to face the car that had pulled to a stop behind me and forced myself to smile. It made my cheeks hurt as much as my knees. “Hi, Aunt Susan, what are you doing here?”

“Move slowly, Margaret. Don’t startle it. Just get in the car.”

There was no missing the panic in my normally calm and collected aunt’s voice and face. My fake smile morphed into a genuine one. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. That’s a dangerous animal. Get away from it!”

Doomsday turned around to look behind her. “Animal where?”

Throwing open the door of her car, Susan leapt out brandishing a folded-up umbrella.

“So much for moving slowly.”

“I’ll hit it.” She raised the umbrella overhead. “You jump in the car.”

“No.”

“Margaret, that dog is dangerous.”

“Doomsday?” the dog whined.

“Shoo!” Susan shouted.

Doomsday ran behind me, burying her head into the back of my knees, almost knocking me over.

“Calm down, Aunt Susan. She’s not going to hurt anyone. She’s a good dog.”

“Good dog,” Doomsday repeated.

“Get away from my niece, you vicious beast!” Susan took a wild swing in the canine’s direction.

“Give me that!” I shouted, grabbing the umbrella and yanking it away from her. “She’s my dog and you’re scaring her.”

Aunt Susan’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open. The only other time I’d witnessed such an expression of horror on her face was when the police had broken her favorite vase as they tried to arrest my father in her living room. Aunt Susan is not an animal lover. In particular she complains about the smell and mess dogs make. But the truth is, she’s absolutely terrified of the four-legged creatures.

Doomsday ripped the umbrella from my grip and chomped on it. It made a sickening crunch.

“Bad dog! Stop that!” Grabbing it away from her, I held it out to my aunt.

“It has . . . teeth marks.”

She was right. There were distinct puncture marks ripping through the material. “Sorry about that. She didn’t mean it.”

“It’s a dangerous animal, Maggie. I think it has rabies. It could attack at any second.”

Doomsday rolled on her back, belly exposed, in the most submissive posture imaginable. She wiggled her stump of a tail.

“Oh yeah,” I drawled. “She’s definitely vicious. I can see why you’re afraid.”

“I can understand that you’ve been shaken up by all that’s happened,” Susan said slowly. “Heaven knows, we all have been.”

I felt a twinge of guilt as I heard a slight waver in my aunt’s voice.

She cleared her throat, regaining control of her emotions. “And I understand that you’re probably feeling alone, but that . . . thing . . .” She slid a sideways glance in Doomsday’s direction.

The dog grinned back at her, displaying all her sharp teeth.

Susan shuddered. “That thing is not the solution to your problems. You should move back home.”

“Never!” I spit out automatically. I’d rather have monkey sex with Harry than move back home.

“Would it be so bad to be with your family who loves you?”

I resisted telling her that their love was smothering. More than that, they drove me crazy. “I like being on my own.”

Turning away, she got back in her car.

“Is that why you came by? To tell me to come home?”

“It’s nice having Alice hanging around. It would be nicer if you were there too. You wouldn’t have to pay rent. You could eat something that isn’t designed to be heated in the microwave. It bothers the twins that you’re here all alone.”

“I’m not alone.” I pointed to Doomsday.

Susan shook her head. “You’re . . .”

“I’m what?”

“You’re the only one we have left, Margaret,” she said softly, before closing the door and driving away.

Chapter Five

T
HE NEXT MORNING
as I was taking my shower, before I went to work at Insuring the Future, I heard a distant, unfamiliar ringing. It started and stopped, started and stopped, started and . . .

“Answer the damn phone,” God bellowed. His words echoed off the glass of his terrarium as though he’d shouted in the middle of the Grand Canyon.

Turning off the water, I stepped out of the tub. “It’s not my phone!” My house phone had a decidedly muffled ring because I kept it under my bed. I never wanted to speak to anyone who had that number. My cell phone quacked like a duck. I definitely heard a trilling ring, which stopped abruptly the moment I wrapped a towel around my torso.

