Hannah West: Sleuth in Training (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  “In the early summer I noticed that some of the plant life in the lake seemed to be particularly robust. We had an unusually dry and warm spring, as you might recall. When I was kayaking, I’d often find my paddle hitting a plant or bringing up plant material. Then, about two weeks ago, I realized that I’d had several kayak sessions without encountering any aquatic plants. And of course that ridiculous actress saw those dead fish.”

  “I’m not surprised that the aquatic plants have receded,” Alpha said. “I’ve noticed the same thing when I’m rowing from the Pocock Center at the university. It makes perfect sense with what I found in the water samples.”

  Alice and I looked at Alpha, waiting for her to continue. “What did you find?” Alice prodded.

  “Herbicides.”

  “Herbicides?” I asked.

  Alpha explained that certain types of plants in the lake could actually take root on boats—a fact that didn’t go over so well in the yachting community.

  It all started to make sense. They weren’t trying to kill fish. They were trying to kill plants.

  Lily’s lame joke from earlier in the week echoed in my head. She’d said: “Maybe it was Tide or Cheer or something. Wouldn’t that just clean the water? Tidy it up?” In a twisted way, she was right. Because someone had the extra-twisted idea of dumping herbicides in the water so that those big expensive boats would be cleaner.

  CHAPTER 18

  “I GOT THESE developed for you,” Mom said, handing me three packages of developed film. “They’re on this CD, too.”

  “You’re the best mom ever!” I said, snatching the envelopes from her.

  “Does that mean you want to come with me tonight when I go back downtown to review an art opening?” she asked.

  “Actually, it doesn’t mean that at all. But you’re still the best. As long as you let me stay home and go kayaking tonight,” I said. “I need to get some more photos to fill in a couple of gaps here.” I spread my new black-and-white photos across the kitchen table, organizing them as I went. I had the pictures of Stella and Timothy on the Clean Sweep, the shot of Estie night kayaking, and many more. As I looked through them, more and more pieces of the puzzle started to come into focus, so to speak. But there were still a few things I didn’t fully understand.

  “If we get up early, you and I can kayak tomorrow morning,” Mom said. “But you are not allowed to take Jake’s boat out alone. I’m glad he has a double kayak so you won’t be tempted,” she added. “But even if he had a single, you are not to go out alone. I repeat: You, Hannah West, may not go out on the water alone tonight. Or at any other time. Understood?”

  “I understand you perfectly,” I said. I stormed off to my temporary bedroom with Mango right at my heels. It’s hard to sulk properly with an adorable labradoodle, so I curled up on the bed with the pooch and did some online research about aquatic plants. After Mom left, I got my camera out anyway and headed outside. Through the telephoto lens I saw a woman with long blond hair emptying a garbage pail into the water from a small motorboat.

  Click. Refocus. Advance the film. Click. This was great stuff! It might not have anything to do with herbicides, but it reminded me of those nuts in the 1970s dumping sewage into the lake. This woman was emptying an entire garbage can! Click. There’s no way she could have heard me—I was a hundred yards away—but she looked up and directly into the camera. Monica Heathcliff! I could see the headline right above my photo: “Famous Hollywood Actress Litters in Lake—photos by Hannah West.” I zoomed in again and caught her mouth in a position that I recognized. It wasn’t Monica after all. It was Estie. Just like that, my dreams of selling my photos to Hollywood Star evaporated.

  I kept snapping anyway.

  Splash. I took my eye from the viewfinder and saw Alice Campbell taking her kayak in the water. The usually graceful Alice wasn’t typically a splasher, but she was definitely in a hurry. She stroked strong and deep, making incredible speed for a human-powered boat.

  She was heading right for where I’d seen Monica Heathcliff. Or was she heading to the boat nearby? I looked through the camera again.

  The Clean Sweep was crisply framed in my viewfinder.

  I slung the camera strap around my neck and clumsily got Jake’s kayak down and into the water. I looked around, hoping one of the other neighbors might be around. I was itching to get on the water, but I’d promised I wouldn’t go out alone.

