The hitwomans egg hunt a.., p.1
The Hitwoman’s Egg Hunt: A Comical Crime Caper, page 1
The Hitwoman’s Egg Hunt
A Comical Crime Caper
Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman
Book 37
JB Lynn
Copyright © Jennifer Baum THE HITWOMAN’S EGG HUNT
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by US copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, or organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The Hitwoman’s Egg Hunt is intended for 18+ older and for mature audiences only.
©2023 Jennifer Baum
Editor: Parisa Zolfaghari
Cover designer: AM Design Studios
Proofreader: Proof Before You Publish
Formatting: Leiha Mann
Contents
A note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Author’s Note
Kiki Long Mysteries
Cursed Chicks Club
Psychic Consignment Mystery Series
Also by JB Lynn
About JB Lynn
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Prologue
You just know it’s going to be a bad day when you hear, “We’ll get back to you.”
I was starting to wonder if “We’ll get back to you” was listed as a synonym for “no” in the thesaurus. I’d applied for four jobs over the course of a week, and every time I’d gotten the dreaded, “We’ll get back to you.”
Swallowing my disappointment, I pasted on a smile, glanced at the name tag my interviewer wore, and said in my best professional voice, “Thanks, Tad.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to work for a Tad, anyway,” God piped up from my bra as I headed for the building’s exit. “And this place stinks.”
He was right on both counts. Still, it was disappointing to know that I couldn’t even get a job working at a pet store. Not even after I trotted out my story about my quitting my last real job at Insuring the Future so that I could look after my recently orphaned niece. I’d left out the part where I’m a killer-for-hire.
“I can’t be unemployed forever,” I muttered. At least, that’s what Aunt Susan kept reminding me. Not that I’m as unemployed as she thinks. Sometimes, I work for the mobster, Delveccio, as a killer-for-hire. Sometimes, I do “consulting” for Ms. Whitehat’s shadowy organization. I’ve even been drafted by Griswald, Susan’s husband, to help out with his P.I. biz. At this point, the idea of a “real” job sounds incredibly boring.
“That’s debatable,” the lizard retorted.
“I’ve got to find something.”
“Can you find crickets?” God asked hopefully. “I can hear them.”
I could, too. They were in a case at the back of the store singing a rousing version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”.
Turning on my heel, I headed toward the insects, passing the “Cuddle Cubicle” where a little girl and her father were examining a ferret. A name-tagged employee watched them with disinterest, arms crossed like he expected them to try to steal the animal.
The stringy-haired Marilyn Manson-wannabe, tall, dark, and creepy, who stood in the shadows growled, “Help you?”
I gulped. He looked more suited for animal sacrifice than pet care. “C-can I get a half dozen?” I asked, pointing at the chirping insects.
“Touched for the very first time,” they sang in perfect harmony.
“They come by the dozen,” Manson replied.
“Give me six and charge me for a dozen,” I said.
Nodding, he moved toward the glass case with a small net and a plastic bag. I hadn’t seen him grab them, but suddenly there they were.
“The net! The net!” the crickets shouted in terror, abandoning their song.
With a swift motion, Manson scooped up a half dozen and dumped them in the bag, tying it off with a practiced movement.
The crickets were silent, mourning the loss of their compatriots.
I took the bag and once again headed toward the exit. The checkout counter was in sight when I heard a sharp scream, a muffled curse, and someone yelling, “We’ve got a runner!”
I turned to see the long, slender body of a ferret racing down the aisle, an employee following closely behind, the sobs of a little girl following him.
The collection of a dozen or so parakeets in an oversized birdcage began to shriek, “Freedom! Freedom!”
The other ferrets, still locked in their enclosure, yelled, “Run! Run!”
The lizards and snakes all hissed about the escapee’s foolishness as two more employees joined the chase.
“Go! Go! Go!” the mice cheered.
The little ferret might have made it, but all of a sudden, there was a loud Southern baying. “Gonna that me get.”
Turning my head in the direction of the dog’s voice, I saw a hound dog, nose twitching, straining to break free from his owner, who was busy talking on her phone, oblivious to the pandemonium of the ferret’s run for freedom.
“Hold on to your dog!” I called.
“Mind your own biz—” she shouted back.
She never finished because her dog leapt, pulling so hard on his leash, he yanked her right off her feet. She landed on her back heavily, her phone going flying.