“The bloody phone is in your purse!” God screamed when it started to ring again.

I’d forgotten that Patrick had given me a burn phone. One that only he had the number of.

“Answer it! Answer it!” The lizard was beating on the glass wall of his enclosure as though he’d been driven mad by the sound.

“Chill, big guy.” I rummaged in my purse while staring at him. If it’s possible for a lizard to be bug-eyed, he was.

“Hello?”

“Morning, Mags. I didn’t wake you, did I?” I could practically hear the warm smile in Patrick’s voice.

“I was in the shower. You could have left a message instead of calling a dozen times.” I tried to push Doomsday away from me, but she was intent on licking the shower water off my ankles.

“I wanted to talk to you before you left for work.”

“About what?”

“A lesson.”

I swallowed hard. The one and only “lesson” we’d had consisted of me learning to shoot a gun and then rolling around in the hay of a barn together. That close physical contact had left me considering the possibility of having sex with the cop/hitman . . . that is until I’d learned he was married . . . with two wives. Still, the memory of our bodies pressed together . . .

“Are you there, Mags?”

“Hey! That tickles! Will you get off of me for two seconds?” I shoved the dog, who’d worked her way up to my knees, intent on getting every last bit of moisture off my skin with her pink tongue.

“You should have said you weren’t alone.” Patrick’s tone was cold and hard.

“Stop licking my legs!” I shrieked.

“Jesus,” Patrick muttered. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Bad dog!” I swatted Doomsday’s nose.

The dog lay down and whined, “Sorry Doomsday.”

“Next time I’m going to lock you up.” My threat caused the dog to flatten her ears.

“You’re talking to the dog?” Patrick asked.

“Who else would I be talking to?”

God made a harrumphing sound, reminding me that he was a sterling conversationalist.

“I thought . . . never mind. I want you to meet me for a lesson.”

“I’ve got work and then I’m visiting Katie.”

“Afterward.”

“That’s usually when I eat dinner.”

“I promise you won’t starve. I’ll see you at the mall at seven.”

I looked at the dog, who’d rolled over on her back and was surreptitiously licking my big toe. “Can’t. I’ve got to let the dog out.”

“Bring her along. I’ll see both of you at the mall at seven-thirty. Have a good day.” He hung up.

It was my turn to harrumph. The idea of me having a good day was about as likely as my crazy mother saying something rational.

S
PEAKING OF CRAZY
women, Armani Vasquez was stalking me. Every time I looked up from my desk at Insuring the Future, she was watching me, but the moment she realized I saw her, she looked away, ducking behind her sheet of thick black hair. She not only observed me from her desk, but I saw her peeking at me through the fronds of the plastic potted palm by the ladies’ room, furtively glancing at me when she stood by the copier, and stealing a quick look from behind the coffeemaker.

I felt like I was under surveillance, but instead of Big Brother watching me, I had the semi-psychic, semi-paralyzed, totally loco Latina chick noting my every move.

I, of course, reacted with grace under pressure. Whenever I caught her staring I alternated flipping her the bird, sticking my tongue out, and circling my finger by my ear in the universal sign of
You’re a fucking loon
.

This netted me some strange looks from my other coworkers.

Finally, when lunchtime rolled around, I called her on her bizarre behavior. She was sitting outside at our favorite picnic table, her back to me, when I walked up to her and rapped my knuckles against the table to get her attention.

Startled, she turned toward me. “Hey, Chiquita,” she said, as though it was the first time she’d seen me that day. “
Que pasa?
”

“Don’t you
que pasa
me. What the hell are you up to?”

“What do you mean?” She had the sense to look away.

“What’s with watching my every move?”

“You should sit.”

“I don’t want to sit. I want an answer.”

“Sit, Maggie.”

Her tone was so sad and serious that a sense of foreboding pooled in the pit of my stomach. I sank onto the bench opposite her. “Is something wrong? Are you sick? What’s going on?”

“I was worried about you.”

“Me? Why?”

“I started dreaming about the spider web again.”

