by Elise Sax
“I think he’s a better suspect than the shark. He didn’t burn her house down, but maybe he did rip her face off.”
“We need more proof.”
Frances held up another letter. “Look here. This one threatens to stab her in the face. Isn’t that proof enough?”
I pocketed the letters. “We need proof on the other side of this relationship. There must be more clues from Felicia’s life. You up for breaking into another house?”
“Sure!” Frances said, excited. “It’s better than making fudge.”
“Call Amy. We’re going back to Donald and Felicia’s house. We need to go back to the beginning. There have to be the answers there.”
Amy met us at Donald’s house with two crowbars and a chainsaw. She handed out the tools when we arrived. “I didn’t know what we’d need, so I brought it all,” she explained.
“Let’s go in the back before we’re seen,” I said, urgently. Amy and I each took a crowbar, and Frances took the chainsaw.
“We don’t need to get in back,” Frances said, fishing a key out of her purse. “I own this house. Remember?”
I didn’t remember. I had forgotten that she now owned the house. Frances had come out well from Felicia and Donald’s murders.
She unlocked the front door, and we walked in. We decided to break up and search the house separately, searching for clues.
By the time we were finishing searching the bedrooms, I had given up hope of finding anything. With all of Donald and Felicia’s secrets, they sure knew how to hide them.
They probably hid their secrets on a computer, and I wished we knew something about computers and clouds. But I didn’t find a computer in the house, so even if we were technological whizzes, there was nothing to whizz about.
“What’s that?” Amy asked, pointing at the ceiling in the hallway.
“That must be the attic,” Frances said.
“The attic,” I breathed. I ran to the bedroom and brought back a chair. Stepping on it, I pushed the attic door open and climbed up through the opening.
Scanning the dark attic, I found that it mostly empty except for a small mattress, a pillow, and blanket which were strewn all over in addition to a trash bag, which was full of empty water bottles and paper plates with bits of food on them.
Then, my eyes were drawn to the tiny, far corner of the attic, and I sucked air through my teeth in surprise and fear.
“Frances! Amy! Come up here. You need to see this,” I called.
They climbed up and joined me. “What did you find?” Frances asked, and I pointed to the corner.
“Oh. My. God,” Amy said.
“It’s glowing,” Frances said.
“Blue. It’s glowing blue,” Amy said. “What is it?”
The glowing man. I was sure it was him, even though all I could see was a blue glow coming from the corner.
“I forgot my crowbar downstairs,” Amy whispered.
“I left the chainsaw downstairs, too,” Frances whispered.
“Get out from there!” I yelled at the corner. “We have you surrounded, and we have big weapons!”
“Yeah, surrounded!” Frances yelled. “Weapons!”
Nothing. There wasn’t a sound. No glowing man jumped up from the corner. No glowing man attacked us.
“Maybe he’s dead,” I whispered. Oh, no. I had found another dead person. Remington would never let me live it down.
I tiptoed toward the glow. “Wow,” I said, when I reached the corner. Frances and Amy ran over.
“What is that?” Amy asked, looking down.
“It’s a necklace,” Frances said.
“It’s a turquoise necklace,” I said. It was the necklace that Sid had bought Felicia. “Why is it glowing?” And why was it in the attic?
Frances took a silk scarf out of her purse and picked up the necklace with it. “It’s glowing all right,” she said, wrapping the scarf around it.
“What else is up here?” Amy asked and shined her cellphone light around the attic.
“Stop,” I told her as she lit up the blanket and pillow. “What is that?”
I leaned over them to take a closer look. They were covered in dried blood. So was the mattress.
I slumped onto the floor and took stock of the situation. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened in the attic. I was pretty sure I knew what happened to Felicia, Donald, and Jesus and who was responsible. Mostly sure, anyway.
But I couldn’t tell Frances and Amy yet. Not here.
“I need to close up the shop, and then I’m going to spend the evening in the lighthouse alone, thinking about all this,” I said.
