The Fear Hunter

by Elise Sax

  “I’ll eat what I want, Bunty,” Sid growled, and Bunty backed down, taking her knitting out of her bag without saying another word.

  The door opened again, and Frances walked in. She was followed closely by Amy, who had three cats on leashes and one cat in a baby stroller. With Rocky getting eaten by Mexican fishes, I felt I needed to apologize to Frances for suspecting her.

  “Psst! Agatha!” one of the Area 38 organizers called. The group had taken up residence in the stacks tables, again, and I went over to him.

  “No soup today,” I said.

  “We know. We’re here on official business. We’re planning on invading Area 38. We’re taking the people to the power. We’re eating the rich. We’re giving it to the man.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work.”

  “We’re getting organized now,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. We need to do trust exercises, and I was wondering if we could do them here.”

  The Homeland Security agent’s warning echoed in my head like a jackhammer. “What are trust exercises?”

  “The usual,” he said. “Ropes, ladders, water. That sort of thing.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a soup shop activity. If you can’t do it sitting on a chair, you have to go elsewhere,” I said, wisely.

  He took my refusal better than I expected, which was good because I didn’t have the time or the energy to argue with him. The door opened, and Mouse ran in. She was frazzled, and her dress was partially tucked into the back of her underwear.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late!” she squeaked, running through the shop toward the kitchen. “I know I promised you I would take care of things today, Agatha, but a lizard got into my apartment. So, I had to save it and return it to the wild, but it got under my dresser, and I went to catch it while I, you know, tried to calm it and assure it that I wasn’t going to harm it. But then I got stuck under the dresser for fifteen minutes. I finally got out, but the dresser broke and crashed onto the lizard, killing it. So, then I had to bury it, and my outfit got dirty from that, so I had to get dressed again, but I had nothing to go with my purple shirt. And you get the picture.”

  “Not a problem,” I said, meeting her at the kitchen. I pulled her dress out of her underwear. “Can you handle Amy and the cats while I talk to Frances for a moment?”

  “Sure. We’ve got enough milk.”

  Frances agreed to meet with me in the kitchen, and I closed us in the pantry for privacy. “What’s this about?” Frances asked. “Are you going to hit on me? Everyone hits on the real estate agent. It’s because we go into their homes. A couple trips to a person’s bedroom, and they think we’re intimate. You know what I mean?”

  “I’m not going to hit on you,” I said.

  “Good. Not that you’re unattractive. But I like penises, and you don’t have one. You don’t, do you? I knew a woman in Long Beach who had a penis. It was a big one, too. She liked to show it off.”

  “I don’t have a penis,” I said.

  “Oh, okay,” she said sounding slightly disappointed.

  “I wanted to apologize for suspecting you of Felicia’s murder. That was out of line, and I’m deeply sorry.”

  Frances tapped my chest. “Go on. Me? A killer? I’m flattered. Why me?”

  “The house. The money.”

  Frances nodded. “Smart. Very smart. I would have suspected me, too. Frances Finkelstein, killer. It’s very cutting edge. Very hip.”

  “I’m still sorry,” I said. “And since Rocky was arrested…”

  “You don’t think Rocky killed Felicia, do you?” Frances asked, as if I had suggested that the earth was a cube made of chocolate.

  I froze. “Why? You don’t think he killed her?”

  Frances leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. “No. Rocky knew about knives. That part’s true. But he had a deathly fear of blood. No way would he have cut up Felicia’s face. And on top of that, he kept the bloody hook in his van? No way, Jose.”

  “No way, Jose,” I breathed, remembering Rocky’s reaction when he cut himself in the shop. He nearly passed out. “You’re right. I thought I was the only one who didn’t think Rocky was the killer. But someone else did it. The killer is still out there.”

  Frances’s eyes widened. “For sure. There are suspects all over the place. Even in this place.” She opened the pantry door and gestured to me to peek outside. “Look over there. Bunty and Sid. Workout freaks. Sure, I do the occasional Jazzercise class, but that’s normal. What they do isn’t normal. It’s freakazoid. And did you know that Bunty is having an affair with Donald?”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Oh, yes. That’s what I hear anyway. Look at Sid. Doesn’t he look miserable?”

