A Treacherous Tide Read online

  Chuck had mentioned that her dad had started Chuck’s Poker Club. When I took a closer look at the photos covering the cluttered walls, I noticed he was in a lot of them, usually grinning with his arm around one of his customers. With their matching big brown eyes, the resemblance between Chucks Senior and Junior was impossible to miss, especially in the older photos higher up on the wall, which must have been taken when Chuck Senior was around his daughter’s current age.

  I was checking out the pictures, only half paying attention while my brain searched for answers, when I noticed one photo near the ceiling at the far end of the bar. But it wasn’t Chuck Senior or the customer he was smiling next to that caught my eye. It was the paddleboard hanging on the wall in the picture’s background.

  Chuck Senior hadn’t only been the first Chuck, he’d also been the first Lookout resident to have his board bitten by a shark.

  “Is that the board your dad was attacked on?” I asked, pointing up at the photo. I couldn’t make out much detail from my seat, but based on the chunk missing from the board in the photo, I had a hunch I knew the answer.

  Chuck seemed confused by my question, but then she followed my finger and smiled affectionately. “Sure is. My dad loved that thing. He probably told the story a thousand times.”

  Unlike EEE’s brightly painted blue-and-green board, this one had a plain off-white finish. Apparently, Chuck Senior’s shark chomped down on the back of his board too. That wasn’t surprising. Like Cap had said, large sharks are often ambush hunters.

  “That picture looks like it was taken right here in the bar,” Joe observed, shifting his gaze from the photo to the board-less wall behind Chuck Junior. “How come the board’s not hanging up anymore? Seems like it would be a big crowd pleaser.”

  Chuck winced as if the question had made her uncomfortable.

  “Well, it used to be… but I kind of lost it in a poker game a few years back.” She looked up guiltily at her dad’s picture. “Sorry, Pop. I had kings over tens, and I was sure Boothby was bluffing.”

  “You lost your dad’s paddleboard to Mayor Boothby?” Joe blurted before I had a chance.

  “He was just Councilman Boothby when it happened, but yeah. The pompous clown always was lucky at cards. He had four queens. I’m still not convinced he didn’t cheat.”

  I was a lot less concerned with her hand than with the guy who won that pot. Boothby was the person who probably benefited most from Lookout’s recent shark frenzy. The same guy who had just used a shark-bitten paddleboard to justify a politically motivated shark hunt also just happened to be the owner of the only other shark-bitten paddleboard in the town’s history? Chuck had said the guy was lucky, but how many odds could one opportunistic political vulture defy? Or was somebody stacking the deck?

  I stared at the tiny bitten board in the background of Chuck Senior’s picture. Sure, bites to the rear of a board aren’t unusual for attacks when they do happen, and this one was a totally different color from the fancily painted one EEE had been riding, but still—

  I hopped out of my seat and onto the bar.

  “Hey! Get off there! I just cleaned that!” Chuck yelled as I reached up to pull down the photograph.

  The paddleboard was out of focus, but the similarity between the two bites was eerie. I wasn’t an expert on stand-up boards, but like Trip’s, Chuck Senior’s board was an older vintage model that looked a little different from the ones they rented on the beach nowadays. And the location of the bite… My detective senses were tingling, but I had to be sure.

  “Do you have plastic wrap and a pen or a Sharpie?” I asked, climbing down from the bar.

  “You’d better not plan on drawing all over my photo,” Chuck warned.

  “Good thinking, bro!” Joe said. “Not a mark, Chuck. We promise.”

  Chuck eyed us skeptically as she placed a roll of cling wrap and a fine-tipped marker on the bar in front of us. I tore off a piece of plastic, laid it over the glass frame, and then carefully traced the outline of the board, bite mark included. While I did that, Joe pulled up a picture on his phone from one of the news websites showing the board that had washed up yesterday. I peeled the plastic wrap with the board’s outline off the photograph and laid it over the screen of Joe’s phone. Joe took over the operation, using his fingers to zoom in on the board until the picture was the same size as the outline I’d traced.

