The Chocolate Pirate Plot

by JoAnna Carl

Joe grimaced. “I can’t swear, Hogan. I’ve represented a lot of people. And people’s appearances change. I don’t remember him, but I can’t say he’s not a former client.”

  Hogan nodded. “We’ll see what happens in the morning, when Max Morgan takes a look at him.”

  Joe and I stayed in our own house that night, but I don’t think either of us slept much. Anyway, I was at the office a half hour early, and not just because I knew Aunt Nettie was going to have lots of questions. If I’m just lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I figure I might as well get up.

  Joe left even earlier than I did, saying he wanted to see what was going on at the shop. Hogan had left a patrol car overnight and had promised that the state police would have a crime-scene crew there early the next morning.

  “Maybe they’ll find a bullet,” Joe said.

  “Do you think it hit the boat?”

  “I hope not!” Joe and I both chuckled. We both know his boats are just slightly behind me in his affections.

  “Don’t you think it went into the water?” I said.

  “Probably. If that’s what happened, even a metal detector might have trouble finding it in the weeds and mud.”

  At ten o’clock I was comforting myself with a cup of coffee and my substitute for pancakes, a maple truffle (“a round milk chocolate truffle flavored with Michigan maple syrup”). I jumped when the phone rang.

  “Hi,” Hogan said. “I’ve got a picture I want you to take a look at. Can you come over?”

  “Be right there.”

  I walked the two blocks to the police station as quickly as possible. When I got there, somehow I wasn’t surprised to see Joe pulling into a parking place. We walked in together.

  Hogan didn’t say anything. He simply motioned us back to his office and pointed to the computer screen.

  “Can either of you pick out Hal Weldon?”

  “I’ve never seen Hal Weldon,” I said.

  “Take a guess.”

  The black-and-white photo displayed was a group shot of a gymnastics team. It was even labeled “South Chicago Gymnastics Team,” along with a date five years earlier.

  I sat down in Hogan’s chair, and Joe leaned over my shoulder. We spoke at the same time.

  “Dark-haired guy,” Joe said. “Back row.”

  “Second from the left. Tallest one there,” I said.

  I looked at Hogan. “And I’d definitely say he’s now the late Hal Weldon.”

  Hogan nodded. “So you both identify him as the dead man. That’s what I thought, too. The name in the caption is ‘Harold Weldon.’ But did you ever see him alive?”

  I shook my head no immediately, but Joe hesitated.

  “He does seem familiar,” he said. “His hair was shorter when that picture was taken.”

  Joe went into the outer office, and in a minute I heard him talking on his phone. “Minnie? How’re you doing?”

  I knew Minnie was the office manager at the poverty-law office where Joe had worked in Chicago. So apparently Joe wanted to check on some case he’d handled then. That would have been at least five years earlier, or about the time the gymnastics team had posed for its photo.

  Having picked the dead man out of the group, I began to look at the rest of the team members. Immediately one almost screamed, “Me!” It was one of the people in the middle row. This fellow had medium brown hair, lighter than Hal Weldon’s, and he wasn’t as tall as Hall. But his sleeveless gymnastics outfit displayed particularly broad and powerful shoulders.

  I punched PRINT. Hogan said, “I’ll get it,” and I realized the police department printer was in the outer office. In less than a minute I was looking at a hard copy of the photo, only a bit more murky than the one on the screen.

  The guy looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him.

  I looked at Hogan. “Where’s the cutline on this photo?”

  “It’s a separate file.” Hogan picked up a printout from his desk. “Here’s my copy. You might want to read the front row.”

  The third person in the front row was identified as Jeremy Matlock.

  “Matlock? That’s awfully close to Mattox,” I said. “I guess Jeremy really was working under an alias. Max may have brought him to my office, but I wouldn’t recognize him from this picture.”

  “And we still don’t know where Jeremy is—whether he’s Mattox or Matlock. We don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.”

  Hogan and I hadn’t had time to say anything more when Joe popped his head in through the doorway.

