by Elise Sax
The door opened, and one of the Area 38 group leaders peeked his head in. “You ready, Agatha? We’re about to begin the trust exercises.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said, and he ducked out of the room.
“What now?” Remington asked me.
“I’ve joined the Area 38 guys. They want to break into Area 38,” I said.
“Are you crazy? You could be shot,” Remington said.
“They’ve got a plan for that,” I said.
“Hey, what if they planted the knitting needle?” Eddie asked. “There’s a lot of bad blood between those freaks and my knitters. They could have planted it to give the knitters and punk rock a bad name.”
“May I leave?” I asked Remington. I didn’t want to hear any more conspiracy theories. I was up to my neck in conspiracy theories, and none of them were getting me any closer to solving the murder mystery.
“No,” he said.
“I’ll see you at six,” I told him and left the office anyway.
I followed the Area 38 guy back to where the casserole stalkers had been duking it out just a few minutes before. Seagulls and dogs were swarming the area, eating the discarded casseroles.
There were about fifteen Area 38ers, including Frances and Amy, waiting to start the trust exercises.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!” Frances called waving her hands at me. I joined her and Amy.
“We heard that you stabbed somebody with a knitting needle and was arrested,” Amy said to me.
“Who did you stab?” Frances asked. “Was it that obnoxious Eddie Acid? He’s full of himself, let me tell you. He’s got a second home with a view that’s sitting empty, but he won’t let me sell it for him. He claims it’s for parties. What’s that about?”
“I didn’t stab anyone. I found the knitting needle. It’s the murder weapon. Donald was killed with it,” I explained.
“Oh, so a knitter did it,” Amy said. “I knew it. You can’t trust knitters.”
“What’re you talking about?” Frances asked. “You’re a knitter, Amy. So am I.”
There was a pause when Amy and Frances looked at each other suspiciously, and I was reminded that they were both suspects.
“What did you find out about Area 38?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Nada,” Frances said. “Except that they’re expecting a million people to help break into Area 38 with them.”
“It’s a long way to a million from this group,” Amy noted.
Two of the leaders set up a large fire pit and began to light it. Eddie Acid had returned and was in deep conversation with the knitters, and I didn’t think that would end well. Doris and Irving showed up with their beach chairs and set up near us.
“Hey there, girls! We’re here to watch the show!” Irving announced to us.
“We love trust exercises. They’re hysterical,” Doris said, taking out her knitting from her bag.
Next to us at the lifeguard tower, two lifeguards were inspecting the back of a third lifeguard. “Flesh-eating bacteria?” I heard one of them say.
“There’s flesh-eating bacteria in the water, in addition to sewage,” Frances whispered in my ear. “I’ll never sell another house again. It’s career-eating bacteria.”
The Area 38ers finished lighting a large fire and instructed us to stand in a circle around it. I had a feeling of déjà vu, but I pushed it aside. After all, there was no way the Area 38 would follow the casserole stalkers’ lead and start fighting over lasagna.
“We’re a group!” one of the Area 38 group leaders announced, once we were standing in a circle. “As a group, we can do anything. Anything! We can overturn the man and take back our power!”
There were a few cheers, and a few murmurs in the group.
“What do you mean, flesh-eating bacteria?” I heard a man ask another with clear panic in his voice.
“Don’t worry. You can’t catch it unless you touch it,” Frances said.
“I was in the water yesterday,” he said. “How long does it take to know if you’ve got it?”
“I don’t know,” she said and gave him a wide berth.
“So, we’re going to start with trust building exercises,” the Area 38 leader said. “Can we get a volunteer?”
“Look at that. The lifeguard has flesh-eating bacteria. That doesn’t sound good, Doris,” Irving said from his chair.
“Don’t get close to him, Irving,” Doris said.
“Volunteer?” the Area 38 leader asked again. Nobody volunteered. He smiled at me. “Thank you, Agatha. Come on over here.”
