“Well, don’t give up.” Agnes grabbed a glass and poured Lisa Livia two fingers of bourbon and slid it across to her. “You haven’t thought this through. Just because the body wasn’t there today doesn’t mean it wasn’t there last week.”

“You think she could have gotten a twenty-five-year-dead body up that ladder and out through the gazebo?” Lisa Livia said, skepticism thick in her voice.

“I think she’s capable of chopping a twenty-five-year-dead body into paperweights, carting them out in a basket, and selling them to the Daughters of the Confederacy as memento mori.” Agnes poured herself a glass. “We’re talking Brenda here. Do not give up hope. It is still entirely possible that your mother bashed your rather with that frying pan twenty-five years ago, and that he’s still deader than a doornail today.”

Lisa Livia’s lips quirked as she straightened and picked up her glass. “Yeah. No point in hoping that my mother’s innocent and my father’s alive.”

“Exactly.” Agnes lifted her glass. “Why look for a silver lining when there might be a cloud? If South Carolina has the death penalty, there could be an orphanage in your future yet.” She clinked her glass with LL’s and drank, and Lisa Livia laughed shortly and drank, too.

“Okay,” she said when she’d drained her glass. “There’s still hope.”

Agnes looked at LL’s empty glass. “I don’t suppose you’d want to pace yourself.”

“I don’t suppose,” Lisa Livia said, putting her glass on the counter. “Hit me, I’m having a bad day.” She looked over at the Venus. “Hit her, too.”

“She has enough problems.” Agnes looked for something to distract LL from more bourbon, went over to the CD player, and punched up the song she’d been playing that morning before breakfast. “Remember this song? You had this on when you bailed me out after I cracked Rich with the frying pan. You made me sing it with you in the car on the way home, remember?”

Lisa Livia bit her lip and looked away.

“There is no good reason,” Agnes sang as she leaned over the counter to LL, “we should be so all alone.”

LL took Agnes’s bottle of bourbon and poured herself another glass and then joined in, and they belted out the Chicks paean to self-pity. “God, I love the Chicks,” Agnes said when the song was done and she’d moved the bourbon out of LL’s reach. “And God do I need them this week.”

“They’ve gotten us through some real bad times,” Lisa Livia said, pushing her empty glass across the counter as “Hello Mr. Heartache” began. “Hit me. Again.”

“If you could slow down a little,” Agnes said, “I could use some help destroying your mother.”

“Right, the house.” Lisa Livia nodded. “How’s that goin’?”

“I’ve decided to take your advice and embrace the killer within, and I’m trying to be a colder, more effective murderous bitch. No emotion. Run silent, run deep. The female Shane.”

“Oh,” Lisa Livia said. “Well. Glad I could help.”

They looked at each other and Agnes poured them each another drink while they tried to work out a plan. All of Lisa Livia’s ended up with “and sink her damn boat,” so Agnes eventually called a halt to both the planning and the liquid refreshment.

“I can’t get drunk,” she said as she sipped her last one, knowing she was well on her way. “I have to write a column and make wedding cakes and write a column today. And you have to prepare to be a mother of a bride. All of this mess is making us forget the wedding. Our little Maria is getting married to a rich kid who loves her. To Maria!” She lifted her glass to Lisa Livia.

“I can get drunk,” Lisa Livia said, and then added, “To Maria!” and knocked the rest of her drink back.

“Okay, then.” Agnes put her drink aside and got out her mixing bowl, trying to keep her mind from sliding back to the chaos of real life, because she was going to stay cool and calm. She thought of Shane, walking through the kitchen the night before, firing that gun with no expression on his face. Yeah, that was gonna be her from now on.

“Speaking of Maria…” Lisa Livia slid her now-empty glass across the counter and picked up Agnes’s full one. “Are you ready for this? Brenda’s been sabotaging Palmer, too. Remember I told you she’s been telling Maria that Palmer is just like his daddy, the drunken whoremonger?”

“Right.” Agnes went to the refrigerator for butter, sour cream, milk, and eggs.

“Well, she’s been telling Palmer that Maria’s marrying him for his money.”

Agnes stopped and turned around, her arms full. “And he believes this garbage?”

“She’s subtle. She just tells him how excited Maria is about living in a big house and having great cars and lots of clothes and big diamonds. He asked me about it, trying to be discreet, poor dork, and I told him Maria doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that, but Brenda’s been working on him for a while. He really believes it, and it’s giving him cold feet. And having that moron Hammond hanging around isn’t making him feel any better.”