  “I defended Harold Weldon in a malicious mischief case,” he said.

  Chapter 16

  “Minnie’s going to fax some records of the case over to Mom’s office,” Joe said.

  “We have a fax machine here,” Hogan said with a grin.

  Joe grinned in return. “Yeah, but I need to look the case over before I tell you about it. There’s that darn confidentiality rule I’ve got to follow. But maybe the stuff Minnie sends will remind me of what it was about.”

  Joe and I had stood up to leave when the outer door swung open so hard that it bounced, and Max Morgan made an entrance. The theater director was wearing an all-black outfit—black jeans, black dress shirt, and black tennies, but he’d added a silk scarf striped in jewel tones and draped inside his collar as an ascot.

  As soon as he was inside, he stopped and struck an attitude, holding his left hand in the air dramatically.

  “Alas! Poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest.”

  Joe gave a cough that I recognized as smothering a laugh—not that laughing would have been out of place, since Max was obviously joking.

  Hogan spoke mildly. “Graveyard antics, Max?”

  Still being dramatic, Max stepped forward. “Forgive me, Hogan. I’m nervous, and it makes me clown. I’m here to take a look at your dead man. Not my favorite way to spend a morning.”

  I remembered then that Max had agreed to look at the body found on Beech Tree beach. But he’d agreed to do that when we hadn’t known who the dark-haired man was. Now Joe and I had identified him from his photo.

  Was further identification necessary? I opened my mouth to ask, then shut it without saying anything. If Hogan thought Max didn’t need to look at the body, he wouldn’t have him do it.

  Joe and I said our good-byes without further comment. Joe headed for his mom’s office, and I went back to mine. An hour and a half later I was working away on our fall sales brochure when Hogan called.

  “It’s official,” he said. “Max ID’d the dead guy as Hal Weldon.”

  I looked toward our retail shop and gave a gasp.

  “Am I supposed to act surprised about the identification?” I said. “If I am, tell me quick. Max is coming in our front door right now.”

  “There’s no secret about the ID. Let me know what Max has to say. But don’t forget that the cause of death is just between you, me, and Joe. I’m not announcing that before I have to.” Hogan hung up.

  Max waved the counter girls away and walked straight into my office. “Lee! Lee! What an experience.”

  “You need chocolate, Max. A few flavonols will settle your nerves. And I’ll get you some coffee from the break room.”

  Max was persuaded to accept a raspberry cream bonbon (“red raspberry puree in a white chocolate cream interior, with an exterior of dark chocolate”) while I got coffee for both of us. He sat down in the chair I keep for visitors.

  “That was not a happy experience,” he said.

  “Hogan says you were able to identify the man.”

  “Oh, yes. His name was Hal Weldon. He worked as a stagehand for a week or two. That was early in the summer. He quit suddenly, leaving me with quite a hole to fill.”

  “Why did he quit?”

  “He said he got another job, one that offered room and board.”

  “He didn’t tell you where this job was?”

  “No. I hadn’t seen him around Warner Pier, so I assumed he’d left
town.”

  I asked a few more questions, such as whether Max had any information on Hal Weldon’s family, but he didn’t seem to know any more. I began to wonder why Max had come to see me, unless he simply wanted a free chocolate.

  Finally Max leaned forward with an air of getting down to business.

  “Lee, I’m worried about Jill.”

  “Jill? I don’t think I can help you there, Max. She and I bumped heads, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Yes, I asked a few pointed questions about just why she and Jeremy went swimming at Beech Tree Public Access Area so early in the morning, and she didn’t seem to like my attitude.”

  “Why shouldn’t they go there early in the morning?”

  “The beach doesn’t get any sun until after eleven.”

  Max blinked. “Oh.”

  “She was supposed to meet me after the matinee yesterday, and she didn’t show up. Why are you worried about her?”

  “I still think Jeremy disappeared deliberately. I’m sure he didn’t drown.”

