Boardwalk
June 25 (Continued)
We ran up the ramp from Thirty-Fourth Street to the boardwalk, where Murielle duPluie’s coverage of the news was blaring through the loudspeaker situated high up on a pole, surrounded by vacationers listening to her report.
“Murielle duPluie here with all the shore news from WLEO. I have breaking news.
“This just in: Meredith Maxwell’s security detail has lost contact with her, and they’ve gone into Kevin’s Fun House to find her. Flying Fish bandmate Austin Barry is asking everyone to look for the starlet.”
We ran to the Minotaur and didn’t hear the rest of the report.
“There she is!” someone in the crowd cried, and a sea of Good Samaritans ran toward the pier in an effort to rescue her, but we were ahead of them, nearly at the coaster, where Cassandra was leading Meredith onto a cart.
We could just make out their voices over the bam! bam! bam! of helicopter blades.
Meredith yelled, “We can take the picture down here.”
“Up there is better.” Cassandra pointed to the peak of the coaster. “A perfect spot for two besties to get a one-of-a-kind shot.”
The cart edged higher to the peak before it would speed down a steep hill. But then, just as the cart got to the top, it stopped.
“What happened?” I asked.
Josie shaded her eyes from the sun. “It stopped, or I think it’s stuck, maybe?”
The Three Ts ran down the pier in their red lifeguard shirts. Dario was behind them. The Ts had been running in sand all summer, so Dario had no chance of keeping up with them.
“What’s going on?” Timmy asked Josie.
She gave him the summary, obviously leaving out the part where Meredith thought that we were kidnapping her. No one really needed to know that part. “And,” Josie said to Timmy, “when this is over, we need to have a serious talk.”
I said to TJ, “That goes for you, too.”
The boys looked at each other, confused.
Dario had arrived, out of breath, in time to hear most of the recap. “I never believed Dr. Rodney was stalking Meredith,” he said. “It was just a crazed fan.”
Tucker looked up at the two girls in the cart at the top of the coaster. We all saw what he was seeing. Cassandra started to stand up.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said.
“Way bad,” Josie agreed.
“What should we do?” Timmy asked.
Then a voice from out of nowhere said, “I have an idea.”
It was Apple, and she was standing next to me. Like right next to me, and I swear she hadn’t been there a hot sec before.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that. Seriously. I hate it—”
“Not now, Stell,” said Dario. “What’s your idea?” he asked Apple.
Surprisingly, she got to the point. “We should prepare for the worst.” She pointed to the fat mat under the bungee.
“Good idea,” Josie said. “Let’s get it.”
Tucker rolled his T-shirt sleeves up to his shoulders and flexed his biceps. “Sun’s out, guns out. Let’s do it.”
The seven of us—me, Josie, the Three Ts, Dario, and the Amazing Apple—went to the big mat. The boys pushed it, while we girls pulled.
“Ugh, this is heavy! Isn’t it just full of air? Since when is air so heavy?” I said to Josie, “I’ll start working out tomorrow.”
“Where are Meredith’s security guards?” Josie asked.
“Probably stuck in the fun house.”
“Can’t you do a trick or something to make this easier?” Josie asked Apple.
“Not a trick,” she said. “But something.”
Apple formed a loop with her thumb and index finger, put it into her mouth, and whistled to Lucien, Evan, and Austin, who were at the end of the pier, watching from the concert stage. They rushed over to provide the extra muscle we needed, and the mat moved to under the Minotaur, but it didn’t cover all the possible angles someone could fall from.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked up to see Cassandra getting herself into position next to Meredith and holding her phone up for a selfie.
That’s when everything started going in slow motion:
Meredith knocked the phone out of Cassandra’s hand.
Cassandra leaned to get it.
She lost her balance.
And she began to fall.
I called to the boys, “She’s coming down! To the right!”
We scrambled to get the mat to where Cassandra was headed. Her loud scream filled the air, mixed with the caws of seagulls and everyone else shouting and yelling.
After what seemed like forever, but was only a few seconds, Cassandra landed… mostly on the mat.
Fifty-Five Stella
Murphy’s Pier
June 25 (Continued)
We stood around Cassandra until an ambulance drove right out onto the pier. Paramedics secured her to a backboard, loaded her into the rig, and sped off with red and blue lights flashing.
Things slowed down after that.
The boys came around to our side of the bouncy mat. TJ rubbed his hand on my back. “It didn’t look too bad. She’ll be all right.”
Timmy said, “I don’t want to imagine what would’ve happened if we were a second slower.”
Dario’s cell phone alarm chirped. “I don’t believe this, but I have to go to work,” he said. “Of all times for a shift at the Gifty to start. I gotta run.”
Josie said, “When duty calls… We’ll text you later.”
Booth directed the coaster operator to get it working and safely escorted Meredith off the ride. She was instantly surrounded by bodyguards and bandmates. They were within earshot, and I was eager to hear exactly what had happened up there.
“Are you okay?” Booth asked her.
She combed her fingers through her hair. “I’m fine.”