“Do you know who the killer is?” Amy asked me.
“I have an idea, but like I said, I need to spend time in the lighthouse alone this evening to work it out.” I let my eyes drift to Frances, and then I looked down at the floor. “You should tell Remington about this, but maybe wait until tomorrow.”
“Will do,” Frances said.
While I closed the shop, I told Mouse that I was going to spend the evening alone in the lighthouse, detective-ing, and that I knew who the killer was but was waiting to tell the police until tomorrow.
“Good for you,” Doris said, who was waiting for Irving to turn out the gas lights. “I think you’re ready for some Sherlock Holmes next.”
“Maybe tomorrow, Doris,” I said.
I went home and told my aunts that I would be handling the lighthouse for the night. Tilly seemed relieved to hear it. Then, I climbed to the top of the lighthouse, gave it permission to allow what was about to happen, and I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
There is a sense of calm serenity that washes over a person when they are sure. Gone are the questions and uncertainties, replaced now with tranquil certainty. It had been a long road for me since Auntie Prudence died, I started to run the soup shop, John returned, I met Remington, and Felicia disappeared. They were all life-changing events, and my life was definitely changed by them. I was changed by them. But where the changes once gave me anxiety and worry, I now was comfortable in my new self. My new life. My new reality.
I was stronger, more self-assured.
I was ready.
As soon as it was dark, I heard footsteps on the stairs. I waited by the light that guided ships at night and looked out at the ocean through the glass. The door opened behind me.
“I knew you would come,” I said, surprised that my voice came out strong and steady. “That’s why I said I was coming here to be alone. I wanted to draw you out.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Like you had any idea.”
I turned around to face her. “It took me a long time to figure out that you were the killer. I went down so many different paths. But someone told me to go back to the beginning, and that’s how I figured it out.”
“Good for you,” she sneered, pointing a gun at me.
“There were other suspects, of course. You planted the whaling hook in poor Rocky’s van. The police think that he’s still alive and on a murder spree.”
“I’m a little sorry about Rocky,” she said. “I wanted him to die by lethal injection, not by drowning.”
“Then, Amy Hawthorne’s cats made her a suspect for Donald’s murder,” I continued. “She had access to knitting needles just like everyone else in town, and her cats ate the victim. That was clever of you to plant the cats.”
“It was a pain in my ass, herding those stupid cats,” she said.
“And Frances Finkelstein seemed to acquire the Whites’ house in a suspect way. Benefiting from his death made me have second thoughts about her.”
“I don’t know anything about Frances,” she said, smiling. “That was just a happy accident.”
“And the last suspect was Doris.”
“Doris? Doris Lansing? Irving’s wife?” she laughed, as if I was the insane one in this conversation and not her. “Why would you think that she was a killer?”
“She had a bandage o
n her hand today, which made her a suspect for Jesus Alvarez’s murder, and right before the whaling hook was found in Rocky’s van, she was carrying a large, long half-duffel, perfect to carry a whaling hook in order to plant it in poor Rocky’s van.”
“I don’t know anything about her duffel, either.” She continued to smile, as if it was fun for her to finally talk about the murders. I noticed that she never lowered her gun. It was aimed right at me.
“Why would you? You were busy that day. I saw you, too. You were wearing your perspiration coat. A nice long coat to make you sweat off pounds but also to hide a whaling hook so that you could plant it in Rocky’s van.”
Bunty Black cocked her head to the side and nodded, as if she was impressed with my detective skills. “See? Women should never be underestimated. Very perceptive of you, Agatha. The perspiration coat. Do you know what kind of torture it is to wear the perspiration coat? The things I’ve done for that miserable sonofabitch.”
“I don’t know much about marriage, but I imagine it’s hard,” I said. “Especially a polyamorous marriage. I’m assuming that was—what was the word you used? Oh, yes—bullshit.”