  Turns out someone else was itching to get on the water.

  Thud. I turned back to the kayak.

  “Mango! How did you get in there, boy?”

  Sitting in the backseat of Jake Heard’s double kayak was his dog. He obviously wanted to go for a ride … and that meant I wouldn’t be alone. Maybe this was exactly why Jake had a double in the first place.

  “Okay, Mango, you’re on!” I grabbed a paddle and eased quickly into the front spot of the kayak. My strokes weren’t as deep or as quick as Alice’s were, but I made amazingly good time out into the water. Monica Heathcliff’s boat must have motored off, but Alice was almost out to the Clean Sweep. I had a great view, so I pulled to a stop and fiddled with the camera until Alice, Timothy, and Stella were all in view. Stella leaned over the side of the boat, talking earnestly to Alice below. Alice began raising out of the kayak, as if she were going to pull herself onto the yacht. Stella leaned over further and—

  “Alice!” I screamed.

  But she was already in the water. I’d captured her tumble into the water on film. I thought Stella had pushed her, and I was pretty sure I’d have a photo to prove it. But there was no more time for photos. I started stroking as fast as I could toward the Clean Sweep, with Mango announcing our arrival in a series of quick barks.

  “Alice!” I called out. She was now up in the boat, and Timothy had draped a blanket around her wet shoulders. Stella was crying. And Alice was crying.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alice said.

  “No, no, I’m so sorry that we suspected you,” Stella said.

  Huh?

  CHAPTER 19

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Mango and I were aboard a gigantic yacht pleasure cruising toward the Emerald City Yacht Club. Stella and Timothy had rushed Alice back to her houseboat so she could take a shower. While she got thoroughly clean, Stella had called Maggie on her cell phone to ask if I could accompany Alice as their guests to the yacht club.

  I was trying to be patient, but there was still so much to know. Still, this was my first time on a pleasure-cruising yacht, and I was determined to enjoy the ride.

  “This is the life, isn’t it, boy?” I said. Mango licked my face and then stretched his head over the side of the boat, just like a dog does in a car when the windows are down.

  “I didn’t completely suspect you, Alice,” Stella was saying when I joined everyone inside the yacht. And I do mean “yacht.” This thing was like a house with a motor. I wanted to snoop around and see what was downstairs, but the conversation up above was just too good to miss. “It’s just that I know you’d do anything to protect Marcus. You were always so special to him, and I know you adore him, too.” Stella and Alice hugged, and Timothy stood by with a big smile on his face.

  “If you two aren’t dumping herbicides in the water, who is?” I asked.

  Timothy’s smile instantly disappeared. “Why on earth would you think that Stella and I would put something toxic into the water?” he demanded.

  “Um, well,” I stammered. “You see, I had this theory going …”

  “Let’s hear this theory,” Timothy said.

  No way was I going to tell him what I was thinking. But then his smile returned, and it seemed like a genuine, kind smile.

  “You won’t hurt our feelings, Hannah. I just really want to know.”

  “Um, you see, I first thought that it was something emitted from the engine or the fuel used in motorboats. But that wasn’t it. But I couldn’t get the name of your boat out of my head.”

  “The Clean Sweep?” Stella asked.

/>   “Yeah. Clean Sweep. I had a feeling you both liked your boat to be superclean. And maybe that’s why you named it the Clean Sweep,” I said.

  “I do like a clean ship,” Timothy said.

  “But that’s not the reason for the name,” Stella added.

  “I was just guessing. Alice said something about how her paddle kept getting caught in the plants growing in the lake. I thought maybe somehow the plants were interfering with your boat, too. I mean, your yacht.”

  “That’s a pretty good theory,” Timothy said.

  “But it turns out to be wrong,” Stella added.

  “I can tell you about the name Clean Sweep,” Alice said. “I bet Alpha could have guessed it as well. Timothy was a rower in college.”

