The Mystery of Dolphin Inlet

by James Holding

  I laughed, too. “Fish is my business,” I said, “and I’m late to work. Treasure hunting is only a sideline with me. So I’ve got to go. Good-by, everybody.”

  They all said good-by.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said, and took off.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE CURED HAM

  When Mike Sebastien came to call on Gloria at nine that night, I learned a little more about the Dolphin Inlet mystery.

  Mike kissed Gloria and sat down at our kitchen table with a cup of hot coffee in front of him. Gloria, Pop and I took chairs at the table, too. Mike lit one of his brown paper cigarettes. And after the first flurry of talk about the day’s events had quieted, I came out with the big question.

  “Did Osgood and Harter kill Roscoe Chapin?” I asked Mike.

  Mike breathed rank smoke and nodded. “They admitted it,” he said. “On the advice of their lawyer—and once they’d learned that their treasure was safely deposited in a Sarta City bank vault waiting for the state’s appraisal—they were quite willing to talk. They killed Chapin accidentally, according to their story.”

  “What is their story?” Pop asked.

  “Osgood and Harter say they were heading home from Sarta City in their outboard. When they got to the entrance to Dolphin Inlet, a scuba diver suddenly came up in front of their boat. He had a speargun in his hand and the spear was pointing right at Osgood who was in the stern, running the boat. Osgood says he was sure the diver was Chapin, so he yelled to Harter on the forward thwart to duck down. At the same time, he tried to duck down flat in the boat himself. Unintentionally he jerked hard on the steering stick as he did so, and the boat swerved right into Chapin. Lying on the bottom of the boat, running blind, Osgood and Harter say they felt a bump. They ran on into the inlet, though, and didn’t realize until they heard it on the radio this morning that they’d done for Chapin.”

  I said, “Why were they so terrified when Chapin surfaced near them? Maybe his air tanks were empty and he had to come up to breathe.”

  “Perry thought he was aiming to kill him, as he’d threatened to do in the note.”

  “So Chapin wrote the note?”

  “Sure. That bit about the ‘cured ham’ meant Chapin would cure Perry the way he cured Hamilton if they didn’t cut him in on their treasure. Kill him.”

  Mike took a sip of his coffee. I said, “Why were Osgood and Harter fixing to run away from the inlet this morning if they knew Chapin was dead and couldn’t bother them anymore?”

  “They were scared. They had killed him, even if only accidentally. And they had good motives for his murder. So they panicked. They decided to take their treasure and clear out. Only you and Susan and that airplane all showed up at the wrong minute to dirty up their nice clean escape.” Pop knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Pete says Chapin killed Ham Osgood in Spain. What for?”

  “Because Hamilton Osgood wouldn’t cut him in on the Osgood treasure. It seems that Perry and Hamilton used to prospect for Spanish gold in a half-hearted way around Florida. Took several trips to the east coast to look around after the news of the treasure ship strikes came out. They didn’t find anything of course. Couple of amateurs. Then their father died and left them a few bucks. They used the money to go to Spain and search historical archives there for clues to Spanish treasure ships that had sunk in Florida waters. And in a Madrid library one day, they came across a dusty old letter written by a survivor of a treasure ship that had been sunk off Florida’s west coast at a spot that sounded a lot like their own Perdido Key!

  “Well, they were on top of the world, Perry says. At last they had a bona fide clue to a possible treasure. But their money was about gone. So they had to find financing before they could search for it.”

  Pop nodded and said, “Harter.”

  “That’s right.” Mike looked at Pop with respect. “Harter was staying at the same hotel. A retired army engineer with a pension, no ties, some knowledge of salvage, and an adventurous bent. The Osgoods had grown to like him. So they offered him a third of any treasure they recovered if he’d pay the freight for the recovery. He jumped at it.”

  “Where’d they meet Chapin?” I asked.

  “He was staying at the same hotel, too. Another American treasure-hunter, looking for clues to sunken loot in Spain, just like the Osgoods. Only the Osgoods found one and he didn’t. Hamilton Osgood foolishly boasted to him about their find. Spoke of it as a sure-fire thing. Chapin tried to cut himself in on the deal immediately. Ham refused, of course. And in the quarrel that followed, Chapin hit Ham Osgood on the head with a bottle of wine and killed him…and then got clean away and disappeared.”