“We have another ambulance on the way. They’ll want to check you out.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Booth said, “I’d like a full account of what happened. Can you come down to the station for an interview?”
“That won’t be necessary. I can tell you right here, right now.”
Meredith looked over to us.
“She’s going to thank us,” Apple said.
Josie said to me, “She’s going to tell him about the Smoothie Factory, the pier, and the jellies. This is the moment everything gets fixed.”
“I think so,” I said to both of them, and I stood up a little, proud of what we’d accomplished. It isn’t every day you save a species and thousands of people.
Meredith pointed at us. “It was them!”
Booth looked over to us. Bodyguards looked at us. Even Evan, Austin, and Lucien stared at us.
“This is all their fault,” she said. “Those girls kidnapped me.”
“What?!” I said.
“Is she kidding?” Josie said.
Booth pointed to us and asked, “Those girls? Stella and Josie Higley?” He didn’t believe what Meredith was saying.
“Yeah.” She flipped her hair and smiled for incoming photos. “None of this would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for them.”
TJ whispered to me, “What did you two do?”
Tucker said, “Is this what you wanted to talk about? Were you going to flee the country or something?”
Tucker said, “Too late for that.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said.
Timmy said, “It sounds pretty bad.”
“I think maybe it is,” Josie said. “But not as bad as what you three were doing.”
Apple said, “I’m outta here.” And by the time I turned my head to thank her for helping us, she was gone.
Tucker asked, “Us? We didn’t do anything.”
“That you know of, which is part of the problem. You didn’t even ask questions to know that what you were doing was harmful,” Josie said. “Dreadfully harmful.”
&
nbsp; The Three Ts looked at me for an answer.
“Your little eight p.m. rendezvous under the boardwalk,” I hinted. “Did you stop to think for a hot sec about what you were actually doing?”
TJ began. “How do you—”
“That’s not important,” I said.
Meredith’s security guard said to Booth, “Miss Maxwell needs to rest now. We can bring her to the station a little later to make an official statement. Why don’t you deal with those girls, and we’ll take care of her?”
Timmy said to us, “Look, the lady from the Smoothie Factory said it was fruit. The best, freshest fruit for her customers. She couldn’t get it locally.”
TJ defended him. “It’s not like pineapples or coconuts grow in New Jersey.”
Josie said, “Or wattle berries.”
Timmy asked, “Wattle what?”
I said, “You were transporting their secret sauce. And that sauce has terrible side effects.”
Tucker asked, “How were we supposed to know any of that? In fact, how do you know that?”
TJ said, “Seriously. It made sense that they needed fruit from the islands, and that it would be delivered by boat. So don’t make us out to sound dumb.”
Booth scratched his head and confirmed with Meredith one more time. “Those two girls kidnapped you? But you’re right here.”
Timmy said, “It’s not like we kidnapped someone.”
Meredith said to Booth, “Pay attention. They kidnapped me before I was right here.”
“We didn’t kidnap anyone!” I yelled.
“Tell me,” Josie asked the boys. “What did they pay you to participate in their scheme?”
“Not a cent,” Tucker said, then added, “Miss Smarty-Pants.”
Booth nodded at Meredith Maxwell, then walked over to us. “Josie, Stella, what the heck happened?”
“You see—” I started.
“We can explain everything—” Josie added.
He held up his hand for us to stop talking. “We’re gonna have to do this downtown after I get things sorted out here. That’s gonna take me a little while. Then I’ll drive you.”
“Like, in a cop car?” I asked.
“In the back,” he confirmed.
Fifty-Six Stella
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
“So there we were in the back seat of Officer Booth’s squad car. He left the window cracked open, like you might for a dog. We could see and hear all the hub-bub.”
“What I don’t understand is that if you were in Booth’s car, how come your dad brought you in here?” Santoro asks. “Why didn’t you come in with Booth?”
“Can we just say that maybe all the choices we made yesterday weren’t great?”
“I think that’s an understatement,” Santoro says. It’s the type of comment that might be accompanied by a tension-breaking smile, but he doesn’t crack his tough detective exterior. “What happened next?”
I explain. “Meredith was nearby on Thirty-Fourth Street with her security entourage. We watched her get checked out by an EMT and drink a bottle of water. Once a blood pressure cuff was removed, one of the thick-armed bodyguards said to Meredith, ‘There’s a radio news lady—duPluPlu. She wants to get a comment from you. Want me to tell her it’s not a good time?’ And Meredith said, ‘I never refuse time with the media. Send her over. I have plenty to tell her.’ ”
Fifty-Seven Stella
Thirty-Fourth Street
June 25 (Continued)
“Now she’s gonna tell Murielle all about the Smoothie Factory.”
Josie shushed me. They weren’t far from us, but there was a lot of activity that made it hard to hear. “She’s going to tell Murielle about the pier and the jellies. It’s actually super smart of her to go to the media instead of Booth, because he probably won’t believe it.”
duPluie set a microphone in front of Meredith Maxwell. “I’m recording, so anytime you’re ready.”
