Whack A Mole

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-but 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.”