The Mystery of Dolphin Inlet

by James Holding

  My thoughts began to buzz around in my head like bees in a clover field. They didn’t follow any logical pattern or make much sense but I’ll say this for them: they sure came at me fast and from all directions! And most of them were questions.

  If it was Roscoe Chapin’s body on the beach, what had happened to him after I left him under the water? I couldn’t believe that the temporary trouble he’d been in when I escaped from his speargun had been serious enough to drown him. And what was he doing down there on the bottom of the Gulf anyway, while the Osgoods and Mr. X were away from home? Taking a secret look at the Osgoods’ treasure ship? Or trying to? Was that the reason? Or was he only doing a little pleasure diving in a quiet inlet? In that case, why would he deliberately shoot a spear at me, an innocent bystander? If Perry Osgood and Mr. X—or Hamilton Osgood, for that matter—had come home while Chapin was still snooping around the inlet, and suspected that he was spying on their treasure, they wouldn’t have been too crazy about that, would they? Any more than they’d welcomed me when I went swimming in their inlet.

  And what about those funny wounds on Chapin’s body? Could even a heavy sea do such damage to a body in just a couple of days of playing with it? Skull fracture and a badly cut arm? I knew the answer to that one. It certainly could. Easy. And worse. Yet what if the sea hadn’t caused the wounds? What if Chapin got them some other way? What way? I closed my eyes and tried to picture it.

  Perry Osgood and Mr. X come home from their shopping in their outboard boat. They see Chapin diving in their inlet. Believing him to be a trespasser at the least, and a hijacker after their treasure at the most, they take dead aim at his swimming figure with their outboard and try to run him down. They do run him down. The prow of their metal boat bashes in his skull, their propeller slices his arm as their boat goes over him in the jumpy sea. Wouldn’t that explain Chapin’s wounds just as well as the police theory? Or better? Maybe.

  Through the door of the fish market I heard the droning of a small airplane going by overhead. Another question suddenly flicked into my so-called mind. Namely, why hadn’t Mike Sebastien filled the cops in yet on what he knew about the body on the beach? About Roscoe Chapin? Mike was a cop himself—half the Perdido Key force!—yet here he was begging the public over the radio for information to help the police identify the body! Mike knew Chapin was living at the Freebooter. He knew Chapin was a scuba diver… or at least carried diving gear in his rented car. He knew the car’s license number. He knew Chapin prowled the woods around Dolphin Inlet. That ought to be plenty of leads for Mike to start on as far as Chapin was concerned! And Mike must see now that it was the treasure Chapin had been interested in…

  I got this far when I made a grab for the telephone. No one was in the market at that point except Gloria and me. I dialed police headquarters in Fiesta Village. For I suddenly realized that Mike Sebastien didn’t know there was a treasure under Dolphin Inlet. I decided I’d better fix that oversight now.

  It wasn’t that easy, though. When I asked Edna Jennings, the police operator, to let me talk to Mike, she said he was out. Over in Sarta City getting the police cruiser’s radio repaired. Back inside an hour. I said, “Can I talk to Sergeant Carroll, then?” If I couldn’t tell Mike, I’d tell his boss. Because this wasn’t just a question of a sunken treasure ship and possible dodging of a treasure-hunting license any more… it could involve murder, maybe. Or, anyway, something pretty bad in the police line.

  “Sergeant Carroll’s down at the end of the Key, looking over the place on the beach where that man’s body was washed up earlier today, Pete,” Miss Jennings said. “Did you hear about it on the radio just now? It’s the biggest sensation Perdido’s had since Vince Cosgrove crashed the secret meeting of the Key Association last summer!”

  “Can’t you raise Sergeant Carroll somehow?” I asked. Talk about a small town police department!

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Or Mike?”

  “No. He called in a few minutes ago. He’s doing a personal errand while the radio is being fixed.”

  “Oh,” I said, “well…”

  Miss Jennings must have heard something in my voice which she recognized from our kindergarten days together, because she stopped with the gossipy manner and became very businesslike. “If it’s anything really urgent, Pete, I can call the sheriff’s office or the state police barracks in Sarta City for you…”

  “It’s not that urgent, thanks,” I said. “Please ask Mike to call me at the fish market when he comes in, will you?”

