The Chocolate Pirate Plot

by JoAnna Carl

  So West Michigan is full of big, blond people. As a tall natural blond, I’d stood out in Texas. In west Michigan I rarely got a second glance.

  Jill did not look like a west Michigan native. She was small, maybe five foot three, and—like Brenda—she seemed more exotic than the wholesome-looking Dutch girls of Warner Pier. She had dark eyes and a beautiful tan. Her hair was blond, true, but it was the frankly fake kind of blond.

  I kept feeling that I ought to know who she was, but I hadn’t managed to place her. I decided to try. “Jill, are you here just for the summer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mentioned that you and Jeremy worked together. Where do you work?”

  Jill shot a quick glance at me, then dropped her eyes to the sand. “It’s just a summer job,” she said. “How long will these guys look for Jeremy before they give up?

  “I don’t know.” Had she just changed the subject? “They won’t look for, well, too long. The lake currents make it hard to predict just where . . .”

  I stopped. Maybe I’d said enough. “Where are you from, Jill?”

  “I’m from Indianapolis. I’m a senior at Northwestern.”

  “Great school! What’s your major?”

  I got that under-the-lashes look again. “I’m in the School of Communication.”

  “Is that journalism?”

  “Not exactly.” She looked at me. “You’re sure there’s no way to make a cell phone call from here?”

  “No. There’s no service on the lakeshore. But I can take you up to my house if you want to make a call.”

  “It doesn’t seem right to leave. But I need to talk to my . . .” She hesitated. “Our boss.”

  “I’m sure he’s heard what happened by now.”

  “I know!” Jill turned around and stared at the people on top of the bank behind us. “I don’t understand why he hasn’t come.”

  The line of volunteers had reached the edge of the water. They dropped their arms and began to talk to one another. Hogan, who was directing the operation, began to gesture to his left, apparently indicating where they would try the next time. Three of the women came over for bottles of water. None of them spoke to Jill, and she didn’t look up at them.

  Jill and I sat silently until they went back into the water, linking their elbows again and forming a line in a new area. It didn’t seem to be a likely spot to me. It was south of the spot where Jill thought Jeremy had gone down. The southwest current should have washed him farther north. But what did I know? Hogan was the expert.

  Jill was still drooping. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. It was as if she couldn’t stand to look at the water any longer.

  I tried to think of something comforting to say. Even though she had denied several times that she had any deep emotional attachment to Jeremy, witnessing something like this had to be upsetting. I was upset, and I’d never met Jeremy. I knew the morning had been a nightmare to Jill.

  What could I say to her? My mind was a blank.

  Then I heard a woman’s voice behind me. “Jill! Lee!”

  I pulled myself out of my own four-inch-high chair—an awkward job—and crawled out from under the umbrella. Jill stayed where she was, but she lifted her head.

  I looked toward the bank behind us. A woman was standing at the top, behind the yellow no-admittance tape. She was waving a big straw hat. “Lee! Jill! It’s me! Maggie.”

  I walked toward her, and she waved again. “They won’t let me through unless you vouch for me!”

  It was Maggie McNutt, who had been aboard Joe’s Shepherd Sedan the night we were boarded by the pirates.

  Before I could do anything to indicate that Maggie should be allowed on the beach, a streak of white terry cloth went by me.

  “Maggie! Maggie!” Jill was running up the stairs toward the top of the bank. “I am so glad you’re here!”

  As Jill ran by, I realized where I’d seen her before, why she had seemed so familiar to me.

  Jill was an actress in the Warner Pier Summer Showboat Players. Joe and I had gone to see their production of Arsenic and Old Lace. She’d played the romantic lead. According to the posters around town, she was about to open as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance, wearing a cute Victorian bonnet and side curls.

  Maggie, of course, was part of the Summer Showboat Players, too, and was in The Pirates of Penzance.

