The Fear Hunter

by Elise Sax

  “A woman’s disappeared,” he said, finally.

  “A woman’s disappeared,” I repeated.

  “Felicia White.”

  “Felicia White.”

  “She was last seen here at your shop.”

  “She was last seen here at your shop.”

  Remington laid his hand on mine on the table. “Are you all right? You’re repeating everything I say.”

  “I’m repeating everything you say?” I asked and closed my mouth again. I retracted my hand from under his. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. What were you saying?”

  “Felicia White. She’s disappeared.”

  “Felicia,” I said, rolling the name around in my mouth. “I didn’t know her last name. She and her husband are semi-regulars. She ordered the million-year soup, and there was something else I can’t remember.”

  Remington took a small notebook and pen out of his jacket’s inside pocket and took notes. “Did she seem agitated? Nervous?”

  I shook my head. “She seemed mean.”

  “Mean to you?”

  “Mean to everyone. But I don’t think that’s out of character for her. I’m not sure. I’ve only been running the shop for two weeks. I haven’t paid that much attention.”

  “What’s the name of the shop?” Remington asked. “There’s nothing written outside, and nobody seems to know.”

  “What do you want to call it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can call it whatever you want. It’s that kind of shop.”

  He smiled at me and nodded. “Cool,” he said. A warm wave of wonderful rolled up my back at the sound of his voice. “I like your style.”

  “Oh,” I breathed. He was awfully handsome. He was rough and tumble in The Rock kind of way, yet dashing and charming in a James Bond kind of way. He was sexy in all kinds of ways.

  “Anything else? Who was she mean to?”

  I told him about Felicia’s conversations with Frances and Amy. “She doesn’t like cats.”

  “I’m a dog guy, myself,” Remington said. “What about her better half? Did you get a read on the husband?”

  “I don’t think I heard him say anything, but they came back here to talk. It’s not their regular table.”

  “They wanted privacy.”

  I nodded. Remington was studying my face. Maybe he was trying to detect if I was lying and I had poisoned Felicia’s meal and had buried her in the alley behind the shop. But then he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and smiled at me.

  “You have an eye for people,” he said and winked.

  My hand flew to my chest, and it was all I could do not to say, “Oh my.”

  “Anything else? Something that made you feel off? Something uncool?”

  “No,” I said but then remembered something. “Actually, there was something. Something she said. When she ordered the million-year soup, she said she planned to live forever.” I got the chills, and I shivered. “Do you think something bad happened to her?”

  Remington cocked his head to the side. “Folks sometimes leave town and don’t tell anyone. Maybe she got into a fight with her husband. Maybe she went with a girlfriend to get Botox and didn’t bother to tell anyone. We’ll probably find her, but…”

  “But you think something bad happened to her.”

  “The woman vanished from a small town. I’m thinkin’ that’s not chill. I’m thinkin’ the mean girl maybe got too mean for her own health. You get me, Aggie?”

  “I get you,” I breathed. He knew my name, and not only did he know my name, he felt comfortable enough to give me a nickname. It was the first time anyone had ever called me by a nickname.

  “How mean was she to you?” he asked and studied me, again. This time, it was definitely the suspicious kind of studying.

  “She was fine. I get customers like that. It doesn’t bother me.”

  Remington scratched the back of his neck and leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Good because folks have been talking smack about you and your family.”

  “Define smack.”

  “Weird stuff. I’m a Trekkie and a big Star Wars fan. Stuff like that.”

  My spine stiffened, and I crossed my arms in front of me. “Like I have a spaceship, and I talk to little green men? Stuff like that?”

  “More like the Jedi mind trick stuff. More like the unexplainable stuff.”

  He was still studying my face. Damn it. My aunts and I had been very careful to lead quiet lives. I wonder just how much unexplainable stuff he was talking about.

  I laughed. “Unmarried women sure get attention,” I said, waving my hand.

  “I heard more than one whisper that maybe you put something more in your soup than soup.”

