Sal dug at an errant piece of pie crust with a toothpick. “Even churchgoers and do-gooders go bad, Rosie. Alice wouldn’t be the first woman, or the last, to carve up a cheating husband with a knife.”

_____

The honeyed scent of Confederate jasmine wafted from a planter on my porch, a gift from Marty. So far, I hadn’t managed to kill it. Wila hadn’t knocked it out of its pot. And some rare bug that only eats jasmine in June hadn’t devoured it. I breathed deeply, enjoying the aroma and the delusion that I was a gardener.

The drive home from Mama’s had passed by rote, I’d been so preoccupied. Now, all I wanted was a beer and my bed. A cousin coming in for the wedding was supposed to bunk with me. But she was delayed, and I was relieved. I did not want to play hostess tonight.

Unlocking the front door, I stepped inside, grateful for the peace and quiet. It took only a moment to register the fact that the house was too quiet. Where was the cat? Where was that reproaching meow as she demanded to be fed?

“Wila?”

A second or two of silence followed my call. And then I heard the distinct sound of someone breathing.

I didn’t switch on the light. I knew my cottage better than anyone. The darkness might give me an advantage. I felt for Maw-Maw’s heavy cane, and then pulled it from the stand at the front door.

A match scratched and lit. The flame revealed the face of “Jane Smith,” cigarette in her mouth, sitting comfortably in my granddad’s old chair. Before she exhaled to blow out the match, I saw a teardrop tattoo high on her cheek, where her sunglasses normally sat.

“You won’t need a weapon, Mace.” The voice was flat and emotionless. No accent. “The two of us are just going to have a little talk.”

I tightened my grip on the cane. “How’d you get in here?”

She turned on a lamp on the table beside Paw-Paw’s chair; held up my key. “You had this hidden on top of the door jamb. Very original.”

I’d left it there for my absent cousin. Stupid.

I stared at the teardrop, trying to remember its significance. Something about prison. Oh, yeah. Convicts add a tattooed drop for each murder they’ve committed. My mouth went dry.

“What do you want?”

“Like I said …” she took a drag from her cigarette, blew the smoke my way, “… a little talk.”

The menace in her voice sent my heart charging into my throat, where it pinned my tongue to the mat. I stood rooted, trying to weigh my options. I could run, but I feared turning my back on her. I could make a move for Paw-Paw’s shotgun in the bedroom closet, but I’d have to get past her to do it. I could jump her, and hope that black motorcycle helmet at her feet wasn’t as lethal as it looked.

She stared at me, as if she were reading my thoughts. Her eyes were bottomless, as dark and unfeeling as the black leather she wore. Her hand moved across her chest and toward the inside of her jacket. Certain it would emerge gripping a gun, I closed my eyes and began to pray.

I heard the hum of my refrigerator. A short mew from Wila in the bedroom. And the even breathing of Ms. Sunglasses.

What I didn’t hear was the crack of a gunshot. Slowly, I opened my eyes. “Jane Smith” assessed me from across the room. An amused smile curved up one corner of her mouth.

“Are you going to whack me?” I asked her.

Her laughter softened the hard planes of her face. Holding up a hand with a pack of matches in the palm, she made a show of slipping them back into her inside jacket pocket.

“What makes you think I’d whack you?”

I spun a convoluted story about how we’d had some strangers and a series of unusual crimes in our little town over the last couple of years, and how everyone was waiting for the next awful thing to occur. Finally, I told her she reminded me of Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

“Angelina played an assassin,” I said.

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Her finger traced her teardrop tattoo. My heart made a reappearance in my throat. When she rose from the chair, I backed up against my front door. But all she did was pick up a book from my coffee table and open it to the first chapter. It was Patrick Smith’s A Land Remembered.

“Any good?”

“Yeah. It’s all about Florida history.”

Tucking the book under her arm, she made a circle around my living room. She leaned close to the wall to look at a picture of my sisters and me with Mama, when we rode the Florida Cracker Trail. She paused at another photo, this one of my grandparents squinting in the sun in an orange grove. Putting the book down, she pulled out the top drawer on my TV cabinet. She lifted and inspected a couple of DVDs, and then a spare remote, and then a lopsided vase Maddie did in ceramics class. The vase only comes out when I know my big sister is going to visit.

When Ms. Sunglasses stooped to slide out a box of CDs from under my stereo, annoyance outweighed my fear. “Can I help you with something?”

“I wouldn’t turn down one of those Heinekens you have in your refrigerator. I think we both could use a beer.”

“You snooped around in my kitchen?”

She shrugged.

Would this turn out like that scene in every crime movie, where the killer allows the victim a final drink before blowing him or her away? I went after the beers anyway because she was right. I could use a little something to take off the edge.

As I grabbed the bottles and a couple of napkins, I kept my ears fine-tuned. Would I hear her unholster a gun? Take off her jacket so she could move more freely with that garrote she surely had to strangle me? Walk into my bedroom and leave a bomb under the bed?

But the only sound from the living room was her humming the Britney Spears oldie, “Oops! … I Did it Again.”

Britney Spears? What kind of self-respecting hit woman would hum Britney Spears? I relaxed a little.

“Here you go, Jane,” I said, returning to hand her a beer.

“Thanks.” She clinked her bottle against mine, and then returned to studying the gator head on my coffee table. “How big was this thing anyway?”

“Ten feet.”

I told her the Reader’s Digest version of my sideline, and how my trapper cousin and I captured the alligator from a newcomer’s pool.

She stuck a hand in the gator’s mouth, felt the multitude of teeth. “Weren’t you scared?”

I shook my head, deciding not to reveal she scared me a lot more than any alligator. With a gator, at least I knew what to expect.

She shuddered, gave me a nervous smile. “All those sharp teeth? I’d have been terrified.”

Now she sounded more like a girlfriend at a pajama party than a hired killer. What was this woman’s game?

When I said nothing, she swigged the beer, straightened in the chair, and got to the point of her visit. “How well do you know Anthony Ciancio?”

The flatness was back in her voice. It was hard to tell where she was headed. Was she a jealous girlfriend? Was she sent by a rival family to murder the Ciancio heir? Was she herself the rival?

“Why?” I hedged.

Leaning in, she put her elbows on her knees. “Look, I’m going to be straight with you, Mace. Carlos Martinez says you’re good people.”

She extracted a black wallet from her inside pocket, flipped it open, and revealed a badge. I was trying to read her agency’s name when she flipped it shut again.