Whack A Mole jc-3 Read online

  “True….”

  “I don't have my own wheels.”

  “I see. What about your parents?”

  She doesn't answer that one.

  “It's totally easy to hitch.”

  “Totally dangerous, too.”

  She gives me a “whatever” rise and fall of the shoulders. “I'm careful. I never climb in with any, you know, raggedy-ass skeezers or anything.”

  She says this like I should be flattered.

  “Of course,” she adds, “I'm always willing to pay my way.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “Always.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “There's a couple totally happy truck drivers on the Turnpike right now.”

  “Hunh.”

  I'm focusing on the road but I can feel the heat radiating off her skin as she leans in closer. I smell strawberries again. It reminds me of that weird, day-glow-red stuff they pour on top of ice cream at Skipper Dipper for the folks who don't do hot fudge. Suddenly, a wet tongue is swirling around inside my ear.

  We swerve into the left lane.

  “Sorry,” I say, regaining control of my vehicle-if of nothing else.

  “You want to pull over and mess around some?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “We could party.”

  “I'm kind of late.”

  “For what?”

  “I'm meeting some friends.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “The Sand Bar. Burgers, beer, that kind of thing.”

  She moves back into her seat. Thinks for a minute.

  “I'm hungry,” she says. “I forgot to eat lunch.”

  I see my out.

  “Well, if you're planning on hitting the beach, you really need to wait until after you go swimming to eat.”

  Yes! This is what Saint Ceepak would do: he'd lecture this Nympho of the Highways about stomach cramps. He'd do his duty and obey the Scout Law: to help other people at all times; to keep himself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

  Morally straight.

  That's the part I need to concentrate on right now.

  “What's your name, anyway?” she asks.

  “Danny. Danny Boyle. How about you?”

  “Stacey.”

  “Stacey what?”

  “Just Stacey for now, okay?”

  “Sure. Stacey.”

  “A nice, cold brew would be totally awesome.”

  “Yes, it would. But are you anywhere even close to twenty-one?”

  She leans forward in her seat. I glance over just to make sure there's no tongue aiming at my ear.

  “Do I look twenty-one?”

  She looks like trouble, is what she looks like. I'm starting to wonder if I should take this girl back to the mainland. Maybe Avondale. Trenton. Edison. Sea Haven, after all, is the only Jersey township I'm sworn to protect.

  Instead, I make a right turn and we head to The Sand Bar.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Sand Bar is a vinyl-sided three-story building on the bay side of the island, with three levels of party decks under blue canopies out back.

  I figure I'll take Stacey inside and feed her-buy her a burger, maybe some curly fries-but no beer. Then I'll call Ceepak. Ask him what to do.

  After we're parked, Stacey reaches into the back to unzip her backpack and pull out “something a little nicer” to wear for dinner. Good thing, since she's dangerously close to violating the eatery's longstanding “NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE” edict in her bra-and-combat-shorts ensemble.

  “Where's my top?”

  Finding it seems to require wiggling her bottom a lot. I decide it's time for me to step away from the vehicle, as we say on the job.

  I check out the restaurant's upper deck, where my buds usually hang.

  Jess sees me, waves down.

  “Hey!” he hollers. “Where you been?”

  “Traffic.”

  “Too bad. Aubrey had to split. What took you so long?”

  As if on cue, Stacey climbs out of the car. She's wrapping on this prairie skirt and adjusting a turquoise tube top. It fits her like a sausage skin.

  Jess leans back and shoots me a double thumbs up.

  It's not what you think, I gesture.

  He gives me a sure, sure nod 'n' wink.

  As Stacey walks toward me, the tube top is straining to keep everything in place. I try not to pay attention to the struggle.

  “Where's the little girls’ room?” she asks, giving me a bored look. Now that we're here maybe she's thinking it's not her kind of scene.

  “Go to the bar and make a left.”

  She puts her hands on her hips, leans back, checks out the upper deck. “Those your friends?”

  I see that Olivia has joined Jess at the railing. They're both cradling longneck Buds. Watching us.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. I'll meet you guys upstairs.”