  They weren’t just the same size and shape, though. The bite marks on the board Dougie found yesterday lined up identically with the one Chuck’s dad had been attacked on thirty years before.

  “Whoa, that’s either an uncanny coincidence…” Chuck trailed off as she tried to process what she was seeing.

  But I’d already come to the same conclusion. “Or that’s the same board!”

  10 FRAMED

  JOE

  THE SHARK WAS FRAMED!” I shouted.

  Frank looked up from the perfectly aligned paddleboards on the screen of my phone. “The Shark Lab break-in today wasn’t just about shark-hating vandals causing trouble. Whoever stole that paddleboard must have known what we’d discover if we had a chance to examine it closely enough.”

  “That it’s not Trip’s board,” I clarified. “It’s just been repainted to look like it. I don’t know where her real board is, but the one Dougie found isn’t it.” I looked up at Chuck. “The one that washed up yesterday is your dad’s.”

  “But if you’re right…,” Chuck said slowly.

  “The shark attack on Dr. Edwards was faked,” I finished.

  “Just like the shark fin we thought we saw right before she disappeared. Whoever blackmailed Shaggy into wearing the fake fin timed it precisely so everyone would assume it was the same shark that attacked her. It worked like a charm, too. Even before Dougie found the board, half the town was assuming the worst. Then when everyone saw what they thought was Trip’s board with a chunk torn out, it was the nail in the shark’s coffin,” Frank said.

  “Embedding a fresh tiger shark tooth in the bite mark to make it look new was a nice touch,” I added. Just thinking about it made me gnash my teeth. The perp had everyone believing tiger sharks were the monsters. The real monster was the person who might very well have sacrificed a protected shark so they could use its tooth to frame its brothers and sisters as bloodthirsty killers. We’d seen frame jobs before, but this one was even worse because the fall guys couldn’t speak up to defend themselves. “Whoever did this used Lookout’s biggest shark advocate to depict sharks as woman-eaters. It’s downright devious.”

  “But if it wasn’t a real shark attack, that means Trip could still be okay!” Chuck said.

  Frank looked less optimistic. “I sure hope so. At least we know she wasn’t eaten by a tiger shark. That doesn’t mean she isn’t still in danger, though.”

  “But if a shark didn’t get Trip, who did? And”—Chuck gulped—“what happened to her?”

  Frank and I had both heard Dr. Edwards scream out from the fog. The prospects didn’t seem good.

  “Whatever happened, I’m guessing it’s a human predator we’re looking for,” I said. “The coastline takes a blind curve once you get past the pier, so even without the fog to give them cover, it would have been possible for someone to grab her without being seen from the shore.”

  “Okay, so we know our perp has arms instead of fins, but we need to narrow the list of suspects down further,” Frank said. “By my count, there are two other people who we know for sure have recently come into contact with Chuck’s dad’s paddleboard. The guy who owns it—”

  “Mayor Boothby,” I spat.

  “And the guy who found it.”

  “You think Dougie had something to do with this?” Chuck waved the suggestion off. “He’s one of the sweetest guys around, and he’s known Trip forever.”

  “Dougie finding the board washed up on the beach doesn’t prove anything,” Frank said. “But combine that with the fact that he was the first one on the scene after the fake fin was spotted
, and the timing all starts to look suspicious.”

  “Isn’t he the one who wanted to go looking for Trip right away, though? Why would he want to help her if he was the one who hurt her?” I argued.

  “He could have been creating an alibi. We already know the perp had Shaggy doing their bidding. We don’t know how many other players they’ve involved. The question is, did Dougie have the lowdown on Shaggy’s poker losses so he could blackmail him?”

  Chuck sighed. “I can’t tell you if he’s a member of the club, but I will say that Dougie is a professional fisherman with his own small business.”

  “Thanks, Chuck,” I said. She’d told us earlier that the club included just about every business owner in town, so her hint was as good as a yes. Dougie had also said something when we first met about everyone having an open tab at Chuck’s. That made a lot more sense in light of the poker game.