Bunty waved the gun at me. I had made her angry. “A polyamorous marriage works. At least it does in most cases. It did with us for years. And then that bitch came between us.”
“Sid was head over heels for her,” I said. “I saw the letters. I can understand that you wanted to kill her. It’s a normal reaction for a wife, even for a women’s studies professor polyamorous wife. I guess you didn’t know that Felicia didn’t love Sid.”
“Like that matters. You really don’t understand a thing about marriage.”
Boy, that was true. “I didn’t know a thing about Donald and Felicia’s marriage, that’s for sure. Felicia was fooling around on Donald, and yet they were both plotting to fake her death, grab the insurance money, and flee to Mexico. Am I leaving anything out?”
Bunty’s mouth dropped open. “How did you find that out?”
“The question is, how did you find out,” I said, pointing at her. “Here’s what I think, but it’s mostly a guess. Sid stopped working out with you. It was the one thing in your marriage that you did together, and then he abandoned you. His muscles started to shrink, and his clothes got baggy. He was only interested in having sex with Felicia, and rejected you in bed, no matter what you claim about your sex life.”
Bunty’s face tightened, and she was gripping the gun a little too tight for my comfort. The truths hurts, even for killer women’s studies professors. It was playing out on her face. I had found her soft underbelly, and she was feeling the pain.
“When she went missing, you went over to her house for some reason, probably to tell Donald all about the affair in order to ruin his life, or maybe you suspected the disappearance was fishy at that point, and you wanted to dig information out of him,” I said. I was on a roll. I knew that everything I said was true. “But he wasn’t there. He was preparing to become rich and move to Mexico. And you heard something. Something in the attic.”
“She was hiding in the attic,” Bunty sneered. “What a dipshit place to hide. I can’t believe the police didn’t look for her there. Well, I found her. And the whaling hook? That was in her house. In her bedroom. I picked it up and took it with me into the attic. Felicia tried to stop me. She offered to share the life insurance with me. Have you seen my car? I’m loaded. I don’t need more money.”
“All of your weightlifting came in handy then,” I said, moving the story forward. “You managed to lug her body to the pier in the middle of the night and somehow fished a shark out of the ocean. That’s pretty impressive, Bunty.”
She smiled and flexed her bicep. “I’ve been fishing my whole life. I fished it out and beat it a few times with a bat. Then, it was nothing to put her head in the shark’s mouth. I created a live tableau just like an artist.”
“You mean a dead tableau,” I said.
“You could stand to lift some weights, Agatha. But you don’t have to worry about that now or ever again.” She punctuated her words by gesturing with her gun, keeping it aimed at me.
“It must have been a nasty surprise when Donald caught on and started to blackmail you,” I said. “I heard him on the phone with you. From what I gather, you were complaining a lot about paying him, even though he was giving you an installment plan. He was very happy then. He got rid of Felicia, and he had money coming out the wazoo.”
“Donald deserved what he got. Killing him was not a crime in any book. Do you know what the bastard had planned? While Felicia thought they were faking her death and escaping to Mexico, Donald was planning on really killing her and taking all of the insurance money for himself. Men. Who needs ‘em?” she said.
That fit with what I knew about Donald’s character. He was scamming the scammer. Either way, Felicia was going to wind up dead. Bunty had just beaten him to the punch.
“There’re only two things that I can’t figure out,” I said. “How did you kill Jesus Alvarez when you were with me at the time he was murdered?”
Bunty threw her head back and laughed, loudly. “That was some good luck. I never knew the guy. I never even touched him. I have no idea how he wound up with a helmet of molten lead. But it gave me a great alibi, and it took my name off the suspect list. At least I thought it did until today.”
“Until you heard that I was going to be by myself in the lighthouse to think about the murders. I’m guessing Doris and Irving told you. They like to talk,” I said.
Bunty nodded. “Bingo.”
“The other thing I can’t figure out is the glowing man and the glowing necklace in the attic. Did Felicia and Donald have something to do with Area 38?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Bunty said. “I hate to call this short after our nice conversation, but I have an alibi to get to. Come on. Get down the stairs,” she ordered, gesturing with the gun.