  “Are you accusing me of something, Detective?” I demanded, crossing my arms in front of myself, again.

  Remington raised his hands in surrender. “Nope. I’m just asking questions. Just doing my job.”

  “Good. I have nothing to hide.” Yes, I lied about having something to hide, but I wasn’t lying about having nothing to hide about Felicia’s disappearance.

  By the time we walked out from behind the bookshelves, word had gotten around the shop that Felicia had disappeared. Remington winked at me and left the shop on his way to find Frances and Amy, in order to interview them about Felicia.

  “What happened back there?” Mouse asked me urgently when Remington left. “Did he touch you?”

  I showed her my arm. “Right above the wrist.”

  She focused on the spot. “Lucky,” she breathed. “Did he accuse you of murdering Felicia?”

  “Sort of. Was she murdered? What have you heard?”

  “Thousands of things. A couple truckers said she must have been taken by terrorists. Irving said she probably got colitis and had to go to the hospital because that happened to him last year.”

  I weighed the possibilities. Colitis seemed more likely than terrorists, but anything was possible. For the next hour, I heard all kinds of possibilities. News of Felicia’s disappearance had spread like wildfire. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in Sea Breeze since the two for one special at the tackle shop last January.

  I had to admit that the excitement was contagious. I fielded each conspiracy theory that entered the shop with boundless enthusiasm. I was filled with a crazy desire to know what had happened to Felicia White, the mean girl and semi-regular.

  When a local woman brought in posters about Felicia’s disappearance, I took one and put it in the shop window. Missing. Have you seen this woman? Felicia White was last seen on Wednesday. Please call if you have any information. Reward offered. There was a phone number and a picture of Felicia riding a horse. I wondered how often she rode a horse. Did she own the horse? Did she compete?

  There was a lot I didn’t know about Felicia, but suddenly I wanted to know everything about her. And I wanted to solve the mystery of her disappearance. I wanted it more than I wanted to go back to my lighthouse and never come out again. I also needed to clear the Bright name before Remington nosed around us and found out something we didn’t want him to find out.

  But how could I solve the mystery? I didn’t know a thing about mysteries.

  I slapped my forehead. Duh. I owned a bookstore. I must have owned hundreds of mysteries.

  “Do you know anything about mystery novels?” I asked Mouse.

  “I’m not much of a reader. I’m more of a Netflix binger.”

  “I’m an avid mystery reader,” Doris announced, overhearing me. She bounded up from her seat. “I’ll get you started.”

  She took my hand and tugged me toward the stacks. She gestured to a shelf. “Most people make the mistake of going for something modern,” she said. “Current. Those people are morons. Nothing good has been written since the 1950s. You agree?”

  She gave me a pointed look, and I figured I should agree. “Yes. Nothing after 1950.”

  “Good girl. Now,
most amateurs would point you to Agatha Christie,” Doris explained. Her voice amped up, and she was talking faster than normal. “They’re not wrong. She is the queen of crime, the maven of murder. So, you can’t go wrong with Agatha. Hey, she has the same name as you! I just realized that.”

  “So, should I read her?”

  “Not yet. Let me finish,” she said, sternly. “Other people would steer you to Arthur Conan Doyle. We both know that would be a mistake. Am I right?”

  “Yes?” I said like a question. I was getting lost in the names. Genre fiction was a tough nut to crack.

  “Yes! So, here’s what you’re going to do.” She took four books off a shelf and handed them to me. “Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Noir. These books will get you into mystery, good and fast. When you’re done with those, we’ll start you on Agatha.” Doris barked laughter. “Agatha. That just kills me that you’ve got the same first names. Maybe it’s a sign.”

  Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. They had good solid names. Good detective names. I clutched the books to my chest with renewed purpose in life. I was sure that the secret to Felicia’s disappearance laid between the novels’ covers.

  When I returned to the kitchen, the three Comic-Con looking, Area 38 conspiracy theorists were waiting for me. “Would you like a table?” I asked them. “Today’s soups are beef and barley, vegetable, chili, and loaded potato.”