  “I say we save Danger Dougie for later and go after the biggest fish first,” Frank suggested. “You already let the catfish out of the bag about Boothby being in on the poker games and him winning your dad’s board. He probably knows all about Shaggy’s gambling woes.”

  “Not to mention that his whole new campaign platform is based on everyone believing a shark attacked Trip,” I said.

  I’d originally pegged Mayor Boothby as an opportunist taking advantage of tragedy to help himself politically, but maybe I hadn’t given the guy enough credit. Maybe he hadn’t just taken advantage of it—maybe he’d masterminded it!

  Frank and I stepped out of Chuck’s Shuck Shack into a muggy, drizzly night. Wind whipped the palm trees, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Our destination: a houseboat docked at the far end of the marina, where Chuck told us the mayor lived. We didn’t bother to call ahead.

  “I’d have figured the mayor would live in a fancier place than this,” Frank said as we walked down the dock toward his floating front door.

  The boat was basically a one-story wooden rectangle in need of a paint job and at least one new window. Plywood covered the hole. The blinds were drawn on the others, though we could see the flicker of a TV, so we knew someone was home. The choppy water matched the dreary sky, and with a swift current tugging on the ropes mooring the houseboat to the dock, we watched our step climbing onto the deck at the houseboat’s stern. There were a couple of lounge chairs set up next to a charcoal grill and a pair of paddleboards strapped to the side of the main cabin, but these were newer models without bite marks.

  I knocked on the door. We heard the latch unlock a minute later. The door cracked open a sliver, and then Mayor Boothby’s face peered out from behind a security chain.

  “What’s all this about? Do you know what time it is?” He looked at us like he had trouble placing our faces. “You’re the boys who were hanging out at Chuck’s place the other night? The ones who mouthed off at my town meeting?”

  “That’s us. Frank and Joe Hardy, shark conservationist private detectives at your service,” said Frank.

  The mayor recoiled, which I’m pretty sure was what Frank had in mind. “Did you say ‘private detectives’? But you’re teenagers.”

  “Yup!” I said, giving him my best boyish grin. “We take on all kinds of cases. Stolen lunch money, missing kittens, conspiracy, fraud, blackmail, criminal malfeasance. You know, the normal kid stuff.”

  “And right now, we’re hot on the trail of a missing paddleboard and thought a civic-minded public servant like yourself might be interested in helping us find it,” Frank said.

  The mayor’s eyes widened. “Did you say ‘paddleboard’?”

  “This one’s just your average vintage model. Normal size. Used to be off-white, but someone painted it bright blue and green. Large shark-bite-shaped piece ripped out of the back. Nothing special. Have you seen it?”

  The door slammed in our faces. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! Go away!” Mayor Boothby shouted from the other side.

  “Sorry, mayor dude. Not gonna happen,” I called through the door. “You can either let us in to talk privately, or we can stand out here making a scene until your neighbors start dropping by to find out what all the fuss is about.”

  “I’m sure your voters would love to hear our theories about your involvement in another scandal,” Frank added.

  That did it. The chain unclicked, the door swung open, and the mayor waved us inside. He poked his head out to make sure no one was looking, before slamming the door again.

  “I’m quite sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’d be derelict in my duties as mayor if I allowed you to stand outside causing a public disturbance,” he said, smoothing his pajamas in an attempt to make himself look more formal. “Now go on with whatever you have to say so I can go on with my evening. I’m a very busy man, and I have important public policy documents to review before bed.”

  He saw me eyeing the game show playing on the TV behind him and quickly hurried over to turn it off.

  The inside of the houseboat was as ramshackle as the exterior. There was stuff everywhere, some of it tossed carelessly in piles, some of it neatly organized. From the looks of the broom leaning against the pile of garbage bags by the door, the mayor was in the middle of a much-needed cleanup.

  “So about that public policy,” Frank said.

  “And the dereliction of duty,” I threw in.

  “A source tells us you’re the proud owner of the last paddleboard to have a bite taken out of it by a shark thirty years ago,” Frank went on.

