The Chocolate Pirate Plot (28 page)

Had Max set up this whole plot? Had he organized the pirates, used them over the whole summer to entertain and lull Warner Pier's boating community into complacency? Because now it was obvious that the whole pirate stunt, the boardings that had amused us all summer, were a plan to kidnap Marco Spear.

“Max.” I murmured the word.

Immediately the sedan began to bounce again, and water began to splash over the swim platform. My head twisted toward the sound so quickly that my neck nearly unscrewed.

“Max!” This time I screamed the word.

Max Morgan had climbed over the swim platform and was in the boat with Jeremy, Aunt Nettie, and me.

And he still had his pistol.

“Okay!” His voice wasn't loud, but its tone was as cold as that spring-fed lake water. “Forget that creep there on the floor, and get this boat under way.”

“No!” I yelled it. Maybe someone—Joe, Hogan, Jerry—would hear me. “Max, I can't operate this boat.”

“You were running it earlier.”

“I can't get it out of the lake! The channel is too tricky! I'll run aground.”

“I know the channel! You start the motor!”

“No! I can't!”

Max pointed his pistol at Aunt Nettie's head. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

I got to my feet, moving as slowly as I could.

Max spoke again. “Move!”

I backed down the aisle, toward the controls. “You'll have to untie the mooring line.”

“Your sweet little aunt can do it!” He poked her with the pistol.

Aunt Nettie got up and went to the side of the boat. Obediently, she began to unwind the mooring line from its stanchion. I felt for the key, hoping that Joe had taken it out and put it in his pocket. But no, it was in the ignition, waiting. I realized that had been a vain hope. After all, Joe hadn't had his pants on when he turned the motor off. But maybe . . . I pulled the key out, juggled it around, and dropped it on the floor of the boat. “I've dropped the key!”

“Bitch! Find it! And use it!”

I fumbled on the floor. There was no way to claim I couldn't find the key; it was attached to a key chain with a large fish-shaped charm on it, the kind that floats. All boat keys should have one of those, so the key won't sink if you drop them overboard.

Max moved closer to me, still spewing swearwords. At that moment the sedan began to buck again. I'd learned what that meant—someone was climbing in.

Max knew what it meant, too. He whirled toward the back of the boat.

No one was there. Aunt Nettie was standing on the deck with one hand behind her back, looking as innocent as a sweet little old lady can.

“Get that motor going!” Max turned back toward me.

As he rotated around, Aunt Nettie pulled that wonderful short oar from behind her, swung it like a baseball bat, and aimed for the fences. She hit Max right between the shoulder blades with the edge of the oar.

The next moments were really confusing. Max fell forward, landing with his chin on the back of one of the sedan's seats and popping his neck back. Then he rolled over onto his side. The trigger of his pistol clicked, but it didn't go off.

I jumped on top of him, straddled his chest, and put one of my knees on each of his arms. He'd have to throw me off before he could go anywhere.

Joe, naked and covered with waterweeds, came over the side of the boat. He tried to grab Max, but Max was lying in the aisle with me on top of him. All Joe could touch were Max's feet. He began to tug at him, trying to slide Max toward the deck. Since he had to pull me along as well—all my weight was on Max—this proved to be a pretty hard job.

Aunt Nettie yelled for help.

Hogan and Jerry ran down the dock. Sirens grew louder until they became deafening. I saw lights—whirling blue lights and brilliant white headlights. They looked beautiful. They meant more law enforcement was there.

They looked even more beautiful when Hogan and Jerry Cherry found Marco Spear, still drugged and sleeping peacefully, in one of the derelict camp cabins. It had been fixed up quite comfortably, they said. Obviously the kidnappers were ready to hold Marco for a week or more.

Aunt Nettie, of course, was the heroine of the whole thing, and her picture ran on the front pages of—apparently—every newspaper in the United States. She and Hogan gave a press conference the next day, hoping to calm things down. She posed holding the oar. But it was useless. Finally, she and Hogan took off before dawn in a borrowed car and went to Arizona, where they hid out at the home of Hogan's niece.

After they disappeared, the press turned their attention to Joe and me. We borrowed his mom's car, left Aunt Nettie's chief assistant in charge of TenHuis Chocolade, and went down to Texas to see my dad in Prairie Creek. Prairie Creek people are closemouthed with strangers. And strangers stand out because there are so few of them.

In a week things had calmed down, and we were all able to come home.

