The Chocolate Pirate Plot

by JoAnna Carl

  “I looked it up on the Oxford Boats Web site. It’s a version of their model XZ200. Here—you take the controls so I can get a good look at it.”

  We switched places, and Joe picked up his binoculars and went to the tiny deck at the back of the Shepherd. From there he could look over the top of the roof that covered our seating. I kept the sedan headed down the channel, moving slowly. We weren’t gaining on the yacht. This was lucky; late on a Sunday evening, the river was crowded. Boats were coming toward us, ready to tie up at their docks and at the Warner Pier marinas. And since everybody on board those boats was gawking at the yacht just the way Joe and I were, a collision would have been pretty easy. I kept my eye on the traffic, ready to throttle back if I needed to, and tried not to stare only at the yacht.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” I said.

  “Out on the lake to open her up.”

  “Do you want to follow her out?”

  “I’d love to get a view of something besides her stern.”

  Joe took the wheel again, and we followed the gorgeous yacht as the channel narrowed. Still moving at no-wake speed, the big boat went by the rock walls that mark the entrance to Lake Michigan, past the Warner River’s own little lighthouse, and out into the swells of the big lake.

  The Shepherd Sedan began to pitch and roll. I knew my stomach wouldn’t stand too much of the lake.

  “They’ll speed up now,” Joe said.

  But the yacht kept moving slowly until it was a few hundred yards offshore. Then it turned so that its side was toward the land, which meant it was also toward us and the other dozen small boats that were hovering there trying to get a look at the yacht.

  “She’s posing for us!” I said.

  I had the binoculars now, but I didn’t need them to see that the bigger boat was rolling in the waves the same way the Shepherd Sedan was.

  “Why are they staying there, with the waves hitting them broadside?” I said. “If they’d head into the waves at an angle, it wouldn’t be as rough. Or am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re right. Of course, they have a stabilization system. But even so . . . Here, you take the wheel, if you don’t mind. I’ll look it over; then you can have a turn.”

  I held the wheel—the Shepherd steers like an automobile—while Joe stood up on the deck again. Then he came back to the helm and took over. “Your turn,” he said.

  I crawled out from under the Shepherd’s roof and stood up, hanging on to the roof and to my stomach. Propping my elbows on the roof, I looked the yacht over. There seemed to be about a dozen people on board. And one of them was looking directly at us and waving like mad.

  “It’s Byron Wendt! He’s waving to us!”

  Joe laughed. “I thought that was him. I guess a few peons got to go on the test run.”

  As we watched, the big yacht turned toward the sunset again, its prow pointed into the waves. Now we were again looking at its stern. Byron climbed up a companionway and joined a group on the flying bridge.

  Suddenly the yacht’s motor’s roared. It began moving away from us.

  A huge wake came up behind it.

  “Sit down!” Joe yelled. He leaned forward to close the front windows. “We’re going to buck like one of your Texas broncos!”

  I slid into the closest seat. I could see the froth and disturbed water of the yacht’s wake rushing toward us. In seconds the Shepherd was bouncing around like a fisherman’s bobber, dancing across the water while waves five feet high washed over our bow. If Joe hadn’t closed the front windows earlier, he would have had a wet lap.

  It took several minutes for the wake to stop shaking us around, and those minutes nearly did me in. I hung on to the back of my seat and to the seat in front of me. And to my stomach. I hadn’t eaten since that morning’s brunch, or I think I would have lost everything down to my toenails. Poor Joe. He loves fooling around in boats, and he married a woman who gets seasick anytime the waves are more than a foot high.

  Actually, the waves don’t bother me. What bothers me is the drop into the space between the waves. Joe has given me the nickname “Wyatt.” As in Earp.

  He turned around and grinned. “I think you’ve seen enough of the fancy yacht, Wyatt.”

  “My stomach has.”

  He was right. I’d had enough of rising up, swooping down, and sliding sideways in a small boat on a large body of water. Lots of times Lake Michigan is calm enough to keep my stomach quiet. That wasn’t one of the times.

