The Chocolate Pirate Plot

by JoAnna Carl

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s an acrobat!” I quickly sketched what Ella Van Ark had said about Hal and Jeremy doing their “tricks.”

  “Don’t you think Hogan should ask Mikki to take a look at the body?”

  “I don’t think she needs to bother, Lee.”

  “Why not? Have they identified the man?”

  “Not that I know of. But Mikki knew Hal because he worked at the Showboat Theater.”

  “So?”

  “Maggie and Jill both worked there, too. And they looked at the body. And they both said they had never seen the man before.”

  I went to my van completely deflated.

  Plus, I still hadn’t found Maggie McNutt. I pulled out my cell phone and called her again. It seemed like a miracle when she answered.

  I probably sounded desperate. “Where are you?”

  “At the Showboat. I’m sorry I didn’t check my messages earlier. I took Jill to get something to eat. By then it was so late, I just dropped her at the theater.”

  I knew Maggie didn’t have a role in that week’s production. “Are you going home?”

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. But I sure would like to talk to you. Could you meet me at the office?”

  “If you’ll give me a Mexican vanilla truffle.”

  “I’ll have one with you.”

  “I’ll stop by the Coffee House.”

  When I got to the office, Will was standing on the sidewalk outside. “Hi, Lee,” he said. “Just waiting for Brenda.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Fifteen minutes before the shift changes.”

  “We’re going into Holland to a movie.”

  “Have fun.” I went in meditating—not for the first time—on how starting the summer with a big fight had made Brenda even more attractive to Will than she had been. He was dancing attendance much more avidly than he had the previous year. Hmm. Not that I’d recommend a tricky move like picking a fight as a ploy that might possibly increase a guy’s interest. Honesty remains the best policy. But hmm again.

  Ten minutes later Maggie and I were in my glass-walled office, with the door shut against the noise of the tourists in the retail shop. A paper plate was on the desk between us. It held two Mexican vanilla truffles (“light vanilla interior formed into a ball and encased in milk chocolate”), two double-fudge bonbons (“layers of milk and dark chocolate fudge with a dark chocolate coating”), and a half dozen pastilles of dark chocolate with outlines of pirate treasure chests molded into their tops. The plate was flanked by Maggie’s contribution, coffees from the Coffee House. Of course, we could have drunk coffee from the TenHuis break room, but the Coffee House has a blend of dark roast that Maggie and I both like plain and black. The bitter flavor was perfect with any kind of chocolate.

  Maggie sipped her coffee, then bit a Mexican vanilla truffle and rolled her eyes in ecstasy. “Bliss,” she said. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

  “Jeremy Mattox.”

  “I told you everything I know about him.”

  “Aw, come on, Maggie. You’re interested in people, particularly young people. You probably know all his hopes, plans, and dreams.”

  “Those are pretty far from facts.”

  “I’ll settle for surmises.”

  Maggie stared at the ceiling while she finished her truffle and took two more sips of coffee. When she finally spoke, she was frowning.

  “Surmises are all I can come up with on Jeremy. He was pretty closemouthed about his hopes, plans, and dreams.”

  “So surmise.”

  “Jeremy never told me anything about himself. Where he was from, how he learned about the stage, why he was interested in the theater—I have no idea about any of that. If I try to describe him, he comes out sounding like a nonentity.”

  “A nonentity? Or a mystery man?”

  “To me, a nonentity. To Jill, apparently, a mystery man.”

  “You spent quite a while with her today. Did she tell you anything about him?”

  “Very few facts. She did say he’d worked in Chicago theaters. Which made me wonder if he’s working here under a fake ID.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “It’s fairly common. To work backstage in a city like New York or Chicago, you have to belong to the union. The Warner Pier Showboat can’t pay union wages or offer union benefits. So if a guy is desperate for a job, he takes it under a fake name.”

  “Would that be a reason for staging a disappearance?”

