by Elise Sax
“I’m not playing with men’s emotions,” I insisted. “I don’t know how to play with men’s emotions. I’m not even sure what men’s emotions are. I know they like sports, but I don’t know much more than that.”
They let the conversation drop after that, probably because the turkey needed basting. I decided to sneak away to the lighthouse just for a visit and to get some much-needed alone time. Before Auntie Prudence died, I had a lot of alone time, but now I was the center of the world with the soup shop. I was surrounded by people every minute of the day.
The lighthouse was connected to our home through a passageway that we built years ago. When we first arrived in Sea Breeze, we built the lighthouse and lived in it for a while, but it was too close quarters for my aunts, who were at each other’s throats nonstop. It was much safer to live in a bigger house where they could stay an arm-swinging length or a knife-throwing length away from each other.
Now, the lighthouse was abandoned except for the tools and objects needed to keep a lighthouse running. I passed through the house and climbed the circular staircase up to the top. I had climbed them thousands of times, but after making soup for the past two weeks instead of working the lighthouse, I found that I was slightly winded by the exertion.
Once I was at the top, I ran my finger against the large glass enclosure, which held the light. It was clean. My aunts were doing a good job in my absence. I opened the door and stepped out onto the narrow metal balcony that circled the light.
I could hear the waves crashing on the shore in the distance, and I breathed deeply in the scent of saltwater on the wind. It was the middle of the night, and the town was dark and quiet. Only a handful of streetlights were on, and there wasn’t a car on the road.
And then I saw it.
A blue glow was moving down Sea Breeze Avenue.
I froze in place. He was back. The glowing man was back.
“Agatha Bright, don’t do it,” John roared, appearing next to me.
“The glowing man is back. I need to talk to him and find out about Area 38,” I said, opening the door to go back inside.
John followed me as I ran down the stairs. “Agatha, I must put my foot down. This is a serious matter.”
“Put your foot down later. I’m going to catch that glowing man.”
“You’re in your nightdress.”
“I don’t think there’s a dress code,” I said, reaching the bottom of the lighthouse.
“I can see your breasts through the fabric. They’re lovely breasts, but I don’t think you should be showing them to the town.”
Covering my breasts with one arm, I turned to him and wagged my finger under his nose. “I’m going to catch the glowing man, and you can’t stop me.”
“Fine. Fine!” John bellowed, throwing his hands up. “If that’s the way you want to play it, Agatha, I can play, too. If you’re going to change, so am I.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no more Mister Patient Ghost. It means I’m going to be proactive.”
John disappeared, and a second later, there was complete chaos in the lighthouse, like a tornado had hit. Every object flew off the walls and crashed to the floor. I ducked before a hammer could make contact with my body. A table upturned itself and crashed violently against the wall. The small windows rattled with fury.
It only took a minute for the violence to end, but I got the message. “Do you feel better, now? Shame on you, acting like a petulant child,” I said, even though John was no longer there. Moving things in the real world exhausted him, and he would be silent for a while. Good. More time for me to catch the glowing man.
I ran outside and down the cobblestone road. It wasn’t until I reached Sea Breeze Avenue that I realized I was barefoot. I didn’t care. Nothing was going to stop me. The glowing man was in sight. He had made a U-turn and was running down the street in the opposite direction. He turned down a side street, and I sped up.
Just then, I saw another light, and it was coming straight for me. Instead of blue, it was white. A car. I hopped onto the sidewalk and kept running. When the car slowed down, I waved at it to move along and leave me alone.
It didn’t work. The car made a U-turn and slowed down next to me. The passenger window opened.
“Are you all right?” a man asked from inside the car. Holy crap. It was Remington. My thoughts went instantly to the fact that my breasts were showing through my nightdress, and I didn’t know whether to be ashamed or thrilled by it.
“Fine. Can’t chat now,” I said, still running.
“What’re you running from?” Remington asked, driving next to me as I ran.
“Running to, not from. The glowing man is back. I’m going to capture him and make him tell me about Area 38.”
“He’s back? Get in.”
“No, I have to catch him.”
“I’ll drive you. It’ll be easier to catch him.”
He stopped the car and opened the passenger door. I got in. I hadn’t ridden in a lot of cars during my life, and I marveled at the technology. There was a computer between the seats and a shotgun attached to the dashboard.
“I get it. This is a police vehicle,” I said. “I’ve read about these.”
“Put your seatbelt on,” Remington said.
“Seatbelt,” I repeated, searching for one.
Remington reached over me and pulled the belt across me and clicked it into place. “Agatha, tell me what you were doing running down the street in the middle of the night without shoes on.” Good. He didn’t mention my breasts. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said, like he was accusing me of something.
“You’re not?”
“No, but I’m getting a distinct stink of booze coming off you, and strangely enough, turkey, too.”
“It was whiskey night,” I explained.
“Where?”
“At home with my aunts. On whiskey nights, we drink a lot of whiskey and bake. We roasted a turkey this time, too, along with cranberry scones.”
“And after, you decided to run down the street, toasted. Agatha, strictly speaking, that isn’t legal.”
