The Fear Hunter

by Elise Sax

  “Hey, Agatha. How are you today?” I heard behind me. I turned around to find Rocky. He was holding his tool bag, and he looked worse for wear.

  “Are you on a job?”

  “The tackle shop at the end of the pier,” he explained. “They have a lot of knives, and they have a ton of scissors, for some reason. They’re all dull as dishwater. I’ve got my hands full.”

  I nodded. “You look tired.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not complaining about good business.”

  I turned my head for a moment and saw Amy walk away from the lifeguard tower, and Donald walk in the opposite direction. Whatever their conversation was about, it was over. The tackle shop owner stepped out of his shop and yelled for Rocky to get moving. He shook his fist in our direction, and I could see that his face was red all the way from where I was standing.

  “Would you do me a favor and get my blue workbox out of the van and bring it to me in the tackle shop?” Rocky asked me, slightly frazzled. “The bossman is a pain in my rear. If I don’t get over there pronto, he’s going to have my guts for garters.”

  “Sure. No problem,” I said since there was no one left to spy on. Remington was following Donald, and the uniformed policeman was walking back toward the pier. Rocky jogged to the tackle shop, and I opened the back of the van. Inside was chaos. Besides the tools of his trade, Rocky had filled his van with personal belongings and some trash.

  Climbing inside, I spotted the blue toolbox at the other end of the van. I stepped over various belongings in order to get to the toolbox, but it was impossible to find a foothold without stepping on one of Rocky’s belongings. I stumbled, and my foot landed on something made of glass, which shattered into a million pieces.

  “Sorry, Rocky, but it’s your fault for making me do this,” I muttered.

  I scooted my foot under a tarp and took another step. I was almost in reach. Another step, and I would be able to get the toolbox and bring it back to Rocky. I lifted my foot that was under the tarp, but it was stuck under something heavy, and I flew forward. Putting my hands out to brace myself, I landed hard on the floor of the van. I had saved my face, but my hands felt sprained. I rolled onto my back and caught my breath. When I was breathing normally, I sat up and flipped the tarp off to see what I had tripped over.

  There on the floor of the van was a long metal pole with a large, rusty metal hook at the end. A bloody, large, rusty metal hook.

  A bloody hook.

  Holy crap. A bloody hook.

  I grabbed hold of it and dragged it out of the van on my hands and knees. When I was outside, I carried it up on the sidewalk and hailed the uniformed policeman.

  “A hook! A hook!” I yelled, pointing at the hook clutched in my hand. The policeman looked around to see where the sound was coming from, and I waved the hook at him. “Over here! A hook!”

  When he got to me, I handed the policeman the hook. “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a hook.”

  All of my hollering brought a small crowd, and Remington ran back to me. “She found a hook, Detective,” the policeman told Remington and rolled his eyes, like he was saying, who cared if I found a hook.

  “You found it?” Remington asked me.

  “It’s not mine. I promise,” I assured him.

  He arched an eyebrow. “You found it?”

  “It not mine,” I whined. “I found it in Rocky’s van.”

  Everyone’s head turned to the van. “I saw her climb out of there, Detective,” the policeman said.

  “See? See?” I said. “I found it in Rocky’s van. It was under a tarp, and I tripped over it.”

  “You tripped over the murder weapon,” Remington repeated.

  “It’s a murder weapon?” the policeman asked, startled.

  “It’s not my murder weapon,” I insisted. “It’s Rocky’s murder weapon. At least, it was in his van.”

  Everyone looked at the van, again.

  “Where’s Rocky?” Remington asked, calmly.

  I pointed at the tackle shop at the end of the pier. “He’s sharpening their knives.”

  “The killer is in a tackle shop full of knives,” someone in the crowd said. “That’s bad luck.”

  “You stay here,” Remington ordered me. “You come with me,” he commanded the policeman, who was still holding the hook. They began to walk toward the pier, and I followed them. So did the small crowd of people.