“Crap,” Agnes said, transferring ingredients to the counter. “Okay, so I’ll fix that, and then we’ll have the wedding, and Brenda will lose the house and die screaming, ‘I’m melting, I’m melting.’“ It sounded like a plan to her, but Lisa Livia looked skeptical.

“I don’t think my mother’s going to be that easy to defeat. Not without holy water and a stake.”

“Reverend Miller will call again tomorrow morning to ask if Maria’s ever been a whore,” Agnes said. “I’ll ask him to bring some holy water to the wedding to sprinkle on Brenda. He’s met her. He’ll understand.”

Agnes went to the sink to fill her measuring cup with water, glanced out the window at the sun sparkling on the water, and froze.

There was an old paint-peeling yacht easing up to the shore, bobbing up and down in concert with the floating dock, taunting her. It banged clumsily against the rubber bumpers and then the engine cut, and Brenda climbed over the side onto the dock to secure the mooring lines.

“Fucking bitch,” Agnes said, and dropped her measuring cup. “What now?”

“Your mother has her goddamned yacht moored off my dock!”

“What?” Lisa Livia came around the counter to look out the window. “I’ll be damned.” She shook her head in reluctant admiration. “She’s getting ready to move back.”

“Bitch,” Agnes said again, staring at the boat. “We’re sinking that damn thing.”

“Now?” Lisa Livia said, sounding sedated but ready.

“No, I have to make cake now.” Agnes went into the pantry and then began taking ingredients off the shelves-cake flour, sugar, baking powder, coconut, plus the supplies that Shane had brought back from Savannah-and then brought them out and dumped them all on the counter.

Lisa Livia caught one of the tubs of icing as it almost rolled off.

“Ick,” she said. “What’s on this? It’s sort of sticky.” She looked closer. “This is blood.”

“Well, Shane picked it up for me.” Agnes got a paper towel and wiped off the tub.

“Thoughtful of him.” Lisa Livia went to wash her hands several times and then poured herself another shot of bourbon. “So, you serious about him?”

“No,” Agnes said. “I’m not even going to sleep with him anymore.”

“Right.” Lisa Livia tossed back her drink, tried to sit down on the stool, and fell on the floor.

“So how we doin’ here?” Agnes went around the counter and helped her up.

“My mother is a liar and a cheat and a murderer,” Lisa Livia said when she was back on the stool. “And she’s had her face lifted. Twice.”

“Well, now I’ve lost all respect for her,” Agnes said.

Lisa Livia regarded her seriously. “You really have changed.”

“I’ve matured,” Agnes said, looking out the kitchen window at Brenda’s yacht. I have a lot on my plate right now and I’m holding on by my fingernails. But as soon as I get a grip here, which is going to be shortly, I swear, Brenda and her boat are going down.

That’s a felony, Agnes. You’ll need a really good plan.

Dr. Garvin?

“Agnes?”

“We’re going to be all right, LL,” Agnes said, and took the glass away from her.

“This ain’t such a good idea,” Garth said, peering around the Defender at the swamp.

Another critic, Shane thought as he opened the back of the truck. “I just want to talk to your grandfather.”

“He ain’t the talking type.”

Shane looked down the thin trail, too narrow to drive down, squinting to see where it disappeared into the gloomy green. Slightly higher forested ground competed with lower areas covered with black water full of reeds, trees struggling to stay alive, and who knew what kind of nefarious wildlife. Besides the Thibault clan.

He opened the locker in the back of the truck and lifted out a plastic case. Flipping it open, he pulled out a gun that resembled a submachine gun, except it had a large plastic hopper on the top.

“You going to use a paintball gun?” Garth asked in disbelief as Shane screwed a C02 canister on below the barrel and poured small round balls into the hopper. “My cousins ain’t gonna think that’s funny. They use real guns.”

Shane cocked the weapon. “This isn’t loaded with paintballs.” He picked up one of the small round balls and held it out for Garth to see. “These are pepper balls. They hold hot pepper and break on impact. Stings to get hit by the projectile in the first place; then the hot pepper is an irritant that causes coughing and a burning on the skin in the eyes and mouth. Pretty much incapacitates anyone it hits. You don’t want me killing all your relatives, do you?”

Garth seemed to take the question seriously for a few moments. “Nah.” He was still looking at the gun. “You got one for me?”