  “I don’t see why. If they get caught, they just drift away and deny the whole thing. The union isn’t likely to track them down.”

  Maggie sipped her coffee and nibbled a treasure chest pastille. “Honestly, Lee, these kids face so many temptations! I worry, worry, worry about them. They think they’re all grown up and know everything, and they don’t know anything!”

  Maggie shuddered. I remembered that at nineteen Maggie had gone to California to try to break into the movies. She has never confided just what happened, but I do know that there are episodes from that time that she deeply regrets.

  “There are so many pitfalls,” she said. “Bad guys are just lurking behind every potted plant, luring them into things that they’ll be sorry for for the rest of their lives.”

  “I know,” I said. “Those guys hang around beauty pageants, too. The only thing that saved me from having nude photos on the Internet was my mom. If I was asked to go on a photo shoot, she insisted on going along. It’s funny how fast a lot of photographers lost interest in me as a model.”

  Maggie laughed. “Did you ever have any interest in an entertainment career?”

  “No! And a good thing, too, since I barely scraped by in the talent competition. I’d sing my medley of John Denver songs, smile, and retire to the back row, where the tall girls stood.”

  “But you got to the Miss Texas competition.”

  “One year out of the five I tried. I wasn’t particularly disappointed. Accounting is a much safer way to make a living.”

  “Too bad you can’t do an audit for the talent competition.”

  We both got the giggles at the thought of a beauty pageant that featured a contestant in a bikini with a ledger under her arm or wearing an evening gown and carrying a computer while demonstrating Quicken. It was a good five minutes before we got back to the subject at hand.

  “Well,” I said, “if you don’t know anything about Jeremy, what have you figured out about Jill?”

  Maggie frowned. “Lee, you usually avoid gossip. So I don’t think these questions are idle curiosity. What are you up to?”

  I quickly sketched my suspicion that Joe and I were intentionally being drawn into some plot. And I wasn’t sure just what the plot was about.

  “But why were we the first boat boarded?” I said. “And we were the smallest boat. All of the others have been yachts. After Jeremy disappeared, why did Jill run past five houses to ask us to help her? Why did this Hal—a friend of Jeremy’s—want Joe to help him with a legal matter? And what’s happened to Hal? After he asked Joe to meet him, why didn’t he show up?”

  “I see your concern,” Maggie said. “But I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. But Jeremy and Jill seem to be part of it. Whatever it is. So I thought I’d try to find out more about them.”

  “Okay, okay.” Maggie took the final bonbon, then stared at the ceiling before she spoke again. “You hit a nerve, that’s all.”

  “With you? Why?”

  “I guess I have a certain sympathy for Jill.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid she’s headed for trouble, Lee.”

  Maggie leaned against the desk and looked at me with serious eyes. I could even see tears welling up.

  “I worry about Jill, Lee, because she’s just like I was at that age.”

  Chapter 10

  My impulse was to go around the desk and give Maggie a big Texas hug. Th
en I remembered we were sitting in my fishbowl office, with all the world and Warner Pier able to look at us, so I restrained myself. I didn’t want to call the attention of Warner Pier to the fact that Maggie had teared up.

  I knew Maggie had many regrets about whatever had happened to her in California twelve or fifteen years earlier, but she had never confided the whole story to me. I also knew her real dread was that her husband, Ken, would find out all the details. If she had a good cry in my office—in full view of Fifth Street—the word was sure to get back to Ken, and he’d ask her about it.

  Warner Pier is a small town.

  So I shoved a box of Kleenex closer to her, and I tried to sound sympathetic. But I didn’t give her a big hug.

  “Maggie, you know you need to talk to some sort of counselor about this issue.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t speak.

  “I’ll be happy to listen, just as a friend, any old time. But you need to put all that behind you, and I don’t know how to help you do that.”

  She nodded again and blew her nose. “I’m sorry, Lee. Most of the time I handle it. But when I see somebody else headed over the same cliff I fell down, I tend to lose it.”