  “Surely.” She hung up.

  Bad luck to find both policemen unavailable at the same time. Not too important, though, I told myself. I picked the big redfish out of the sink and started in on him again. After all, Chapin was dead, the treasure ship couldn’t walk away, the Osgoods and Mr. X…

  The bombshell hit me. I grabbed the telephone and dialed the police back. My grip on the receiver was tight enough to turn my knuckles white. I said to Miss Jennings, “This is Pete Hobbs again, Miss Jennings. Things are a lot more urgent than I thought! Please ask Mike the minute he comes in—or Sergeant Carroll if he comes in first—to hotfoot it out to Dolphin Inlet right away. Tell him there’s a possibility Susan Frost and I might be in bad trouble out there. And that he can find out at Dolphin Inlet everything he wants to know about that body on the beach! There’s sunken Spanish treasure out there!” I threw in the last part, figuring it would get Sergeant Carroll out to the inlet on the double if he came in before Mike.

  I hung up on Miss Jennings’ questions about who Susan Frost was and the treasure, and looked at my watch. It was ten thirty-five. Too late. But I had to try.

  I dialed the Freebooter, asked for cottage twelve. Mrs. Frost answered. I said. “Is Susan there, Mrs. Frost?” hoping against hope. “Has she left yet?”

  “Why, yes,” Susan’s mother replied. “She left with her father and the others about three-quarters of an hour ago. They wanted to be in plenty of time at the airport. Why? What’s the trouble?”

  “Nothing, Mrs. Frost. Just checking to be sure she remembered.” I slammed up the receiver and started for the front door of the fish market without even stopping to take off my apron. We were still empty of customers, luckily.

  “What was that all about?” Gloria asked me. “And why the big rush to Dolphin Inlet? Is that where you’re going?”

  She knew very well it was. She’d been listening to every word I said on the phone. I gave it to her fast. “I’m going to Dolphin Inlet,” I said, pushing open the screen door, “because Susan is out there alone. Within spitting distance of the Osgoods. And I think maybe the Osgoods are murderers!”

  * * * *

  I ran outside, hopped in our pickup truck and ground the starter. The engine wouldn’t catch. Savagely I bore down, pumping the gas pedal. Nothing happened. Then I saw I’d forgotten to turn on the ignition. That’s how excited I was.

  Don’t ask me why. I just had this feeling that I ought to go out to Dolphin Inlet pronto, find Susan and warn her that we were fooling around with men who might be murderers. I wanted to get her away from there.

  As I turned off Fiesta Drive onto Gulf Road I thought to myself that Susan’s father had been one hundred percent right last night… and Mrs. Frost, too. “Let us handle it from here in,” Mr. Frost had said.

  “Susan and Pete have done enough,” Mrs. Frost had chimed in. Brother, I wished now I’d listened to them. And made Susan listen, too!

  Not that I was really worried for fear Susan would be discovered by the Osgoods or Mr. X at the Inlet. She’d promised to stay inside the edge of the woods. Two hundred yards from the point, the Osgoods and their shack. She’d agreed not to expose herself in the open. So she would be safe. I knew that. Especially with her painting excuse as an anchor to windward if anything unexpected did happen. All the same, the idea kept nagging me that she might do something foolish on the
spur of the moment. Like stepping out onto the beach to wave at her father’s airplane when it came down over the inlet. I didn’t think she’d do it. But she might. I couldn’t tell what she might do. And I hated to think what the Osgoods and Mr. X, if they were killers, might do to her if they caught her spying. Or connected her with that circling airplane that was looking over their treasure site.

  I forgot all about the treasure itself. I didn’t care a bucket of chum whether the state of Florida ever got its twenty-five percent of the goodies under Dolphin Inlet or not. What I cared about, I suddenly realized, was Susan and her safety. And a lot.