  When we got to the end of the pier, the people were making so much noise, talking about killers and hooks, that Rocky and the tackle shop owner stepped out of the shop to see what was going on.

  “Are you looking for bait and tackle?” the shop owner asked, not understanding what was going on.

  “Rocky, you remember me?” Remington asked him.

  “Sure, you’re The Rock.”

  “I’m Detective Remington Cumberbatch. Is that your van parked on the street?”

  “Sure. Still running after twenty years. Did I park too far away from the curb?” Rocky asked.

  “Why was this hook in your van?” Remington asked, pointing at the hook in the policeman’s hand.

  “Hey, I know what that is,” the tackle shop owner said. “It’s an antique whaling hook. That might be worth something.”

  “Rocky, it’s the murder weapon,” I told him. “It was used to kill Felicia.”

  Rocky’s mouth dropped open, and his face was the picture of shock and surprise. “Why was it in my van?”

  “Do you have something you want to get off your chest, Rocky?” Remington asked.

  “No.”

  “Nothing about Felicia? About the hook?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Remington said, his voice calm and cool, like he was talking to a skittish horse. “I’m going to bring you to the station to ask you a few questions.”

  “But I have knives to sharpen,” Rocky said.

  “You can sharpen them after,” Remington said, taking handcuffs off his waistband. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  “Oh, my God. The new cop is arresting Rocky!” someone in the crowd exclaimed.

  “Is that a cop? I thought they were filming a movie,” another person cried from the crowd.

  “Your hands behind your back, Rocky,” Remington said, and Rocky did what he was told.

  “I can’t believe that Rocky Montana ripped a woman’s face off,” the policeman said.

  “I would never!” Rocky yelled.

  “We’ll talk about it at the station,” Remington told him.

  “No. No. No. No, no, no,” Rocky moaned as Remington handcuffed him. “I don’t want to go to jail. Not again. I swore I would never go to jail again.”

  “Take him in, and I’ll meet up with you in a minute,” Remington told the policeman. “Now, about you, Aggie,” he said to me.

  “I found it in the van,” I said.

  “I’m going to need a statement from you. And a promise.”

  “A promise?” I asked.

  “Yes. I need you to stop finding things. I need you to stop hanging around killers,” he said, his expression serious.

  At that moment, it dawned on me that I had solved the mystery of Felicia’s murder. I had found the murder weapon and discovered that poor, sweet Rocky was the killer. “I thought I would feel better,” I told Remington.

  “Ain’t nothing satisfying about dead people, baby,” Remington said.

  I wished he didn’t say it that way. It reminded me that John was waiting at home for me. Where Remington worried that I might be a murderer, John was worried that I would get murdered.

  There was a high-pitched scream near us, and I turned to see the policeman on the floor, the whaling hook on top of him. “I stumbled over it!” he yelled.

  “See?” I said to Remington. “It’s not hard to do.”

  “He’s going to jump!” a woman yelled.

  Remington and I whipped around, just in time to see Rocky jump off the pier twenty feet into the ocean with his hands ha
ndcuffed behind his back. We ran to the railing and looked down just as Rocky hit the water.

  “He’s dead,” the tackle shop owner said. “Rocky can’t swim.”

  “The current will sweep him down to Mexico,” someone in the crowd announced. “He’ll be swimming with the Mexican fishes.”

  Rocky had gone in the water, and that was the last that we saw of him. It was hard to imagine that he could survive with his hands cuffed behind his back, even if he could swim.

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

  Chapter 9

  “The streets were dark with something more than night.”

  –Raymond Chandler

  Remington handed the policeman his gun and phone and jumped into the ocean, but he didn’t find Rocky. Divers were brought in from San Diego, and various boats covered the area. But Rocky didn’t show up. The general consensus was that he was eaten by Mexican fishes.

  The antique whaling hook was tested quickly, and it came out positive for Felicia’s blood and matched the shape of her wounds. So, the mystery was over. Rocky killed Felicia. Rocky died.

  All done.