“The net! The net!” the other ferrets chanted, warning that Manson, carrying a bigger net than he’d used on the insects, was bearing down on the runner.
“Catch!” the hound barked.
“Help!” the ferret yelped in terror, picking up speed.
Beyond him, I saw the entry doors swooshing open. I held my breath, unsure if it was safer for him inside, chased by a posse, or outside where he could be crushed by a passing car.
“Stop!” I roared as the little thing neared the doors.
The ferret didn’t listen, but the hound tried to. The floor was slick, and he ended up careening into a pyramid of stacked cat food cans. The clattering, combined with the cacophony of the animal onlookers, provided a deafening soundtrack.
The net arched through the air and the ferret’s bid for freedom ended without bloodshed.
Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t get the job here.
1
“At this point, I feel like I’m never going to find a job,” I complained to my boyfriend, Gino.
We were cuddled up in his bed after making love. I knew he would have preferred to just roll over and go to sleep, but instead, he stroked my arm, murmuring, “Why the urgent job search?”
“Because Susan is driving me crazy,” I confessed. My aunt had recently begun fussing that my state of unemployment was setting a terrible example for my nieces.
“The boss could give you a job,” Gino suggested.
I groaned. No doubt, the mobster who I sometimes kill people for could find work for me, but it wasn’t the sort of situation that would get Susan off my case. “Legal work,” I clarified. “I need legal work.”
“Yeah, I know. I was saying he could get you hired on at one of his legit businesses. He owns quite a few. Gas stations and—”
I shivered dramatically. “Too cold to pump gas in the winter.” Not to mention, smelly and dirty. There are only two states in the United States where it’s illegal to pump one’s own gas; New Jersey, where I live, and Oregon, clear on the opposite coast. It would be a “fire hazard” is the common argument, but I’m pretty sure it all comes down to payola. Which makes perfect sense, because corruption runs rampant here in The Garden State. Don’t ask me why Oregon is clinging to the outdated model.
“Oh, so you’re going to be fussy about the kind of work you do,” Gino teased, nibbling on my earlobe. “How about a laundromat?”
“Too hot,” I said.
“Well, Goldilocks,” he mocked. “What about at a restaurant?”
“Too people-y.”
He chuckled a
nd squeezed me tighter. “You’re impossible.”
I grinned, leaning back against him.
“What about taking my job while I’m out of commission,” he suggested.
My breath caught and my body tensed. In one week, he was going to donate part of his liver to a young girl. It should have happened the month before, but she’d come down with a virus and needed to recover before the transplant. When the surgery had been postponed, I’d felt like it had been a reprieve. Now that it was back on the calendar, it contributed to my anxiety.
“I don’t think I’m intimidating enough to be the bodyguard of a mob boss,” I forced myself to say in an airy tone.
“True but—” His cellphone chirped, interrupting him, and Gino moaned. “Speak of the devil.” Pulling away from me, he leaned over and snatched it up off the night table. “I’ve got to go to work.” He was already out of the bed, reaching for his clothes.
I pulled the sheet around me, trying to ward off the chill of his absence. “I thought you were on the equivalent of desk duty.”
“I am, but I’m not on sick time yet.” He got dressed, kissed my forehead, and hurried out of the room.
A few moments later, I heard the front door close.
I closed my eyes, fighting an illogical urge to cry.
“He didn’t murder you in his bed, did he?” God boomed from another room.
I’d left the lizard in a glass bowl in the living room so that our lovemaking could be private.
“I’m fine!” I shouted back, throwing off the sheet and getting out of the warm bed.
“Because the way he ran out of here was suspicious,” God continued.
“He got called into work,” I yelled, slowly getting redressed.
“Does that mean we can go home?”
I didn’t respond.
“Because I’m dying to tell everyone about the pet store.”
I rolled my eyes. He made it sound like he was in possession of the world’s juiciest bit of gossip, instead of a silly story.
I trudged into the living room, scooped the lizard up, and placed him on my shoulder.
“You seem to be in a mood, Maggie,” he ventured carefully. “Considering that nobody is currently trying to murder you, you’re not on the hook to assassinate anyone, your family drama is in a lull, and you’ve got a decent boyfriend who’s not trying to kill you or sleeping with someone else, I’d expect your spirits to be better.”
“What a low bar for happiness,” I muttered, making my way to my car. “If my life isn’t a total shambles, I should be ecstatic?”