  “Yes. He ordered six scones.”

  “Exactly. Wouldn’t you eat six scones if your wife was doing the nasty with Donald?”

  Donald was cheating on Felicia with Bunty? It all made sense. The pieces were falling into place. More than ever, I was sure that Donald killed his wife. I was never more sure of anything. He killed her for both the money and to run away with Bunty. Money and sex, the two most common motives for murder. It made perfect sense.

  But there was a problem with that scenario. Donald had a solid alibi. He was having a prayer meeting with a pastor and the casserole stalkers when his wife was killed.

  Or was he?

  I needed to check up on his alibi, immediately.

  “But they didn’t kill Felicia,” Frances continued. “It was the Area 38 group. The conspiracy theorists may be crazy, but they’re not idiots. All kinds of creepy stuff happens out in the desert. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there really is an Area 38 out there, and they’re making people glow and killing them. For all we know, Felicia was in on it and couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.”

  I decided to keep my big mouth shut about Area 38 and Homeland Security. No sense in stoking the fires with Frances and getting myself sent away to be water-boarded. Still peeking through the pantry doorway, I saw Amy hand her cat leashes to Mouse and walk our way.

  “What’s going on?” Amy asked as she pushed her way into the pantry with us.

  “Agatha thought that I killed Felicia,” Frances told her, excited.

  “Lucky. Nobody ever suspects the cat lady,” Amy said. “Everyone’s a suspect except for me. But I don’t think Rocky killed her.”

  “Either do I, and neither does Agatha,” Frances told her.

  “And you didn’t kill her, Frances. Not with your manicure,” Amy said. “I definitely know who killed Felicia.”

  “Donald?” I asked.

  “No, it’s that Area 38 place,” Amy said. “Those freaks at the stacks tables are right. The government did it and pinned it on poor, dead Rocky.”

  “But why would they kill Felicia?” I asked.

  “Because Felicia was weird,” Amy said.

  “She’s right. Felicia was weird,” Frances said. “She had secrets. She was playing around with money, letting her house sink into foreclosure while she was employed. I bet her job was really a front. She was probably a spy.”

  Amy nodded in agreement. “I detected a slight accent.”

  “You’re right,” Frances exclaimed. “I thought it was a speech impediment, but maybe Felicia was a Russian spy.”

  “Or Chinese,” Amy suggested.

  “I think Donald killed her,” I said. “I’m going to check on his alibi.” Area 38 was definitely suspicious, but I couldn’t stop my suspicions about Donald.

  “Agatha is a detective,” Frances told Amy. “She’s been reading books about it.”

  “That’s so cool,” Amy said. “We should detective with her. We can check on Area 38 while Agatha checks on Donald. This is going to be great. If we were on Netflix, people would binge-watch us. For sure.”

  “I’m in,” Frances chimed in. “Just think when we find the killer and shine a light on corruption in the government. We’ll become so famous that homeowners will b
e knocking down my door to sell their houses for them.”

  “And everyone will want me to watch their cats,” Amy said.

  “We should probably leave this to the police,” I suggested. Unlike Frances and Amy, I didn’t want attention. I didn’t want the world to binge watch me. I didn’t want my name and face in the paper. It could be a matter of life or death for the Bright women.

  No, I didn’t want to prove that Donald killed Felicia for attention or a boon to my business. I wanted to prove that Donald killed Felicia because I needed to. I had a busybody compulsion. I couldn’t stop myself.

  “The police think that Rocky killed Felicia. Maybe they’ll give us an award or a medal when we figure out the real story,” Frances said.

  “We’ll need black ski caps and metal batons in case we need to break kneecaps,” Amy said, rolling with the detective thing.

  “Good point. I almost forgot about the metal batons,” Frances said.