“Maybe you should start with someone else,” I said. “I have trust issues.”
“We have to start somewhere,” he said.
I walked around the fire pit to him. In one direction, the knitters near the bandstand were giving us the evil eye, and in the other direction, the two lifeguards were backing away from the third lifeguard.
“Look again! Look again!” the third lifeguard urged them. “It can’t be flesh-eating bacteria. It has to be something else,” he said, panicked.
Another volunteer was called to join me. This time it was the guy next to the guy who swam in the ocean and was afraid he had flesh-eating bacteria. He was wearing a long red velvet cape with wide collars.
“What the hell is going on?” the second volunteer asked me. “It’s like the opening scene of The Walking Dead. This is how the whole thing started. What if we all get flesh-eating bacteria?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I had never watched The Walking Dead. I had lived with the walking dead for my whole life. The Area 38 group leader told me to fall back in his arms, and I tried to focus on that.
“Oh my God. It’s going everywhere,” the guy who was afraid he had flesh-eating bacteria said. “It’s like mold.”
He ran over to me and asked the other volunteer to check him for flesh-eating bacteria.
“I’m not doing that,” the cape guy said. “No way. That shit don’t play.”
“Trust me. I won’t infect you,” he urged.
“I don’t trust anybody.”
Nobody trusted him, which seemed to provoke him. Something told me to make a quick exit, but I was rooted to the spot. There was too much to see, and I had sensory overload. There were the knitters, the lifeguards, the Area 38ers, Irving and Doris, and a man in a cape running away from a man asking him to search his body for a deadly disease.
It was a lot.
My stomach growled, and I realized that I had forgotten to eat lunch. I could have gone for some of Auntie Ida’s leftover fried chicken and maybe a tomato salad to go with it.
“Just fall back anyway,” the Area 38 leader instructed me.
“But there’s no one to catch me,” I said.
“He’ll come back.”
The guy in the cape did come back, but he ran off again. He was running around and around the fire, and the other guy was chasing him.
“Fine!” he yelled. “If you’re not going to check me, I’m going to rub my body all over you!”
It was like the ultimate third grade cootie scare.
The guy with the cooties chased the other with his hand outstretched, and he was fast. When he almost reached him, the caped guy freaked out and flung his body around.
That’s when his cape caught fire.
“You’re on fire,” the cootie guy said and stopped running after him. I didn’t blame him. Thinking short term, fire was definitely worse than flesh-eating bacteria.
“Don’t touch me!” the caped guy screamed. His cape was burning for real, now. Long licks of flame climbed up his cape.
“You’re on fire! You’re on fire!” the entire Area 38 group yelled, finally a group.
It was either the warnings, the heat, or the flames, but he finally understood that his cape was on fire. He ran past the group toward the lifeguard tower.
“That boy’s lit up like a Christmas tree!” Irving exclaimed from his beach chair.
“Take off the cape, you
moron!” Doris yelled, still knitting.
The cape guy listened to Doris. Just as the flames were going to reach him, he flung it off. The cape sailed through the air and landed on the pergola, which was attached to the lifeguard tower.
“He did it. He saved himself,” Frances cried.
“It’s a miracle!” Amy exclaimed
“That was a close one,” the cape guy said, gasping for air.
But the lifeguard tower wasn’t so lucky. The cape acted like an accelerant, and the tower went up in flames in a matter of seconds. The three lifeguards were outside at the time, but the tower turned into cinders before the firefighters showed up.
“Was that part of the trust exercises?” Amy asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I thought there would be a ropes course. When we did this with the real estate company I work for, they used a ropes course,” Frances said.
I didn’t want to start the trust exercises again with a ropes course. I wanted to be done with the Area 38ers. “I don’t think I’m a group person,” I said.
“Me neither,” Frances said. “Twelve years with the Moonies soured me on groups, let me tell you.”