  “I’m glad that this is behind you, Agatha,” John told me that night. It was nearly midnight, and I was sitting up in bed. We had been talking for hours. That wasn’t new for us, but the topic of the conversation was. We had never discussed a murder mystery before. Not even with Auntie Prudence.

  “I don’t think it’s behind me. I don’t feel like it’s over.”

  He stood over me, his hands clasped behind his back. His hair was tied with a leather tie, as usual, and I felt the familiar urge to untie it and touch it. I knew with certainty that it would be thick and soft, even though I had never touched it before.

  “Agatha,” he said, softly, as if he could read my thoughts of longing. He stepped closer, and I put my hand out on the bed, less than an inch from his thigh.

  It was always like this. The longing. The frustration. The sadness. The love. There were years and years and years of this. That’s why John went silent for a year. But pain was better than emptiness, as far as I was concerned. I needed him with me, even if he couldn’t be with me all the way.

  “Why would Rocky kill Felicia?” I asked John, carefully reinserting the real world back into the room.

  “Would? Don’t you mean did?”

  “No. I don’t think he did. Rocky was a nice man. Kind. Gentle. I can’t see him taking a hook to Felicia’s face.”

  “There’s violence in all men,” John said, speaking from personal experience. “Rocky might have had mental issues. He might have gotten angry with her. You’ve said that Felicia was not a kind woman and that many people didn’t like her. Perhaps Rocky was one of them. It would only take one swipe of a whaling hook to kill a woman. One swipe can be done without intention, merely by impulse.”

  John had a point. Everything he said made sense. There was no reason Rocky couldn’t have killed Felicia. People did things all the time that were out of character.

  “But…” I said.

  John arched an eyebrow and smiled. “But,” he repeated. “You enjoy this, Agatha. You like your mystery.”

  Yes. I never felt so alive since Felicia died. That probably didn’t say anything good about me, but there you go. I was a busybody, a murder fiend. “I can’t stop thinking that Donald killed Felicia. He had every reason to. Money. Lots of money, John. And he’s running around town, acting fishy. Not to mention the fact that he’s planning on leaving Sea Breeze. I think he’s guilty, but I can’t prove it.”

  John ran his hand over his beard. “Donald White does sound like a scoundrel and a cad. He’s more than likely up to no good. He could have probably killed his wife without too much trouble. I knew a man who killed his wife and sold her flesh to the local baker to make pies. It was discovered when the baker found an earring.”

  “What did you do to him?” I asked.

  “I prosecuted. The judge chose to hang him.”

  The words dropped into the silence of the room and stayed there between us. Hanging was a sore subject for the Bright women.

  “I would like to get hold of Donald and take him to the woods so that he could never hurt another soul, especially a soul I care about,” John said.

  “There are no woods here,” I told him, but his offer filled my heart. In life, John would protect me against all threats. “I need to find proof that Donald did it, but I don’t know how.”

  “You are glowing, Agatha. You enjoy a mystery more than you ever enjoyed the lighthouse.”

  “I brought home more mysteries so that I’ll keep learning. This one is by Agatha Christie. We share the same name,” I said, showing him the book.

  “Read it to me,” John urged. “Let’s see what the other Agatha would say about a knife sharpener killing a woman with a whaling hook.”

  I read for about a half hour until I fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I was woken by the sounds of my aunts downstairs in the kitchen. For once, they weren’t fighting. It was the sound of a Bright whiskey night.

  I loved Bright whiskey nights. We hadn’t had one since Auntie Prudence died.

  Hopping out of bed, I ran downstairs. I found my aunts in the kitchen. They were stirring batter in a large bowl. A bottle of whiskey was open and three glasses full of amber liquid were on the table.

  I sat down at the table and took a sip from one of the glasses. Yum. We had collected Irish whiskey over the years, and this one from 1885 was particularly good.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “I wanted to make scones, and Tilly thought to put cranberries in them. Genius,” Auntie Ida said.