  Frances and Amy left the shop so that they could get a head start on taking down the government, and I left the shop to spy on Donald, again. Mouse assured me that she would handle the knitters and Area 38ers while I was away, and I explained to her that I would be back in the afternoon to lock up.

  Once outside, I walked as fast as I could toward Donald’s house. Across the street in the park, workers were building the bandstand for the Punk Rock Knitting Championship. People were coming and going, enjoying their Sunday. A couple of them waved to me, and I waved back, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t even pause when I passed the police station.

  When I reached Donald’s house, two casserole stalkers were on his front porch. “He’s not here,” one of them told me. “And I brought a pot roast this time. You’d think he would be grateful for pot roast.”

  “Maybe he’s inside, mourning,” I said. Or on the phone with the yacht salesman. Or packing up and hiding from the casserole stalkers.

  “I peeked through the windows,” the other woman told me. “He’s not in there.”

  “A woman with a lasagna got a call from one of her sources and said she saw him near the bandstand that’s being built, so she went to find him,” the pot roast stalker said. “I’m heading over there, too. He can run, but he can’t hide.”

  I did a quick tour around the house, but Donald wasn’t there. So, I followed the two casserole stalkers to the bandstand.

  In the few minutes that I had been away, the area had grown thick with Sunday visitors. Since the ocean wasn’t safe to enter, they mostly walked along the pier, stood in line at the doughnut shop, and watched the workers as they built the punk rock bandstand. Knitters were everywhere, practicing on benches, at the doughnut shop tables, and on blankets on the grass in the park. Across the street, the soup shop was doing a steady stream of business with knitters coming in and out of the door.

  I scanned the park for Donald, but I couldn’t find him. I did find four casserole-bearing women searching for him, though, and I followed them for a while. No Donald. It was like he had disappeared, and I wondered if he had already skipped town. Perhaps the boat salesman had come through on the sale of his boat.

  I decided to find out. Turning away from the bandstand, the knitters, and the casserole stalkers, I headed toward the marina to search for Donald there, or at least ask the salesman about his whereabouts. Ahead of me, two lifeguards were washing their trucks, and another two were working out in the outside exercise area. There was no shortage of muscled men pumping iron this Sunday, and I found myself searching for Remington. He had muscles on top of muscles, but I had never seen him exercising with the others.

  Even the dogs and cats were out today. I noticed two cats walking toward the lifeguard tower. “Amy’s cats,” I said out loud. I recognized them. A calico, and a Siamese. They had been in the soup shop nearly every day with Amy since I started working there. Amy would be devastated to find out that two of her clients had gotten loose and were running wild in Sea Breeze. Amy took her job very seriously, and she enjoyed having a stellar reputation as the only cat walker in town. I had no choice. I had to catch them for Amy.

  That’s why I followed Amy’s cats instead of continuing to the marina. I convinced myself that it would be a temporary detour and that once the cats were secured, I would head out to find Donald, again.

  I watched as the two cats slipped into a door at the lifeguard tower that had been left ajar.

  “Here, kitty kitty,” I sang, pushing the door open all the way.

  Inside was a small, dark storage closet, not much bigger than the pantry at the soup shop. “Here, kitty kitty,” I sang again and nearly tripped over something on the ground.

  It was a foot.

  A foot in a shoe. The foot was attached to a well-dressed man, who I would have recognized anywhere. It was Donald, the object of my search.

  I found him.

  Donald White was lying on the floor of the lifeguard tower’s storage closet, and cats were swarming around him, licking their lips. Donald wasn’t moving. He was dead.

  And he had no eyes.

  “Hey, I saw you come in here, and…” Remington started, appearing behind me. He stopped talking when he saw Donald on the floor in front of me, lying dead with no eyes.

  “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Remington said.

  Chapter 11

  “Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.”

  –Agatha Christie

  “I found him,” I said.

  “You found him,” Remington said.

  “I followed Amy’s cats, and here he was. I don’t know what happened to his eyes. He didn’t have them when I found him.”

