Terror at High Tide
Page 10
Back at the boat Frank and Joe tied Cartwright’s wrists and ankles and secured him to a seat with the rope.
“Let’s wait here until the fog lifts,” Geovanis said. “We’ll be safer that way.”
“We may have a while to wait,” Joe said. “But that’s okay. Frank and I have enough questions to fill a month’s time on a desert island.”
Frank looked at Cartwright gravely. “We know that you’re really Carter Harris, the purser on the Ebony Pearl. Instead of going down with the rest of the crew, you jumped ship.”
“In a lifeboat meant for passengers,” George Geovanis added.
“Yes,” Cartwright said with a sneer. “And I made my way to Boston, where I started a new life, with jewels I stole from the ship’s safe. A few years later I moved to Nantucket so I could do more sailing.”
“Coward!” Alicia cried. “You let everyone think you were a hero—that you’d gone down with the ship. Instead you let some other person drown.”
Turning to Mr. Geovanis, Frank asked, “And you recognized him from the Ebony Pearl?”
“Yes,” Mr. Geovanis replied, his eyes flashing. “I have strong memories of the Ebony Pearl, and especially of the nasty purser who sat at our table at dinner. And when I met Cartwright at a fundraising party for the museum last week, he made a comment in the same snide tone he’d used onboard years ago. Then I noticed that Cartwright was missing part of his little finger, just like the purser. He used to tell stories about how he’d lost it repairing an outboard motor. I thought it had to be the same guy.”
“Now what about the balloon?” Frank asked. “How does that figure into all this?”
Mr. Geovanis gave a small smile. “I’m afraid I have to take responsibility for the balloon. You see, I wasn’t totally sure whether Cartwright was Harris, so I made up the hoax using a real balloon I’d saved from the Ebony Pearl. I knew Callie was a reporter and that she was visiting Alicia at our beach. So when I came home for lunch, I planted the balloon nearby, hoping she’d find it and write a story about it. I was curious to see how Cartwright would react to news about the ship.”
“Ha!” Cartwright spat out. “Well, you soon found out my reaction—and it was more than you bargained for. But what did you expect? I’m a prominent Nantucket citizen. I wouldn’t let you expose me.”
Mr. Geovanis stared at Cartwright in disbelief. “When I mentioned at Jonah’s party that you looked like Harris, I hardly expected to be kidnapped. You were going to kill me, until I told you that the world would learn the truth anyway—my suspicions are all in the book I’m writing.”
Joe turned to Cartwright. “You were the intruder at the museum. You went there to erase Mr. Geovanis’s book from his computer.”
Cartwright nodded. “And to destroy the manuscript. I made Geovanis give me his key and the alarm code by threatening to harm his lovely daughter if he didn’t obey.”
Alicia’s eyes flashed with anger as she looked at Cartwright. “And then you wanted me to take Dad’s other copy from his safe-deposit box.”
“That was a bluff,” Mr. Geovanis cut in. “There’s no other copy in the bank, but I was trying to buy time, and the bank wouldn’t open until Monday. I hoped Frank and Joe might track me down by then—and I was right.” He grinned at the Hardys. “I made a mistake telling Cartwright that you guys were detectives—I’m sorry. I was desperate, and I thought he’d back off if he knew you were after him.”
“So you tried to scare us by running us off the road,” Frank said to Cartwright.
Cartwright nodded proudly. “Then I lured you to the mill. I wanted to arrange some accidents for you.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Joe said. “And of course, the cuff link was yours.”
“Yes,” Cartwright said. “George ripped it off during a struggle on the way to the shed.” He paused, then added dreamily, “I wore those cuff links sometimes, but I never thought anyone would link them to the Ebony Pearl so many years later.”
Alicia turned to her father, putting her arm around him. “Dad, tell us how he kidnapped you from the party with all those other people around.”
Mr. Geovanis’s brown eyes looked pained. “We argued about whether or not he was Harris, and he suggested that we settle our argument in private. So we took a drive. Near the cranberry bog, he took out a knife and forced me out. After a struggle, he tied my hands and put me in that ramshackle shed.”
“Then he returned to the party, ate dessert, and gave a speech,” Joe added with disgust.
“But how were you able to call my car phone, Dad?” Alicia asked.
“I escaped for a moment the next day when I asked Cartwright to change the ropes on my arms and legs because they hurt me. We struggled for a moment, and I knocked him down. I made a run for his dune buggy, hoping his keys were in it. They weren’t, but his phone was. I called your cell phone after our answering machine at home cut me off. It took only a few seconds before Cartwright caught up to me and cut us off.”
Frank glanced around. The fog was finally lifting, and he could see patches of blue in the sky. Looking at Cartwright, he narrowed his eyes. “It’s time to go, Mr. Harris,” he announced. “The police are waiting for you.”
• • •
The next day, Monday, the skies above the island were clear and the air was hot. Frank, Joe, and Callie had joined Alicia and Geovanis for a swim at the beach in front of their house. As Frank spread his towel on the sand, Joe jogged over to him, carrying his surfboard.
“Hey, Frank, don’t get too comfortable. We’ve got some waves to catch.”
Frank looked at Callie and shrugged. Then grabbing his surfboard, he ran into the water alongside Joe. “Aren’t we repeating ourselves here?” he asked as a huge wave crashed off shore.
Joe grinned. “Just stay off the beach, Frank. One mystery a trip is enough.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Aladdin
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