  “And Ida had the idea to roast a turkey to make mini-sandwiches for our Sunday lunch. More genius,” Auntie Tilly said.

  It was one of the rare moments of peace between them, and it felt good.

  “We’re going to start on the turkey when we put the scones in the oven, and we’re making an extra six batches to take with you to work tomorrow,” Auntie Tilly told me.

  “I’m just opening. I’m not serving food,” I said.

  “A few scones won’t hurt anybody,” Auntie Ida said.

  “Whiskey,” John said, appearing next to me. “I still don’t understand why you women haven’t succumbed to the joys of rum. I would love to taste rum on my lips, again. Or even smell rum.”

  “I’ll make a rum cake next week, and you can pretend to smell it,” Auntie Ida offered.

  “Typical of a man not to understand the finer points about a finer drink,” Auntie Tilly chastised him.

  “I’ll have you know that some of my most favorite moments in life started with rum. Be careful, or I’ll haunt you, Tilly,” he said.

  “What do you call what you’re doing now?” she asked.

  “Gifting you with my presence. Educating you about the pleasure of rum. If I haunted you, Tilly, you would know it. You would never sleep again because of the terror,” John said, his face set in stone, all hard planes and edges. He would have been a fearsome man in life. All strength and no weakness.

  Except for me. I would have been his weakness.

  Auntie Tilly laughed. “You’re a funny one. I’ve got news for you, scary man. I haven’t slept in years.”

  That was a lie. Auntie Tilly slept like the dead. Her snoring could be heard for miles. When the scones were in the oven, the three of us sat at the table and sipped whiskey. John broke out into a bawdy song about a woman on a ship. I closed my eyes in appreciation of his voice and of old songs.

  “How’s the wind?” I asked Auntie Tilly, when John finished his song.

  “Still changing. Be prepared for anything,” Auntie Tilly said.

  “See? The wind is still changing,” I said to John. “Rocky didn’t kill Felicia.”

  We drank and baked and a couple hours later, we put the turkey into the oven. When we returned to the table and poured more whiskey, John had disappeared. He did that sometimes bec
ause he wanted to and sometimes because he had to. I didn’t know the exact rules for a dead person, but I knew there were rules. Limits.

  Auntie Tilly and Auntie Ida leaned forward and lowered their voice. “What have you done to John?” Auntie Tilly demanded.

  “Nothing. I wasn’t aware I could do anything to John,” I said. I had a list of things I wanted to do to John. They were all things I had never done to anyone, and they were all done naked.

  Auntie Tilly waved her hand, dismissively. “Not that. He looks like a wounded puppy.”

  “He’s always been the tragic hero and heartbroken, but this is different,” Auntie Ida said. “Did you do something we’re not supposed to do?”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms in front of me. “I would never.”

  “Because that would be dangerous. We don’t want bad attention, and by bad attention, I mean attention,” Auntie Ida said.

  “I know,” I said, choosing not to tell them about Mouse’s suspicions.

  Auntie Tilly closed one eye and stared at me, like she was looking at my head through a sniper’s rifle. She tapped her chin with her index finger. “If I were crazy, I’d say that John was jealous.”

  Auntie Ida sucked in air. “You know what, Tilly? I think you’re right. John is jealous. Why is John jealous, Agatha?”

  I swallowed down the rest of my whiskey and poured more into my glass. “There’s nothing to be jealous about,” I said into my glass.

  Auntie Ida and Auntie Tilly gasped, loudly. “You just lied,” Auntie Ida said. “You just lied about there being nothing to be jealous about.”

  “Agatha Bright, do you have a man in your life?” Auntie Tilly asked.

  “No.” It was the truth. I didn’t have a man in my life. I had a ghost in my life, and I had a sexy detective who flirted with me every chance he got. Nothing more than that.

  Auntie Tilly arched an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “You better be careful, girl. Playing around with men’s emotions can have bad outcomes.”

  “That’s true,” Auntie Ida said. “Wars have started like that. And recessions. Darth Vader went to the dark side because of it.”