  “You found him,” Remington repeated.

  “I thought we went over that.”

  “You followed Amy’s cats.”

  “Yes, those two,” I said pointing at two cats who were licking Donald’s face. “I think those two over there are also her clients. Are you going to take his pulse?”

  “I can tell from here that his pulse days are long over.”

  I thought so too.

  Remington turned toward me. “Agatha, didn’t we talk about this? I told you to stop finding dead things.”

  I scowled at him. “Technically, I’ve only found one dead body. The other thing was a bloody hook. I didn’t find Felicia at all, so you can’t count that one.”

  “You forgot about Rocky. You were there for that one.”

  I bit my lower lip. “I forgot about him. But how can you blame me for Rocky?”

  “I don’t blame you. I just think it’s crazy coincidental that death follows you.”

  “Death follows you.”

  “Death is supposed to follow me. That’s my job.” Remington’s jaw clenched. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep you out of jail.”

  “I’m not the killer. Donald’s the killer,” I insisted.

  Remington cocked his head to the side and pointed at Donald’s body. He was a bloody mess with no eyes, and cats were swarming his body. “It looks like Donald’s the victim, not the killer.”

  He had a point. Donald was definitely a victim. And that meant that I had been completely wrong about him. He wasn’t the killer. How could I have been wrong about him? He had been the perfect suspect. He had inherited a bucket of money from Felicia’s death. He was selling off his boat. He had threatening phone conversations. And he had planned on leaving town. Donald White had killer written all over him.

  “Maybe it was an accident,” I suggested. “He could have stumbled in here, hit his head, fell down dead, and his eyeballs popped out of their sockets from the force of the fall.”

  “Not possible,” Remington said. He shooed the cats away and kneeled down next to Donald. “No head injury. He’s got a chest wound that bled everywhere and is probably the cause of death.”

  “Maybe he fell on his chest,” I said, even though Donald was lying on his back.

  “Oh. My. God,” I heard behind me. I turne
d around. Amy was in the storage room, staring at Donald’s eyeless face, her eyes big as saucers. “I followed my cats in here, and…Oh. My. God.”

  Remington stood and put his hands out, palms forward. “Take a deep breath. It will be okay. Are you all right?” he asked Amy.

  “Yes, of course I’m all right,” Amy said and let out an ear-splitting scream.

  “Of course she’s all right,” Remington repeated to me and rolled his eyes.

  I gave Amy a hug. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” I told her.

  “Where are his eyes? Someone took his eyes,” Amy moaned.

  There was another scream, but this time it didn’t come from Amy. It was Frances. She had pushed her way into the small space. She was screaming louder than Amy. It sounded like a siren.

  “Satanists!” Frances screamed, finally able to form words. “Satanists have taken his eyes!”

  She screamed, again, this time like an air raid siren, and ran outside.

  Remington rolled his eyes at me again and sighed deeply. “I should go after her, but I need to stay with the body and secure the crime scene.”

  “She’ll probably come around, again, after the shock wears off,” I said. “I don’t think she can resist coming back.”

  Amy pulled away from me, alarmed. “Do you think she’s right about the Satanists?”

  “Satanists don’t exist,” I said because accusations about Satanists came right before accusations about witches, and that scared me.

  “Satanists do exist,” Remington corrected. “But Satanists didn’t do this.”

  “But the eyes,” Amy whispered, as if she was afraid that Satanists would hear her and pluck her eyes out, too.

  “Satanists didn’t do this,” Remington repeated. “The cats ate his eyes after he died.”

  Amy stood up straight, and she put her hands on her hips. She squinted at Remington, and her nostrils flared. “Cats do not eat eyeballs. Take that back, Detective.”

  “Cats love eyes,” Remington explained. “It’s like jalapeno poppers for them.”

  “You take that back,” Amy said. “Cats are God’s favorite creatures. They would never eat a person’s eyes. I would trust cats with my eyes before I trusted you with my eyes. You take that back, or I’ll sue you for slander.”