  “Oh, that’s what all this is about.” Boothby giggled nervously. “Why, yes, I used to own old Chuck’s paddleboard. It was given to me by his daughter—”

  “And by ‘given to,’ you mean you won it in an illegal poker game?” Frank put his hands on his hips.

  “The type of high-stakes game where an unscrupulous player might use another’s gambling habits to blackmail them into perpetrating hoaxes against an unsuspecting public?” I added with a smirk.

  Boothby’s face tightened and he forced an awkward smile. “Anyway, I used to own it, as I said, but it was stolen from my boat along with a number of other personal items during a break-in last week.” He pointed at the boarded-up window and gave an exasperated look around at the rest of the messy houseboat. “As you can see, I’m still cleaning up. The hooligans ransacked the entire place. I’m normally a very tidy person.”

  My instinct was to not trust a word Boothby said, but the state of the houseboat supported the burglary claim. The scene looked exactly like what he said it was—a neat person in the process of cleaning up a place someone else had torn apart. But if the mayor was telling the truth and the paddleboard really had been stolen, that put us right back at square one. If we were going to track down the perp who’d blackmailed Shaggy and staged the shark attack on EEE, we needed to know who had Chuck Senior’s paddleboard last.

  And I couldn’t help feeling there was something off about the mayor’s story. Just because he was telling the truth about one thing didn’t mean he wasn’t lying about plenty of other stuff. If we could turn up the heat a bit, he might let whatever he was trying to hide slip. Frank and I had Boothby on the hook. Now we just had to set the line.

  “There sure is an epidemic of shark-bitten paddleboard theft going around Lookout,” I remarked casually. “First, yours last week. Then another one with a bite in the exact same place was stolen from Shark Lab earlier today. That’s some coincidence. That makes the only two shark-bitten paddleboards in Lookout’s history both snatched in a week! Strange how that other board just happened to wash up onshore so soon after yours was stolen. Then it goes missing before anyone had a chance to examine it too closely.”

  Boothby tried hard to maintain his poker face, but I could see him squirming behind the forced smile.

  “And with you getting so much political leverage for your anti-shark initiative after Dr. Edwards’s disappearance at the same time too,” Frank persisted. “All because of a paddleboard with a shark bite just li
ke the one you say was stolen.”

  “I have no idea what you could possibly mean,” he said. “What happened is a terrible tragedy. Terrible. But I can’t even begin to image how the break-in here has anything to do with it. You know, I can’t say I ever looked at old Chuck’s board very closely. It was more of a conversation piece than anything else. Quite a different color, too, now that I think about it. No similarity at all, really.” The mayor nodded to himself, picking up more confidence in his story as he spoke. “And, of course, everyone saw the shark swimming around before the attack. Tragic, just tragic what that awful shark did, but out of anyone’s control, sadly. Why, it never occurred to me in a million years that someone might paint my board to look like Trip’s in order to stage an attack like that. The very idea is just preposterous. Now, if you’ll just—” Boothby paused when he saw our matching gotcha grins. “What?”

  “Who said anything about the attack being staged?” asked Frank, pinning the mayor with his gaze.

  “Y-you did?” the mayor asked hopefully, turning a shade paler.

  “Nope. We just said it was all very strange. You’re the one who suggested that someone painted your board to look like Trip’s.” I could see Boothby sweating now.

  “That’s not… But you… I didn’t… You… You’re putting words in my mouth!” The mayor’s fumbling was music to my ears—the sweet sound of a witness cracking.

  “It’s funny, but now that you mention the board being painted, we have photographic evidence that the attack was staged and your board was swapped out for Trip’s,” Frank said calmly.

  “You’re clearly making this all up to rattle me. No one would ever believe such a patently absurd claim,” Boothby sputtered.

  “Let’s see what your adoring public thinks when we call a press conference in front of town hall to announce our findings.” I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know who else was involved in this whole setup besides Shaggy, but we’ve got enough to implicate you in Councilwoman Edwards’s disappearance.”