The Chocolate Pirate Plot (26 page)

Joe reached over and took my hand. “Hogan, the more I think about that episode, the more I think it wasn't meant to be that amateurish. I think they were expected to kill us.”

“Joe!” I said. “That's ridiculous. The whole thing seemed like a joke.”

“True. But I'll tell you, Lee, when that guy pointed a gun right at you from five or six feet away—and fired. Well, I nearly died of a heart attack.”

“But it must have been a joke. You've said he couldn't have missed.”

“No, he couldn't have. The only explanation is that the pistol wasn't loaded. The gun must have been loaded with blanks.”

Hogan nodded. “Ever since you told that story, I've wondered if that wasn't true.”

“And if Jeremy was involved,” Joe said, “that becomes logical. Jeremy is a stagehand; he works with the technical side of theater. Finding, or even making, blank shells would be one of his skills.”

Joe squeezed my hand, and I squeezed his back. Neither of us was going to get over that attack at the dock in a hurry.

Hogan leaned close. “Lee, what gave you a brainstorm? How did you figure all of this out—right this moment?”

“Mikki.”

Everybody looked blank, and I went on.

“Mikki is afflicted with malapropism, Hogan, just like I am. Before you got here, she came over and talked to me. And twice she used the word ‘campy.' Once her tongue slipped and she substituted ‘campy' for ‘catty,' and the other time she used it in its common meaning of overdone or phony.”

“So?”

“We malapropists get used to making those slips of the tongue. We just go on, even if people laugh. When Mikki mixed up her words on earlier occasions, she just ignored it. But both times she used the word ‘campy' tonight, she turned red, stammered around, and acted embarrassed.”

“Then you think Mikki was the pirate queen?”

“No. She's too tall.” I thought a moment. “Jill was the pirate queen. No, that won't work! When Hal's body was found, Jill swore she'd never seen him before. I believed her.”

“That could have been true if Jill had never seen him except in his pirate disguise,” Hogan said. “And that's possible, since he left the theater before she joined the company.”

We all considered that. “I don't think she could have ignored his tattoo,” I said doubtfully.

“But Jill didn't see the tattoo when we found Hal's body,” Hogan said. “I didn't see it myself until after she'd left the beach.”

“No! That still won't work.” Joe shook his head vigorously. “Jill's too flat chested.”

Aunt Nettie and I both laughed.

“Honestly!” she said. “Men never learn. As my mother used to say, ‘What nature has forgotten, we just stuff with cotton.'”

“Sorry, Nettie,” Joe said. “That wasn't cotton peeking out of the pirate queen's costume. It was genuine cleavage.”

“Joe,” I said, “did you ever hear of something called a push-up bra?”

“You mean her cleavage wasn't real?”

“Obviously her cleavage
was
real. But it could have been moved around. Pushed up.”

“Pushed?”

“Yes, darling. That's why they call it a push-up bra. It shoves the boobs higher and to the center of the chest.”

“Beauty queen contestants wear these things?”

“Sometimes. It depends on the rules of the contest. I never wore one! But you can buy them at Penney's. Anyway, Jill could have been the pirate queen, and Jeremy must have been the pirate who played the pipe, danced, and did somersaults. Hal was originally the larger pirate, the big guy who did the most athletic stunts. The one who yelled, ‘Yo-ho-ho!' Either Jill hadn't seen him without his costume and makeup, or she pretended not to know who he was when she was shown his body.”

Hogan spoke. “Since we're assigning roles, and Hal's dead, do you have a name for the guy who took over as the lead pirate tonight?”

I surprised myself with the name that popped out. “Jack McGrath. He's got to be involved, since he's the one staying at the camp. He has the right build, if he added some padding. Again, we're talking theatrical people. They'd know how to add padding.”

Silence fell again. I stared at Hogan. Had I convinced him? Could he do anything about it? Or would he see some fatal flaw in my reasoning and throw out my whole elaborate plot?

Joe, Aunt Nettie, and I all sat silently. Hogan was thinking so hard, I could practically hear his brain whirring. When he finally cleared his throat and leaned over, we all jumped.

“You know, Lee, this is all pretty vague. I don't think it's proof enough to justify raiding that camp tonight.”

“Do you think you could get a search warrant for the camp?”

“At this moment, I couldn't get a search warrant to look at that yacht, and it's a crime scene.”

Joe took a deep breath, as if he was going to say something, but he didn't. There was no reason for him to point out in his lawyerly way that law officers don't need warrants to search crime scenes. Hogan knew that as well as Joe did.

We all sat a few minutes. Then Hogan abruptly downed the last of his Labatt's. “Let's go over to the office,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to the state cops.”

So we paid our bill and left. For the next half hour, Joe, Aunt Nettie, and I sat in Hogan's outer office. Hogan closed himself inside his inner office. We could see that the phone was lit up, and once or twice we heard the rumble of his voice. But Hogan didn't come out and tell us that the FBI and the Michigan State Police were ready to raid Camp Sail-Along.

When he did come out, he didn't look happy. “The best I could get was a promise to look at it tomorrow,” he said.

He threw himself down in a chair, and the four of us stared at one another some more.

Then Hogan spoke. “Joe, do you know the river channel up to Lake o' the Winds?”

“Yep. I take all the boats I work on up to that lake for a test run.”

“You willing to try it tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we could take a little scouting trip up that way,” Hogan said. He held up a warning finger. “Now, we're definitely not getting too close to the camp.”