  I headed north on Gulf Road at the pickup’s best speed. I turned down the window beside me and stuck my head out and listened for airplane sounds. I didn’t hear any. I couldn’t have heard them over the racket my own truck motor was making anyway, I thought. Besides, it wasn’t time for them yet.

  My watch said twenty minutes to eleven. Mr. Frost, Mr. Simons and Professor Harris were supposed to take off from Sarta City airport at eleven. So what was I listening for? I still had time to get to the inlet before the plane.

  Then I went as cold as a snook in frosty weather. Because suddenly I remembered that plane I’d heard fly over the fish market ten minutes ago. Could that have been Mr. Frost’s chartered plane? If he and his party got to the airport early—they’d left the Freebooter almost an hour ago, Mrs. Frost had said—they could have taken off earlier than eleven…

  I pushed harder on the gas pedal. The only result was that the old pickup shook a little harder and groaned a little louder. No more speed. The few minutes it took me to cover the five miles to Dolphin Inlet seemed like forever. When I was still a couple of miles short, I caught a glimpse through a break in the trees of a little plane circling out over the Gulf and back again, very low, about where the mouth of Dolphin Inlet ought to be. So that answered one question.

  I began praying that Susan would stay out of sight.

  CHAPTER 14

  SUSAN DISAPPEARS

  I was beginning to think of those two cabbage palms on Gulf Road where Susan and I parked, as “our” cabbage palms. When I saw them coming up at me, I braked the pickup hard, swerved into the side of the road, turned off the ignition and jumped down before the truck had quite stopped under the palms.

  I crossed the road at a dead run, jerking off my apron as I ran. I dropped it at the edge of the woods. Under the trees my eyes took a few seconds to adjust from bright sunlight to shadow.

  When I could see all right, I plunged through the woods like a fullback trying for the first down with only a yard to go. I headed straight for the spot where I’d left my clothes the day I took a swim in the inlet. I kept looking anxiously ahead of me, hoping to see Susan. Not that I’d be able to see her until I was almost through the woods. I knew she’d be watching the inlet from the very edge of the trees. But I kept looking, anyway.

  And a good thing I did, because I almost missed the easel. It had been unlimbered and set up on its long thin legs a few feet back in the trees at a spot where Susan could get a clear view of the point and the inlet. A piece of canvas board rested on the easel. The canvas was absolutely blank. That surprised me. Susan should have drawn at least a few lines on it, I thought, to make it a believable excuse for her being there.

  I stopped in my tracks when I saw the easel, though. The worry and the pressure began to drain out of me at the sight of it. For it meant that Susan was here and probably all right.

  I began to look for her. First along the edge of the woods bordering the beach. Then, carefully, in the vicinity of the easel with the empty canvas on it. I couldn’t see her. With an uneasy churning beginning in my stomach, one by one I cased the tree trunks nearby which were thick enough to hide her from the inlet. She wasn’t behind any of them.

  Just beyond where I stood, the powdered-sugar beach of Dolphin Inlet shone blindingly bright in the sun. Peering out from under the trees, I could see Dolphin Point with absolutely no sign of life about it. Neither Perry Osgood nor Mr. X was anywhere in sight. Yet I could plainly hear the sound of Mr. Frost’s chartered plane circling overhead, the noise of its motor first receding out into the Gulf, then coming back for another pass over Dolphin Point. I could trace its flight easily with eyes as well as ears, except when it flew directly above the woods where I was on its landward turns.

  So where was Susan? Her easel was here, and her canvas, too, even if she hadn’t painted anything on it. So she should be here. Right here. And right now.

  I began to move around now, careless of the noise I made, looking for her. The uneasy feeling in my stomach got worse. I spent five useless minutes searching the border of the woods for twenty-five yards in each direction from her easel, and two more looking into all the possible hiding places near the easel itself. No Susan. Something must have happened to her, then. But what? I threw caution to the winds, cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled at the top of my voice, “Susan! Susan! Are you here? Where are you?”

  I was listening hard for an answer when a voice that was not Susan’s said quietly behind me, “You looking for somebody, Pete?”

