The Chocolate Pirate Plot (15 page)

I was more curious than ever. “Where are you and Hogan?”

“At the police station.”

“That's just a couple of blocks. I could bring the envelope over.”

“No. Hogan doesn't need any callers this afternoon.”

“What's going on?”

Joe lowered his voice. “You know that body we pulled out of the lake yesterday?”

“The drowned man? I'm not likely to forget it.”

“It turns out he wasn't drowned.”

“Wasn't drowned!”

“Nope. The preliminary autopsy found a bullet hole hidden in all that dark hair.”

I
gasped. “Oh, no! Does Hogan know any more details?”

“Not yet. He just now found out about it.”

“Have they figured out who the guy is?”

“No.”

I had a million other questions. Had anyone been reported missing who might be the dead man? Were any of the marinas missing a boat? Were any swimmers missing? My questions came pouring out.

“Hang on!” Joe said. “Hogan is doing everything possible to find out about the guy, but it takes time. Somebody's got to miss him before anyone knows he's gone. It's only been two days.”

“Could he have shot himself?”

“Not in the back of the head.”

“Oooh. Yuck.”

“I'm nearly through here at the police station. I brought Byron by to make sure he reported that phone call from Jeremy. When we got here Hogan had just heard the word about the guy in the lake being a shooting victim. I'll leave in a few minutes and take Byron back to the boatyard—or wherever he needs to go. Then I'll come over to your place to pick up that message.”

“You're sure you don't want me to bring it over? It might be from Jeremy, if he isn't dead. Or from Hal, if he isn't dead either.”

Joe sighed. “I started to ask you to read it to me, but it might be a privileged communication. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

It was thirty minutes before Joe arrived, and if I had thought Tracy was going to bust a gut with curiosity about Brenda—well, I was definitely leading in the gut-busting contest during those thirty minutes. I was dying to know what was in that envelope. I longed to rip into it. It didn't do any good to tell myself it was probably something like a bill or a receipt or a note asking Joe to serve on a committee. I couldn't think of any reason that a bill or a receipt or an ordinary note would have been delivered to TenHuis Chocolade on a Sunday, rather than to the Vintage Boats post office box on a Monday morning. But why would a message to Joe from anybody at all come to TenHuis in the first place? And why in a makeshift envelope?

I was chewing my nails by the time Joe got there. Of course he could tell how curious I was, so he teased me. He dawdled around before he opened the odd note, looking at both sides of the envelope, holding it up to the light, pretending to sniff it, then acting as if he was going to slip it into his pocket unopened.

Finally I brandished my letter opener at him. It's shaped like a miniature sword, and I held it up like a dagger. “In a mystery novel,” I said, “this would be a great murder weapon.”

Joe laughed. “Give me the letter opener—handle first, please.”

He slit the top of the envelope carefully, then spread the top open, turned it over, and made a motion as if he were emptying the contents. Nothing came out.

“No mysterious white powder,” he said.

Finally, Joe reached inside the envelope and pulled out a small sheet of lined paper. It had a ragged edge, as if it had been ripped from a notebook. He read it. Then he shook his head, rolled his eyes, and tossed the message over to me.

As I read it, he called out, “Tracy! Did you do this?”

“What? What have I done now?” Tracy came running into the office.

I held up the small sheet of paper, and she read it aloud.

“‘If Marco Spear comes to Warner Pier, he'll be in danger!'”

Tracy's eyes bugged. “Who would threaten Marco Spear?”

Joe shook his head. “I don't think anyone would, Tracy.”

“But this message . . .”

“Is a fake,” he said. “Some kind of publicity stunt, maybe. Silliness.”

“What does it have to do with me? Did you think I would write something like that?”

I answered her. “We don't really think that, Tracy. Joe just means it probably came from someone who knows how interested you and the other counter girls have been in the rumor about Marco Spear. Whoever wrote it was teasing you.”

“But then why was it addressed to Joe?”

“I don't know. Joe? What do you think?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that someone has been trying to link us to the pirates all along, and now they've started on the top pirate, Marco Spear. I'm tired of it.”

“Do you think we should show it to Hogan?” I said.