  “Hand me the Wheat Thins,” I said. Something salty helps me fight motion sickness.

  I stayed where I was, ate a handful of crackers, and opened a Diet Coke while Joe took the Shepherd back through the channel into the Warner River. There, at no-wake speed and on the calmer water, I moved up to sit beside him. He patted my hand. “Sorry about that. The lake was pretty choppy tonight. And I didn’t anticipate that they’d take off so suddenly.”

  “That yacht was quite a sight. If Byron got to make the first trip, he must be more important out at Oxford Boats than he admitted.”

  “I think Byron is somebody’s nephew.”

  “He sure was closemouthed about whatever’s going on out there.”

  “He probably doesn’t know much. And now, how about dinner at Herrera’s?”

  “Brunch and dinner both at Warner Pier’s best restaurant? I think I could handle that.”

  “First, I’d better stop for gas.”

  We stopped by the Warner Pier Marina, where Brenda’s boyfriend—or was he?—Will VanKlompen came out to fill the Shepherd’s tank.

  We took time to talk to Will, of course. He asked whether we’d seen the new yacht, where we were headed—all the polite questions. Then Will moved close to Joe. “My propeller shaft is leaking. Have you got a wrench that would tighten it up?”

  “Sure. You need to borrow it?”

  Will launched into a technical explanation of what he needed to do to the old boat he was always working on, and Joe said that he had a wrench that would handle the job.

  “You can pick it up tomorrow, Will.”

  “I can’t do that. I have to work an extra shift. I’ll be here from six a.m. to nine p.m.”

  “It’ll have to be Thursday, then. I have to go to Holland Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  Working at a job with regular hours was putting a serious crimp in Joe’s boatbuilding career. But Will agreed to call him and set up a time when he could go by the shop to borrow the wrench, even if it had to be as far away as Thursday.

  Brenda’s name was not mentioned, though she’d mentioned Will’s that afternoon. I knew they had a date after Will got off duty at the marina at nine o’clock, if the fight they’d had hadn’t sabotaged it.

  I vowed once again not to get involved in Brenda’s romantic life, and Joe and I puttered on up the river to Herrera’s. We tied up at the outdoor deck, went inside, and had a delicious dinner, complete with wine and candlelight. By then my motion sickness had passed completely, and I was hungry enough to eat my way through the whole menu, item by item. I restrained myself to salad and one entree.

  We made the final leg of our trip, back up the river to Joe’s boat shop, by moonlight. It had been a wonderful evening.

  We had been ready for a wonderful evening. The past few days had not been wonderful. The search for the drowning victim, the runaround from Jill Campbell, the mysterious appointment with Hal that didn’t happen—all these things had been puzzling, and we’d felt that we were required to deal with them on our own, because they were simply puzzling. Until the autopsy discovered that the man found in the water had been shot, they hadn’t seemed to involve any crime, so we hadn’t turned to Hogan.

  In some weird way, learning that the man found dead at our beach was a murder victim had lifted a load from my shoulders. It was awful, of course. But I didn’t have to do anything about it. Now it was the responsibility of Hogan Jones and of the Michigan State Police.

  As we went up the Warner River, our motor gurgl
ing, I was content. The moon was full and making a path across the water. We’d treated the inside of the boat with mosquito repellent, so nothing was chewing us. We were wearing snuggly sweatshirts. And we were together. Content. That’s the word.

  By then Joe was using not only running lights, but also a spotlight, which he played along the banks of the river. When the spotlight hit his dock, he cut the boat’s speed. We sidled up to the dock, and I moved to the stern and picked up a short oar Joe keeps in the boat, mainly to shove the sedan away from the dock when it seems as if it’s going to bump it too hard. The mooring line was coiled at my feet. I was still standing there when Joe spoke. His voice was urgent.

  “Back off, Lee! Don’t tie up yet!”

  Huh? I swung toward Joe.

  He was facing the controls. The motor revved, and I saw Joe throw the gearshift into reverse. The boat began to back away from the dock.

