by Elise Sax
“No,” I said. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Let him,” Auntie Tilly urged. “John’s been gone for hundreds of years. Remington is still clinging to life. Let John do this for you. Let him do it for Remington.”
“I can’t make that choice,” I said, crying.
“Then, let me make it for you,” John said, softly.
He disappeared, and Remington began to convulse into seizures. I held him tight. “Are these the death throes?” I asked my aunts.
“I don’t know what this is,” Auntie Ida said. “I’ve never seen this before.”
Remington’s seizures continued. His body flapped uncontrollably as I tried in vain to keep him still. It seemed like he was dying a second time. His body was rebelling in a violent way, torturing poor Remington. I was powerless to stop it. Powerless to help him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, his body relaxed. He was still unconscious, but he gulped air. He was breathing.
“It’s done,” Auntie Tilly said. “Remington will live, but he needs to get to a hospital. I’ll call an ambulance.”
I put my hand on Remington’s chest and felt his heartbeat. It was strong and healthy. Alive.
“John?” I called out, hoping that he had been wrong about having to leave in order to save Remington.
But there was no answer.
Chapter 18
“Very few of us are what we seem.”
–Agatha Christie
Somehow, I managed to sleep. John was gone. Not just quiet. There was no sense of him in the house anymore. No ghostly presence. He was gone forever. It was a terrible loss. I didn’t know how to process it.
So, I slept.
I slept like the dead and woke up before the alarm went off. I got dressed in the bathroom and checked my reflection in the mirror for John, but he wasn’t there.
Auntie Tilly was just going to bed when I went downstairs to leave for the soup shop. Auntie Ida greeted me in the entranceway. She was wearing her welder jumpsuit, and she handed me a basket of mini coffee cakes and strawberry scones.
She kissed my forehead goodbye. “It will be fine,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“I’m going to visit Remington at the hospital today. I might not be home for dinner,” I told her.
“I’m experimenting with spore reproduction in the slow cooker today, so it might be a good idea to skip dinner tonight.”
Outside, the weather had turned cooler, and the sea breeze was heavenly. The town was peaceful. It was the quiet after the storm. There was no glowing man running down the street, and I didn’t have to step over any dead bodies on my way to the soup shop. I was even looking forward to the day at the soup shop. It was a good day, all things considering.
Doris and Irving were waiting for me at the door. “Oh, good, you’re early,” Irving said. “We came for a quick breakfast, before we go to the knitting championship. We want a good seat.”
“Irving’s been practicing his knitting,” Doris explained, as I unlocked the front door.
“I can make a vest with three buttonholes in twenty-five minutes,” Irving boasted. “I’d like to see any of those old biddy knitters beat that.”
We walked into the shop, and Irving started to light the gas lights. “I’m an old biddy knitter, Irving,” Doris said. “Don’t bad-mouth the old biddies.”
I filled the coffeepot and served Irving and Doris an assortment of mini coffee cakes and scones. “Did you hear about Jesus Alvarez?” Doris asked me.
“He was murdered.”
“No! It was an accident,” Doris told me, delighted to be the bearer of new information. “He was using the molten lead for something, and there was a big bubble. That did it, you see.”
“A bubble of lead. What will they think of next?” Irving mused. “Cordless internet?”
“Irving, they already have cordless internet,” Doris said. “It’s called Wi-Fi. We have Wi-Fi at the house.”
“We do not have Wi-Fi, Doris. We haven’t had Wi-Fi since the cassette player was invented.”
“You’re talking about hi-fi. Cordless internet is Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, Irving.”
“I hate cassettes,” Irving continued. “The damned tape twists and then everything goes to hell.”
“Not hi-fi, Irving! Wi-Fi! Wi-Fi!” Doris yelled.
“What were you saying about a lead bubble?” I interrupted.
Doris blinked. “Huh? Oh, yeah. It can happen with lead when you heat it too hot. A large bubble forms and kapow! it blows up. This was a big bubble. It exploded over Jesus, and that’s all she wrote.”
“A bubble the size of Jesus’s head,” Irving said.
“It was an accident?” I asked.
Doris nodded. “An accident.”
That explained one of my questions. Bunty didn’t murder Jesus because Jesus wasn’t murdered.
“We better get going if we’re going to get a good seat,” Irving said with a mouthful of mini coffee cake.
“You’re right,” Doris said. “We want to stay clear of the gum chewers, or they’ll distract us. If we stop knitting, we’re disqualified.”
“Eddie Acid’s got punk rockers as sentries. It’s going to be like Checkpoint Charlie or the receipt checker at Costco,” Irving explained to me.
Doris gulped down the last of her coffee and slung her knitting bag over her shoulder. “Not to mention, that I’m angling to sit next to Judge Gilmore,” she said. “He’s presiding over Bunty’s trial, and I’m determined to get on that jury. The competition will be fierce, though. Everyone wants a seat for that.”
Bunty had been arrested only a few hours ago, and they had already picked a judge, and they were about to pick a jury. The entire town knew about Bunty’s guilt, and it wasn’t sunrise, yet. That’s how it went in Sea Breeze. Big news in a small town spread like wildfire.