After I closed the soup shop, I returned home. There was still a large group across the street, not to mention two firetrucks and three police cars. Remington was there somewhere, but I had succeeded in running back to the shop before he arrived. I didn’t need to be the center of another disaster. I worried that if he saw me at the foot of the ruins of the lifeguard tower, he would have locked me up for sure.
Even though it wasn’t my fault.
I didn’t cause disasters. Disasters just seemed to follow me.
I was looking forward to peace and quiet at home for a couple of hours before Remington was due to pick me up, but I walked into a battle. Auntie Ida and Auntie Tilly were in a Rocky tug of war in the entranceway.
“I’m going to show him the lighthouse,” Auntie Tilly said, tugging one of Rocky’s arms.
“I’m going to feed him a slice of banana bread,” Auntie Ida said, tugging Rocky’s other arm.
“How about I eat the bread and then go see the lighthouse?” Rocky suggested. His face was locked in an expression of pure fear, and I didn’t blame him for being scared.
Auntie Ida beamed with pleasure at Rocky’s decision to eat her banana bread before he visited the lighthouse. She had won the tug of war.
“I could go for a slice of banana bread, too,” I said. “I forgot to eat all day.”
“How could you forget to eat?” Tilly demanded.
“I was too busy with knitting needles, a riot, and a fire,” I explained.
We went to the kitchen, and Auntie Ida served the banana bread with tall glasses of buttermilk.
“Did you prove my innocence?” Rocky asked me. “Can I go home now? There are a lot of knives that need sharpening.”
“Not yet,” I said. His face dropped in disappointment, but my aunts looked delighted. “I have something to tell you, and to you know who.”
“What is it?” Auntie Ida asked, concerned.
“Remington Cumberbatch is going to pick me up soon. We’re going out to dinner.”
“That’s the man who arrested me,” Rocky said, visibly insulted by my choice of date.
“I know. I’m sorry. He won’t come inside,” I said.
“Have you told you know who?” Auntie Ida asked. We all looked around us, expecting John to appear. But he was quiet again. Even though I couldn’t see him, I knew that he was probably listening, and I knew that it would be difficult for him to hear about Remington.
“No, I haven’t told him,” I said.
“And well you shouldn’t,” Tilly said. “You have a right to a nice dinner with a man who can eat. You know who should go away and stay away.”
“Don’t say that, Auntie Tilly. I would be heartbroken,” I said.
“Heartbreak is a temporary affliction,” Auntie Tilly said. “You’d get over it eventually, and then you could settle down with a beautiful man who breathes oxygen.”
The doorbell rang a few minutes before six, and I ran to answer it. My aunts came with me to the door, and Rocky hid under the kitchen table. When I opened the door, Remington was standing on the porch, slightly out of breath. He had changed his clothes and looked spectacular in slacks and a sweater.
I had forgotten to change my clothes. I was still wearing what I had worn to work. I didn’t look bad in my long flowing dress, belted with a thick brown leather belt, but I smelled a little like lobster bisque.
“Wow, that was a lot of stairs,” Remington said, smiling at me. “You look nice.” I felt a tingle of pleasure at the compliment.
“Doesn’t she?” Tilly asked.
“Yes. An angel. I’m Remington,” he said, putting his hand out to her to shake. But my aunts pushed his hand away and gave him a bear hug. He hugged them back. He was so tall that he could wrap each arm around an aunt.
After introductions, I pushed Remington out the door and closed it behind us. Even if John was keeping quiet, there was no sense in testing it with Remington. Not to mention the fact that we were harboring a fugitive.
“What happened to the front steps?” Remington asked, looking down. “There were at least a hundred of them when I climbed up, but now there’s only four.”
“Where are we going out to eat?” I asked, changing the subject, because I was a terrible liar and I couldn’t explain to him that the house created more stairs if it didn’t like the visitor. I didn’t think the house was anti-Remington per se, but it was definitely pro-John.
