Saltwater Secrets

by Cindy Callaghan

  I get back to what happened in the bungalow. “When I saw a drawing, I knew that Mr. Rodney had been following the same trail of bread crumbs we were.”

  “He draws?”

  “Not well. But since I’d seen what he was drawing, I knew what it was. When we were snorkeling, I saw a drainpipe that empties local runoff into the ocean. It’s under the pier. I guess he drew it because he didn’t have an underwater camera.” I add, “We have one at my school. It’s owned by the marine conservation society. I’m running for prez this fall. Stella offered to make posters for me.”

  He writes that down. I’m not sure why he would need to remember that, but I’m touched that he cares.

  “Lemme tell you about the other stuff we saw. Right there on a plastic table in the kitchen was a pile of paper folders among bunches of unopened mail. A real mess. Mr. Rodney is not a good housekeeper, not that I’m being judgy, just saying.” I ask, “Are you? Do you like things neat?”

  He leans his head right and left, making it crack.

  “Anyway, I noticed on his mail that ‘Rodney’ is his first name, not last. All this time we’ve been calling him Mr. Rodney, like it’s his last name. And, get this, his mail is addressed to a doctor. He’s a doctor of something. Who knew? But that’s not important. What’s important is those folders. You might wanna write this down.”

  He readies his pen.

  “The first one got my attention because it said ‘Medusas.’ You know how worried I am about them. Then there was another one called ‘Quotene.’ That was a chemical analysis.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because when I opened the folder, the paper said ‘chemical analysis.’ ”

  He doesn’t look up from his notepad, but he pauses.

  I spell: “Q-U-O-T-E-N-E.”

  Then he asks, “Anything else?”

  “It had reports about Murphy’s Pier. I didn’t look at them closely until later. That’s when I figured out they were measurements of the pylons.”

  He stops writing. “What do you mean, ‘later’? Did you hang out there for a while?”

  “No.”

  He waits, and when I don’t answer right away, he puts his pen down. “Did you steal them?”

  He leans back in his chair, and he does this thing where he lets the room be quiet. I can’t stand it. There’s only two of us here; one of us has to fill the awkward silence. It’s not gonna be him. He’s a stubborn man. So I say, “Steal? No. I took my phone out and snapped pics. We didn’t take anything.”

  Forty Josie

  The Smoothie Factory

  June 24 (Continued)

  We made our way through the line at the Smoothie Factory for Stella to buy the elixir that symbolized everything wrong with this summer—the changes. I mean, what’s wrong with keeping things the same? Especially when they’re things we love, like Water Ice World? During the wait I devoured the information from the folders.

  Stella said, “I feel the need to point out what an ‘invasion of privacy’ you said it was when I looked at Laney’s camera roll.” Stella imitated an Aussie accent with “invasion of privacy,” and she was actually quite good. When we were kids, she used to pretend she was Australian. She doesn’t know that I know. She continued, “But then you go ahead and copy all this stuff.”

  “It’s not like these files were personal. Mr. Rodney—sorry, Dr. Rodney—and wants to figure out what’s going on with the pier. Just like us. We have clues and so does he; it only makes sense that we put them together.”

  Stella said, “It makes sense that you’d ask him about it, not copy his stuff. Isn’t that plagiarism?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I would love to ask him about it, but he’s probably at some surf tourney. Who knows when he’ll be back or how many jellies could die while we wait? I don’t think you’re understanding the urgency here.”

  “I do now that you’ve explained it,” Stella said. “But maybe he doesn’t know the urgency. We have his clues, but he doesn’t have ours.”

  “I think he’ll be proud of us for following his leads,” I said.

  Then, by some miracle, someone vacated a table, and I snatched it. Once Stella had paid for her evil concoction, she fell into the seat across from me. She sipped from the lime-green cup. “This is so insanely good. It’s melon and blood orange, and there is this other flavor that I can’t identify, but I love it. It’s the same taste as last time. I think it’s their secret sauce.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, not looking up from the file.

  With a straw wedged in the corner of her mouth, Stella asked, “So what’ve we got in there?”

  “There’s this chemical, quotene. It’s organic. Looks like Dr. Rodney—Doctor? It’s gonna take a little while to get used to that—sent it to a lab and had it analyzed under a bunch of different conditions.” Then I said, “The report shows that in some of the tests it’s toxic.”

  Without removing the straw from the corner in which it was implanted, she said, “Toxic is never good. Right?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume it’s generally bad.” I added, “Especially since it was in the ocean where we swim and snorkel, and where fish live. Dr. Rodney got the sample from under the pier.” I pointed to a map that I’d copied from the folder, where he’d marked an X on the spot where he’d taken the samples.

  Stella unclenched her lips from the straw and said, “Toxins. That’s also what he was looking for at the arcade.”

  “Yup.”

  Instead of speculating more about organic chemicals, she said, “Seriously, Jo, this is so good, so so good. You have to try it.” Before I could protest, she said, “I know what you’re gonna say, but ignore all of that for just a hot sec and taste this. No one at Water Ice World will ever know.”

