by Lisa Doan
“No I didn’t,” Olive said. “I was too scared to sleep. I can’t ever sleep again until we get home. I’m gonna stay awake until we get home.”
“Why?” Charlie asked. “Afraid somebody will creep in and kill all your Shopkins?”
“No,” Olive said. “Somebody wants to creep in and kill me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Charlie said laughing. “Nobody is trying to kill you. They probably should be, but they’re not.”
“Oh yeah?” Olive asked, her voice dropping down to a whisper. “Last night, I saw a man outside my window.”
Charlie gulped. Cankelton.
“He was a ghost,” she continued. “A drowned ghost.”
“Sounds like a bad dream,” Charlie muttered.
Olive narrowed her eyes. “That’s what mommy said when I woke her up and he was gone. Do you think that ghost is mad that I wanted to cook people? And also, for blaming daddy when I lost Kooky Cookie, and then I found Kooky under the bed this morning?”
“Would a ghost really care about lost Shopkins and stupid cooking threats? I highly doubt it,” Charlie said, hoping to bring the conversation to a halt.
Gunter came to stand by Charlie. Charlie said, “My sister thinks she saw a ghost out her window last night. A ghost that wants to kill her.” He stared at Gunter meaningfully, so he would get the hint that it had been Cankelton.
Gunter snorted and said, “That’s what you get for threatening to cook people.”
“I knew it!” Olive cried. “I’ll never even make it to first grade!”
“Thanks, Gunter,” Charlie said.
“You are very welcome. No more dawdling over this fine breakfast. The captain said he has something to show you on the bridge.”
Charlie got up and reluctantly left his sister to repent her crimes and pray to the drowned ghost for forgiveness.
* * *
The captain leaned back in his chair on the bridge. “I saw the new name,” he said. “The Captain Kidding. I ought to fire that brother-in-law of mine.”
“He can fix it later,” Charlie said.
“He will fix it later,” the captain said. “Assuming I still have my boat. Otherwise, I’ll end up as a Starbucks barista at the Miami airport, whipping up a grande, half-caf, half-sweet, coconut milk, cinnamon dolce latte for an idiot in a beanie who claims his name is Northeast Rainbow.”
Charlie would have thought that description extreme, except there was a high school kid on his block who wore a beanie, carried around a Starbucks cup wherever he went, and was named Lobo Lupe Wolf. Lobo was Spanish for “wolf” and lupe was French for “wolf,” so his actual name was Wolf Wolf Wolf.
“For now,” the captain continued, “we’ll be back at Turks and Caicos in twenty minutes. I’ll dock her right at the fuel pumps and then I’ll disguise myself and trot over to the immigration office with the passports.”
“A disguise,” Charlie said. “Good idea, planning for every contingency.”
“What’s your disguise?” Gunter asked.
“Tourist,” the captain said. “I’ll switch my captain’s hat for a baseball cap pulled down low and put on a pair of dark sunglasses. I’ve got a T-shirt with a Turks and Caicos flag on it, then I’ll add socks, sandals, and a fanny pack and voila—I blend right in.”
“Genius,” Charlie said.
“We should be out of there in under an hour,” the captain said, handing Charlie and Gunter marine radios. “Keep an ear out in case we run into trouble. If you see anything happening around the boat, like Manthi and Flynn, radio me.”
Charlie took his and looked at it. “Does it even work? You said you couldn’t call the Coast Guard with them.”
“It’s a five-mile radius,” the captain said. “Good luck finding the Coast Guard lollygagging around within five miles of you. Seems to me that wherever you are, they aren’t. Now, you got to use proper marine radio protocol, mind. I got a reputation to uphold.”
“There’s a protocol?” Charlie asked.
“Obviously, there’s a protocol,” Gunter said.
“Do you know what it is?” Charlie asked him skeptically.
“I do not,” Gunter said.