  I was beginning to see the pattern now. I said, “Then Mr. Harter came home to Perdido Key with Perry Osgood and they bought the place at Dolphin Inlet to be near the treasure site.”

  “Right. Except they didn’t buy the property at the inlet until they’d actually located the treasure ship by exploratory dives. Then Perry fronted for Harter and bought everything in the name of Osgood—property, boats and diving gear—although it was Harter’s dough that paid for it all.”

  “What was the idea of Harter pretending to be Ham Osgood?” Gloria asked.

  I answered that one myself. “So folks wouldn’t know there was a stranger living at Dolphin Inlet, and get curious about him. And maybe find out about the treasure.”

  Mike nodded. “They’d been diving almost a year at the inlet, undisturbed, before they got that note from Roscoe Chapin telling them that he’d found them. He followed them back to America, of course, when the heat of his Spanish killing died down, to get some of their treasure if he could. Or all of it, maybe.”

  I said, “Why’d he write the note? Why warn them he was around?”

  Mike shrugged his wide shoulders. “Who knows? To scare them into panic action of some kind, maybe, which would reveal the treasure site to him, the hiding place of the recovered loot, or even abandon everything to him by running away. That’s what Perry thinks. Chapin said he’d hired spies to watch them, but he obviously didn’t. He watched them himself. He took a room at the Freebooter as his base for spying operations at Dolphin Inlet. From there, he spies on Osgood and Harter diving; he locates the position of the wreck and their treasure cache; he roves around in the woods at night, checking on how much loot they’ve brought up each day; he even does a little scuba diving himself when Osgood and Harter are out of the way, probably to check on how much treasure might still be in the wreck, so he can decide when to raid the cache and get the maximum loot.”

  “That’s how come Susan and I met him in the woods. And I met him underwater. But why would he shoot at me?” I asked.

  “That’s easy to figure now,” Mike answered, “knowing what we do. Look, Chapin had already found some nosy strangers snooping around in the inlet woods at night, close to the treasure cache. In fact, he’s even been chased by them. Now, all of a sudden, during a nice quiet dive under Dolphin Inlet when he knows Osgood and Harter are away from home, he runs into a strange diver down there, too close to the site of the sunken hulk to be accidental. So he deliberately tries to kill you, Pete. To eliminate another obvious competitor for the treasure. He’s already killed Ham Osgood. And the second time around, murder comes easier, they tell me.”

  I shivered, remembering that touch of the spear point on my thigh. It could have been through my heart.

  Mike put out his cigarette and finished his coffee. “I guess that covers the main points of Perry Osgood’s story,” he said.

  Everybody was quiet for a few seconds. Then I said, “Do you believe their story, Mike? Are they telling the truth, Osgood and Harter?”

  Mike grinned at me. “How do I know?” he said. “The part about Ham Osgood’s murder in Spain is true. We’ve already checked with the Madrid police by telephone and they confirm it. In Chapin’s death, though, they may only be guilty of
involuntary manslaughter as they claim, or they may have deliberately murdered him in cold blood. They’re certainly guilty of attempted kidnapping if Susan’s family wants to charge them with it. But I’m just a small town cop. All I do is catch people who are suspected of breaking the law. Somebody else has to decide whether they’re guilty or not, thank goodness.”

  “What I want to know,” said Gloria, “is who the treasure belongs to after all this?”

  “I guess it still belongs to Osgood and Harter,” Mike said, “license or no license, involuntary manslaughter or deliberate murder. They discovered it and they brought it up. So it belongs to them. All except what the state will take now, thanks to you, Pete.”

  “Has anybody told Susan about all this yet?” I asked Mike.

  He winked at me. “I thought you might want to tell her yourself.”

  I went into the living room to telephone Susan.

  CHAPTER 20

  SOUVENIRS

  That was Thursday night. One of Pop’s crew reported sick at midnight and I had to take his place on Pop’s boat. I spent the next forty-eight hours either out on the Gulf or grabbing what sleep I could between fishing trips.