  “We made a clean sweep my senior year, taking the national championship from Harvard,” Timothy said.

  “Did you say something back there about Alpha?” Stella asked. “Such a beautiful but unusual name. Timothy, isn’t that the name of the woman we met at Stephen’s lab?”

  “Who’s Stephen?” Alice and I both asked at the same time.

  “He’s a graduate student over at the university. He developed the herbicide neutralizer we were testing,” Timothy said.

  “The what?” Alice and I asked in unison again.

  “We’re trying to counteract the effects of the chemicals that are attacking the aquatic plant life. We were hoping for an easy fix, but we had no idea that the herbicides would be toxic enough to kill fish as well. The problem is a lot bigger than we first thought,” Stella said.

  “Why didn’t you try to find and stop the polluter instead of covering it up?” I asked. But no one said anything. I wondered if they were afraid to answer. Maybe they didn’t want to say that Marcus was the one they suspected. I could tell that Alice didn’t want to say that Marcus, her own nephew, was the one she suspected (although it had already come out that Alice suspected Marcus’s loving parents of helping him with the scheme). None of the adults wanted to say it, so no one said anything for a while.

  “I don’t think it was Marcus,” I said, interrupting the silence. They all looked at me but were still silent. “Really. I don’t think he’s behind this. Have you ever asked him?”

  They shook their heads.

  “By this time tomorrow, I think I can prove who was behind it,” I said with a bit more confidence than I actually felt. The adults didn’t look as if they had much confidence in me either.

  “Alice, does the Floating Home Association have meetings?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course. We have one the day after tomorrow,” she said. “It’s at my house.”

  “Do you think you could have it somewhere else instead?” I asked. “That is, of course, if the yacht club would let us.”

  CHAPTER 20

  IT TURNED OUT that Stella Dartmouth was a vice president of the yacht club, in line to be commodore next year. Scheduling a meeting at the yacht club was no problem when a VP makes the call.

  I made sure that Alpha and Stephen, the other researcher, could come to the meeting. Stella invited Marcus. Alice enticed everyone on our dock—plus Lily—to come by offering a free dinner at the yacht club after the meeting. People who had lived near the yacht club for years said they’d never actually been invited inside. Mom called her friend Mary Perez at KOMO TV. If things didn’t play out the way I thought they would, Mary could still do a feature story about the Floating Home Association.

  “You can add houseboats to the list of stories that people can’t resist,” Mary said. “Other parts of the country can count only on cute kids and puppies to lure in viewers no matter what. In Seattle, we have kids, puppies, and houseboats.”

  “Look! It’s Monica Heathcliff!” someone said. A woman with blond hair entered the lobby of the Emerald City Yacht Club, creating quite a stir.

  “Can’t they tell it isn’t Monica?” I asked Lily. “That hair color is so obviously fake.”

  Lily looked at me in disbelief. “And you thought that the real Monica had natural-looking hair? If we hadn’t met Monica, if we’d seen her only on TV and in People magazine, I bet we’d think this was the real thing.”

  “Oh, I think we could see through to Estie Bartlett,” I said.

  “Doubt it,” Lily said in a singsong voice.

  “Girls, the meeting is about to begin,” Alice said.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked.

  “Not about the meeting. Not even about the TV camera,” Alice said. “But I am a bit nervous about the lines you’ve given me.”

  “I bet the magic of being around Dockside Blues will make you an Emmy Award-winning actress in your own right,” Lily said.

  “I hope you’re right,” Alice said. She went up to the front of the room to begin the meeting.

  “Before we go through our business agenda, I’d like to introduce a few special guests and make an exciting announcement,” Alice said to the group of about thirty people gathered in a meeting room called the Captain’s Room. She introduced Alpha Cowlitz and Stephen Vargas as two “bright young researchers committed to the environment and healthy water.” She introduced Stella and Timothy Dartmouth as “our gracious hosts today, who are eager for Emerald City Yacht Club to become more involved in our neighborhood.”