  “Loaded potato sounds good,” one of them said.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” another one said. He was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Princess Leia in a metal bikini on it. “Although, I could go for a bowl of chili.”

  “We’re here about the woman who got taken by the government,” the third guy said.

  I gasped. “Felicia White? She was taken by the government?”

  “Not so loud,” the Princess Leia guy said. “Don’t you think it’s a weird coincidence that a man who was glowing came in here shouting about Area 38, and then the next day a woman went missing?”

  He was right. It was a weird coincidence. I wondered what Raymond Chandler would have said about it. Would he have told me to start my investigation with Area 38?

  “Where is Area 38?” I asked.

  “Not so fast. How do we know you’re not part of the government?” one of them asked me.

  “I’m not,” I said. I wasn’t. I didn’t even have a social security card. I had never paid taxes. I was nowhere close to being part of the government.

  “We’ll have to check you out, make sure you’re trustworthy,” one of them told me. “In the meantime, we’ll add you to our protest list.”

  I didn’t know what the protest list was, but my mind was swirling about Felicia and Area 38. Maybe she worked for the government. Maybe she had something to do with the glowing guy.

  Whatever happened to Felicia, I needed to find out. Was this the wind change that my aunts had talked about? Was this my destiny?

  Chapter 4

  “I put a spell on you because you’re mine.”

  —Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You.”

  I carried the mystery books home, eager to dig into them. The rest of the day at the shop had been all about conspiracy theories, innuendo, and rumors. It had been hard to filter out any clues or glean any idea what happened to Felicia. She had disappeared without a trace. I was hoping that the books would help me start the investigation.

  I planned on reading at home at the kitchen table with cookies and milk. Auntie Ida had made some killer snickerdoodles last night, and I was ready to eat a half dozen of them.

  But when I walked through the front door, I was greeted by mayhem. Auntie Ida and Auntie Tilly were screaming at each other. Auntie Ida was wearing a gray jumpsuit and a welder’s mask, while Auntie Tilly was in black slacks and a blue chambray shirt.

  “Don’t you tell me what to do!” Auntie Ida yelled at her sister, her voice muffled by the welder’s mask.

  “Don’t you tell me what to do!” Auntie Tilly yelled back at her.

  I walked past the arguing women in the entranceway and put my books down on the kitchen table.

  “You’re crazy! You can’t play with nuclear fuel!” Auntie Tilly was yelling. I opened the icebox and took out a pitcher of milk.

  “I’m not playing! I’ve almost got time travel down!” Auntie Ida yelled back.

  “Why do we want time travel? We’re older than dirt!” Auntie Tilly yelled.

  I poured the milk into a large glass and found the cookies. I brought them all with me to the table and sat down.

  “For your information, I need to go back in time because I can’t for the life of me remember the recipe for fig bars!” Auntie Ida yelled.

  “You give stupid a bad name!” Auntie Tilly yelled.

  “Stupid is a bad name, moron!”

  I had forgotten that Auntie Tilly and Auntie Ida fought like cats and dogs. Auntie Prudence used to play referee, but with her gone, the two sisters would probably fight until they were hoarse. I decided to let them work it out themselves. I couldn’t play detective and referee at the same time. Besides, they were more than grown women, and they could take care of themselves. And I didn’t have time to worry about nuclear fuel. I had a mystery to solve.

  I took a bite of a cookie and cracked open one of the Dashiell Hammett books. After a couple of pages, I was lost in the story, and I didn’t hear my aunts fighting at all. I only stopped reading when Auntie Tilly shook my shoulder.

  “Ida wants boeuf bourguignon for dinner, but I think we should have pancakes. You have to vote,” Auntie Tilly told me. She stood tall with her arms crossed in front of her and her face set in a “I dare you to vote wrong” position.

  I swallowed. “We had pancakes last night, and boeuf bourguignon is too similar to soup. I can’t bear to look at soup again today. How about cinnamon toast with hot chocolate?”