“Not ecstatic, but not unabashedly miserable,” he reproved gently.
I let out a sigh as I settled behind the steering wheel. “I’m not miserable, maybe just a little listless.”
The lizard ran down my arm, onto the steering wheel, and leapt to the dashboard. “Tell me more.”
“I don’t have anything to do.” I winced at the slight whine I heard in my tone. I started the car and began to drive home. “Nobody needs my help. Gino is gung ho about saving this girl with one of his body parts.”
“Only part of it,” God corrected. “It’ll grow back in eight to ten weeks. I watched a special about organ donation. It was fascinating.”
“And I’ve got nothing to do,” I reiterated. “I mean, even my parents are doing well. Do you know how weird that is? Dad staying on the straight and narrow because of his job at the deli and—”
“Hey,” God interrupted. “Getting a sandwich named after you is a big deal.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. My father was inordinately proud of The Archie. “I guess so.”
“And you should be thrilled your mother is doing so well.”
“I am,” I murmured. And I was. She had been so lucid that she’d come out to her father’s farm twice in the past month to have Sunday dinner with the whole family.
“You’ll find something to do,” God soothed. “Working for Tad wasn’t it.”
“I know.” I sighed. “It just sucks to feel like I serve no purpose.”
“Margaret May Lee,” God roared, sounding more like my Aunt Susan than I was comfortable with, “don’t you dare say you serve no purpose. You are a beloved daughter and granddaughter, sister and aunt. A protector and friend to animals. You’re a righter of wrongs. And you serve a great purpose.” He was breathing heavily by the end, the little orange flap under his chin inflating and deflating rapidly.
Startled by the emotion behind his outburst, I found myself blinking back tears. “Gee, thanks.”
“Note that I did not indicate you are eloquent,” he said in his most superior tone.
The laughter that triggered chased away my tears.
I was in a much better mood when I pulled into the driveway.
A mood that dissipated the moment I saw the wild-eyed llama charging straight at my car.
2
“What’s wrong?” I asked Alejandro as I pulled to a stop and rolled down the window.
“Dissent, discord, infighting,” the llama gasped, worry thickening his Peruvian accent. “You must put an end to it.”
“Where?” I asked.
“The barn.”
Without another word to him, I sped down the driveway, wondering what kind of chaos I’d be rolling into.
“I recommend not taking sides,” God advised, the bumpy driveway causing his voice to shake.
“You don’t even know what’s going on,” I muttered. “What if I assess the situation and then figure out what to do.” I scooped him off the dash just before I slammed on the brakes, ten yards from the barn.
“A good plan,” he agreed as I jumped out of the car and deposited him on my shoulder. “And excellent reflexes.”
“Hey, toots,” Mike, the crow, cawed from a nearby fence post. “Did you bring popcorn? I’m enjoying the show in there.”
I waved him off.
“Blindly into the fray we dive,” God intoned dramatically as I strode toward the frantic hubbub of voices in the barn.
Nonnie, my grandfather’s “assistant” and secret girlfriend, was pacing back and forth, sobbing.
Herschel, my hand-wringing grandfather, was murmuring inaudible platitudes.
Irma, the donkey, was braying, “I never liked her.”
Matilda, the pig, oinked her outrage. “Slander! Lies!”
Miss Lassalan, the teacher who instructed my nieces and Delveccio’s nephew, was pleading, “You’re scaring the children!”
The cacophony was deafening.
Jumping up on a bale of hay, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Everybody, shut up!”
Shocked, all fell silent, staring at me.
Miss Lassalan was the first to recover. “Thank you. The children are frightened.”
“I’ll talk to them,” I told her, hopping off my makeshift soap box. I scowled at everyone else in the space. “Everybody else keep quiet.”
I hustled over to the door of the kids’ classroom, pasted on a bright smile, and stepped inside with the teacher close on my heels. “Hey, guys?”
All three children stared at me, wide-eyed and uncharacteristically quiet.
I swallowed hard, unsure what to say to reassure them.
It was Alicia, my normally shy niece, who piped up in awe, “You told them to shut up.”
Katie was quick to join in. “Aunt Susan says that’s rude.”
I nodded slowly. She’d told me that when I was their age, too. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
“But it worked,” Dominic pointed out.
I winked at him. “It certainly did.” I glanced over at the teacher, who’d reclaimed her spot at the front of the room. “What are we learning about today?”
