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
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
“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.”