Once Irving and Doris left, I began to prepare the soups of the day. When they were simmering in the cauldrons, Mouse came in through the back door, and her lips were attached to the flour deliveryman.
She was half his height, and I watched, curious to see how the kissing was done.
“You say goodbye,” Mouse squeaked when they finally broke the kiss.
“No, you say goodbye,” he said.
“No, you say goodbye.”
“No, you say goodbye.”
I lost interest after the fifth, “No, you say goodbye,” but I was happy to see that Mouse had sealed the deal with her big crush. Maybe now she wouldn’t order flour every day.
Frances stormed into the shop through the front door, out of breath. “You’ll never guess what just happened,” she announced.
“Not another dead body,” I moaned.
“No, that’s your thing, Agatha, not mine. The Men in Black came to my house and took the glowing necklace from me.”
I gasped. “How did they know about it?”
“I have no idea,” Frances said and looked at her nails.
“They took the glowing necklace you found in Felicia’s attic?” Mouse asked.
Frances and I locked eyes. “Okay, fine,” she said. “I might have told a few people about the necklace. That’s probably how the Men in Black found out about it.”
“They’re Homeland Security,” I said. “I wonder if we’ll ever find out the truth about Area 38.”
“What’re you talking about?” Frances asked. “We’ll get Amy, and the three of us will do our investigating together just like always. Nothing can stop us. We’re like Charlie’s Angels, but without the hair and with more cats.” I liked that idea. It was nice having two friends who would drop everything and spy on a secret government facility with me.
“Gotta go,” Frances said. “I want to get my seat for the knitting competition. If I get stuck next to the gum chewers, I’m doomed.”
She hugged me goodbye and ran out of the shop.
I told Mouse that I was going to watch the knitters for a while, and I stepped outside. The sun was just rising. There we
re about one hundred knitters sitting on beach chairs by the bandstand, clutching knitting needles and ready to start. Punk rocker sentries kept watch, making sure that no one got a head start. Eddie Acid was helped onto the bandstand with his walker, and the sound system screeched into action.
“Hello, punk rockers!” he shouted into the microphone. There were cheers from the knitters in response. “The day is here! The sun has risen again, and so has punk rock! When I give you the punk rock scream, you’ll commence your knitting. If you stop for anything—and I mean, anything! —you’ll be disqualified. Ready! Get set!...”
Eddie screamed, and the knitters started to knit.
It was hard to believe that it was going off without a hitch. But it was. It had been a long road to get there with almost-deaths and almost-arrests, but now they were all sitting and knitting happily in silence. There was something magical about the quiet community activity with the ocean in the background.
I was about to go back into the shop when an octogenarian knitter screamed in the group. “I did not stop! It was the gum wrapper! The gum wrapper!” she yelled.
A punk rocker sentry was tugging her knitting needles away from the screaming knitter, but she was putting up a valiant fight.
“It wasn’t my fault! The gum chewer rustled a gum wrapper! It distracted me!” she yelled.
“If you stop knitting for any reason, you’re disqualified,” Eddie announced, angrily on the microphone.
With the fight breaking out between the eighty-year-old lady knitter and the punk rocker, about half of the knitters paused in their knitting to watch the action. The punk rocker sentries ran to confiscate the knitting needles from the stopped knitters, and that’s when all hell broke loose.
It was a free-for-all.
Punk rockers against elderly knitters.
“Punk rock knitters!” Eddie urged over the loudspeaker. “Calm down! This is for charity! This is for punk rock! Hey, you, lady! You’re not allowed to put him in a chokehold!”
Oh, well, I thought. At least it lasted a few minutes. About two minutes. That was better than nothing.
Rocky’s van drove down the street, and he stopped in front of me. He opened the passenger window. “I got my van back,” he said, happily.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“The police gave it back to me free since I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Could you give me a ride to the hospital? I’m going to visit Remington.”
“Sure,” Rocky said. “It’s on my way to a job. I’ve got an emergency paring knife situation.”
I told Mouse that I would be out for a while and returned to Rocky’s van and climbed into the passenger seat. Across the street, the knitters and punk rockers were still going at it.
“You ungrateful knitters!” Eddie yelled into the microphone. “You’re giving punk rock a bad name!”
Rocky drove away from the curb toward the hospital.
“I’m lucky that my customers haven’t moved onto another mobile knife sharpener while I was away,” Rocky said.
“That’s good that they’re loyal to you. It’s because you’re good at your job, Rocky.”
“I once sharpened a cleaver that had been buried in the mayor’s yard for three years. When I got through with it, it was ready for Iron Chef. I bet nobody else could do that,” he said.
“How are you, otherwise?” I asked. “After everything that happened in the lighthouse last night, I mean.”
Rocky rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I must have had an allergic reaction or something because I’ve got some weird memories. Stuff I can’t explain.”
“That’s probably it. An allergic reaction.”
“Ida and Tilly invited me to dinner tonight,” he said. “They said I forgot some belongings at your place, but I never had any belongings at your house. I guess I’ll figure it out when I go.”
In a moment of loyalty to my aunts, I decided not to warn Rocky about Auntie Ida’s spore experiment.
