Saltwater Secrets Read online

  Lopez: We didn’t want to cause a panic. The water has been tested, and it’s been confirmed that it’s safe for swimming. My office will always put the safety of this community ahead of all else.

  duPluie: How will the town pay for all of this?

  Lopez: Thanks to our conservative budgeting practices, we have money in reserve for such disasters. A good local government always plans ahead.

  He smiled and searched the small crowd as if looking for the TV camera or photographer for a photo op, but there was neither.

  Lopez: Speaking of local government, I have to get back to work. Thank you, Ms. duPluie and everyone at WLEO.

  duPluie: Oh no, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And also I want to compliment you about your office providing a hotel room for Meredith Maxwell’s fan club president, Cassandra Winterhalter. That’s very generous.

  Lopez: It’s important to the community that celebrities feel welcomed here in Whalehead. We want them to come back, right? So when Miss Winterhalter approached my office about finding accommodations when everything was sold out, we helped. I mean, without her, who will lead Maxwell’s local fans?

  duPluie: Too true, Mr. Mayor.

  Forty-Five Josie

  Boardwalk

  June 24 (Continued)

  Once the mayor was off the air and the crowd had dissipated, many of them jumping in line for the bungee, Stella and I approached him.

  He smiled when he saw us, like always. “Hi, girls. What are you up to today? Planning a bonfire for tonight?”

  “There’s a bonfire tonight?” Stella asked. “I hadn’t heard about it.” It was just like Stella to lose focus at the mention of a social opp. She was plagued with FOMO.

  “Not sure. I thought you guys did that most nights.”

  I said, “That was nice of you to get a hotel room for Meredith Maxwell’s number one fan.”

  He said, “When you’re the mayor, sometimes you can pull strings.”

  “Very cool.” Then I got us back on track. “We actually wanted to talk to you about something serious.”

  “Something serious?” He looked right at us. “What’s up?”

  “It’s related to the jellies, actually,” I said.

  “Okay… what is it?”

  “I—I mean, we—think that the jellies are being killed because their digestive systems can’t handle a certain chemical under the pier. And the same chemical is damaging the pylons. And damaged pylons won’t hold up the weight of all the people on the pier when they come to the Flying Fish concert.”

  Mayor Lopez pulled his sunglasses out of his front breast pocket and put them on. “I see,” he said. “Digestive systems. Chemicals. Pylons.” He seemed to think about this. “Any chance you girls have been talking to Rodney?”

  Stella and I looked at each other. I suddenly thought about the files we’d relied on for these theories. What if those were bogus or made up?

  “That’s what I thought.” He headed toward the boardwalk. “Look, girls, have you ever heard the expression ‘consider the source’? I think that applies here. Rod has a history of sending our law enforcement on wild-goose chases, and that’s a very inefficient way for me to manage our town.”

  “But—”

  He kept walking. “I really do have experts coming in. We’ll see what they say. Now I have to get to work.” Mayor Lopez sped up and started talking to a few other folks nearby. Clearly the conversation was over.

  I looked at Stella. “That didn’t go well.”

  “No,” she said as she watched something in the distance. “Plan B?”

  “What’s plan B?”

  She nodded toward Officer Booth, who was pouring sugar into his coffee.

  “Ugh. I don’t think so. He hates Dr. Rodney. What’s he gonna do?”

  “Booth’s a cop. He might be more likely to listen to evidence.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not like we have anything to lose. The worst that could happen is that he could laugh at us.”

  Stella said, “He probably will.”

  “Probably.”

  * * *

  I walked slowly on our approach, letting Stella be slightly in front of me.

  “Hey there, Officer Booth,” Stella said. “It’s a great day, isn’t it? No such thing as a bad day at the beach, that’s what I always say.”

  He didn’t smile or make any move to indicate that he was anything other than annoyed that we were interrupting his coffee.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “I’m kinda busy.”

  “We need help from an experienced investigator, like yourself.”

