The Chocolate Pirate Plot (14 page)

Joe shook his head, looking mystified, and turned toward the refrigerator. “Let me get you a soda, Byron. We need to hear the whole story.”

He got out canned pop for Byron and himself. I found a chair for Byron to use to prop his leg up. Then we questioned the guy.

“First,” Joe said, “who
is
your mother? Do we know her?”

It turned out that Byron's mom was a Mrs. Wendt who lived in New Jersey and who had merely passed Jeremy's message along. Apparently she had nothing to do with Warner Pier, Jeremy's disappearance, or the dead man at Beech Tree beach. No, we didn't know her.

“I guess Jeremy called her because he didn't have a number for me,” Byron said. “I went to high school with Jeremy, and he came over to my house a few times, so he knew how to find my mom. But Jeremy and I have been out of touch for three or four years.”

Byron said he had been surprised when his mom said Jeremy had called. And the message Jeremy left made no sense to him.

“Something dangerous is going on,” Jeremy had told Mrs. Wendt. “Byron needs to know about it. If I don't get hold of him, tell him I'll leave a message with Joe Woodyard. He's a lawyer there in Warner Pier.”

“So Jeremy knew you were in Warner Pier?”

“Yes. But I don't know how he found that out.”

“Did your mother give him your number?”

“No.” Byron blinked behind his thick lenses and spoke wistfully. “I guess you'd say I've sort of moved on from the old gang. It's not that I don't want to talk to them, but sometimes they ask questions I can't answer.”

Yeah, I thought. Questions such as, Why are you working as a gofer at a boatyard after the other members of that old gang finished college and are now trying to build careers? I could understand why Byron might not want to speak to his old friends.

“Anyway,” Byron said, “Mom told him that she'd pass the message along and ask me to call him. He left a number, but when I called it, no one answered. I sloughed the whole thing off, but then I heard on the television that Jeremy was missing and that some other guy was dead. So I thought maybe I'd better—you know—do something about it. But I don't know anything the cops would want to know, and Jeremy had told my mom that you could explain . . .”

“You were pretty calm about being told you were in danger.”

“I didn't believe it. I still don't.”

“You're not a threat to anyone?”

Byron shook his head.

“Do you have anything valuable anyone would want to take?”

“No way!” Byron's eyes got wide, and his gaze was direct. “Right at the moment, my bike is the most important thing I have, and it now needs a few repairs.”

“Did the call scare your mother?”

“I think she felt the same way I did. Jeremy was always overdramatic. Neither of us took it seriously.”

“Did you know Jeremy was in Warner Pier for the summer?”

“I sure didn't, and I don't know how he found out I was here. My arrival got very little attention.”

“This is a small town. Maybe he saw you on the street.”

“I didn't see him. Besides, I've only been here a few weeks, and I've been hanging around the boatyard. I've only been downtown a few times.” He smiled at me. “You know, for chocolate. The people at the boatyard ate the box you gave me, so I had to go buy more.”

“I'm glad you liked it.”

“I do. And the girls are always—you know, pleasant.”

I hoped Byron hadn't tried to date any of the girls. Then they might not have been so pleasant. I was sure they'd have said no. He certainly wasn't love's young dream.

Joe wrote down the phone number Jeremy had left with Byron's mother, then thought the whole thing over a few minutes before he spoke again. “Byron, could I talk to your mom directly?”

Byron thought. “Sure. It's Sunday. She ought to be home. Maybe her story will make more sense to someone else.”

He produced a cell phone from his pocket and called the number for us. After his mom answered, he explained why he had called and said Joe wanted a firsthand account of Jeremy's call. Then he put the phone on the speaker setting so all three of us could follow the conversation.

Not that it turned out to be much of a conversation. The only thing notable was that Mrs. Wendt had a nasal Jersey accent. That struck me as odd, because her son's accent wasn't so pronounced. Okay, okay—I minored in speech, and I think regional accents are interesting, though they're disappearing fast, largely because of the influence of television. So I notice the way people talk.