Rocky dropped me off at the hospital. At the reception desk, I was given Remington’s room number, and I rode the elevator to his floor. I found him in his room, sitting up in bed. For some reason I was unaware of but grateful for, he wasn’t wearing a hospital gown. It was the first time that I had seen him shirtless, and I was struck mute. He was all muscles and tattoos and a large bandage where he was shot.
He smiled when I entered. “This is a pleasure, Aggie,” he said and got out of bed.
“I’m not sure you’re supposed to be standing,” I said.
“There’s no way I’m not going to stand when you come in, and besides, I need to walk around. It’s supposed to clear my lungs.”
He was wearing short shorts and his legs were as strong as tree trunks. It was hard for me not to look at his body, which triggered the familiar feeling of guilt that I got when I lusted after Remington.
But now the feeling of guilt was accompanied by a feeling of sadness and loss. I wondered if it would ever go away. I didn’t know what the timetable was for recovering from grief after the loss of a lifetime’s relationship.
Remington slipped his arm around my waist. “That feels good,” he said.
He was right. It felt really good.
“You want to walk with me?” he asked, and I nodded.
He kept his arm around my waist and pulled me close, as we walked down the hallway.
“Are you sure it’s not flesh-eating bacteria?” I heard a patient ask a doctor, as we passed a room.
“I don’t remember much of what happened last night, but I’m under the impression that I should thank you,” Remington told me.
“No. I didn’t do anything. Don’t thank me.”
“Oh, by the way, Homeland Security came to visit in the middle of the night,” he said. “They said they confiscated the rock.”
“It doesn’t matter. Frances, Amy, and I are going to investigate.”
“About that,” he started.
We turned the corner and stopped dead when we saw the two Homeland Security agents escorting a man toward the elevator. The man was dressed, but his head was glowing.
“It’s the glowing man,” I breathed.
“Yeah, funny thing about that,” Remington said. “It turns out that he’s been here the whole time. He’s a chemist, and he was making a new cleaning solution that’s supposed to clean tile grout like nothing else.”
“Oh, that could come in handy,” I said.
“I think the government agrees. They’re keeping it under wraps for now. Maybe they’re going to use it for some kind of chemical warfare.”
“Grout warfare?” I asked.
Remington shrugged. “Maybe you and your friends can investigate it.”
“We’re planning to,” I said.
We finished one lap around the floor and headed back to his room. “Or, I thought maybe you’d investigate something more exciting.”
“There hasn’t been another murder, so I think we’re stuck with glowing grout,” I explained.
“What about your Aunt Prudence? She died under mysterious circumstances.”
That was true, but how did he know? “How did you hear about that?” I asked.
“I hear things. It might be better to focus on her, rather than chemical warfare. Just thinkin’ out loud.”
We returned to his room, and Remington closed the door. He grabbed me and pulled me close so that the length and width of me was touching him. He walked me backward until I was leaning up against the wall.
“Aggie Bright, how I’ve longed to hold you,” he whispered in my ear. His body was hard, and it sank into mine. “How I’ve longed to touch your hair,” he whispered and freed my hair from its holder, letting it fall down my back in a wave.
Remington ran his hand down my hair, and at the same, his lips gently touched my neck. He devoured my skin as his mouth traveled up my neck to my ear. My skin tingled, and my body ached for him. I was on fire, like someone had lit
a match and turned my insides into hot lava.
I dug my fingers into the hard flesh of his back and pulled him closer. He moaned, as he continued to kiss and tug at my ear with his lips. It occurred to me that a nurse might walk in, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.
And then his mouth was on mine.
My first kiss.
I had dreamed of having my first kiss for centuries. I had imagined and fantasized this moment countless times, but I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of it. I snaked my arms around Remington’s neck, and he pushed forward so that no air could pass between our bodies. His lips were hot, and the stubble on his face scratched my cheek, heightening the erotic sensation.
Remington thrust his tongue into my mouth, and I gasped with pleasure and surprise. I met his tongue with mine, and I was rewarded with a delicious bout of dizziness. He feasted on my mouth, like he had been starved for centuries, and I welcomed every second of it.
I was overcome by arousal. I was hot and wet, and I squirmed against him, where I could feel his arousal, too. The kiss went on and on, and it was electric, full of unbridled lust and mutual attraction.
And there was something more.
There was something behind the kiss that promised bigger things than physical pleasure. Something more than lust.
It was deeper. Through Remington’s kiss, I could feel his love for me. There was no other word for it. It was no mere kiss. It was no mere attraction.
This was a soulmate kind of kiss.
This was a forever kind of moment.
I was hit with a moment of clarity and realization. I mustered all of my strength, and I put my hand on Remington’s chest and urged him to back away. He did so immediately, breaking the kiss.
We were both out of breath. Remington’s eyes were big and dark, and his skin was flush with excitement.
I put my hands on either side of his head and pulled him down to me. I looked deeper into his eyes, and that’s when I saw it.
“John?” I asked. “John, is that you?”
THE END
Continue the story with Some Like It Shot, book two in the Agatha Bright Mysteries. Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know when it’s released.