  “Is that so?” He blew steam off his coffee.

  “You see, we’ve been gathering some information about the pier, and it seems like the integrity of the pylons—”

  He chuckled. “Their integrity? Is that a word you found in your information?”

  As we’d suspected, he was laughing at us.

  “It is.” Stella remained cool. For now. It’s not like Stella to keep cool for long. “And it says that the pylons are wearing away and won’t be able to support the weight of all the people who will be on the pier for the Flying Fish concert.”

  He spit his hot coffee onto the ground and laughed out loud this time. “Sure it does.” When he saw that we weren’t laughing along, he looked at his watch and said, “Look, I got a lot going on today, girls.”

  I didn’t believe that. I figured what he had going on was coffee here on the pier, maybe a walk to Moe’s for another coffee, then back to the pier to finish his day with coffee. “Just listen to us,” Stella said. “Geez, this is real.”

  “It’s evidence,” I assured him.

  “And where did you get this evidence from?”

  Stella and I exchanged a look, because as soon as we told him it was Dr. Rodney’s research, he’d disregard its value.

  “Let me guess. You got it from a ramshackle shed. Probably it was papered with photos of flying saucers. Maybe a poster that says ‘The Truth Is Out There.’ Am I right?” He tipped the hot coffee into his mouth.

  “No.” I propped my hands on my hips. “As a matter of fact, you are wrong with a big, fat capital W.”

  Stella interrupted me. “Jo—”

  I ignored her, but not the fact of our role reversals. I was losing my cool, and Stella was trying to stop me. It’s probably not a bad thing that Stella and I rub off on each other, because I can be too timid, and she can be too aggressive.

  I said, “He’s a big Flying Fish fan, and he had posters of Meredith Maxwell in his bungalow—it’s not a shed.”

  Officer Booth swallowed the hot coffee too fast, because he clenched his neck like it hurt his throat. “You say he has pictures of Maxwell?” He set his coffee on the ledge of a whack-a-mole midway game.

  The worker said, “Dude, that’s gonna spill.”

  Booth glanced over the top of his aviator sunglasses, and whatever look he gave intimidated the worker enough for him to surrender with both hands.

  Booth pulled out his smartphone. While he tapped a message, he said, “I wouldn’t pay much attention to what Rod says.” Booth pointed to his head. “Fried. Too much sun and surf fried the guy’s brain.” He used his finger to stir his coffee, wincing at its heat, and licked it off quickly. “Why don’t you girls go build a sand castle, or chew gum, or something like normal kids do at the beach?”

  I fumed. “Jellies are DYING! And all these people”—I swung my arm around to highlight the tourists and workers on Murphy’s Pier—“are in danger, and they don’t even know it.” My voice got louder. “And you don’t care!”

  Booth slowly returned his phone to his pocket, straightened his posture, and took off his sunglasses. He bent down to be at our eye level. “Look, Josie Higley, I highly recommend you chill out.” Then he swung the darts over to Stella. “And you, Stella Higley, don’t get started. Get off this pier before I bring you two to the station for disturbing the peace. And if you don’t think I’ll do it, I dare you to test me. It w
ould be the highlight of my day.” He stood back up, returned his sunglasses to his face, and asked, “Clear?”

  Stella sucked in a breath like she was gonna shout at him, but I grabbed her forearm.

  Dodging eye contact, I mumbled, “Clear,” a beat before Stella did.

  Booth picked up his coffee and casually walked off.

  When he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear, I said to Stella, “One thing is clear.”

  “Totally. Let’s do it,” Stella said.

  Stella and I were on the same page for what felt like the first time this summer. In sync. And that felt good.

  Forty-Six Josie

  Police Station

  June 26 (Continued)

  “Before you tell me more about Booth, can you tell me what you thought of Meredith Maxwell’s number one fan?”

  “Cassandra? At that time I thought it was nice that Mayor Lopez was able to use his connections to get her a hotel room.” Later, I understood more about how a mayor pulling strings isn’t always a good thing, but I don’t want Detective Santoro to know about that.

