The Chocolate Pirate Plot (6 page)

We reached the victim, and Hogan knelt at his head. Maggie again slid her arm around Jill's waist, and I stood close beside her.

Hogan pulled the sheet back. We saw the side of the man's head and a bush of black hair.

“No!” Jill gasped and staggered, nearly falling to her knees. “Jeremy is blond!”

She whirled around and hugged Maggie excitedly. “Jeremy is blond! This isn't him! They've found someone else!”

T
hat sure got everybody's attention.

The beach buzzed. The search team had found the wrong drowning victim? How could that be?

Who could it be?

Maggie quickly leaned over to check out the dead man, looking at his hair as Jill had, then at his face. She nodded at Hogan. “Jill is right. That's not Jeremy.”

“We'll check to make sure no one else is missing in the area,” Hogan said.

Maggie frowned. “If another drowning had been reported . . .”

“Yeah,” Hogan said. “We'd probably have heard.”

I realized that Hogan was one of the few people on the beach who hadn't looked surprised by the discovery that the dead man was not Jeremy. He looked serious, but he wasn't amazed the way the rest of us were. I looked at the body myself—like Jill, I skipped the face—and I began to put a few things together. Such as the dead man's arm, the one holding the sheet up like a tent pole. The stiffness looked like rigor mortis to me. However, Jeremy had supposedly been in the water for just a couple of hours. I didn't think that was long enough for rigor mortis to develop. I could be wrong, since I know little about medical matters, but Hogan had formerly served as a homicide detective, so he'd seen plenty of bodies.

Hogan marshaled his line of marching volunteers for another sweep through the water, still looking for Jeremy, then took Jill aside for what looked like an in-depth questioning session. Maggie and I sat down in the beach chairs under the umbrella. Maybe this was my chance to find out what Maggie knew about Jeremy and Jill.

“Just who is this Jeremy?” I said.

“He's on the tech crew at the theater.”

“Then I haven't seen him onstage?”

“Nope. Though he's a good-looking guy. I was a little surprised that he was more interested in the backstage angle of theater. Usually the good-looking guys want to be out front.”

“Is he a student?”

“I don't think so. He works backstage in Chicago theaters.”

“Jill says she's a student at Northwestern. I guess I thought most of the people working at the Showboat this summer were students.”

“Most of the actors are. Crew—maybe half and half. Then there are a few of us elderly types.” She was being ironic. We both think the early thirties is young, though the student actors Maggie had been working with might not.

“Why do you care?” Maggie said.

“My usual curiosity. I'm just trying to get the picture.”

“Picture of what?”

“Of Jill, I guess. Is she as flaky as she seems?”

Maggie shot me a look that could only be described as hostile. “Aren't all actresses supposed to be flaky?”

Her question surprised me. Maggie and I had been buddies for two years. Was she taking my remark personally? I didn't want to fight with her, and I certainly hadn't intended to put down her profession.

“I don't know about all actresses, Maggie,” I said. “I certainly don't consider you flaky. You're one of the most levelheaded people I know.”

“Now I am.” Maggie sounded bitter. She ducked her head and dug up a handful of sand, then let it trickle through her fingers. “God knows I spent years of my life being flaky.”

“At least you didn't get married when you were still at the flaky stage, the way I did. I'm sorry if I seemed judgmental about Jill. She's no sillier than I was at her age.”

Maggie and I both stared across the beach at Jill and Hogan. Hogan was frowning down at the girl. His face was grim. Jill was twisting a lock of her hair like a ten-year-old. Somehow her mouth looked as if she had developed a lisp. As we watched, she ducked her head and looked up at Hogan from under her lashes. She was behaving like a little girl.

“Yuck,” Maggie said. “This is not the way Jill usually acts. Flaky is too kind a word.”

“You think it's all an act?”

Maggie gave me another sharp look. “‘Act' as in acting? So if actors aren't flaky, they're phony?”

“Come on, Maggie! I just think she's behaved oddly. I'd like to know why.”

“What did she do that's so odd?”

“For one thing, she refused to tell me that she's an actor.”