  Just to shut her up, so that I could get to the other folders, I took a sip. “There. Happy?”

  “Good, isn’t it?”

  I let the smoothie roll over my tongue.

  A spark of lightning or something flashed in my brain, not because of the übernutrition, but because the taste ignited a memory—one that was deep down in the recesses of my childhood. I took the cup from Stella and tasted the smoothie again.

  “I told you,” she said, so satisfied that she was right about the smoothies. “Now you understand why everyone is hooked on these.”

  I didn’t respond, because I was hyper-focused on the clear tubes of PVC pipe through which ribbons of purple liquid blended with the colorful fruits, while my mind was somewhere else entirely.

  I’m a little girl, maybe six or seven, in Australia with my mom. We’re traipsing along a dune near the beach and stop at a bush. My mom picks a berry for me. It tastes as if a peach and a grape had a purple baby.

  I snapped my focus back onto Stella. “It’s wattle berry,” I said.

  “What is?” Stella snatched the lime-green cup back from me like she was afraid that I’d finish it.

  “Everything,” I said. “It’s all about wattle berries.”

  “What?” Stella was still confused.

  “This drink is melon, blood orange, and wattle berry,” I clarified. “It’s from Australia.”

  Stella planted the straw back into its parking spot in the corner of her mouth, more interested in finishing the smoothie before I asked for more. “Never heard of it.”

  “There’s a reason for that. The Australian Ecological Society petitioned the gov to make the farming of wattle berries illegal when it was discovered that the berries are poisonous to certain species with sensitive digestive systems.”

  Stella picked up a napkin and spit out the smoothie that was in her mouth. “Poisonous? I’ve had like three—”

  “Don’t worry. It only hurts certain species with super-super-sensitive digestive systems. Not humans. There’s a frog in southern Australia and—”

  “Medusa jellyfish?” Stella asked.

  “Right. There was some debate, because wattle berries are so nutritious—like, of
f the charts. Once scientists proved that the same health benefits could be found in other natural alternatives, they granted the petition and made harvesting the berries illegal. Aussies take environmentalism very seriously, and they follow that law. Wattle berries are quite rare and can only be found growing spontaneously in the wild here and there.”

  “How would Mrs. Gardiner, owner of the Smoothie Factory, like a bajillion miles away, in Whalehead, New Jersey, get an illegal, sometimes toxic berry from Australia? I mean, come on, Josie, your imagination is making this bizarre connection because you hate this place so much.”

  “That would mean that she has some suppliers from Australia—” I thought about the Australian guy that Lydia had told us about.

  Stella said, “And the supplier has some way to transport the berries around the world.”

  My mind went to the Koala.

  Stella said, “And he’d need local help.”

  Now I thought about the Three Ts and the Water Sport Adventure van.

  Stella said, “Really, Jo, it’s ridiculous.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “If the processing of wattle berries creates an organic chemical called quotene, then Dr. Rodney hasn’t concocted some crazy conspiracy this time. He knew something was affecting the medusas; he just didn’t know what, or where it was coming from; that’s why he was looking in the arcade,” I said.

  “Let’s say the wattle berries are killing jellyfish. Who’s dumping smoothies into the ocean?” Stella asked. “They’re way too expensive, not to mention yummy, to throw them away.”

  “This place.” I indicated the Smoothie Factory. “They’re using wattles. The machine we saw in the basement is processing the berries. The berry waste goes into the drain we saw in the floor, and then it dumps into the ocean through the sewer pipe. Do you know where that pipe is?”

  “I do,” Stella said, to my surprise. She pointed to the X on Dr. Rodney’s map on my phone. “I saw it when we were snorkeling.”

  “Yup. And what else is under the pier?” I asked.

  “The pylons that have less wax.” She rubbed her hands together and summarized: “Wattle berries are processed in the basement, creating a by-product called quotene, which drains into the water under Murphy’s Pier. The medusa jellyfish consume it and die, because their bellies can’t handle the toxin. And it also eats away at the wax on the pylons, damaging the stability of the pier.”

  I tilt my head at her. “You’ve been paying attention.”

  “See, I can be interested in boys and saving the world at the same time,” Stella added.

  The alarm on my phone buzzed.

  “I’ll do it,” Stella said, and she texted Dad our location along with a selfie. She showed it to me.

  I pointed to the girl who she’d captured in the background. “Who’s that? She looks familiar.”

  “I never forget a face,” Stella said. “That’s Meredith Maxwell’s number one fan. We signed the poster she made.”

  “Right. I remember. That’s a cool job, running a fan club,” I said. “What do we do next?”

  Stella said, “I can think of two things.”

  Forty-One Josie

  Police Station

  June 26 (Continued)

  “The first thing I wanted to do was herd the medusas to safer water, like the Pied Piper of Jellies, but I was pretty sure there was no way to do that, and I was also pretty sure that wasn’t what Stella was referring to.”

  “What did she want to do?” Detective Santoro asks.