  “Where'd you find her?” Olivia asks.

  There's no bullshitting Olivia. She's way too smart. She's goes to med school up in New Brunswick and comes home in the summer to earn money for the stuff all her scholarships don't cover. And Olivia's pretty intense. I guess that's why she and Jess are such a good combo. He's totally mellow-works as a house painter when he's not too busy goofing off or surfing.

  “She was hitchhiking,” I say. “Causing a traffic jam near the causeway.”

  Jess nods. “So you took prudent police action, right?”

  “I figured I needed to take her someplace safe. Yes.”

  “Sure,” says Jess. “Someplace safe. Like a seaside bar. Good call. It's like a convent in here.”

  “This is only temporary,” I say. “I'm calling Ceepak. We'll try and find her a bed….”

  Jess raises an eyebrow.

  I fling an onion ring, nail him on the nose.

  Olivia shakes her head, takes a pull on her beer. Jess and I reach for the onion rings. We're all sharing a basket before we decide what we actually want to eat.

  “So,” she asks, “you think your friend got lost trying to find the bathroom?”

  I check my watch. She's right. Stacey should have joined us half a bottle ago.

  “I'll be back.” I head downstairs.

  The place is packed. Lots of guys and girls making a mosh pit around the bar. Lots of noise. Music. The bleeps and bloops of electronic pinball machines.

  I don't see Stacey.

  I check the hallway outside the restrooms.

  “Excuse me,” I shout to the girl at the head of the line. There's bass-thumping music blasting out of the concert-sized speakers suspended from the ceiling. “Are you waiting for a redhead to come out?”

  She looks puzzled.

  “What?”

  “The girl who's in there-is she a redhead?”

  “No. Blonde.” Now she grins. “You like redheads?” She steps into a dusty beam of light.

  She's a redhead. She's also extremely drunk.

  “I'm looking for my sister,” I lie.

  “Too bad.”

  The music breaks into a fuzz-box guitar solo that growls enough to cover my exit. I head back into the bar. No Stacey. Frustrated, I decide to head through the crowd and make my way outside.

  I see more people clustered just beyond the door, smoking cigarettes and laughing.

  Then I see my Jeep.

  Both doors are wide open.

  I hustle over. The Hello Kitty backpack is gone. The papers and crap I stow up under my sun visor are scattered all over the driver's seat. Looks like everything is still there except, of course, the twenty-dollar bill I keep hidden for emergencies.

  Next, I check the cup holder. My coins have been cleaned out, too. At least she left me my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee mug. At least I no longer have to search the yellow pages for the local Runaway Teen Shelter.

  My cell phone-which, thank God, I had tucked into my shorts before heading into The Sand Bar-chirps. I wonder if it's Stacey, Little Orange Robbing
Hood. I wonder if she found my number somehow, and is calling to laugh at me.

  I snap it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Danny?”

  It's Ceepak. I dial down my rage.

  “Hey. What's up?”

  “Are you busy?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  All of a sudden I hear this big “woof.”

  “What's that?” I ask.

  “Barkley,” says Ceepak.

  “You're still at the shelter?”

  “No. We're home.”

  Another woof. I guess it was inevitable. Ceepak adopted the prisoner.

  “It's all good, boy.” I hear Ceepak say, and suddenly Barkley is quiet. I think somebody just got another Pupperoni. Ceepak comes back on line. “Sorry about that.”

  “What's up?”

  “Danny, if it's convenient, can you meet me at Captain Pete's?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. Now. Say five, make that ten minutes?”

  “Sure. What's up?”

  “The captain went treasure hunting this afternoon.”

  “Oh. Did he find another old shoe?”

  “No. A charm bracelet.”

  I roll my eyes. I can't believe this. Ceepak wants me to spend my night off gawking at a charm bracelet?

  “Danny?” he says, as if he can read my mind over the telephone.

  “Yeah?”

  “It should prove extremely interesting. Pete found something else.”

  “What?”