  “I hate to trot out the platitudes, but we all have to make our own mistakes.”

  “I sure made mine. But Jill is the same kind of girl I was at nineteen or twenty. She’s ambitious. And she wants success now. Now! She’s not willing to wait.”

  “And you think she’d be tempted to take a shortcut?”

  “I’m afraid so. Especially since she’s also absolutely fearless.”

  “Are you saying Jill might take a shortcut—seduce the director or something—if she had the chance? Or do you think specific shortcuts are being offered to her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining things.”

  I sighed. “It’s like we tell children: If you feel as if something’s wrong, something probably is. You must have some evidence. What is it?”

  “Oh, crazy phone calls. Stuff like that.”

  “Is Max involved? He’s the director-producer. Do you think he might be in on some sleazy deal?”

  “He hasn’t shown any sign of it to me. Max doesn’t seem to be the problem—he keeps his distance from the cast and crew. Spends most of his off time out in the community. I simply have an uneasy feeling about the situation at the Showboat. And I can’t quite put my finger on why.” Maggie leaned forward. “Anyway, no matter what’s going on, I can’t quit and leave’em to it.”

  “Contract?”

  “Right. I have to work through August thirtieth. So I just try not to notice the clique.”

  “Clique? As in small group of people who hang together?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you think there’s a small group of—is ‘troublemakers’ the right word?”

  “‘Conspirators’ might be a better one. But I don’t know what they’re conspiring about.”

  “Maggie, anytime you have more than a half dozen people working together or studying together or whatever they’re doing together—well, don’t cliques of some sort develop?”

  “Sure. But this is different. It’s the stop-talking-when-a-nonmember-comes-in type of clique, not the let’s-all-go-for-a-beer-and-not-invite-Maggie clique.” She laughed. “I told you—it’s probably my imagination. It’s just a group of people you wouldn’t think had anything in common, and they don’t seem to socialize, but they all seem to have some secret link.”

  “Who’s in this group?”

  “Jill, Jeremy, and Mikki, mainly.”

  “But not Max Morgan?”

  “No, he stays aloof from all of us. If that group is particularly close to him, I haven’t noticed it. In fact, now and then he gives the cast and crew a little lecture on being one big happy family. I suspect he noticed the same thing I do and is trying to discourage it.”

  Maggie stuffed the final treasure chest into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “And now that I’ve gorged myself on TenHuis Chocolade, I’ll repeat—probably I’m imagining the whole thing. And I’ll get out of your office. And your hair. And if you mention one word of all this . . .”

  I crossed my heart. “Hope to die,” I said. “I will not break your confidence. Not even to Joe.”

  “Oh, Joe can be closemouthed,” Maggie said. “I don’t know if I should ride it out or try to find out what’s going on. Maybe I should talk to Max.”

  She left my office, waved at Aunt Nettie, and went out the front door, leaving me confused about just what to do next. Only one thing was certain: I wasn’t giving up on trying to figure out why Jill had come running up Lake Shore Drive that morning, passing five other houses to reach Joe and me.

  Then I looked at my watch. Five thirty. Yikes! My day off was nearly over, and I hadn’t been to the grocery store yet.

  Lots of couples splurge by going out on Saturday night. Joe and I were so busy all week that we splurged by staying home. It was the one night each week I made sure I produced an actual home-cooked meal. I jumped to my feet and headed for my van, trying frantically to think of something tasty but quick to cook.

  Sounded like steaks. Maybe Joe would fire up the charcoal grill.

  Two hours later we sat down to rib eyes, baked potatoes, and salad. Not too imaginative, but a treat. As we ate I told Joe about my visit to Camp Sail-Along and why I felt sorry for the camp manager, Jack McGrath, especially since he apparently knew nothing about sailboats. I left out the part about telling Jack that I might join him for a nap. Or a nip.

  “You’ve had a busy afternoon, Lee.”