Maxwell: I was in the fun house, just walking along enjoying seeing my reflection in those silly mirrors. You know the ones?
duPluie: I sure do.
Maxwell: Then I climbed over the rope bridge, and the next thing I knew, a girl pushed me through a hole in the floor, and I fell. I fell! To the sand below. Another girl closed the trapdoor, and the two of them kept me down there against my will. It was those Higley girls. They wouldn’t let me leave.
duPluie: What did they want?
Maxwell: Ransom? Autographs? Who knows?
duPluie sucked in a shocking breath that would be audible on the recording.
“I’m going to go all New York on her,” I said to Josie. “Watch me.”
Then something amazing happened.
Fifty-Eight Stella
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
Detective Santoro asks, “Something amazing, huh? I could make a pretty good guess what that was.”
“Yup. A voice, one we knew well, came out of nowhere. It said, ‘She’s lying, and it makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?’ ”
“Apple. That boardwalk magician?” he asks.
I nod. “You know, she’s more like a superhero. She seems to know when we need her, and she appears without so much as a Bat-Signal.” I say, “She unlocked the door and let us— Wait. Is that a crime? If it is, then that’s not what happened.”
“Stella, believe me on this. Alayna Appleton opening a car door is small potatoes compared to everything else we got going on here. So I promise you, she will not get in any trouble. But for future reference, don’t do that again.”
“Noted,” I say. “So we left Booth’s car. We were on a mission. To figure out why Meredith was lying.” Then I added, “If we weren’t going to find out, who would?”
Fifty-Nine Stella
Nifty Gifty
June 25 (Continued)
Not sure exactly where to go for help, we slipped into the only safe place we could think of, Nifty Gifty.
“What the heck?” Dario asked when he saw us. “I heard everything on the radio news. Get back here.” He dragged us behind the counter, pushed us to where no one could see, and tossed us each a big straw beach hat and sunglasses. “Put these on.” He smiled at a customer. “Have you checked out those refrigerator magnets? A sight to behold, I promise you. They’re right over there.” Then to us he said, “I’m pretty sure I’m now implicated as an accomplice or something.”
“Toughen up, Dario,” I said to him. “We seriously need intel on why Meredith won’t tell the police about the Smoothie Factory and why she’s lying about what we did to her.”
“Way ahead of you, Higleys. Way, way ahead.”
A customer approached the register. “These are excellent choices,” Dario said to her about the magnets she’d chosen. Then he took her snow globe and wrapped it in tissue paper. “I always wonder what the fascination is with snow globes. I love them myself, but they freak me out a little too, because I imagine, What if I was trapped inside? Do you ever do that?”
“Not so much,” the customer said.
“And here’s your change. Have a wonderful day.”
Once the customer was out of the way, I said to Dario, “Can we leave the snow globe commentary for another day, when our freedom isn’t hanging in the balance?”
“Stella, don’t be rude, because as I look around, I’m pretty much the only friend you guys have right now. Where are your Three Ts, huh? So, if I were you, I’d try to be a little nicer to me.”
“Fine,” I growled.
“Fine what?” he asked.
“Snow globes are cool,” I spat. “Now, what are you way ahead on?”
“Research, Stella, research. That’s what a good radio journalist does. I’ve been looking into a variable that you girls forgot about. A biggie.”
Josie asked, “What?”
“It’s what makes the world go around. The lettuce, the cabbage, the dough—”
Josie said, “Stop with the foo
d!”
“The money!” he said. “Meredith is lying because of money.”
“How does any of this connect to money?” I asked.
And he showed us.
Sixty Stella
Police Station
June 26 (Continued)
“What Dario found out was that the Smoothie Factory is funded by something called a shell company, which he explained isn’t a real company but one that’s only used for financial transactions. It’s fake.”
Santoro says, “I know what a shell company is. And,” he adds, “I’m impressed that you do too.”
“Gee, thanks, Detective. Can I call you Jay?”
Straight face: “No.”
“Okay, well, thanks anyway. That’s the only nice thing you’ve said to me all day.”
He rubs his scruff. “Just continue.”
“The shell company is called MM Enterprises, and guess who holds the money for that company?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “Miss I Hate the Environment, Miss I’m a Big Fat Liar, Miss I Don’t Care If People Drown on a Pier, Miss I’m Gonna Blame All This on Stella and Josie Higley, Miss—”
“I get it,” he says.
“If she tells the truth, the Smoothie Factory doesn’t go national, and she loses all the money she’s invested.” I bang my hands on the table. “Bam!” I say. “Case closed. Open and shut! I rest my case. Thank you, jury, for your time.”
Santoro puts his pen down and leans his head right and left to get a good stretch. It even cracks. He doesn’t speak. It’s the silence thing he’s been doing all along.
This time, I don’t fill it.
Santoro looks at his watch.
“Why isn’t there a clock in here?” I ask.
“So the perps lose all sense of time.”
“I’m not a perp.”
“Should you be?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Santoro shakes his head.
“Okay, so a few things. But they were for the right reason, and they were—”
“I know, they were all your idea.”
Saltwater Secrets Page 13