  “A picture of the girl who lost it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I say my goodbyes to Jess and Olivia, snag one last onion ring, and walk the two blocks up Bayside Boulevard to Gardenia Street and Cap'n Pete's Pier House, where he keeps his boat and runs his charter business.

  It's not really a house. Looks more like a motel office straddling a dock. There's an ice machine out front, a picnic table, and a little sign detailing the daily tide table and Pete's hourly rates. There's also a wide breezeway along the side of the building that takes you out to the dock and the Reel Fun, Cap'n Pete's trusty sport-fishing vessel.

  The building's decorated with funny coconut pirate heads and party lights-brightly colored ones shaped like flamingos, tropical fish, and chili peppers-strung all over the place. Hanging near the front door he has one of those battery-powered parrot-in-a-cage things that flaps its wings and repeats whatever you say. Inside, there's a rubber Billy The Bigmouth Bass that sings “Take Me to the River.”

  You go fishing with Cap'n Pete, even if you don't come back with anything but a sunburn, you're guaranteed to have a good time.

  Looking around, I don't see Pete anywhere, so I go to the office and knock on the screen door.

  “Cap'n Pete?”

  No answer. I shield my eyes, peer inside.

  The singing fish plaque is hanging on the wall behind the little desk where you hand Pete your credit card or sign the clipboard with the liability waiver papers. Next to it is a framed photo of Pete's wife and kids and, next to that, one of his mother. When we were kids, we used to call his mom, Mrs. Molly Mullen, “Cap'n Hag.” Not to her face, of course. She used to run the office and hated kids. Thought we made everything we touched sticky. Yelled at us to wait outside while our parents went into the office to fork over their cash.

  We didn't mind. This meant we got to hang out on the dock with Pete, pick out our fishing rods, laugh at his goofy jokes and riddles. Guess the Cap'n got his funny genes from his father, because his mom sure didn't have any. Maybe that's why she left Pete's dad and moved to Sea Haven.

  Anyway, old Molly Mullen died about fifteen years ago, and Pete took over the whole operation. That's when all the decorations went up and children of all ages rejoiced.

  I knock again.

  “Yo! Cap'n Pete?”

  I move around the office, walk under the breezeway, and hit the dock. There's a plastic table out here where Pete cleans and guts fish for the folks who want to cook what they caught but prefer to see it looking like it does at the grocery store. But instead of Styrofoam and shrink-wrap, he tidies up their catch and presents it to them in newspaper. A pile of the Sea Haven Sandpaper, our local weekly, is stacked inside a milk crate.

  “Danny?”

  It's Cap'n Pete, behind me.

  “Hey!”

  “Johnny here?”

  “Not yet. But he called me, so I know he's on the way.”

  “You want a pop while we wait?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come on, laddie.”

  He unlocks the door. Inside his office, he keeps one of those old-fashioned Coke coolers, the kind with the thick aluminum sides where you lift open a lid and sink your arm into icy water to fish out your favorite kind of soda. Pete calls it “pop” because he and his mom moved down here from Chicago. Must be why he keeps the Mike Ditka mustache, too. I think when they first came to town, Mrs. Mullen hired a different captain every summer. When Pete hit eighteen, he took over the full-time skipper duties, even got the official yacht cap with the gold cord and life-preserver-plus-anchors patch.

  “Who wants a pop?” he says-and all of a sudden the parrot flaps its wings and shrieks, “Who wants a pop?” Pete must've flicked the plastic bird's switch before he came out back to find me.

  “Polly wants a pop!” he cracks, and the bird, of course, parrots it right back. Pete is chuckling so hard I think his baggy-butt jeans are going to slide down another inch.

  Ceepak pulls up to the pier on his sixteen-speed trail bike.

  “Evening, Captain.”

  “Evening, Johnny,” says Pete. Then the parrot flaps and says it: “Evening, Johnny.” It's getting pretty annoying. Danny wants Polly to stick a cracker in it.

  Fortunately, Pete decides it's time to flip the switch off.

  He unlocks the office door. “Come in and look at my pirate booty!”

  I fish a Stewart's Orange Cream soda out of the cooler. Ceepak passes.