  Then feet pounded on the little dock, and a dark figure ran toward me.

  “Get down!” This time Joe yelled.

  I guess I was too surprised to react. I didn’t get down; I kept standing in the stern.

  There were only four or five feet of water between the boat and the dock when the dark figure jumped toward me.

  In an awkward imitation of a football block, I threw out my arms and stiff-armed the jumper while he was still in midair.

  The figure landed in the water with a mighty splash, and I fell over backward just as a shot was fired.

  Chapter 15

  The next impression I had was of darkness.

  “Lee!” There was a big thump from the front of the boat. “Lee!”

  “Joe!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “Joe! I’m okay! What happened to the lights?”

  “I’ll get us out of here. Stay down!”

  Joe didn’t have time to explain, but by then I had realized that he had killed all the Shepherd’s lights. I wondered vaguely why there was no light coming from the shop, where Joe has a big outdoor light that illuminates the whole area. It wasn’t on.

  But that wasn’t a major worry at the moment. I managed to get to my knees on the boat’s deck. Then I heard splashing, and suddenly the side of the boat dipped, sinking toward the dock.

  I yelled, “He’s trying to climb in!” It wouldn’t be hard for the guy who had jumped off the dock to get into the boat, since the river was only about four feet deep where he had gone in. All he had to do was stand on the riverbed and swing a leg over the side.

  Joe yelled again. “Stay down!”

  My hand met the short paddle. I grabbed it and got to my feet.

  “I’ll hit him!” I swung the paddle. I was hoping for the guy’s arm or leg, but the thunk of wood hitting wood told me I’d hit the gunwale instead.

  “I’m behind you!” Joe was moving toward me. I was afraid I’d hit him instead of the man who was trying to climb into the boat, so I didn’t swing the paddle again. I stayed still, afraid to move a muscle, for a moment. Then the boat tipped again. The attacker was still trying to climb into the boat. I had to stop him.

  “Watch out! I’m going to hit him again!” I said. I felt along the gunwale.

  And my hand met strange fingers.

  I shrieked. The hand grasped mine. I grasped his. We clung together in a sort of mad handshake.

  The situation turned to total confusion. I still had the paddle in my other hand, and I began to whack at the attacker’s fingers with it. He hung on, twisting my hand painfully. I couldn’t get a good swing with one hand, so my whacking wasn’t very effective. If I’d had a hatchet I could have done some real damage. Probably to myself.

  Joe wasn’t beside me. I figured that out when the Shepherd’s motor began to chug, and the boat moved. In the dark I didn’t know what direction it was moving.

  The guy in the water still had hold of my hand, and half the blows I was aiming at him were hitting my own knuckles. Finally I dropped the oar on the deck, leaned over, and bit the guy on the wrist. He cursed and turned my hand loose. Then he gurgled, apparently because he had lost his footing and his head had sunk below the surface of the water. But the boat was still tipping toward him, so I knew he had kept his grip on the gunwale.

  During all this, still in complete darkness, Joe had been falling over seats, kicking soft drink cans around, and generally raising a ruckus. He and I were both yelling out stupid remarks. “Get him!” “Start the boat!” “I can’t see anything.”

  Then the motor stopped its gentle chugging and gunned hard.

  The moment that happened, the guy hanging on the side let go. Once he wasn’t pulling the side down, the Shepherd bounced up, and I nearly fell over backward again. By then my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark—we were under trees, so the moon was no help—and I had a vague sense that someone was climbing onto our dock.

  I yelled, “He’s getting away!”

  Then I saw lights far away. They were bouncing off the trees that arched over Joe’s drive.

  I tried to yell louder than the motor. “Someone’s coming!”

  There was motion on the shore. A running figure—two figures—crossed between us and the bouncing lights. The lights grew brighter. A vehicle turned into the parking area beside Joe’s shop.

  Joe cut the motor to idle, and we both yelled, “It’s Will!”