A chill swept through me.

She had dreamed about a crystal spider web before the terrible car accident that had killed my sister, landed my niece in a coma, and bestowed the ability to talk to animals on me. Unable to make sense of her vision, Armani hadn’t told me about it until afterward, when she’d shown me the sketch she’d made of the web. It had matched the pattern of the car’s cracked windshield perfectly.

That, along with her bizarre prediction to “meet the man,” which ended up being the way I killed Gary the Gun, has made me a semi-believer in her semi-accurate prophecies.

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Interpreting isn’t my strong suit. I just get the visions. I suck at figuring out what they mean, but I’m thinking the web combined with RUF RIDE means you should stay away from cars.”

“Stay away from cars? How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“I’m sure Harry would be happy to set up a cot for you in his office.”

“I’d rather die.”

She chuckled, but then grew somber. “Seriously, Chiquita. I’m worried about you. You need to be careful.”

“Is that why you were stalking me?”

“I was trying to read your aura.”

“My aura?”

She nodded excitedly. “My grandmother could read auras. Maybe I can too.”

“I thought you read Scrabble tiles . . . and had those prophetic dreams. Now you can read auras too? What the hell are you doing working here? I’m sure California Psychics would give you a job in an instant.”

Tears filled Armani’s eyes and she turned away from me.

I felt about two inches tall. She was my friend, trying to help me, and I’d gone and made fun of her for it. “I’m sorry.”

She ignored me. Not that I could blame her.

“I didn’t mean it. I’m just really stressed out.” Because a mob boss wants me to kill a drug dealer that I used to call Uncle.

“Youneedewetaid,” she muttered.

“What?”

She turned to look at me. “You need to get laid,” she shouted.

Our coworkers, intentionally inhaling carcinogens by the door, stopped puffing long enough to laugh at my expense.

My cheeks burned. “That’s your solution to everything.”

“It would certainly fix things with Harry.”

“Not funny.”

“But true.”

“Not happening.”

“What about the cop?”

An image of red-haired, green-eyed Patrick sprang to mind, but I knew that wasn’t who she was referring to. She meant muscle-bound Paul. “I don’t trust him.”

“News flash, Chiquita: You don’t have to trust ’em to screw ’em.”

Wise words.

A
FTER WORK, A
day that was mercifully Harry-free, I went to visit Katie. Before I entered her room, I knew by the telltale clicking that Aunt Susan was there, pecking away at her computer keyboard like a crazed woodpecker.

“Hello, Margaret.” She didn’t look up from her typing.

“Hi.” I bent over Katie and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Hey there, Baby Girl. Aunt Maggie is here.” I held my breath, hoping that she’d open her eyes.

She didn’t.

I sighed my disappointment, which made Susan’s fingers falter. The sudden silence echoed through the room.

Taking Katie’s tiny hand in mine, I sank into the seat beside her bed. I sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Even that didn’t garner a response from her. I swallowed down the painful lump that rose in my throat. The doctors had said her recovery, if she made one, would be slow, but I kept hoping for a miracle. Every day that she failed to improve, my sense of optimism wavered.

Aunt Susan cleared her throat. “You’ll never guess who Alice brought by last night.”

I looked over at her and saw that she too had unshed tears in her eyes. “Who?”

“Zeke.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I saw him last night.”

“Where?”

“At The Big Day. We were looking for a wedding dress for her and he popped up like some deranged fairy godmother, pulling out the perfect gown.”

“He’s a nice boy. He was always patient with your mother.”

I didn’t say anything. Aunt Susan had always had a soft spot for Zeke. I couldn’t expect her to understand that beneath his smooth charm lurked the heart of an evil wizard, able to cast a spell over everyone I knew.

“Alice said the dress he chose was perfect, everything she’d dreamed of finding.”

“She does look beautiful in it,” I admitted grudgingly.

“Lamont didn’t like the fact she brought Zeke home. I was afraid he was going to sit on the poor boy.”