But whatever her accent, Mrs. Wendt didn't have a lot to add to the story Byron had already told us.

“Jeremy said a dangerous situation had arisen,” she said. “He said Byron needed to know about it. And he said that he'd explain it all to you, and Byron could call you if he wasn't able to reach him. Reach Jeremy, I mean. Did Jeremy tell you what's going on?”

“No,” Joe said. “As far as I know he didn't even try to call me.”

“Maybe the whole thing is a hoax,” she said.

“What would be Jeremy's purpose in starting such a hoax?”

“That I don't know. But why did he call me, anyway? Calling a mother to tell her that her son may be in a dangerous situation—and then not describing the situation—well, I admit that I hope it was a hoax.”

Byron spoke then. “I thought it was a hoax. Or a joke of some kind. I was going to just ignore the call until I heard that Jeremy had disappeared.”

Joe asked Mrs. Wendt exactly when Jeremy had called. The call had come in two days earlier, about ten o'clock in the evening, she told us. “I told him it was kinda late.”

“Huh.” Joe grunted, then sat silently, apparently thinking over what she had said.

So I took the opportunity to ask a question.

“Mrs. Wendt, were there any sounds in the background when Jeremy made his call?”

“Sounds?”

“Dogs barking. Horns honking. Ice cream trucks tinkling.”

“None of those things.” She laughed. “I did get a snatch of Elvis.”

Joe, Byron, and I all spoke in unison. “Elvis?”

“Yeah. It was some recording of an Elvis Presley song. ‘You ain't nothin' but a hound dog.' I heard it for just a minute. It wasn't loud. Then the sound went dead. At the time I thought Jeremy had hung up. But maybe he put his hand over the speaker. Or maybe it was a radio or some other phone cutting in.”

“And you didn't hear the sound again?”

“No, just that few seconds of ‘Hound Dog.' Elvis complaining that he was crying all the time. Or some other part of the lyric.”

That seemed to cover the subject. Joe took Mrs. Wendt's number, asking her to call him if Jeremy phoned her again. He gave her his cell number. Then all four of us said good-bye. And I left for the office. I couldn't put off going in any longer.

The place was crowded when I arrived. Instead of going to my office, I joined Tracy and Brenda behind the counter, boxing up bonbons, truffles, and molded chocolates as quickly as possible. I'm always surprised at the way tourists buy our chocolate. After all, a chocolate fanatic could buy a half dozen Cadbury Caram-ello bars—that happens to be my own favorite mass-market chocolate bar—for about what he or she would spend for a quarter of a pound of TenHuis Dutch caramel bonbons. Yes, our bonbons are better, but superficially the product description is the same for either product: “creamy, European-style caramel filling coated in dark chocolate.” Well, maybe the Cara-mello is coated in milk chocolate.

After about twenty minutes, the three of us had caught up with the rush, and I was able to talk to the girls for a few minutes.

“How was the movie?”

They looked at each other, but neither answered.

“Yesterday,” I said. “I ran into Will, Brenda, and he said you all were going into Holland to a movie. What did you see?”

“We didn't go,” Brenda said. “We changed our minds.”

Tracy couldn't stand it any longer. She blurted out what she knew. “They stayed home and had a big fight!”

“Oh, gee!” I said. “I'm sorry to hear that. Fights are never fun.”

I looked closely at Brenda. She didn't seem distraught. In fact, her mouth had a grim appearance that looked more angry than upset.

Throughout the summer's troubles with Will, I'd tried hard to keep from telling Brenda what to do about them. I tried to keep from even hinting at how she should handle her problems with Will. For one thing, I'm not her mother. For another, telling kids how to handle their romances sensibly is almost certain to cause them to do the opposite of what you suggest—in other words, to handle them stupidly. It's a no-win situation, and I wanted to stay out of it.

So I didn't say anything else. Instead, I went into my office and sat at my desk. To my surprise Brenda followed me, closing the door behind her. So she apparently wanted to talk to me.