  I was surprised when Auntie Tilly’s face softened. Her eyes widened, and she smiled. “Perfect! I haven’t had cinnamon toast in ages. And maybe brownies for dessert. What do you think?”

  I thought it was wonderful. When you get as old as I am, you don’t bother with diets anymore. Interestingly, since I stopped worrying about what I ate many years ago, I had stayed the same weight.

  My aunts buried the hatchet in order to make dinner. I guessed that no grudge could continue when cinnamon toast was for dinner. They whipped up the brownie batter in a few minutes and put the brownies in one of the ovens. Then, they toasted an entire loaf of white bread in the other oven while they mixed cinnamon and sugar. When the bread was toasted, Auntie Tilly prepared a half-gallon of hot chocolate while Auntie Ida slathered the toasts with butter and sprinkled them with the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

  I pushed my books aside and helped set the table. “This is much better than pancakes,” Auntie Ida said when we were sitting and her mouth was full of cinnamon toast.

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s good,” Auntie Tilly said. “The food pyramid can kiss my ass.”

  “What’s the food pyramid?” I asked.

  “You need to get out more,” Auntie Tilly chastised me.

  “Me? I’m out every day now. I’m seeing crazy things. There was a man who glowed yesterday, and today a woman went missing, and the police think that I might have killed her,” I said and took a sip of my hot chocolate.

  “Do you think you’ll go to prison?” Auntie Ida asked breathlessly, with more than a little excitement. “I have a prison jumpsuit I could loan you. I’ve always dreamed of going to prison. I want to try out my potion to change metal into feathers.”

  “Don’t say potion,” Auntie Tilly warned her.

  “Sorry. Chemical mixture,” Auntie Ida corrected herself. “It would be a hoot to see all those bars turned into feathers. Just think of the possibilities for comfy mattresses and pillows for the prisoners.”

  “They wouldn’t be prisoners if the bars turned into feathers,” Auntie Tilly said, logically.

  “I don’t get y
our point,” Auntie Ida said.

  The oven timer went off, and Auntie Ida took the brownies out of the oven to cool and sat back down.

  “Why do the police think you killed this woman?” Auntie Tilly asked me.

  “Because the Bright family is weird, according to some people he spoke to,” I said.

  Auntie Tilly and I took a slow turn and looked directly at Auntie Ida. Her welder’s mask was pushed back so it rested on top of her head.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I haven’t left the house since the war,” Auntie Ida said.

  “Which war?” Auntie Tilly asked.

  “The one with John Wayne,” Auntie Ida said.

  “That could mean anything. The man did a million movies,” Auntie Tilly complained. “Was he riding a horse in this war?”

  Auntie Ida thought about that a moment and tapped her chin with her finger. “No. He was wearing a helmet, and the movies were loud.”

  “World War II,” Auntie Tilly said. “You haven’t been out of the house since World War II. That’s pretty good. Maybe the locals have memories of you before then. Like that thing you did in the 1920s.”

  Auntie Ida threw the slice of toast that she had been eating down on her plate violently. “That wasn’t my fault. Don’t bring that up, again, Tilly. It’s so like you to try and get my dander up.”

  “I’m a truth talker, woman. Deal with it,” Auntie Tilly spat.

  “You’re a mean old woman,” Auntie Ida said.

  “You’re older than I am,” Auntie Tilly pointed out.

  Sigh. Even cinnamon toast couldn’t bring them together. Maybe all of the arguing would give them laryngitis and then they’d shut up. In the meantime, perhaps brownies would do the trick. I got up and brought the pan of brownies back to the table. I cut three large squares and passed them around.

  I took a big bite of one and washed it down with hot chocolate.

  “What’s this?” Auntie Tilly asked, picking up one of my books.

  “I’m learning how to solve mysteries. I’m going find Felicia,” I explained excitedly. “She’s the missing woman. She was last seen in the soup shop. That’s why I’m a suspect. A suspect in her disappearance and maybe even a murder suspect.”