I appreciated its loyalty and felt guilty about my lack of it.
“Do you have a favorite restaurant?” he asked, opening the car door for me.
“I haven’t been to a restaurant since they started putting goat cheese on pizza.”
“That was a long time ago, Aggie.”
“I haven’t been to a restaurant in a long time.”
“No, I mean that was a long time ago. Like more than thirty years ago,” Remington said.
“I’m older than I look.”
Chapter 14
“Any woman can fool a man if she wants to and if he’s in love with her.”
–Agatha Christie
It was the first time I had ever gone to a restaurant with a man. The few times in my life when I had gone out to eat had been with Auntie Prudence and Auntie Ida, and we went to Mexicali for crabs and beer on the beach. We stopped going years ago when the border crossing became more difficult and a Mexican cartel cut the restaurant owner’s head off.
Going to a restaurant with Remington was a totally different experience. It was special. It combined lust and food, which was an awesome combination. Even a better combination than chocolate and peanut butter.
Remington took me to an Italian restaurant with a patio that overlooked the ocean. Candles in red candleholders were in the center of each checkered cloth-covered table. Remington held my hand, opened doors for me, and was as attentive as an ICU nurse, except that I wasn’t dying, and he wanted to kiss me.
He was obvious about wanting to kiss me. It was like knowing that there was leftover pie and ice cream in the kitchen, waiting for me whenever I wanted them.
The host sat us outside at a table for two, and he thanked Remington for fixing a problem.
“Paolo’s family owns this restaurant,” Remington explained to me. “They had an issue with a supplier.”
“All fixed,” Paolo announced, ecstatic. “So, garlic bread is on the house tonight. And don’t order the scallops. That’s my gift to you.”
Remington waggled his eyebrows at me. “Free garlic bread and no food poisoning. I bet you’re pinching yourself right about now to be on a date with me.”
“I like garlic bread,” I agreed and my face got hot.
“What a day, but at least it’s ending well,” Remington said, studying me, as if I was the menu.
“Yes, crazy day.”
&
nbsp; “You should have seen those crazy Area 38 people. They burned down the lifeguard tower with a cape. A velvet cape. You can’t make this shit up.”
I kept my expression blank and focused on not blinking and not smiling, trying to hide from him the fact that I had had a front seat to the flammable cape debacle. It didn’t work. I couldn’t hide, any better than I could outright lie.
“What?” Remington asked. “What are you hiding?”
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. My face broke out in a big sweat, and I wiped my forehead and upper lip with my checked napkin. “Nothing,” I croaked. “Not hiding a thing.” I was hoarse, my voice taken by the stress of lying. I grabbed my glass of water and gulped down half.
“You know what? I’m going to pretend that you’re not lying to me about this,” Remington said. “I’m going to pretend that you had nothing to do with burning down the lifeguard tower.”
“Where’s that garlic bread?” I asked, looking for Paolo. I could feel Remington’s eyes boring holes through me right to my lying, hiding brain.
“Oh my God! You burned down the lifeguard tower!” Remington cried. The other diners turned to look at us.
“I didn’t burn it down. I saw it get burned down,” I insisted. “I was doing trust exercises with the cape guy.”
“Why were you doing trust exercises?”
“To bond as a group in order to overthrow the government and reveal the secrets of Area 38. Duh!” I added loudly, because his romantic get-in-my-pants look had been replaced with his why-are-you-such-a-walking-disaster look.
Paolo returned with our garlic bread. “Ready to order?” he asked.
“No,” Remington said.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“The lasagna is very good tonight,” Paolo suggested.
“Don’t say lasagna!” Remington and I shouted. Paolo took a step back.
“Sorry,” Remington apologized to Paolo. “It was a difficult lasagna day for us.”
“There was a casserole riot,” I explained.
Paolo nodded. “Oh, yeah. I heard about that. Hey, aren’t you the woman who killed Donald White with a knitting needle?”