  As soon as Jill got to the top of the bank, she and Maggie grabbed each other in a big hug. Jill even cried a few tears on Maggie’s shoulder.

  “Oh, Maggie!” Jill said. “Where is Max?”

  “He’s gone to Chicago for the day.”

  “Chicago!” Jill stepped back, her face a picture of incredulity. “He can’t have left town!”

  “Why not?”

  Jill stamped her foot as hard as a flip-flop can be stamped in sand. “The rat! I’ll kill him for this!”

  Maggie looked confused. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, I heard a shout behind us.

  “They’ve found something!”

  I lifted the yellow tape and let Maggie through before I bothered to turn around. We’d already had several such announcements. So far the beach patrol had found a log, a sand-filled foam cooler, and a pair of tennis shoes with the laces tied together.

  But when I turned around this time, the situation looked different. The searchers in the water were gathered in a tight knot, a knot that was hiding whatever they had found. It was something large.

  I had an urge to protect the younger woman, and I guess Maggie did, too, because we both stepped closer to Jill. Maggie put her arm around Jill’s waist. We all stared at the scene.

  A leg flashed into and out of view. It was horizontal, so I knew it didn’t belong to one of the searchers. I gasped, and I think Jill and Maggie did, too. The line of searchers had apparently found Jeremy.

  It took the rescue crew only a few minutes to lift the body onto the beach. Hogan stood by with a yellow plastic sheet, which I knew was standard equipment he kept in his car. The searchers closed in, forming a wall that blocked the onlookers’ view of the drowned man. Hogan knelt, staying on his knees for at least two full minutes. I wondered why. Then I saw the sheet flap around, and one of the county deputies catch the end. He and Hogan had apparently covered the man.

  Hogan stood up and walked up to Maggie, Jill, and me. Silence had fallen over the assembled rescue workers. Hogan stopped about six feet away from us.

  “Jill,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to identify him.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Jill said. Tears were trickling down her cheeks.

  “Hogan, I know him, too,” Maggie said. “Can I do it?”

  “No!” Jill spoke sharply. “I’m not just an ingénue. I’ve got to act like a grown woman.”

  She took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  “Good girl,” Hogan said. He took her arm. They walked toward the water, with Maggie and me following.

  The clump of rescuers parted as we approached, and I saw a strange thing. Something was holding the sheet up on the right side of the drowning victim. It looked as if his arm was bent at the elbow and was holding the sheet up like a tent pole. Even as upset as I was, it struck me as odd.

  We reached the victim, and Hogan knelt at his head. Maggie again slid her arm around Jill’s waist, and I stood close beside her.

  Hogan pulled the sheet back. We saw the side of the man’s head and a bush of black hair.

  “No!” Jill gasped and staggered, nearly falling to her knees. “Jeremy is blond!”

  She whirled around and hugged Maggie excitedly. “Jeremy is blond! This isn’t him! They’ve found someone else!”

  Chocolate Chat

  Chocolate Gives Clue to Ancient Life

  Chocolate proves the existence of a vital and important pre-Columbian civilization in the American Southwest.

  According to Craig Childs, author of numerous books on archaeology and a co
mmentator on National Public Radio, unusual potsherds were found at a dig in northwestern New Mexico. Reassembled, they became tall, slender pots. What could ancient New Mexicans have used them for?

  Similar ones had been found at Mayan sites, and scientists knew the Maya used them for drinking chocolate during ceremonies. But cacao doesn’t grow in New Mexico. Too dry. Too far north.

  Then the residue found on the potsherds was analyzed. It contained theobromine. Theobromine is found only in chocolate.

  The ancient inhabitants of the desert Southwest had used those pots exactly as the Maya did—for a bitter, grainy drink made from cacao beans.

  That chocolate must have reached them through a trading route that would have stretched more than a thousand miles south. Add this evidence of international trade to their elaborate building projects—large towns and well-engineered waterways—and Childs says we can’t picture pre-Columbian Native Americans living a primitive life. They had a sophisticated civilization. Archaeologists have long known this, but that chocolate was the final proof.