I repeated the exchange in which Jill had told me she was “in the School of Communication.”

Maggie looked troubled. But she still apparently felt that she had to stick up for her fellow theater employee.

“Okay!” she said. “I admit it was an odd answer. I can't explain it. You'll just have to ask Jill herself.”

With that, Maggie got up, pulled herself to her full five feet two inches, and walked over toward Jill and Hogan. Hogan waved her off, however, and she veered toward the water. She ducked her head and walked along, examining the rocks along the wave line. Or pretending to.

In a few minutes Hogan gave up on questioning Jill, and she came back to the umbrella. “Yeesh!” she said as she dropped into the beach chair Maggie had vacated. “Is that police chief always like that?”

“Like what?”

“Having to have every little thing explained to him.”

“That's his job. Understanding all the details builds the big picture. What did he want to know?”

“The same old stuff. Why Jeremy and I came here. Exactly what happened when he went under.”

Jill went back to her dispirited pose—knees against her chest, head drooping, shoulders slumped, fingers trailing in the sand.

“I'm just tired of going over it,” she said.

I was tired of the whole thing, too. Maybe that's what made me bring up another question, one that had been circling around the back of my brain for most of the morning.

“Jill,” I said, “just why did you run to our house this morning?”

She didn't look up, but her body became more alert. It was as if an alarm had gone off, as if I'd yelled, “Watch out!” instead of asking a simple question.

I didn't repeat the question, but after a pause Jill spoke. “I went to your house because I needed help.”

“Yes, but why did you come to Joe and me for it?”

Now I got a sideways glance from behind Jill's sunglasses. It was a quick glance. Immediately her eyes dropped back to the sand.

“You were the first person I saw,” she said. “You were there.”

“Yep, Joe and I were there. But you ran past five houses to get to us.”

“I didn't see anybody at those houses.”

“Weren't there cars in the drives?”

“Maybe. I don't remember.”

“Television sets playing? Lights on? Coffee perking?”

“I don't know!”

We were both silent. Then Jill took a deep breath. “I guess I panicked.”

“Did you yell for help before you saw me?”

“I don't remember!”

“It just seems odd, Jill. There are houses within calling distance of this beach, houses you had to run by to get to our mailbox. Joe and I are sort of far from the beach to be first responders for a drowning accident.”

Jill jumped to her feet. “I don't have to take this! I don't even have to stay here. I'll tell that Chief Jones that I'm leaving. I can go back to my room. I'll find my boss.”

“Max?”

“Mr. Morgan. He'll help me deal with you locals!”

She began snatching up her belongings. Beach towel and sunscreen were stuffed into a bag. She yanked my terry-cloth cover-up off and threw it down on the chair she'd been sitting in.

“I don't think they'll let you take Jeremy's car,” I said. “Do you want me to give you a ride?”

“No! Maggie will take me.”

She dropped her bag and walked swiftly down the beach toward Maggie, calling out her name. I remained where I was, sitting in my beach chair while Jill talked to Maggie, then reported to Hogan. When she and Maggie came back, Jill didn't speak. She picked up her beach bag without looking at me.

“Jill,” I said, “if Max Morgan is mixed up in this, you can't blame me for wondering if it's some kind of a publicity stunt.”

She kept her head turned away from me. “If I've gone through a day like today for a publicity stunt, we'll have another dead man,” she said. “And his name will be Max Morgan.”

She and Maggie left.

She'd summed up my feelings. If I'd gone through a day like today for a stunt to publicize the Warner Pier Summer Showboat Playhouse, I might murder Max Morgan myself.

But looking for one body and finding another—well, it didn't seem like a coincidence either.

In fact, how could Jeremy's disappearance be a publicity stunt at all? Why would it get publicity? To be blunt, people drown in Lake Michigan every year. I'm afraid they're rapidly forgotten by the general public. Only their friends and relatives remember.

Jeremy's disappearance seemed more like an escape plan. Could he be fleeing from justice? Or from his landlord? Or from some other threat? Obviously, if Jeremy's body didn't turn up, Hogan would be looking into that angle.