  “And now I’d like to introduce our special guest, Monica Heathcliff,” Alice said. Everyone clapped enthusiastically. Estie was caught off guard at this announcement, but by the time the camera had turned toward her and the applause started, she was tossing her hair and acting as confident as if she really were a Hollywood star.

  “Monica is suffering from a bit of voice strain today,” Alice looked pointedly at Estie, who obligingly touched her neck as if she might have a sore throat. “She’s asked me to go ahead and make her exciting announcement.” Alice paused for drama before continuing, “I feel so privileged to tell you that Monica Heathcliff and her sister, Estie Bartlett, have begun a Portage Bay Stewardship program to ensure that we have healthy, clean water for decades to come.” There was spontaneous applause. The next moment was a true test of Estie’s acting abilities. She looked stunned. Confused. Angry. And then, magically, she smiled radiantly and nodded. Again her fingers went to her neck and her supposed sore throat. “In addition, these two environmentally conscious sisters will be working with the Emerald City Yacht Club and boating groups to spread the word about healthy water and safe boating.” Alice continued with a list of all the commitments we’d dreamed up for Estie.

  I passed a small notebook with photos to Estie.

  “What’s this?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.

  “It’s just a little motivation to help you remember why you are so committed to the cleanup effort here on Portage Bay,” I said. Estie grimaced as she turned the pages. “Nice close-up,” I added as she got to the photos I’d taken of her pouring something into the water off the dock, pouring something into the water from a kayak. “You can imagine how excited I was to find such a famous actress in the background of some of my shots.”

  Estie just nodded and continued smiling.

  I’d managed to zoom in pretty well on Estie’s face in those shots. What I hadn’t expected was the bonus of finding her in eight of my other pictures. I’d taken the digital files and enlarged them in Photoshop. That’s when I noticed a woman with long blond hair in a boat near the subject of my shots. I considered them extra insurance. Estie might possibly claim that she was just helping investigate water problems by gathering water samples. However, these shots clearly—or at least somewhat clearly—showed her pouring a powdered substance into the water.

  Sitting through the business meeting of the Floating Home Association wasn’t exactly exciting, but I bet it was even tougher for Estie to sit through it all.

  CHAPTER 21

  “THIS KIND OF litter patrol totally rocks!” Lily said, moving from side to side so that our double kayak was actually rocking.

  “Stop it or I’m going to have to send you to shore
patrol,” I said. Our job was to paddle around and look for any floating soda cups, beer cans, plastic bags, and other trash that might have landed on the water.

  Monica Heathcliff—the real Monica Heathcliff—and her brown-haired sister Estie Bartlett were picking up trash on the shore and surrounding neighborhood. About twenty other people had shown up as part of the Portage Bay Stewardship Cleanup Day.

  It turns out I really did have photos of a famous actress littering. I spent more time in Photoshop cleaning up and enlarging and found that there were actually two different women in the backgrounds of some of the photos. Five of the photos had Estie, but three had Monica, who, it turns out, had enlisted Estie’s help. In return, Monica promised to help her sister get a role in a television show.

  “Why would Monica be interested in polluting water up here?” Marcus had asked me at dinner the night we committed Monica and Estie to being environmental advocates.

  “I wasn’t sure at first, either,” I admitted. “I found a photo of her in People with a guy who is supposedly in real estate in Seattle, according to the caption.”

  “That would be Harrison Donegal,” Marcus said. “They’re engaged.”

  “Harrison? Is that the fellow who recently joined the yacht club?” Timothy asked his wife.

  “I believe it is,” I answered for Stella. “I found out that he owns a thirty-two-foot boat but has just ordered a new sixty-footer that’s going to be delivered next month.”

  “He wanted the plants cut back for his new luxury yacht,” Alice said.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Harrison Donegal wasn’t on hand to pick up trash. I’d have to find some other way to make sure that he paid for what he did. Alice and her neighbors assured me they could think up some sort of charitable task for him to take on.