  Chapter 5

  That sure got everybody’s attention.

  The beach buzzed. The search team had found the wrong drowning victim? How could that be?

  Who could it be?

  Maggie quickly leaned over to check out the dead man, looking at his hair as Jill had, then at his face. She nodded at Hogan. “Jill is right. That’s not Jeremy.”

  “We’ll check to make sure no one else is missing in the area,” Hogan said.

  Maggie frowned. “If another drowning had been reported . . .”

  “Yeah,” Hogan said. “We’d probably have heard.”

  I realized that Hogan was one of the few people on the beach who hadn’t looked surprised by the discovery that the dead man was not Jeremy. He looked serious, but he wasn’t amazed the way the rest of us were. I looked at the body myself—like Jill, I skipped the face—and I began to put a few things together. Such as the dead man’s arm, the one holding the sheet up like a tent pole. The stiffness looked like rigor mortis to me. However, Jeremy had supposedly been in the water for just a couple of hours. I didn’t think that was long enough for rigor mortis to develop. I could be wrong, since I know little about medical matters, but Hogan had formerly served as a homicide detective, so he’d seen plenty of bodies.

  Hogan marshaled his line of marching volunteers for another sweep through the water, still looking for Jeremy, then took Jill aside for what looked like an in-depth questioning session. Maggie and I sat down in the beach chairs under the umbrella. Maybe this was my chance to find out what Maggie knew about Jeremy and Jill.

  “Just who is this Jeremy?” I said.

  “He’s on the tech crew at the theater.”

  “Then I haven’t seen him onstage?”

  “Nope. Though he’s a good-looking guy. I was a little surprised that he was more interested in the backstage angle of theater. Usually the good-looking guys want to be out front.”

  “Is he a student?”

  “I don’t think so. He works backstage in Chicago theaters.”

  “Jill says she’s a student at Northwestern. I guess I thought most of the people working at the Showboat this summer were students.”

  “Most of the actors are. Crew—maybe half and half. Then there are a few of us elderly types.” She was being ironic. We both think the early thirties is young, though the student actors Maggie had been working with might not.

  “Why do you care?” Maggie said.

  “My usual curiosity. I’m just trying to get the picture.”

  “Picture of what?”

  “Of Jill, I guess. Is she as flaky as she seems?”

  Maggie shot me a look that could only be described as hostile. “Aren’t all actresses supposed to be flaky?”

  Her question surprised me. Maggie and I had been buddies for two years. Was she taking my remark personally? I didn’t want to fight with her, and I certainly hadn’t intended to put down her profession.

  “I don’t know about all actresses, Maggie,” I said. “I certainly don’t consider you flaky. You’re one of the most levelheaded people I know.”

  “Now I am.” Maggie sounded bitter. She ducked her head and dug up a handful of sand, then let it trickle through her fingers. “God knows I spent years of my life being flaky.”

  “At least you didn’t get married when you were still at the flaky stage, the way I did. I’m sorry if I seemed judgmental about Jill. She’s no sillier than I was at her age.”

  Maggie and I both stared across the beach at Jill and Hogan. Hogan was frowning down at the girl. His face was grim. Jill was twisting a lock of her hair like a ten-year-old. Somehow her mouth looked as if she had developed a lisp. As we watched, she ducked her head and looked up at Hogan from under her lashes. She was behaving like a little girl.

  “Yuck,” Maggie said. “This is not the way Jill usually acts. Flaky is too kind a word.”

  “You think it’s all an act?”

  Maggie gave me another sharp look. “‘Act’ as in acting? So if actors aren’t flaky, they’re phony?”

  “Come on, Maggie! I just think she’s behaved oddly. I’d like to know why.”

  “What did she do that’s so odd?”

  “For one thing, she refused to tell me that she’s an actor.”