  I felt sort of restless and let down. Not that things were dull on Pop’s boat. Once, in about twelve feet of water, we got into a school of kingfish, small ones, and we landed half a boat-load before they left us. And out near channel marker No. 69, trolling with a hand rig while Pop was hunting fish, I hooked into a thirty pound cobia that took me twenty minutes to land and made my arms feel like pieces of limp spaghetti by the time I got him to gaff. When I wasn’t fishing, sleeping, or helping the crew with the nets, I spent my time thinking of Susan and whittling on a piece of driftwood.

  I didn’t get back to my regular spot in the fish market, cleaning and filleting, until Saturday morning—the day Susan and her folks were leaving for Tallahassee. Susan had promised she’d stop and say good-by before they took off.

  It was ten o’clock on the button when she arrived. I heard an auto horn let go outside, and Gloria said, “That’s them, Pete! Go on out.”

  I went out. It was Susan’s car, all right. I walked over to it, and leaned on the front door by the driver’s side. Mr. Frost was driving. I hadn’t seen him since we found the treasure cache. “Hi, Pete,” he said to me. He sounded very friendly. “We wanted to say good-by and thank you again. We’re on our way. Mr. Simons and Professor Harris will be around for a while until the treasure business is settled, but I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “I’m glad you stopped,” I said. “I wanted to apologize for getting Susan involved in such a mess…”

  Mrs. Frost leaned across her husband and held out her hand. I shook it. “Don’t be silly, Pete,” she said. “Susan is just as much to blame as you.”

  Susan was in the back seat. She laughed and handed me out a stretched canvas through the window of the car. “Here’s a present for you, Pete,” she said. “I did it while you were out fishing the last couple of days.”

  I held it up and took a look at it. It was an oil painting of Dolphin Point, based on one of Susan’s sketches, with the Osgoods’ dilapidated shack in the foreground, vaguely seen through the stand of slash pines above the anchorage. “Say!” I said with real admiration. “This is great, Susan!”

  She jumped out of the car. “Bring it inside, Pete,” she commanded. “I want to see how it looks over your cleaning tubs.” She dashed into the fish market. I followed her in, lugging the painting.

  Gloria was alone in the shop. As I came through the door she was saying to Susan, “Come back again, and I’ll personally guarantee that my baby brother won’t be a nuisance to you the next time!”

  Susan said, “Pete hasn’t been a nuisance! This is the best vacation I ever had.”

  I said, “Look what Susan painted for me, Gloria—Dolphin Point.” I turned to Susan. “I’m certainly not going to hang it over the fish tubs!”

  Susan’s laugh came quickly. “Hang it wherever you want, Pete. It’s yours.”

  I put down the painting and got out of my pocket the little piece of carved driftwood I’d fashioned on Pop’s boat during odd minutes. It was a dolphin about two inches long, with a sharp dorsal fin shaped like the point at Dolphin Inlet, and a flat place on the back to mount a pin on. “I guess we both had the same idea,” I said, and handed it to Susan. She turned it this way and that, examining it. At last she said, “Why, Pete, I didn’t know you were a sculptor. Did you carve this?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “with a fish knife.”

  “For me? Is this flat place to mount a pin on?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Susan closed her hand on the dolphin carving. “Thank you very much. For this…and everything.”

  Without any warning at all, Susan reached up and pulled my head down with her hands and kissed me. “Good-by, Pete,” she said.

  I heard her footsteps going down the front steps. A starter whirred and a motor roared outside. Then the sound of her car retreated down our sandy lane.

  I sneaked a sidelong look at Gloria. She said softly, “What’s the matter with you, Pete? You just stood there like a wooden Indian when she kissed you. Why didn’t you kiss her back?”

  I was wondering the same thing myself. But it was none of Gloria’s business. I said, “You take care of your kissing, Gloria, and I’ll take care of mine.”

  I went over to the cleaning table and picked up my knife and started on a Spanish mackerel for Mrs. Corwin’s Saturday morning order.

  All of a sudden I felt like a million dollars. I started to whistle.

  It wasn’t until an hour later that I began to worry about whether I’d smelled of fish when Susan kissed me good-by.