  “You sure?”

  “No, thank you. I had a root beer earlier.”

  “With Rita?”

  “Roger that.”

  Pete is in the back room retrieving his find.

  “Give me a second, guys,” he calls out from behind the thick curtains, which look like old army blankets. “I put my little treasure in a shoebox. Now, I just have to remember where I put the shoebox!” More laughs. He cracks himself up sometimes.

  “Take your time,” says Ceepak.

  “So, where's Barkley?” I ask.

  “Sleeping on the sofa.”

  Suddenly, I want to tease him. I don't know why. Maybe it's an orange-pop-induced sugar rush. Maybe it's because my last female companion stole my emergency twenty. Whatever the reason, I'm in the mood to bust my partner's chops again, to give him a little grief about his girlfriend. Maybe it's because I don't have one myself.

  “So,” I say, knowing, of course, that John Ceepak cannot tell a lie, “is Rita up there with Barkley?”

  “10-4.”

  “Is she gonna spend the night with you guys?”

  Pete steps into the office with his shoebox.

  “Affirmative,” says Ceepak.

  Poor guy. He's blushing-but The Code won't let him fib, fudge, or weasel.

  “She's sleeping over two nights in a row? Awesome.” I flash a manly wink at Cap'n Pete.

  Pete doesn't wink back.

  He's grinning but I can tell it's a strain. In fact, he looks the way the old nun from elementary school used to look whenever she caught us upside down on the monkey bars practicing our swear words.

  “So,” I say, quickly changing the subject, “you found a charm bracelet, hunh?”

  “Yep,” says Pete. “I got lucky for a change. All it took was following in the footsteps of our able friend here. I went back to where you found that ring, Johnny.”

  “Oak Beach?”

  “Right. Figured it might not be a bad idea. Might be something else buried there. It was just a hunch-bu
t it paid off!”

  He puts the box on the desk and angles down a gooseneck lamp so we can better see his find.

  “I tried not to touch anything. Just like you said at the meeting. Pulled it out with hot dog tongs.”

  “Let's see,” says Ceepak. He snaps open the cargo pants pocket where he packs his tweezers.

  He snags the bracelet and holds it up under the light. The gold still sparkles in spots. Now he pulls out his photographer's bulb-brush. He keeps that one in his knee pocket. He gently dusts the charms.

  “A charm bracelet is like a piece of frozen-or, in this case, buried-history.”

  “We're all ears,” I tell him. Pete nods agreement.

  Ceepak pulls a magnifying glass out of yet another pocket. Clearing his throat, he begins. “The wearer went to the 1984 World Expo in New Orleans, Louisiana. Or else someone brought her back a souvenir.”

  “What else?” I ask. Come on-that one was pretty easy.

  Ceepak fingers another of the charms.

  “I also suspect this young lady was an Italian-American. She liked rock music and cats. And she either enjoyed going to church or someone encouraged her to do so.” Go, Sherlock.

  He shows us the little Fortuna, the curved goat-horn that Italians say wards off the evil eye. Next comes a tiny electric guitar, then two kittens in pounce poses, and a silver church with a steeple.

  “Mary,” says Cap'n Pete. “Her name was Mary!” He sounds like a gypsy reading Tarot cards.

  I point to the last charm, the one cut in the silhouetted shape of a girl's head. “Because that's what's engraved on the back side of that one, right?”

  Pete looks properly mysterious. For an instant.

  “That … and this.”

  He holds up the shoebox with both hands like he's the high priest in Raiders of the Lost Ark right before all hell breaks loose and the Nazis melt.

  “I told you I had her picture.”

  He turns over a plastic bag sitting in the bottom of the box to reveal a cutout panel from a wax-paper milk carton. It's one of those missing children mug shots. A teenage girl, seventeen or eighteen. I read her name: Mary Guarneri.

  “This was buried in the same spot as the bracelet,” he explains. “Look!” He points to the top edge of the cardboard.

  Embossed letters read AUG 12 85.

  I say what we all know: “The milk's expiration date.”