  I repeated the exchange in which Jill had told me she was “in the School of Communication.”

  Maggie looked troubled. But she still apparently felt that she had to stick up for her fellow theater employee.

  “Okay!” she said. “I admit it was an odd answer. I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to ask Jill herself.”

  With that, Maggie got up, pulled herself to her full five feet two inches, and walked over toward Jill and Hogan. Hogan waved her off, however, and she veered toward the water. She ducked her head and walked along, examining the rocks along the wave line. Or pretending to.

  In a few minutes Hogan gave up on questioning Jill, and she came back to the umbrella. “Yeesh!” she said as she dropped into the beach chair Maggie had vacated. “Is that police chief always like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Having to have every little thing explained to him.”

  “That’s his job. Understanding all the details builds the big picture. What did he want to know?”

  “The same old stuff. Why Jeremy and I came here. Exactly what happened when he went under.”

  Jill went back to her dispirited pose—knees against her chest, head drooping, shoulders slumped, fingers trailing in the sand.

  “I’m just tired of going over it,” she said.

  I was tired of the whole thing, too. Maybe that’s what made me bring up another question, one that had been circling around the back of my brain for most of the morning.

  “Jill,” I said, “just why did you run to our house this morning?”

  She didn’t look up, but her body became more alert. It was as if an alarm had gone off, as if I’d yelled, “Watch out!” instead of asking a simple question.

  I didn’t repeat the question, but after a pause Jill spoke. “I went to your house because I needed help.”

  “Yes, but why did you come to Joe and me for it?”

  Now I got a sideways glance from behind Jill’s sunglasses. It was a quick glance. Immediately her eyes dropped back to the sand.

  “You were the first person I saw,” she said. “You were there.”

  “Yep, Joe and I were there. But you ran past five houses to get to us.”

  “I didn’t see anybody at those houses.”

  “Weren’t there cars in the drives?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  “Television sets playing? Lights on? Coffee perking?”

  “I don’t know!”

  We were both silent. Then Jill took a deep breath. “I guess I panicked.”

  “Did you yell for help before you saw me?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  “It jus
t seems odd, Jill. There are houses within calling distance of this beach, houses you had to run by to get to our mailbox. Joe and I are sort of far from the beach to be first responders for a drowning accident.”

  Jill jumped to her feet. “I don’t have to take this! I don’t even have to stay here. I’ll tell that Chief Jones that I’m leaving. I can go back to my room. I’ll find my boss.”

  “Max?”

  “Mr. Morgan. He’ll help me deal with you locals!”

  She began snatching up her belongings. Beach towel and sunscreen were stuffed into a bag. She yanked my terry-cloth cover-up off and threw it down on the chair she’d been sitting in.

  “I don’t think they’ll let you take Jeremy’s car,” I said. “Do you want me to give you a ride?”

  “No! Maggie will take me.”

  She dropped her bag and walked swiftly down the beach toward Maggie, calling out her name. I remained where I was, sitting in my beach chair while Jill talked to Maggie, then reported to Hogan. When she and Maggie came back, Jill didn’t speak. She picked up her beach bag without looking at me.

  “Jill,” I said, “if Max Morgan is mixed up in this, you can’t blame me for wondering if it’s some kind of a publicity stunt.”

  She kept her head turned away from me. “If I’ve gone through a day like today for a publicity stunt, we’ll have another dead man,” she said. “And his name will be Max Morgan.”

  She and Maggie left.

  She’d summed up my feelings. If I’d gone through a day like today for a stunt to publicize the Warner Pier Summer Showboat Playhouse, I might murder Max Morgan myself.

  But looking for one body and finding another—well, it didn’t seem like a coincidence either.

  In fact, how could Jeremy’s disappearance be a publicity stunt at all? Why would it get publicity? To be blunt, people drown in Lake Michigan every year. I’m afraid they’re rapidly forgotten by the general public. Only their friends and relatives remember.