“Hogan has a dead man on his hands. I don't want to bother him with a silly note.”

Joe swore Tracy and Brenda to secrecy, asking them not to mention the note. “Let's not start any new rumors,” he said.

Both agreed to keep the note quiet, especially because Joe said he was sure it was a joke of some sort and that the two of them might be intended targets of the joker. Joe and I both knew that asking for a direct promise was the best way to keep Tracy from talking. We'd sworn her to secrecy in the past, and she'd always kept her word. Brenda wasn't quite as talkative. Or maybe, being a summer worker only, she didn't know as many people to talk to. But it was good to make her promise not to talk about it, too.

I had been a bit surprised, however, that Joe showed the two girls the note at all, but he explained quietly that he thought satisfying their curiosity about it might keep them from talking. I hoped he was right.

Joe left, saying he was going to go back to the boat shop to try to do some work. “Varnishing a hull sounds real soothing right now,” he said. “I want to forget this whole business.”

I noticed that he took the odd note with him, although he left the envelope behind.

I wasn't quite ready to forget the matter. I looked the envelope over. “Business Reply Mail.” The words were printed in big letters and enclosed in a rectangular box. Underneath that box, in smaller letters, it said, “Postage will be paid by addressee.” I had seen thousands of envelopes like it. Whenever I pick up a magazine, it seems that a half dozen of them fall out.

The address—the street address of the business that promised to pay the postage—had been obliterated with a heavy black marking pen, apparently the same pen that had been used to write Joe's name. When I held the envelope up to my desk lamp, I couldn't read the address.

The flap was quite deep—two-thirds of the depth of the envelope—and had been thoroughly glued down. I took out my scissors and carefully cut it just above the line of glue. I got most of the flap up.

That didn't help much. The words “Yes, I want to subscribe to” were at the top, but the magazine's name had been blacked out with that darn black marker. I held the envelope up to the light again. I could take a guess at the second word that had been blacked out, and I thought it was “today.”

The first word, however, could be anything. “Chocolate Today.” “Boatbuilding Today.” “Teaching Today.” I squinted at the first word. It did start with
T
, I decided.

Could it be “Theater”?

Could the envelope have come from a theatrical magazine?

My heart skipped a beat at the thought that I might have discovered a real clue, but I told myself not to get too excited. Even if the word was “theater,” it wouldn't prove anything. Practically everybody we'd run into over Jeremy's disappearance and the dead man found at our beach had some connection with theater. Besides, an advertising envelope like that one—if it was designed to encourage new subscriptions to a theatrical magazine—might be in any magazine for the artistically inclined. A literary magazine. An art magazine. A dance magazine.
Theater Today
might try for subscriptions in dozens of different publications.

I carefully put the envelope in a file folder and was tucking it into my top drawer just as the phone rang.

“TenHuis Chocolade. Fine chocolates in the European tradition.”

“It's Joe, and don't say my name.”

“Okay.” I paused. “What's up?”

“Can you come over to the police station?”

“Yep.”

“Quick as you can, okay?”

The girls were too busy with customers to ask questions, so I muttered something about needing to do an errand, and I left. I did tuck the file folder with the envelope in it under my arm.

At the police station I found Joe in Hogan's office. The two of them looked a bit worried.

Hogan didn't even say hello. He opened with, “Lee, I need your help.”

“Anything I can do, Hogan.”

“I need to talk to Jill Campbell again. She's at the theater, and I don't want to pick her up in a patrol car. It would cause too much talk. I thought maybe you could arrange to bring her to meet me.”

“She may not want to go anywhere with me, Hogan. We didn't part on very good terms.”

“You should make it plain that I'm the one who wants to talk to her. If she refuses a polite request, then I'll make an impolite one. But I'd like to try it this way first.”

“I'll call Jill and tell her I'll pick her up. Where do we go?”

“Here. Your van is parked in this block enough that no one will think anything about it.”

I glanced at my watch. “The current Showboat production has a matinee this afternoon. Jill might not be able to get away until after the performance.”

Hogan grimaced. “Then I'll have to wait. I need to be friendly with the citizens of Warner Pier, and sabotaging the Showboat is no way to accomplish that.”