“I’m not toasted,” I insisted. “If that means inebriated. I’ve never been inebriated in my life. Believe me, I’ve tried, but I can’t get there. Speaking of getting there, step on it. We have to catch the glowing guy.”
He put his foot on the gas, and we zoomed down the street. I instructed him to turn right where the glowing guy had gone a minute before.
“You should invite me to a whiskey night. I like whiskey as much as the next man. You live with your aunts, right? I’d love to meet them,” Remington said. “Maybe I’ll stop by sometime.”
I couldn’t imagine him stopping by the house. It was a recipe for disaster. “Over there!” I yelled, pointing ahead. There was a tinge of blue glow where the glowing man had been. “Turn right!”
“It’s like he’s leaving a glowing trail,” Remington noted.
“What do you think is making him glow?”
“Something tells me it’s not from eating a large bag of blue sour candies. I think it’s probably something we want to stay far away from. Like Chernobyl or Tribbles.”
We had lost the glowing man, but a car sped away in the distance. “He’s got a car,” I said.
“It’s either his or he’s got a glowing partner,” Remington agreed.
“Catch him! Can’t you go any faster?”
“Aggie, I can go as fast as you want. Faster, probably. But I’m not in a hurry. Let’s hang back and play it cool. We’ll see where he’s going. We can always interrogate him later. You like how I’m saying ‘we’?”
I giggled and slapped my hand over my mouth in embarrassment. We followed the car out of town, toward the desert. “Do you think he’s going to Area 38?” I asked.
“If he’s smart, he’s not. Let me tell you, if someone made me glow, I wouldn’t go back for a visit. You hear me?”
We followed the car for forty minut
es, while Remington talked about Star Trek and his Captain Kirk uniform collection, whatever that meant. Finally, we turned off the highway onto a dirt road for a couple of miles. We almost ran into the security fence that surrounded Area 38 because the complex was dark. Ahead of us, a gate opened, and the glowing man’s car drove through. The gate closed, again before we could reach it.
“Area 38,” I read out loud on a small plaque on the gate. “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
“That means shot,” Remington said. “Or sent to a black site in a small Middle Eastern country.”
“That doesn’t sound good. I don’t want either of those things. Can we sneak in? I bet I could climb the fence no problem.”
“It’s an electric fence,” Remington said. “You’ll get fried like bacon on a Sunday morning.”
“An electric fence. What will people think of next?” I asked, impressed.
“I’ve heard rumors about machine guns and self-rising bread.”
Remington opened his door. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“Out.”
“What about the electric fence? What about the bacon?”
“I’m not going to touch the fence,” he said, clicking on a flashlight. “I’m going to do some non-touching spying. You want to join me?” I practically jumped out of the car. “Be careful where you step in your bare feet,” Remington warned.
“I’ll be fine.”
He shined the light on me. “How did you get like that?”
“Good food and lots of sunshine. Actually, I’m not much taller than the average woman.”
“No, like that. That. Your clothes. Your feet. You weren’t dressed like that before.”
“I can assure you that I’ve worn this outfit many times,” I said, sidestepping the truth.
“Aggie, you know what I mean. You were wearing a nightgown before. Now, you’re wearing a dress with a belt, and there are shoes on your feet.”
My hair was brushed, too, and I was wearing my favorite pair of earrings, but I didn’t think I should point that out to Remington. I was trying to keep a low profile, and my aunts would be angry if I drew attention to us.
“Maybe I should sit down,” Remington said, shining the light on my clothes. “Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe there wasn’t a glowing man. Maybe I’m not at a secret government facility with a beautiful woman who has materialized shoes out of nowhere. Oh, hell. Of course, I’m dreaming. All of that sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Either a dream or a psychotic break. Normally, I’m as cool as the other side of the pillow, but I’m low on the cool thing right now. Opposite of cool. Way opposite. Polar opposite…even though polar sounds cool.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” I interrupted.
Remington blinked. His mouth turned up slowly into a wide smile. “Baby, you got it all in the right places.”
“That’s good, right?” I said. “Look!” I exclaimed and pointed at the ground. There were a couple of rocks. And they were glowing.
“What the hell is going on here?” Remington asked.
He put gloves on and pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. “Evidence,” he said, putting a glowing rock into the bag. “I’ll get it tested, and maybe we’ll uncover the secrets of Area 38.”
Chapter 10
“Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.”
–Agatha Christie
Remington dropped me off in front of the soup shop and left to take the glowing rock to a lab, which could test it for radioactivity or whatever would cause it to glow. We had walked a good portion of the Area 38 fence, but we didn’t learn anything about the mysterious facility except that glowing men liked to come and go from the place, and they were very diligent about keeping the lights off.
Afterward, when Remington dropped me off at the soup shop, it was still dark, and Doris and Irving were already waiting for me at the front door. “No soups today,” I warned them.
“We know,” Doris said. “We’re here to give our support to the knitters.”
“You got any of that horrible coffee you make?” Irving asked me.
“I’ll start the pot.” I took the skeleton key out of my pocket and unlocked the door.