The captain sighed. “All right, swabbies, here’s how it goes. You’re on channel 16. Stay there and listen. If you need to call me, use the code name Big Dog. Press the button and say ‘Big Dog, Big Dog, this is Kidd, over.’ Just like that. Then take your finger off the button and listen. Don’t—on no account—start talking on this channel. I’ll say ‘Kidd, this is Big Dog, switch.’ Then we all switch to channel 68. You see how that’s clever? Any nosy Parker listening in will know we’re going to another channel, but he won’t know which one. We’ll be done talking by the time he figures it out.”
Charlie nodded. It was a little bit more formal than the toy walkie-talkies he had used from his backyard to communicate with the Pennypacker kitchen. Those transmissions went something like, “Hey dad, we need more marshmallows out here.” Then his dad would radio back, “There goes your college fund—too bad a doctorate in marshmallows won’t get you a real job. Why are we living on Ramen noodles and air? Because we spent everything on marshmallows!” Then his mom would be in the background saying, “Charles, we are not rationing marshmallows on the Fourth of July.”
They had docked at the marina and the attendant began fueling the boat. The captain came on deck, the brim of his baseball cap pulled down so low that Charlie wasn’t sure how he could see. His outfit, down to the socks pulled up to his knees, really did make him look like one more tourist-dad who didn’t care what he looked like. Charlie watched him stumble down the road and lurch into a taxi with his Ziploc bag filled with passports.
Charlie and Gunter had been ordered to stand at the bow and stern, keeping a lookout. Charlie was at the bow and had laid the marine radio down so he could look like he was casually enjoying the view instead of being on a mission. He scanned the marina for Manthi and Flynn, willing his stomach to stop flipping around. Nerves of steel were the most important part of executing any kind of daring plan. Except for his stomach, he felt like he was holding up pretty well.
He wondered if Gunter would tell everybody at school about the trip. And if Gunter would leave out the part where they thought the mob was after them. He figured Gunter had just as much skin in the game as he did, so he probably wouldn’t highlight that unfortunate misunderstanding. The story would be all about racing across the Caribbean with mysterious men on their heels and the brilliant plan to outwit them.
He glanced at Gunter at the stern of the boat, also trying to look casual so that the parents who were sunbathing and trying to keep track of their kids at the same time wouldn’t notice anything. Charlie wondered what his friend Kyle would do in this situation. He would probably do what Charlie told him to do. Usually, he really liked that Kyle let him make all the decisions and that Mrs. Kendreth thought all his decisions were brilliant, but in this situation, he was not so sure. If the captain did call on the radio, if there was some kind of trouble heading their way, he’d need a team ready to act boldly. The only team he had was Gunter, but at least he could be pretty sure that Gunter would act boldly. Usually stupidly, but always boldly.
The marine radio crackled to life. “Kidd, Kidd, this is Big Dog, over.”
Charlie fumbled with the radio and pressed the button. “Big Dog, this is Kidd, over.”
“This is Kidd, too, over,” Gunter said.
“Switch, over,” the captain said.
Charlie pressed the up arrow, scrolling through the channels to find 68.
“Big Dog, Big Dog, this is Kidd, over,” Gunter said, looking triumphant that he had gotten to channel 68 first.
“The jig is up,” the captain said. “The suits are here. They recognized me coming out of the immigration office.”
“How?” Charlie asked. “How could they know it was you?”
“Um,” the captain said through static, “I believe they may have recognized my mid
-section. At least, that’s what they were staring at.”
Charlie looked at Gunter. Manthi and Flynn had recognized the captain. They had been tipped off by that unmistakable belly. Round, like a taut beachball, it preceded the captain by at least half a foot. He should have known there was no disguising that.
“Is the boat refueled? Over,” the captain radioed.
“The guy is near the shed, writing something down, over,” Gunter said.
“That’s the bill of sale,” the captain said. “Go to the bridge. There’s a credit card in a black pouch. Give it to him. We need to be ready to fly as soon as I get back. Over.”
Charlie threw down the radio and raced to the bridge. He found the black pouch, grabbed the Visa card, and raced down the gangplank to the attendant. “The captain told me to give you this,” Charlie said, nearly breathless.
The man nodded and took the card into the little shack on the dock.
Mrs. Pennypacker stood at the rails and called, “Charlie, what in the world are you doing?”