“Of course not,” Joe said. “We'll keep our distance. But we can take the night-vision glasses, can't we?”

Hogan nodded grimly. “Sure. They're on loan from the state police. It seems very suitable to take them along.”

I
'm not at all sure why Aunt Nettie and I were allowed to go on the excursion to Camp Sail-Along. In fact, I'm not sure why Joe was allowed to go, except that he owned the boat and knew the river channel. Maybe Hogan wanted to be able to tell the Michigan State Police and the feds that he'd just made a casual trip that evening, even took the wives along.

None of us was dressed warmly enough to be out on the water in a semi-open boat at eleven o'clock at night. By then the temperature was in the mid-fifties. Hogan rounded up some extra cop jackets, the kind with POLICE in big letters on the fronts and backs, and off we went, headed for Joe's boat shop and the Shepherd Sedan tied up at its dock.

The first part of the trip, of course, was the tricky bit as far as boating goes, since Joe had to take us about a mile up the river before we reached the channel into Lake o' the Winds. That stretch of the Warner River is broader than it is deep, and the banks are lined with all sorts of plants that can enmesh a boat or tear up its propeller.

At least the night was clear. The moon was in the western half of the sky and was casting lovely reflections on the water. Joe kept the sedan's motor at a steady gurgle—slow and cautious—and he swept the banks with his spotlight. It wouldn't have been a bad ride, if we hadn't been afraid of what we'd find when we got to Camp Sail-Along. Or afraid that we wouldn't find anything.

When we got within sight of the lake, Joe throttled the motor back to a murmur and motioned that he wanted to speak to Hogan and me.

“This place is on the south side of the lake, right?”

Hogan and I nodded.

“I don't remember anyplace over there with a big boathouse. In fact, there's not a lot over there at all.”

“Yes, it's lonely,” I said. “That's what makes it ideal for this crime.”

“I'm not sure about the boathouse,” Hogan said. “I've never had any reason to go there, either from the lake or from the land side. I just know where the road turns in from McIntosh Road. Lee? You've made the most recent visit.”

I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “There's a big storage shed down near the water, Joe. I saw it from the land side, of course, and there may be trees between that big shed and the lake. But there's a smaller building that definitely is a boathouse.”

“Is it big enough to hold the pirates' inflatable?”

“Oh, yes. Maybe the best landmark from the water would be that long dock that could be used to tie up six or eight small sailboats—back when it was a camp.”

“Oh, yeah! The long dock. I know the place.”

The sedan's motor began to gurgle again, and we entered the lake. With a smooth expanse of water about a half mile in diameter, there was plenty of room for the moon to make a gorgeous pathway across the lake. Many of the houses on the north edge of the lake had outdoor lights, of course, and some of their windows still were lit. All the lights were doubled; we could see the lights plus their reflections. The northern half of the lake sparkled.

The scene was beautiful but scary. I thought of those quiet homes with normal families—watching television, reading books, sleeping—while a half mile across the lake a nest of killers and kidnappers was lurking.

I tried to remind myself that I might be wrong. There might be nothing wrong going on at Camp Sail-Along. My teeth began to chatter anyway.

Hogan spoke. “Go around to the north, Joe. Let's not go directly to the camp.”

Joe nodded, and the sedan swung toward the left. Hogan took out the nightscope. He moved to the small deck at the stern and knelt. He mounted the scope on its tripod and pointed it toward the camp.

I whispered to Joe, “Do you want to take a turn on the scope?”

He nodded, then got up, and I slid under the sedan's steering gear. The boat is easy to operate. The whole point of the sedan is that it's like driving a car.

I kept the boat moving slowly along the north shore, where the houses were. Joe and Hogan knelt on the deck and took turns looking the camp over with the scope. Aunt Nettie sat still. I think all of us were holding our breaths.

I came to the east end of the lake and followed the shore, turning south. Now I could see the site of Camp Sail-Along without craning my neck. Or I would have been able to see the site if it hadn't been dark. In the moonlight I could barely make out the boathouse, with its metal roof reflecting the moonlight, and the long, narrow dock.

The sedan gurgled its way to within a hundred yards or so of the south shore, and I turned west. Now the camp was straight ahead of me and a little to the left. Everything was quiet. I began to think I'd ask for a turn with the night-vision scope.

Then I heard two things.

First, the
kerthump-kerthump
of running feet.

Second, a splash.

“What was that?” I used a stage whisper.

Joe hissed out an answer. “Somebody ran down that dock and jumped off!”

There were more running feet.

And the sound of a shot echoed over the water.

“Lee, speed up.” Hogan's voice was urgent but not loud. “Cut the lights and head for the camp!”

My hand shook as I turned off the lights—all the lights, even the ones required by the rules of boat safety. I pulled the throttle out slightly, but I was afraid to gun the motor.

Then Hogan popped up beside me. “Watch my directions,” he said. “There's a guy in the water, and we'll have to try to pick him up.”

“Joe!” My voice squeaked. “You'll have to take over!”

“You can handle it.” His voice sounded a lot more confident than I felt.

I increased the boat's speed again, and I looked back to see Joe drop his pants.

Oh, no! Joe was getting ready to go into the water to pull the man out. I didn't like that idea.

More running and some yelling was happening on the shore. And a few minutes earlier someone had fired a gun, apparently at the man in the water. I didn't want Joe to become a second target.

Hogan pushed the sedan's windshield open and poked his head out. He made a chopping motion with his hand, signaling for me to turn farther to the right.