“I’ll turn the lights on,” Irving said. “I know how.”
While he turned on the gas lights, I walked to the kitchen and filled the coffeepot. A large basket of my aunts’ cranberry scones was sitting on the counter.
“I heard that the shop got destroyed yesterday, but it doesn’t look worse for wear,” Doris said and sat at their usual table. She was right. It looked like it did every day since it was opened years ago. The only thing that changed were the books.
The door opened, and two men wearing black suits and dark sunglasses walked in.
Irving grabbed one of the men’s arms and tried to guide him through the shop. “I’ll help you find a table, young man. Straight ahead. Be careful.”
“We’re not blind,” the man growled, pushing Irving’s hand away. “We’re with the government.”
Irving backed away. “I swear to God, I didn’t rip the tags off my pillow. It came that way,” he said.
“Sit down, Irving,” Doris told him. “I don’t think they’re here about your pillow.”
“Why not? I pay my taxes,” Irving said.
“What are you saying? You want them to arrest you about your pillow?” Doris asked, incredulous.
“Why not? I’m not important enough? I’m not a Koch brother, so the government doesn’t care about me?”
“Fine!” Doris said, slapping the table loudly. “Officers, arrest this man for his unlawful pillow!”
“I’d throat punch them, if I wouldn’t lose my pension,” one of the men in black said to the other man in black.
“May I help you?” I asked them, interrupting the confrontation.
“Agatha Bright? We’re with Homeland Security,” one of them said to me. Oh, no. They found me. They knew that I had tried to break into Area 38, and I stole a rock. I stumbled backward, knocking the coffeepot onto the floor.
“What happened? Did he hit her?” Irving asked Doris. “You want me to call Johnnie Cochran for you, Agatha?”
“She doesn’t need a lawyer…yet,” one of the homeland security agents said, adding the last part directed at me for emphasis. “We’ve heard that you’re hosting a group, which is protesting a so-called Area 38.”
“I’m not hosting them. They’re customers, like the knitters,” I said.
One of the agents took out a small notebook and jotted down notes.
“I’m sure you understand that Area 38 doesn’t exist,” he said.
“And if it did exist and a group decided to break into it, you would be a co-conspirator,” the other agent told me.
A lot he knew. I had already tried to break in, so I was a sole conspirator.
My face grew hot, and my palms began to sweat. Anything I was going to say to them would have to be a lie, and I was the worst liar in the world, so they would know I was lying and then I would wind up in a black site in a small Middle Eastern country.
“I don’t want to be tortured,” I blurted out.
“You know what’s torture?” Irving said from his seat. “An old man at four in the morning without a cup of coffee. That’s torture.”
I picked up the coffeepot and filled it again.
“I promise I’m not working with the Area 38 group. I don’t know their plans,” I said and locked eyes with the two agents. It wasn’t a lie, and I milked it for everything it was worth. No blinking. No blushing. There was no way they could tell that I had known exactly where Area 38 was and that I had followed a glowing man there just a couple hours before.
At least, I hoped there was no way they could tell that.
“We’ll be watching,” one of them said, pointing at his eyes and then at mine.
The other agent handed me a card. “We expect you to contact us if anything illegal is planned.”
I nodded, and the two agen
ts left. When the door closed behind them, I slumped against the counter and tried to catch my breath. When my aunts found out that not only was I getting attention, but I was getting attention from the government, they would give me hell.
I made the coffee and served it to Irving and Doris along with a plate full of scones. “We thought the Area 38 geeks were delusional Comic-Con escapees, but I guess they’ve been right all along,” Doris said.
“The crazy people aren’t crazy after all, and good, sensible folks like Rocky are murderers,” Irving said, tsking loudly. “It’s like that bad acid trip we had on the second day of Woodstock.”
“Don’t remind me. I’ll get a flashback,” Doris said.
The shop filled up before sunrise. From the conversations, I gathered that there was a general consensus among the knitters and Area 38ers that Rocky was a murderer. The knitters thought Rocky killed Felicia because he was crazy, but the Area 38 group thought he was a contract killer for the Area 38 government.
It looked like I was the only one who thought Rocky was innocent. Or rather, I was sure that Donald was guilty, so ipso facto, Rocky had to be innocent. I couldn’t forget about his cash windfall from his wife’s death. There was also the fact that Donald hadn’t looked for Felicia very much when she had first gone missing. I didn’t know much about loving husbands, but I assumed that a loving husband would turn over every rock to find his missing wife.
The door opened, and Bunty and her husband walked in. It was early for them. Normally, they were across the street working out at this time. Maybe they took Sundays off, I thought.
“I want a half dozen of those scones,” Bunty’s husband told me as soon as I sat them at a table.
“Are you kidding me, Sid?” Bunty asked him, enraged. “Aren’t you pushing this to the limits? You’ve stopped working out, and you’re eating a bunch of junk.”
I didn’t know what she was complaining about. Her husband Sid looked like he was wasting away. His clothes were visibly baggy on him. In my opinion, he needed some scones. So did Bunty. Her perspiration coat had worked. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on her.