  I whirled around. It was Perry Osgood. His big chin and no-eyebrow face didn’t look any different from the time he came to our market and bought the red snappers; but somehow, his manner made me think he was wound up tighter than a watch spring. He had a couple of folded-up burlap sacks under one arm. I could smell them. They gave off a kind of dry, dusty, animal-feed smell.

  For a second I was too surprised to say anything. He must have sneaked up on me through the woods, instead of coming along the open beach from his house on the point. Probably because of the airplane, I thought. And why the burlap bags? Did they have something to do with Susan, I wondered a trifle wildly.

  I said with as much cheerfulness as I could scrape up, “Hi, Mr. Osgood. I’m looking for Susan Frost.”

  “She the girl who was with you in the sailboat last Sunday?”

  “Yes, sir. She came over here this morning to paint the point and the inlet, and then she was going to do a painting of your house, the way you said she could.” I pointed at Susan’s blank canvas on the easel.

  “Oh,” he said without any change of expression. He looked at the canvas. “She didn’t get very far with her painting, did she?”

  “I guess not.” I took the plunge. “Do you know where she is, Mr. Osgood?” My heart was slugging against my ribs so hard I was afraid he’d see my shirt front jerking with the beat. This harmless-looking guy could be a killer, I kept thinking.

  He shook his head, a short, irritated shake. “What do you want with her?”

  “I’ve got a message for her from her mother. I was making a delivery out this way, and…”

  I didn’t have time to finish my lie. Osgood interrupted me. “I guess she must have left before you got here,” he said. “Too bad. Maybe you can catch up with her on Gulf Road, Pete.” In other words, I thought, scram.

  “If she left, she wouldn’t have gone without her easel,” I argued. “You sure she’s not here, Mr. Osgood?”

  “You can see for yourself.”

  The airplane came by low over our heads, hidden from us by the tree branches under which we stood. Osgood’s eyes flicked upward toward the sound just once. His voice was sharper when he went on, lifted above the airplane racket, “As a matter of fact, I told her to leave, Pete. This is private property, you know. And it just so happens I didn’t want her around today, getting underfoot. So I sent her home. The same thing goes for you. I’m busy right now. I’ve got no time to waste on kids. So how about getting off my property?”

  He sounded anxious. And I guess he was. I asked him again, “How come Susan didn’t take her painting equipment with her when she left?”

  “Because I told her she could come back and paint tomorrow,” Osgood said gruffly. “So she left her stuff set up.”

  Th
at sounded reasonable enough to be true. It wasn’t, though, I knew that. Susan wouldn’t have left the inlet today, even if ordered to. She might have pretended to leave. But she wouldn’t have gone far. Not when she knew I was coming to join her. Not while her father’s survey plane was still overhead. She’d still be keeping tabs on the inlet. From some other vantage point, maybe, but somewhere nearby. As she’d said herself, this was too exciting to miss.

  I said, “Oh, well, we certainly don’t want to bother you, Mr. Osgood. I’m sorry.” Then I turned as though to leave. My stomach was up in my throat. I thought, what if Osgood had stumbled on Susan in the woods, just as he had me? And connected her with the strange airplane flying over the inlet? And hadn’t believed her when she handed him the painting excuse? What would he have done? It gave me a fit of shivers to think about it. Because the chances were good that this old schoolmate of Pop’s was capable of almost anything, up to and including murder!

  Murder. That reminded me. I swung back to Perry Osgood.

  “Say, Mr. Osgood,” I said, “I was sorry to hear about your friend getting killed.”

  Osgood’s arm made a sudden movement, crushing the burlap bags against his chest. “What are you talking about?” he said hoarsely.

  “Your friend, Roscoe Chapin. Didn’t you hear the news about him on the radio this morning?”

  He didn’t ask me what news. He said, “Roscoe Chapin?” and drilled me with those pale blue eyes of his.

  “Yes, sir. His body was found on the beach at the south end of the Key this morning. Drowned. With a busted head and a bad cut on his arm.”

  Osgood’s lack of reaction told me that this was stale news to him. Had he heard it over the radio himself? Or did he know that Chapin was dead because he and Mr. X had been personally responsible? I wished I knew.