  Will drives an old Jeep SUV. I had recognized the way his headlights are set and those aggressive vertical bars Jeep puts on its front ends, and I guess Joe did, too. That front end has pulled into our drive many times.

  Now Joe and I began our confused yelling act again. “Go back!” “Stay in the car!” “Drive off!” “Go away!”

  I didn’t know who had tried to waylay us at the dock, but I did know someone had fired at least one shot. I had a horrible vision of Will and Brenda innocently stepping out of Will’s car and meeting the bad guys with guns face-to-face.

  Our shouting, naturally, produced exactly the opposite effect from the one we’d wanted. Will turned the Jeep around so that its headlights were shining on the dock, then drove a dozen feet or so closer to the river. He and Brenda got out and ran toward us, giving their own confused yells. “What’s wrong?” “Where are you?” “What’s happened?”

  Joe gave a sigh. “I guess the bad guys have gone,” he said. “Whoever they were.”

  He turned the boat’s lights back on and used the spotlight to scan the bank. Then we came into the dock again. This time Will caught our mooring line and secured it to the cleat.

  He and Brenda were full of questions, but Joe urged us all to get inside the shop before we began to talk.

  “And lock the door,” he said.

  I had a horrid feeling that the intruders would be waiting inside, but the door was still locked, and when we got inside the shop, everything seemed undisturbed. Once we’d called the cops and I’d tested the plumbing, we all began to try to figure out what we’d seen, making notes so we could pass them along to the lawmen.

  Brenda and Will hadn’t seen anything.

  “We were sitting on the deck at the Dockster having a soda,” Will said. “We saw you guys go by, headed upriver. And I thought we could meet you at the shop and I could borrow that wrench tonight. When we got here, we didn’t see any vehicles parked in the drive or on the road leading in. Joe’s truck was the only vehicle. The first we knew that something was wrong was when we pulled into the parking area here. All of a sudden you guys began to yell.”

  “Joe?” I said. “What made you know something was wrong? You told me not to tie up before I saw a thing.”

  “The light outside the shop was out.”

  “Oh. I didn’t notice that until later. The spot on the sedan is so bright, I didn’t even realize that the shop light wasn’t on until you doused the boat’s lights.”

  “The shop light could simply have burned out, so that might not have meant anything. I think maybe I saw movement, too. Anyway, the situation just looked funny. I’m not entirely sure why.” />
  When Hogan came—seems as if the poor guy is always coming to help Joe and me out after some emergency—we repeated our story.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why? What was the point of all this? Were they trying to rob us? That’s stupid. Nobody carries a lot of money or valuables when they go out on a boat. If they wanted the boat itself—which is worth quite a bit of money but would be hard to sell—it would have been easier to wait until we tied it up and went off and left it alone.”

  Joe spoke quietly. “You’re forgetting the shot.”

  “At this point, Joe, I’m not positive that I heard a shot. In fact, it doesn’t make sense. If the guys—and I’m sure there were two of them—had a pistol, why didn’t they use it again?”

  “That’s a good question, Lee. And my question is, why are you alive?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I had a good view as the first guy ran onto the dock. He did have a pistol.”

  Joe reached over and took my hand. “I yelled when I saw him.”

  “You yelled for me to get down.”

  “Right. The reason I yelled was that he was standing squarely on the dock and aiming that pistol right at you.”

  “All I saw was the figure. I didn’t see the pistol.”

  “It was there. He aimed right at you and fired from no more than five feet away.”

  He squeezed my hand. “I still don’t see how he could have missed. By all rights, you should be dead.”

  He blinked, and I saw tears in his eyes.

  I got a few tears in my eyes to match. Neither of us could say much, and Brenda, Will, and Hogan got a demonstration of effective mutual hugging. It must have been nearly five minutes before I could get another word out.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “We’re back to the question we’ve had all along. Why?”

  Hogan nodded. “A lot of strange things have happened, and you two seem to be concerned with them. But I sure don’t see the reason. Lee, you’re positive that you’d never seen the dead man before?”

  “I swear. He was a complete stranger.”

  “Joe?”