Hannah West: Sleuth in Training (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  “The problem is, you have no eye for fashion,” Lily said.

  “I think we have a bigger problem right now,” I said.

  “Celeste was so nice to give these to me,” Lily said.

  “She is actually pretty nice,” I said. “That’s why I feel bad for what we’re about to do.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “WHAT? WE’RE GOING to do nothing? That seems so boring. Especially coming from you,” Lily said. I’d filled her in on my plan while we washed Mango off in the shower. Now Lily was pivoting in half circles, admiring her new high-heeled sandals in front of the closet mirror upstairs in Jake’s bedroom loft.

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You see, if we stay inside here, we can watch all the action firsthand. I thought you’d like that.”

  “I don’t want to watch the action. I want to be on TV,” Lily said.

  “Really?” I used my best fake-astonishment voice. “Actually, Lily, nothing is brilliant.” I had to pause and think through what I’d said. I’m not often making philosophical proclamations like that. “What I mean is, doing nothing is brilliant. The more we know about the script, the characters, and how things work, the easier it will be for us to get Marcus Dartmouth, director, to put us on the show.”

  “Us? You want to be on Dockside Blues, too?”

  “You bet. I think they need some diversity on that show, based on all the white people we saw on the dock yesterday. Shhh! Someone’s coming. Darn. I guess we’re stuck here now.”

  “Darn,” Lily said, smiling.

  We crawled silently to the window, peering between two slats in the white blinds on the loft window. Two black-hooded shapes moved quickly along the dock, glancing behind them several times.

  “Hold on,” I whispered to Lily. I tiptoed down to my bedroom and grabbed my camera and an extra lens. Back upstairs, I put on the telephoto lens and wedged the long lens through the slats of the blinds and adjusted the focus until I could see the two faces crystal clear. Despite their melodramatic entrance and head movements, I knew they couldn’t be part of the TV show. Unless Marcus Dartmouth had decided to give his mother and stepfather a couple of stealthy roles and they were rehearsing before the film crew arrived.

  “What are they pouring out?” Lily whispered.

  I took a couple of photographs. “It’s not dead fish. Not even nondead fish,” I said, backing away from the window, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly sad. “I’m afraid it might be something to kill fish, though. Something toxic.”

  We had just witnessed Timothy and Stella Dartmouth walking along the outer edge of the dock, each shaking a plastic bucket so that a white powder spewed into the water. It looked like laundry detergent, but I had a feeling it wasn’t quite that simple. I hadn’t seen what they’d emptied into the lake from their boat the other night, but I bet it was the same substance. I couldn’t imagine what it was, but if we could figure that out, maybe we could figure out why the Dartmouths were pouring it into Lake Washington.

  “We need to get a sample of the water as soon as possible,” I said.

  “And then what, Captain Science? Do we run some of our genius scientific experiments in our basement laboratory? Oops. We forgot to make a secret laboratory in the basement. Double oops! The basement of this houseboat would be underwater and kind of wet.”

  “Shhh!” I said as I watched Stella and Timothy skulk away in their matching black, hooded rain gear. Someone should tell them that villains use black at night because it helps them blend in. Head-to-toe black clothing on a sunny Seattle day was hardly going with the flow in terms of wardrobe choice.

  Before I could even leave the loft window perch, another person came on the dock. Still not someone from Dockside Blues.

  “What’s she doing out here?” Lily whispered.

  Estie, the other houseboat house sitter, peered around the corner of the Morrisons’ cottage and then stepped out to the far side of the dock. She set down a fishing tackle box and swiftly plopped herself into a cross-legged sitting position. Then, just as quickly, she unfurled her legs, snapped the tackle box closed, and took refuge behind the gate at the Morrisons’ cottage.

  Alice Campbell came out on the dock, doing the same quiet walk and furtive glancing over her shoulder as the previous dockside visitors. She opened a thermal cooler bag and took out two jars. She took another look behind her and then began pouring something from one jar to the other. Then she dumped the mixture into the lake water. She took another jar out of the cooler and used it to scoop up some water. Then she took a fourth jar out of the cooler, unscrewed the top, and poured from this jar into the third jar. Alice closed all the jars, placed them carefully back in the black bag, and zipped the cooler shut.