  “She wanted to cut off the wattle berry supply and get the pier shut down before the Flying Fish concert in three days, because, according to Dr. Rodney’s calculations, the pier wouldn’t support the weight of all those people now that the pylons had been compromised by the quotene.”

  “Getting Whalehead to close the pier is a big deal. How were you going to do that?”

  “We needed help from someone with authority.”

  “So you went to talk to the mayor?”

  “Not just yet, because a man entered the Smoothie Factory. Stella followed him with her eyes as he walked around the line of waiting smoothie wanters and behind the counter. ‘Hold everything,’ Stella said.”

  Forty-Two Josie

  The Smoothie Factory

  June 24 (Continued)

  “Stella, what are you looking at?”

  “I know that guy.” She shuffled for her phone and swiped the screen. She held it out for me. “See.”

  It was the man from Laney’s phone.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Dunno. Don’t look now, but—” Stella snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Listen, do not look. Got it?” She pointed to her eyes. “Look here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Outside the window, a woman in a baseball hat and sunglasses is watching that dude.”

  I started turning my head toward the window, but Stella snapped her fingers.

  “Hey.” She pointed to her eyes. “Here.”

  I did what she said. “It’s Laney, isn’t it?”

  Stella nodded.

  Forty-Three Josie

  Police Station

  June 26 (Continued)

  “You’re talking about Laney Marini? The one I arranged for your dad to meet?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, but Stella never trusted her. And it looks like Stella was right, because Laney’s definitely up to something. How well do you know her?”

  He wiggles in his seat a little.

  This is the first time Detective Santoro seems uncomfortable, so he’s hiding something too.

  “Wait. You do know her, don’t you? You didn’t set my dad up with some random stranger.”

  “We’re colleagues. I know her.” He searches his notebook for some other questions to ask me. “Look, let’s stay on track. What did you think she was doing?”

  I say, “We have theories.…”

  “What kind of theories?”

  “She was a private detective, and that man’s wife had hired her to follow him, to see if he was having an affair. Or the two of them were a team planning to rob the Smoothie Factory on the day it would make millions of dollars. So the guy was posing as a deliveryman to scope out the details of the shop.”

  “You think like a cop,” he says, and I think he means it as a compliment.

  “It was ridiculous at first, but the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like a great way to steal a lot of money in one day.”

  “Plausible.”

  “If you think it’s plausible, it means that you don’t even know enough about her to know that she’s not planning some kind of major robbery, but you set her up with my dad anyway?” I cross my arms.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Again no answer, but I ask anyway, “Are you a good detective?”

  He shrugs like he’s being modest but he thinks he’s good.

  “I don’t want to worry that you’ll become a matchmaker.”

  Forty-Four Josie

  Boardwalk—Whalehead, New Jersey

  June 24 (Continued)

  We agreed to save the jellies and potential concertgoers before saving the Smoothie Factory from a robbery.

  We figured that Officer Booth wouldn’t listen to us, and that left Mayor Lopez as the person with authority to help us.

  I called his office. They said that he was on the pier trying out the new bungee for a segment on WLEO, so to the pier we went.

  I shielded my eyes from the sun. “There he is,” I said, looking up to the jump platform. He was being dramatic, pretending to be scared, showing off. Murielle duPluie’s microphone was extended on a long pole from about three-quarters of the way up the stairs, like that was as far up as she could handle.

  A small crowd had gathered around the safety mat, waiting for the mayor to bounce on it. And they weren’t disappointed when he plopped, laughing the whole time. He shimmied himself off the mat, and by the time he’d unhooked his gear, Mur
ielle was next to him, ready to bring his commentary to her radio listeners.

  duPluie: Tell us how you’re feeling right now.

  Lopez: I’m a little winded, actually. It was so exciting, it took my breath away.

  duPluie: Were you scared?

  Lopez: Nah. That was just an act. I’m the brave type.

  He puffed out his chest.

  Lopez: But if I didn’t know that this huge mat was down here, that’d be a different story.

  duPluie: Would you do it again?

  Lopez: Absolutely. This ride is worth every penny and a great addition to the attractions Whalehead offers on Murphy’s Pier. This is just another reason for vacationers to choose our beach.

  From a little distance, a voice yelled to the mayor, “What about the dead jellyfish? Are you aware they’re being poisoned? What are you going to do about it?” It was none other than our mate Dr. Rodney, apparently back from whatever surf competition or chemical analysis he’d been doing.

  Officer Booth was on Dr. Rodney before he could spurt out another question. “That’s enough now, Hot Rod. This is about the bungee ride, not allegedly poisoned jellyfish or one of your other half-baked ideas.”

  The mayor called over to Officer Booth, “It’s okay. I want to answer that.” He leaned in to Murielle’s mic. “There appears to be a problem with the local species of medusa jellyfish. My office is aware of this. We’re very concerned and have commissioned experts to assess the situation and give us a full report of their findings. Once we have that in hand, we’ll review options and move ahead with the most aggressive approach.”

  Dr. Rodney started yelling something else, but Murielle regained control of her interview.

  duPluie: Why wasn’t the public informed about this?