  “And?”

  “I’m afraid Jill helped him.”

  I considered that. “I doubt it, Max. She was quite distraught over his—disappearance.”

  “I know she was, but I’m still worried. I think she’s hiding something.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Whispering. Strange phone calls. Evasive answers. A general atmosphere of secrecy.”

  “That’s not necessarily because of Jeremy. Girls have lots of secrets.”

  “True.” Max shook his head sorrowfully. “I’m not in loco parentis, not responsible for these students who work at the theater. But—”

  He broke off, and I chuckled humorlessly. “Believe me, I understand. I supervise our counter girls, and one of them is my stepsister.”

  “It’s just—” Max broke off again, looked around as if he were making sure the counter girls hadn’t crept up behind him, then lowered his voice slightly. “I’m afraid I saw Jill with that strange guy I suspected was a loan shark.”

  “The guy in the suit?”

  “Yes. But now I wonder if I understood the situation properly. His dealings with Jeremy may not have involved high-interest loans.”

  “Then what?”

  A frown crossed Max’s face. “Drugs? Who knows? I just didn’t like him. An unsavory type.”

  I considered this. It didn’t jibe with the impression that Jill had made on me. She hadn’t seemed to be the type of person who might get involved with drugs. And while Maggie had expressed concern about Jill, along with other young and ambitious actors, she hadn’t mentioned drugs. Surely ambitious young actors knew that drugs could ruin their careers before they were started. Acting takes discipline, and drugs destroy discipline. That’s not hard to grasp.

  Before I could tell Max that whatever was bothering Jill, I didn’t think it was drugs, he stood up. “I guess I’d better get over to the theater,” he said. “My cast and crew are there now striking the set, and I ought to be acting interested.”

  “You don’t have a production this week, do you?”

  “We’re dark until Friday, when we open Pirates. Which means we rehearse all week.”

  As soon as Max was out the door, I called Hogan, as he had requested, and reported on our conversation. Did I feel like a spy? Yes. But I couldn’t refuse Hogan. He’d simply done too much for me.

  Then I called Joe’s mom’s office, hoping that Joe was still there. His mom’s assistant told me he’d left an hour earlier, as soon as his faxed material arrived. So I tried the boat shop. Joe was there and seemed pleased at the idea of my bringing him lunch.

  I ordered sandwiches from the Sidewalk Café, so it was nearly one p.m. when I pulled into the boat shop’s parking lot.

  I admit that revisiting the scene of the excitement we’d had the previous evening was scary. I looked behind every bush as I drove down the drive and into the lot. If there had been wind, if the bushes and trees had been moving around, I doubt I would have had the nerve to get out of the van. But this was Michigan, not Texas. It wasn’t windy. It was a mild and sunny summer day. Still, I parked and looked the area over carefully. I saw nothing but Joe’s truck. I got out of my van, and I forced myself to walk slowly into the shop.

  No boogeymen jumped out at me. No guns fired.

  After what Joe had said about client confidentiality, I was determined not to ask him about the case in which Hal Weldon had been involved. I didn’t want him to tell me that he couldn’t say anything about it. So I didn’t say anything more inquisitive than “Here’s your roast beef with horseradish sauce on a hoagie roll.”

  I might have burst with curiosity if Joe hadn’t handed me the faxed sheets as soon as we sat down to eat.

  I read the first page, then began to laugh. “Joe! This is that case about the college guys who crashed the St. Patrick’s Day parade!”

  He smiled. “The funniest case I ever handled. Nice to know one of the guys involved thought I did a good enough job that he wanted to hire me again. I hope that isn’t the reason he wound up dead.”

  “I doubt that his decision to contact you had anything to do with his death.”

  “Hard to tell.”

  I kept reading the faxed sheets. As Joe said, the case had been amusing, and the dry legalese of the papers Minnie had sent didn’t hide that.

  The case had involved a half dozen college students, all athletes at South Chicago U. The mascot of South Chicago just happens to be the Viking, and that probably had some relationship to what happened.