When she spoke, she kept her voice low, and I concluded that she still hadn't confided in Tracy. “It's this Marco Spear thing again. Will keeps nagging me about it.”

“I'm sorry to hear that!”

“I'm getting really tired of it.” She leaned over my desk and spoke firmly. “And I'm not planning to marry someone who can't take a joke. No matter how sexy he is.”

She gave a firm nod, straightened up, and went back into the retail shop.

So there.

She still hadn't asked my advice. Good.

I tried to do my own work, but I couldn't help keeping an eye on Tracy. My dad, a small-town Texas mechanic, would have said she was “about to bust a gut.” She was so curious about what Brenda had told me that she could hardly keep from jumping up and down and screaming.

Twice she made some excuse to come into the office and talk to me about nothing. When she spoke to Brenda, she was obviously trying to pretend nothing was wrong. I concluded that she had quizzed Brenda earlier and had been refused information. Tracy didn't act angry; after all, she couldn't admit to being mad at Brenda for refusing to share her personal business.

At least Tracy's reaction was funny. I wasn't surprised when she came into my office a third time. I looked up as she came in, wondering what her excuse was now. To my surprise Tracy offered me an envelope.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “This fell out of the door when we opened up at twelve. I forgot all about it.”

At first I thought she was handing me a piece of trash. It was a preprinted envelope, a little bigger than six inches by three inches. It had probably come from some publication. It was the sort of envelope, usually begging me to subscribe, that annoys me by falling out when I try to read a magazine.

Not only was it a common, usually useless item, but it was also dirty. It was smudged with actual dirt, plus someone had scribbled all over the front of it with a marking pen.

In other words, it looked like a piece of trash. I'm sure I frowned at the sight.

“I nearly threw it out,” Tracy said. “Luckily, I looked at the back.”

I flipped the envelope over. It was sealed. And written across the flap was “Please deliver to Joe Woodyard.”

There was no name, street address, or box number for the sender, and the envelope had not been stamped.

When I looked at the front, I saw that the scribbling there wasn't purposeless. The original address had been crossed out, and the word “Over” had been scrawled across the bottom.

“This was stuck into the door?” I probably sounded as puzzled as I felt.

“Right. Brenda and I thought it was kind of peculiar.”

“I think you're right.”

Tracy's tone was eager. “Are you going to open it?”

“It's addressed to Joe. I'll take it to him.”

“It sure is weird.” Tracy went back to work.

“Weird” did seem to be the word for it. A hand-delivered message was unusual enough. And the makeshift envelope—that was strange, too. And for it to be delivered to my office, not to Joe's and not to our home—well, that was unexpected.

It was beyond weird. It was mysterious.

My mind immediately jumped to Hal and Jeremy—the two missing guys. And Hal had wanted to meet with Joe on a legal matter. Could this note be from Hal?

Heaven knows how I resisted the temptation to rip that envelope open.

Instead I picked up the telephone and called the boat shop.

Joe, darn him, wasn't there. So I called his cell phone. It was turned off.

Where could Joe be?

I reviewed the day's activities. We'd had brunch with Max Morgan, then talked with Byron Wendt about Jeremy.

Joe might think both conversations should be discussed with Hogan Jones.

I called the police station.

The phone was answered by the county dispatcher. It was Sunday, so all calls to the Warner Pier PD were being handled by the Warner County Sheriff's Office, thirty miles away.

I apologized for bothering the dispatcher and hung up. But I wasn't giving up. Next I tried Hogan's cell phone.

And I nearly fell out of my chair when Joe answered it.

“Joe? I thought I called Hogan.”

“He's busy. When he saw your number, he handed me the phone. What's up?”

“You got a strange message. In writing. Delivered to TenHuis Chocolade.”

“That is odd. Who's it from?”

“There's no return address.” I picked the envelope up and examined it again while I described it to Joe.

He answered with a noncommittal grunt.