  “I’m determined to find out why Jill was so set on reporting Jeremy’s so-called drowning to us. Which leads me to another question. Why did this Hal Weldon try to reach you?”

  “Word of my superior legal skills had reached him, and he wanted to make a will.”

  “People rarely want to make a will so urgently that they call a lawyer on Saturday.”

  “My clients do. Poverty law, remember. The working poor usually can’t afford to take off work during the week.”

  “Had you ever heard of Hal Weldon?”

  “Not until the office paged me and said it was an emergency.”

  “So you don’t really think it was a will or something else routine?”

  “No, Lee. I think Hal Weldon is in some kind of trouble and needs a lawyer immediately.”

  “Has he been arrested?”

  “Not in this county, as far as I’ve been able to find out.”

  “So you’ve been checking!”

  “I asked Hogan, and I called the sheriff’s office. Neither of them had ever heard of him. In fact, neither of them had arrested anybody today—Warner County not being a high crime area. I didn’t try other counties.”

  “I wonder why he wanted you.”

  “I might have represented him in a previous life. Either his or mine.”

  “But you don’t remember him?”

  “Nope. I represented a lot of people in Detroit and more later in Chicago. I don’t remember them all.”

  “Do you have a list of those old cases?”

  “With names of clients? I’m afraid not. Since they were agency clients, I left their records behind.”

  “Besides,” I said, “Weldon might be using a different name.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I told Joe about Maggie’s idea that Jeremy might be working under a fake name to avoid union rules. “Since Hal Weldon was supposedly also a stagehand, I guess it’s possible he would be using an alias, too.”

  Joe frowned. “Maybe Hogan could contact the stagehands union, find out something. The problem would be giving him an excuse to do that. As far as we can tell, no crime has been committed. Accidental drowning is of interest to law enforcement, true, but it’s not illegal.”

  We finished eating in silence, and I got up and went to the kitchen for the ice cream I’d planned for dessert. But when I brought it back to the dining table, Joe was in t
he corner of the living room, looking at the computer screen.

  I was surprised. “You don’t want ice cream?”

  “I’ll be right there.” But he didn’t come. He kept sitting there, giving an occasional command to the computer.

  “What are you looking for?” I said.

  “I thought I’d find out if Hal Weldon has a criminal record.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Within limits. Prison records are public. And they’re online.”

  Before Joe’s ice cream could melt, he’d discovered that Hal Weldon had never been in prison in Michigan or in Illinois.

  Before he could hit the CLOSE button, I interrupted. “As long as you’re looking, Google him. Maybe we’ll find out something.”

  Joe shrugged, went to the Google site, and typed in “Harold Weldon.”

  “I’ll put in Illinois, too,” he said, “just so we don’t get every Weldon in the United States.” A moment later we both laughed. He’d pulled up fifteen hundred references.

  “Better bring the ice cream in here,” he said. “I’ll try Hal Weldon. That might narrow it down.”

  It did. There were only fifty-some-odd references to Hal Weldon that contained the word “Illinois” as well as his name. We learned that there are Hal Weldons who are doctors, Hal Weldons who appear in genealogical records, and one Hal Weldon who’s a prominent steel guitar player.

  And way at the bottom of the list, we found one that made me gasp, and Joe yell, “Bingo!”

  “That’s gotta be him,” I said.

  A Hal Weldon had been on the gymnastics team at South Chicago University three years earlier.

  Joe and I both felt sure that we’d found the Hal Weldon who did “tricks” out behind the cottages at the Showboat dorm. But we hadn’t found a picture of him. All we had was a listing of entries for intercollegiate gymnastics meets.

  It was another lead. Joe cleared the table, and I loaded the dishwasher. Then we dug out our set of DVDs of classic comedies, watched one of our favorites—Some Like It Hot—and went to bed.

  It had been a long day, and it was followed by an early morning. The phone rang at seven a.m.