“Just paying for the fuel, mom,” he called back.
Charlie heard a long screech of tires and stood on his toes to look toward the entrance to the marina.
The captain threw some cash at the driver and jogged toward the boat, holding the passports over his head.
Charlie waved him to the shack. “Over here, Cap!”
Captain Wisner’s thin legs were pumping double time and his large belly bounced up and down. He grabbed the credit card receipt from the startled man, scribbled his name on it, and took his copy with the credit card. “All aboard, Charlie, not a moment to lose! I paid my driver extra to lose the bums, but they’ll arrive in a matter of minutes.”
They raced back to the boat and leapt on board. There was no sign of Cankelton, so Charlie ran to the bow and threw off the ropes. Gunter did the same at the stern. Jimmy Jenkins’s mom propped herself on her elbows, looking around at the activity. “Wow,” she said. “We’re going already? That was fast.”
The boat began to drift from its mooring as Captain Wisner ran up to the bridge.
Screeching tires on the gravel drive sprayed up dust in all directions. A second taxi had slammed to a halt in front of the marina. Charlie watched one of the lawyers wrestle his briefcase from the car while the other handed cash to the driver. They sprinted toward the dock.
The engines roared to life. The boat had drifted four feet from the dock by the time Manthi and Flynn reached it. Flynn, who Charlie now knew was the tall one who had flung himself into the sea the last time, grabbed a rope from the dock and threw it toward the boat. It sailed through the air and caught on a cleat. Flynn smiled and pulled it taut.
Chapter Seventeen
Flynn began to haul the boat in, while Manthi wrapped himself around Flynn to stop his partner from being pulled into the water. Charlie ran over and tried to unhook the rope, but it was too taut to budge.
The rope slacked for a moment as Flynn went hand over hand. Charlie wrenched it free and threw it off.
Flynn, now pulling on a rope attached to nothing, flew backward on top of Manthi. He rolled off his friend and yelled, “Young man, don’t allow the captain to drag you into this!”
“Too late!” Charlie called.
“The new name doesn’t fool us, Wisner,” Manthi called, getting to his knees. “What’s the point of running? We’ll catch up to you eventually.”
Captain Wisner leaned out the bridge’s window and shouted, “Eventually is not this minute and the Captain Kidding is now in international waters!”
“You’re in Turks and Caicos’ waters, as you well know!”
“Not for long,” the captain shouted, pulling the boat ever farther from the dock. “We’ll soon be in Bermudian waters!”
Charlie thought that was pretty clever. Pretending to let slip that they were going to Bermuda when they were really going to the Dominican Republic. Hopefully, Manthi and Flynn would be on the first flight going in the wrong direction.
The captain had gotten far enough from the dock to turn the boat seaward. They had fuel, stamped passports, and they’d escaped the lawyers once again. That was the good news. The bad news was that Manthi and Flynn were not at all fooled by the Captain Kidding. It was time for one last-ditch effort if Captain Wisner was going to save his boat.
Charlie’s mom had watched the scene unfold on the dock. She stood with her arms crossed while other parents began to get up from their lounge chairs to see what was happening. Charlie knew that he was about ten seconds away from a courtroom interrogation. He dashed up to the bridge instead. Gunter was five seconds behind him. Gunter slammed the door shut and pulled down the shade.
“All the work we did was for nothing,” Gunter said. “They weren’t fooled by the new name at all.”
“What now?” the captain said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place, between an anvil and a hammer, between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
“That’s between a lot of things,” Gunter said.
Charlie said, “Captain, you’re giving up too easily. You can’t just try one plan and then throw your hands up in defeat. You’ve got to switch to a plan B. We’re going head-to-head with Disney lawyers; there were always going to be ups and downs.”
“You have a plan B?” the captain asked.
“I think so,” Charlie said. Then more firmly, “No. I know so.”
Charlie had convinced the captain and Gunter that his idea would work. The captain had jumped on it immediately—he was like a drowning man grasping at a lifeguard’s ring. Gunter had walked around the idea, poking it for holes and playing devil’s advocate, aka being Gunter. His but-shouldn’t-we’s and what-ifs and I-doubts were annoying, but they helped refine the plan.