Jeremy was the other hero. He was in a Holland hospital for quite a while, but doctors promised he would recover fully. Marco was kept overnight in the same hospital, and I'm happy to say that before he left the next morning, Marco not only went to visit Jeremy, but promised to help him get a job in Hollywood. One photographer was allowed in, so they had their picture taken together. The caption was “High school teammate saves kidnapped movie star.”

Plus, the studio came up with a reward for Jeremy. So Jeremy came out okay, though he required four pints of blood that first night. The bullet had hit an important artery, but no vital organs.

As his mutterings in the boat had revealed, Jeremy had been enticed into the pirate business by Max, who told him it was all to be a joke. When Jeremy and Hal realized a real crime was planned, Hal was afraid to go to the police, partly because of his earlier involvement in the big Viking prank in Chicago. Hal tried to contact Joe, but Max found out what he was up to. Max shot him, then forced Jeremy to help dump his friend's body. Jeremy managed to dump him near Beech Tree Public Access Area so his body could be found. When Jeremy tried to fake his own death so he could get away from the plot, Max figured out where he was hiding and forced him to continue. Jeremy had been kept at Camp Sail-Along, with Jack McGrath in charge. Jeremy had pretended to be cooperating, but on the one occasion he slipped away from Jack in Warner Pier—late at night—he wrote that odd warning note and stuck it in the door of TenHuis Chocolade. Because Hal knew Joe, Jeremy had felt that Joe could be trusted to help him. Both Hal and Jeremy had been afraid of facing criminal charges because of their involvement with Max's plot.

The loan shark—never seen by anyone but Max—was invented to make Jeremy's disappearance credible. Joe and I are still convinced that Max simply described George Raft. He had a thing for old movies.

Jeremy insisted that Jill hadn't realized what was going on. He had told her to go to Joe and me for help after he staged his drowning, Jeremy admitted, but to get her to do it, he was forced to say that Max wanted it done. Again, Jill had been promised a chance at Hollywood if she took part in the pirate boardings. She'd been told that taking Marco off in the magic chest was part of a publicity stunt. And Jill claimed she had never seen Hal when he wasn't in his pirate costume. He'd always been suited up when she and Jeremy appeared for their pirate excursions. I wasn't sure I believed that. Jill had to answer a lot of questions, but she was never charged.

Miraculously, the final Showboat production of
The Pirates of Penzance
came off. At the request of the Showboat owners, Maggie McNutt took over as director-producer, in addition to playing the part of Ruth. They opened on schedule, even with a completely demoralized cast. Maggie says the Showboat owners will have to find a new director for next year, and she hopes they come up with an honest one.

Mikki apparently was largely in the dark about the whole kidnapping scheme, but she had deduced that Jill was involved in some hanky-panky that involved a camp. This led to her embarrassment when she made a malaprop reference using the word “campy.”

Jack McGrath made a plea bargain and got ten years. Daren Roberts also copped a plea. He had given Max inside information about Marco's schedule—including the original tip that Marco was coming to Warner Pier. Daren tried to say he'd done it innocently, but he had carelessly left a fingerprint on the door to the cabinet that concealed the electrical controls aboard Marco's yacht. This was pretty firm proof that he was the person who sabotaged the radar.

Max is still waging a legal battle, but Joe says he expects Max to receive a life sentence for kidnapping and murder.

“I wouldn't want to defend him,” he said. “It would be tough.”

Would Max have allowed Jeremy, Jill, or Jack to live after he no longer needed them to act as pirates?

I doubt it. They knew too much. Jeremy was convinced that Max was ready to kill him as soon as the kidnapping was accomplished. Because of that, he made a break for it. That's when Max shot him. Fate—or dumb luck—decreed that Joe, Hogan, Aunt Nettie, and I were close enough to rescue him before he grew too weak to swim.

A month after all the excitement, one more important event took place at Warner Pier. Marco came back to town, without the buckteeth and with his contact lenses. The trip wasn't given any publicity, but he invited all of us to dinner in Herrera's private dining room. The next day a ceremonial bottle of Michigan wine was broken on the bow of the new yacht—by Aunt Nettie—and a word was added to the yacht's name, at least temporarily.

Now it's
The Chocolate Buccaneer
.

Marco boarded then, and the yacht headed out on its maiden voyage, through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic. It was to go on through the Panama Canal and wind up in the Port of Los Angeles. Of course, Marco didn't get to make the whole trip. He had to fly back to Hollywood to earn enough money to support his yacht.

And Marco has other major expenses. TenHuis Chocolade now has a standing order for a pound of chocolates to be delivered to the yacht—at any port in the world—once a month.

 

 

I
didn't set out to solve one of the biggest mysteries in Warner Pier's history. All I intended to do was clean out the garage.