SHE WROTE: And One More For The Road . . .

There was another scene after the Shane scene and before this one, but we figured this was the one you'd vote to see:


Agnes clutched her frying pan tighter as she felt her way through the dim moonlight in the narrow housekeeper’s room toward the bedside table and the lamp there, really hating the kid who’d made her feel afraid in her own home, even if he was dead now, hating even more that Joey thought she was in trouble.

“I told you nothing happened in here,” she called out, looking around for the cop. “It was all out in the kitchen.” Not that I’m upset with you, sir. Please don’t arrest me.

The wind blew the curtains away from the window by the bed, and she saw that the little bedside table was tipped over, and then somebody clamped a hand over her mouth and said, “Shhhh,” and her heart lurched sideways, and she swung the pan up over her head hard and connected with a smack that reverberated into her shoulders.

The guy wrenched the pan out of her hand. “Stop it. Joey sent me.”

She yanked away from him, and he let her go so that she stumbled, falling against the bed as she fumbled on the floor for the light and clicked it on, breathing hard.

He loomed up over her as her heart pounded, a big guy, dressed in black: black pants, black T, black denim jacket. He looked like he’d been hacked out of a block of wood: strong, weathered face; black, flat eyes--shark eyes, she thought, if this guy had come for me, I’d be dead—cropped dark hair going gray at the temples, now a little bloody on the right; tense, hard, squared-off body, all of it alert and concentrated on her. But the thing she noticed most as she tried to keep from having a heart attack was that he looked like Joey. Younger than Joey, bigger than Joey, but he looked like Joey.

She swallowed. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m Shane. Joey sent me.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen, no wasted movement. “Who’s out there?”

Agnes got to her feet, wishing she had her frying pan back. “Shane. Okay, Shane, thank you for scaring the hell out of me, but this is my house, so I’ll ask the questions.” She took a deep breath. “Joey sent you. Why?”

“I’m here to protect some kid. Little Agnes?”

“That’s me,” Agnes said.

There was a silence long enough to hear crickets in, and Agnes thought, If he makes some crack about me being not little, I’m gonna hit him again, and then he spoke.

“I’m here to protect you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Unless you hit me again, in which case, whoever I’m supposed to save you from can have your ass.”

“Protect me.” That wasn’t good. She’d been worried about the police finding out about her record, but Joey thought she needed protected from something else, something only somebody like this guy could stave off. Which meant something was seriously wrong. Not that the guy who was a corpse in her basement hadn’t been a tip-off, but if Joey thought something was so bad that she needed this guy, it must be really bad because a guy like this could protect her from . . .

Anything.

Out in the front hall, the ugly black grandfather clock left behind by the house’s previous owner began to chime the hour in big gongs that sounded like Death’s oven timer, and Agnes looked at Shane again.

Big. Broad. Dark. Strong. Handsome if you liked thugs. Looked like Joey. And he was here to keep her safe.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Could be worse.

“Okay, Shane,” Agnes said as the clock gonged twelve. “I got Joey in my kitchen, a cop in my front hall, a dead body in my basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”