“It could work,” Gunter admitted.
“It has to work,” Charlie said.
“True,” Gunter admitted. “Unless you have a plan C.”
“I do not,” Charlie said. “You?”
“Nope.”
Charlie spent the next hour walking the crew through his epic plan B. Cinderalla blew smoke rings over Charlie’s head and then burned a few holes in her gown for good measure. Mickey Mouser tore off his mouse ears, stomped on them, and ground them into the deck. Cankelton ripped off his Timiny Cricket costume and tried to throw it overboard, but the captain caught it before it went over the side. Whatever the crew really thought about the plan, they were wildly enthusiastic about getting rid of the Disney-like costumes.
Now it was time to introduce the concept to the boat’s paying passengers. It was late afternoon, the time of day when the breeze died down and the color of the sea deepened from turquoise to gray-blue.
Charlie thought they could not launch the plan too soon. When he’d come down from the bridge earlier, his mom had tried to interrogate him. He’d claimed he didn’t know anything about the men in suits and he’d just helped the captain fuel up the boat because he thought it would be fun. She had narrowed her eyes and chewed on her Trident gum, but he had not cracked. That, Charlie knew, was only a temporary win; his mom would fire questions at him when he least expected it, until he finally spilled his guts. It would be just like the case of the missing dress slacks (he had ripped one of the knees and thrown them out), the mysterious disappearance of a box of Ring Dings (he had only meant to eat one, but then kept going back), and, most recently, the inexplicable C in math last year (he’d paid too much attention to Mrs. Carson’s therapy dog and not enough to Mrs. Carson).
The rest of the passengers were just as suspicious as his mom. After racing out of the Turks and Caicos, the boat had become a hotbed of rumors. Every time Charlie passed somebody, he heard a new theory launched. Among the more interesting ideas that were being traded like baseball cards: The captain was wanted by the Feds for high crimes and misdemeanors. The captain, himself, had staged the military coup at Eleuthera. The captain was a drug lord kingpin posing as an inept boat captain. It was generally agreed that the captain had taken them
out to sea again so they couldn’t get cell service to call the authorities. The idea of a mutiny was bandied about, until it was realized that nobody knew how to drive the boat or what direction to drive it if they figured it out. Charlie’s dad had a pad of paper and was making a list of all the reasons he could sue.
“Settle down, folks,” the captain yelled over the swirling rumors, innuendos, accusations, and insinuations.
“Thank you,” the captain said. “Now, I’d just like to say that it’s perfectly natural to experience a few bumps in the road. That’s what we’ve had here—bumps. Nothing more than bumps. The good news? It is all smooth sailing from here on in. Not a bump on the horizon as far as the eye can see. And for the record, I am not wanted for high crimes, I’m not a drug lord or planner of coups, and don’t bother suing me because there’s nothing to get. So there you have it—bumps in the road, all smoothed out.”
“What are you talking about?” Jimmy Jenkins’s mom asked.
“Yeah, what is he trying to say?”
“Whatever he’s trying to say, I don’t buy it.”
“‘Bumps in the road’ goes right into the lawsuit,” Mr. Pennypacker said.
“Hashtag: what the heck are bumps?” Claire muttered.
Mrs. Pennypacker stepped forward. “Folks, what we have here is a tap dancer,” she said. “A song and dance man. I’ve seen defendants try the same thing a hundred times—they just keep talking fast and saying nothing. They hope you lose track of the point.”
The captain backed away from Mrs. Pennypacker. Charlie realized that with all the talk of bumps and smooth sailing, the captain had told them nothing. He had to take over before a real mutiny got under way or, worse, his mom demolished the defendant. He decided he’d better lay out the cold, hard facts.
Charlie climbed the steps that led to the bridge and said, “Hold on, everybody. The captain hasn’t explained it right. Or explained anything, really. But I will.”
Everyone quieted down. Except for Mr. Pennypacker, who waved his sheet of paper and said, “Just look at how long this list is!”