“I’m not going to let you kill me.”
“You don’t have much of a choice, Agatha.”
I stepped around Bunty, just as the gun flew out of her hands as if it had wings and fell down the winding staircase to the floor below.
“I can do this on my own, John,” I complained to the air. “Don’t help me.”
Bunty ran down the stairs after her gun, and John appeared next to me. “It’s too dangerous, Agatha,” he said. “I’ve called in your aunts.”
“I can do this on my own,” I insisted and walked down the stairs. “I worked out who the killer was. I lured her here. I will capture her and send her to the police on my own.”
Below, Bunty searched the floor for her gun. She found it just as my aunts walked into the lighthouse with Rocky. “Agatha, hold our hands, quick,” Auntie Tilly ordered me.
“I can do this myself,” I complained, but I did as I was told. The three of us stood in a line and held hands. Bunty lifted the gun and aimed it at me. I was reminded of the Area 38ers and their efforts to evade bullets. It didn’t work for them, but they didn’t have the special talents of the Bright women. My aunts and I squeezed hands, and the gun flew out of Bunty’s hands and fell on the floor.
Bunty screamed with rage. “What the hell’s going on?” she yelled.
“It’s over,” I said.
Bunty grabbed a hammer from the wall and threw it our way. My aunts squeezed my hands hard, again, and the hammer stopped midair and dropped to the floor.
“This is actually fun,” Auntie Ida said. “I haven’t done this in ages. It’s like going for a walk on a spring day after a long winter.”
Bunty’s eyes were wild as she tried to understand what was happening. I worried that we would pay for this later, that word would get out about flying guns and hammers. But it was unlikely that Bunty would be believed, since she was a crazed killer.
And besides, I was tired of hiding my skills and talents.
Bunty knew when she had lost. She sank to the floor and put her hands up in surrender. My aunts and I let
go of each other. It was over, and we had won.
The door to the lighthouse opened and Remington entered. “Aggie, are you all right? Frances told me that you were here…Rocky?” He froze when he noticed the escaped fugitive, and so did Rocky for a moment. Then fear took over, and Rocky bolted. Remington ran after him in the small room. It only took a second to catch him, but it was a half-second too long. “Rocky, freeze! Police!”
While our attention was on Remington and Rocky, Bunty had picked up her gun and aimed it right at me.
The shot rang out, hurting my ears. Remington, who had moved in front of me, fell to the floor with a loud crash and blood pooled under him as he bled out from the bullet wound. Bunty took aim at me again. My aunts and I didn’t have time to do anything, but the gun flew out of her hand so forcefully that it crashed against the wall and broke into pieces.
John had saved me.
Defeated, Bunty tried to run, but Rocky stopped her. He jumped on her and pinned her to the ground. “Not so fast, lady. I’m not taking the rap for you,” he told her.
I sank to the floor and cradled Remington in my arms. He was no longer conscious, so he wasn’t aware of me. He had lost a lot of blood, and I could feel the life running out of him.
“Auntie Ida, Auntie Tilly, help him, please,” I said with tears running down my face.
“We can’t, sweetie,” Auntie Ida said. “He’s gone already. I can feel it. There’s nothing that we can do for him.”
I knew she was right, but I pleaded with her to save him, anyway. In my arms, I could feel Remington’s heart beat slower and slower as he drifted away forever. He was beyond medical care or magical care. Remington was young and strong, but none of that would save him, now.
John appeared at my side. His expression was sad and mournful, but I knew he wasn’t mourning for Remington. It was my tears that hurt him.
“I can bring him back, Agatha,” John said.
“You can?” I asked through my sobs. “Please John, do it. Please.”
“I can do it, but it will mean that I go away forever,” John explained. “Not just go quiet. Leave. In exchange for his life, I will be gone. Do you understand me?”