  “Did you know where Booth was going?” Detective Santoro asks me.

  “No. But he was on a mission, so I assumed some kind of official police business.”

  “Did the pictures in Rodney’s bungalow concern you? The pics of Maxwell.”

  “I didn’t think twice about them. I just thought he liked the Flying Fish. Who doesn’t, right?”

  Detective Santoro turns back a page in his little flippy notebook. “What did you mean when you said one thing was clear?”

  I pick at my cuticle without answering.

  “What was clear, Josie?”

  I think I should be careful with this answer. Detective Santoro might be my dad’s fishing mate, but he’s also a law enforcement guy. So, essentially he and Booth and the mayor are all on the same team.

  “Josie? What was clear?”

  “That Booth and the mayor didn’t believe us.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “They weren’t going to help.” I stare at his unsmiling face. (Has this guy ever smiled in his life?) I glance at the dirty linoleum floor. “So, you see, we had to.”

  “Had to what?”

  I realize my fingers have turned white because I’m holding the table so hard. I stare deep into his chestnut-colored eyes. “Time was running out. We had to take matters into our own hands. Jellies were dying; people were in danger. We had no choice, Detective Santoro.”

  Forty-Seven Josie

  Boardwalk

  June 24 (Continued)

  We had a plan.

  First we wanted to shut down the incoming wattle berry supply, and to do that we had to learn more about the process that was going on at night.

  “How are we gonna do that?” I asked Stella.

  “A stakeout.”

  That night Stella and I returned to the boardwalk to spy on the Three Ts.

  Somehow their nightly kayaking trip put them in the middle of this. They probably had no idea that they were in cahoots with the scheme that had so many terrible downstream effects. If they did, they never would’ve been involved.

  The boardwalk was different after dark. The music from the merry-go-round was louder; the smell of burgers was stronger; exercisers were replaced by ice cream eaters. Couples strolled hand in hand on the boards and barefoot on the beach. The birds had gone to bed. One thing was the same. It was always in the background: the laughs and giggles of people on vacation. The good cheer floated through the air, and that’s what made the shore feel like the shore.

  I confirmed that we hadn’t forgotten anything. “Binoculars?” I asked Stella.

  She pulled them out of the backpack. “Check. Three pairs.”

  “Flashlight?”

  “Check.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “Check.”

  “Notebook and pen?”

  “Check and check.”

  Dario ran down the boardwalk, paper plate in his hand, catching the end of our list. “Funnel cake? Check. It would be inhumane to have a stakeout without it.” He broke off a piece of fried dough and ate it. “I’m pretty sure this is a doughnut in disguise. What’s the deal with jam filling anyway? It just ends up on your shirt. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a jam-filled doughnut and actually eaten the jam. It always lands on my shirt, but that doesn’t stop me from getting them. It’s like a challenge now. The cream filling isn’t as bad; it doesn’t move as fast on account of it being less slippery—”

  I broke off a piece of funnel cake while Stella rolled her eyes. She said, “Can we stick to the task here—stakeout, not doughnut wars?”

  Dario’s eyes bulged. “I love that idea. It could be like Game of Thrones with a whole army of doughnuts fighting an army of partially chewed zombie doughnuts. They would say, ‘Morning is coming,’ because people mostly eat doughnuts in the morning, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really make any sense, because it is, after all, a cake, so essentially a dessert food.” He pushed the record button on his phone to capture an audio memo. “Feature news segment idea: Why do people eat doughnuts for breakfast? Uh, scratch that. Make it, why don’t people eat doughnuts for dessert?”

  Stella said, “Stakeout. Focus. It will be midnight, and we’ll still be here talking about doughnuts. Don’t forget Dad wants us home before eleven.”

  I told Dario, “Doughnuts will have to wait.”

  “Fine.” Then he asked me, “How are we gonna do this?”