Hope surged through me, lifting my spirits and bringing a smile to my face. Finally! Someone who saw Zeke for the conniving little weasel he is! My fondness for Alice’s fiancé tripled in that moment. “He’s not a boy. He’s my age.”

She tilted her head and considered that. “But he’s not bitter, which makes him seem younger.”

Frowning, I looked away.

“His family disowned him,” Susan reminded me quietly, before I had a chance to launch into my litany of reasons why I was bitter. “Do you remember how you begged us to take him in?”

I nodded. The anti-drug campaign had been in full swing at our high school when Zeke had called the cops on his own drug-dealing father at the end of our junior year. When his dad was sent to prison, his mother kicked Zeke out of the house for “destroying the family.”

Way back then, I’d felt a sort of kinship with Zeke since we had the most fucked-up families in the neighborhood. That and the fact I’d nursed a crush on him when we were juniors. He’d needed a place to stay until he finished high school, so I’d asked my aunts to help my friend/crush, but everything changed our senior year. That’s when I’d found out that he was gay and it was when he’d tried to steal my best friend.

I sighed. “I made a mistake.”

“You made me proud.”

I snapped my attention back to her. Her eyes were trained on her computer screen. “Really?”

“I’m constantly surprised by what you’re capable of, Margaret.”

The conversation went no further than that, because Aunt Loretta teetered in, pollinating the room with air kisses and taking over the conversation. I couldn’t tell if she was wearing even more blush than usual, or if she was hot and bothered about something.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

She frowned at me. “Are you going to wear a tuxedo?”

I looked to Aunt Susan for a clue as to what the hell her sister was talking about. She shrugged at me helplessly, her fingers hovering above her keyboard. “A tuxedo?” I asked Aunt Loretta.

“To the wedding!”

“To your wedding?” I asked, totally confused.

“Heaven help us,” Aunt Susan muttered, and began banging away on her computer with undue vigor.

“Not
my
wedding,” Aunt Loretta huffed. “How vulgar!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I confessed, feeling the dull throb of a headache take root behind my eyes.

“To Alice’s wedding! Are you wearing a tuxedo to Alice’s wedding?”

“I’m wearing a tutu.”

Aunt Susan’s clickety-clacking stopped long enough for her to ask, “Really? She’s having you wear a tutu?”

I shook my head. “No. It just looks like a tutu. It’s pink and frilly and has this giant crinoline skirt.”

“Ughhh,” Loretta groaned.

Apparently, in her estimation, a tutu was even more vulgar than wearing a tuxedo to her wedding. And I hadn’t even mentioned that it was cotton candy pink.

“So no tuxedos,” I told her with faux cheeriness.

“He can’t wear a tutu.” Loretta tapped her stiletto for emphasis.

“Lamont?” I asked.

She stopped tapping and looked at me as though I were even crazier than her sister, my mom, who is locked up in the nuthouse. “Why would Lamont wear a tutu?”

“Loretta!” Aunt Susan said sharply. “Why are you going on about tuxedos and tutus?”

Her sister blinked her false eyelashes, signaling she was hurt by Susan’s tone. “I wasn’t the one who brought up tutus.”

Aunt Susan glared at her. “Tuxedo?”

“What’s Zeke going to wear to the wedding?”

The throbbing behind my eyes increased to the intensity of war drums. I had a horrible feeling that I knew where this was going. “Why would it matter what Zeke wears?”

“Because,” Aunt Loretta said, “Alice asked him to be one of her bridesmaids.”

Even though I’d suspected as much, the confirmation still stung. I turned away from my aunts so they wouldn’t see the tears I was fighting. Blindly I picked up a pink teddy bear that had been sent to Katie.

“You’re a bull in a china shop, Loretta,” Aunt Susan chided.

“What?” Aunt Loretta asked. “It’s a legitimate concern.”

“She didn’t know,” Aunt Susan said gently.

“Oh. I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Margaret.”

“It’s okay,” I said, my back still to them. “One would assume that the bride would let her maid of honor in on such decisions.”