  The six guys, apparently at an all-night beer party on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, had decided that the Irish were overemphasizing leprechauns, shamrocks, and the Blarney Stone and were not giving enough credit to the Viking side of their heritage. After all, the beer drinkers figured, the Norsemen had raided the Irish coast regularly. One of the students even claimed that Vikings founded the city of Dublin.

  About four in the morning and after a couple of cases of beer, it became clear to the group that it was their responsibility to change the emphasis of the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown Chicago to help the event reveal this to the public.

  One of them borrowed a flatbed truck from his father’s business—without permission—and two others turned some scrap lumber into a makeshift ship’s prow, complete with cardboard dragon head. A sail made from a bedsheet was hoisted. Some girlfriends came up with fake fur garments. At a school with a Viking mascot, horned helmets were readily available in the band room and were pressed into unauthorized use.

  The resulting mishmash, put together in about six hours, must have looked as if it had been raided by Vikings.

  The group then joined the parade—without paying an entry fee or getting permission. They simply cut into line somehow and participated for eight or ten blocks before the parade authorities and some of Chicago’s finest yanked them out.

  Joe got involved because, after they sobered up, none of them could afford a lawyer. He represented them in police court on the day after St. Pat’s.

  “I will say I never saw a more repentant group of criminals, or at least a group with such a mass hangover,” he said when he got to that part of the story. “Especially when they had to face the irate Irish parade organizers.”

  “The Irish were upset, were they?”

  “A bit. Of course, you have to remember that their heads probably ached as much as the Vikings’ heads did. They were all but yelling, ‘String ’em up!’”

  “How’d you get the college guys off?”

  “I didn’t entirely. But it was a matter of convincing the parade people that they were going to give the Vikings even more publicity if the case came to trial.”

  “And they were going to look even more stupid.”

  “I let their own lawyer explain that to them. Or maybe their parade chair did it. Anyway, the six Vikings pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace and got off with fines and a str
ong scolding from a judge whose name happened to be O’Brien. I remember he warned them to stay away from the Sons of Italy. Those guys get even more incensed about Vikings.”

  “Because of Leif Erickson?”

  “Oh, yes. They don’t like to be told that he came over before Columbus.”

  I swallowed a bite of my ham sandwich. “So Hal Weldon was one of the Viking Six. Was he one of the leaders of the prank?”

  “I’d guess that he was more of a follower. Anyway, I think all six of them lost their athletic scholarships.”

  “Too bad!”

  “Yeah, I hate to see that sort of initiative punished.”

  “I guess there’s no way to find out why Hal made an appointment with you.”

  “There’s the tattoo clue.”

  “The skull and crossbones on his arm?”

  “Right. That’s a pretty good indication that he was one of the Warner Pier pirates.”

  I bit off another mouthful and chewed it while I considered that. “But why would the Warner Pier pirates need a lawyer? As far as we know, they haven’t committed any crime.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “You mean they haven’t committed a crime—yet?”

  Joe nodded. “Neither Hogan nor I can figure out what they’re up to. Which makes us suspect that it hasn’t happened yet.”

  I couldn’t figure it out either, of course, and I needed to get back to the office. I was clearing away our luncheon debris when I heard a voice outside.

  “Ahoy! Ahoy, the shop!”

  Joe looked as mystified as I felt as he opened the shop’s door.

  The figure outside was so ordinary and nerdy looking I could barely remember his name. Luckily, Joe did.

  “Hi, Byron,” he said. “I see you’re back on your bike.”

  “Yes, and I come bearing an apology.”

  “Apology for what?”

  “An apology for nearly swamping your boat when the new yacht was on her test run last night.”

  “Apology accepted. We shouldn’t have gotten so close. And you weren’t at the helm.”

  “True. I’ve also got an invitation.”

  “An invitation?”

  “An invitation to be on board her when Mr. Oxford takes her out for another test run tonight.”