  Stella clicked an app on her phone. “This app tells me the location of all of my connections. See, it’s a dot with the person’s name under it. Since TJ and I are connected, as long as he has his phone on him, I can see where he is.” She watched a map of Whalehead open, and a dot blinked, indicating her position, and then other dots blinked, showing where her online friends were. There was one for me and one for Dario—right next to hers—and Angie’s dot was moving up Ocean Drive. Then we saw TJ’s. It was with Timmy’s and Tucker’s.

  “Are they night swimming?” Dario asked.

  “Nope,” Stella said. “Kayaking.”

  “Let’s get into position,” I said. Then I looked at the dots on my phone’s app. Stella and I had a lot of the same connections, except for one, because I had an extra dot. I hovered over it to see who it was. It was Laney, and she was nearby.

  I looked down the boardwalk and saw her in her Phillies baseball cap. She leaned on the railing between the Smoothie Factory and Kevin’s Fun House, the section that’s right above our secret spot with the kayak groove. She looked through a telescope, giving the appearance she was stargazing.

  Stella didn’t trust her, and I was beginning to think Stella’s instincts were right, because things were coming together for me about Laney. I remembered:

  the cap from Ocean Avenue the other night;

  the man from the Smoothie Factory who was on her phone;

  her pictures of the Koala.

  I didn’t know why, but she was also following the wattle berries. We walked down to the beach. We had to walk slow so Dario could keep up—he was challenged with balancing fried dough on a plate.

  “Here looks good,” Stella said. She dropped to her knees, lay on her belly, and took the binoculars out of the pack.

  Dario and I lay on either side of her.

  She handed a pair to me but hesitated to give a pair to Dario.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  She looked at his hands. “Sticky.”

  He set the paper plate on the sand in front of him, licked his hands, and wiped them on his butt. “Clean.”

  “Gross,” Stella said, but gave him the third pair anyway.

  I said, “You need to stop at one of your favorite soap spots later.”

  We glued the binoculars to our faces.

  Dario said, “Moe’s is in the lead, by the way. Theirs smells like cucumber ginger.”

  “Shh.” Stella stared through the binoculars. “They’r
e out there somewhere.”

  We were quiet for a quick wink while we all scanned the dark ocean.

  Then, out of the blue, from my left, a new voice said, “I love a good stakeout.”

  We three dropped our binoculars and looked at the sudden appearance of Apple lying next to us.

  “Hey,” she said. She broke off a piece of fried dough from the plate in front of her and chewed it. She opened her mouth and showed us the chewed-up food. “Hello, zombie funnel cake,” she said.

  Dario laughed. “Exactly.”

  “This reminds me of when I was at summer camp in Zimbabwe.”

  Dario asked, “You went to camp in Zimbabwe?”

  “Very exclusive. A place to learn the ancient art of Magoola-goo-goo. That’s a form of magic dating back to the dawn of man. It’s taught by a transcendental warrior king from the Neolithic era.”

  “How does this remind you of that?” I asked even though I doubted Apple had gone to these exotic places.

  “They have night. It gets dark, and there’s sand. And birds. Not gulls, of course, winged woolly mammoths that sound like gulls. We’d watch their synchronized flight with binoculars.”

  “Shh,” Stella said again. “We have serious work to do.” It always surprised me that Stella didn’t call Apple out about these far-fetched trips.

  I put the binoculars back to my face and studied the ocean.

  “Fine,” Apple said. She didn’t talk anymore, but she chewed with her mouth open. I swear I could smell the tuna she’d had earlier.

  “There,” Stella said. She pointed out farther than I’d been looking. “See the lights? It’s a boat. The kayaks are to the right of it. See it?”

  “Got it,” I said. People on the kayaks were taking bags from someone off the back of the boat.

  “I can’t see the person on the boat. But I think it’s a man,” Dario said.

  “For sure,” I said.

  A cloud covering the moon floated aside, providing some light, but by then the man had turned his back.

  “See the name of the boat?” Stella asked.

  “Yup.”