  As soon as Alice left, Estie was back on the dock with her tackle box. Why in the world were all these people so interested in the water here? Were they messing it up or cleaning it up? And why all the scurrying?

  At that point, the setup crew arrived, and I suddenly understood why everyone was rushing around.

  “We shouldn’t have gone through the drive-thru at Starbucks,” a man said as he and another man rolled a cart of equipment onto the dock. “It always takes longer to go through the drive-thru than to go inside and wait in the line. It’s also a waste of gas.”

  As they approached, Estie hurriedly put her jars and bottles back in the tackle box.

  “No, no,” the second man said. “It wastes more gas to turn off the engine and restart it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way it could use more gas to go inside—”

  A clatter of glass interrupted their debate when they came upon Estie, who was holding the open tackle box by the handle, while the contents rolled along the dock.

  “Good thing nothing broke,” one of the men said. “Joshua and Marcus wouldn’t take too kindly to the dock being wet where it wasn’t wet yesterday.”

  I grimaced, noticing that Mango’s wet splashes were still visible on the dock.

  “Sorry!” Estie said, grabbing bottles and scooping them back in her box.

  “No harm done,” the taller guy said. “But everyone should be off the dock before Marcus gets here.”

  Estie smoothed down her hair with her right hand. “Are you expecting Marcus soon?”

  “Any minute. For some reason he wants to be here during setup today.”

  “I’ll get out of your way then,” Estie said.

  “You look familiar,” the other guy said. “Were you ever on Love Today? Not that I ever watched the daytime dramas.”

  “Ha! Anyone who says ‘daytime drama’ instead of ‘soap opera’ is definitely someone who watches them,” the first man said.

  The second guy shoved him a bit. “Nah. I didn’t watch them. I could have worked on them though, you know. Been on the crew or something.” They kept bickering as they started opening crates and unzipping black bags that protected equipment. Estie smiled and tossed her long dark hair over her right shoulder and walked back to her cottage, swishing her hips and holding the tackle box like it was a patent leather handbag.

  “Exit stage left,” Lily said as we watched Estie almost prance down the dock as if she were a model on a runway.

  Watching a crew set up for a television show is possibly the dullest thing imaginable. In fact, I don’t think it’s even imaginable. I have a pretty darn good imagination, and I am confident I can’t imagine something that dull. After ten minutes of absolute nothingness—just a lot of unloading of equipment and screwing poles together—we decided to take a silent-TV break. We watched an episode of Full House with the closed-captioning on. Twenty-eight minutes later—and the crew still wasn’t completely set up.

  “TV is boring,” I said.

  “Hey! Don’t make fun of Michelle and D.J. and Joey, and I won’t make fun of your Crime Channel addiction,” Lily said. Lily proudly claims to have watched Full House reruns every week since she was four years old and often talks about the Danny Tanner family as if they were her next-doo
r neighbors.

  “I meant that making a TV show is boring,” I explained. “The only thing possibly more boring is watching people make a TV show.”

  “Let me know when the good stuff starts,” Lily said, not taking her eyes off the TV screen as another episode of Full House started. I sighed and went back to scoping things out through my camera lens. I moved the lens down the dock until I settled on the golden, shiny head of Monica Heathcliff, the star of Dockside Blues, who was in a heated argument with another woman. Both women stood with their hands on their hips, occasionally pointing a hand at the other woman.

  I gently eased the window open a crack in the hope of hearing what they were talking about.

  “You need to keep your hands out of my business,” Monica said.

  “It’s all over now. They’re dead,” the other woman said, her voice loud and shrill.

  “They’re all dead, and there’s nothing you can do to bring them back, Celeste.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “CELESTE?” LILY ROLLED off the bed with a thud and crawled to our lookout spot.

  Unfortunately, her thudding upstairs disturbed Mango from his peaceful slumber downstairs.

  Mango’s barking was interrupted by Marcus Dartmouth shouting, “Cut! Cut! Who let a dog stay here during filming? Joshua? Where’s Celeste? Wasn’t she responsible for clearing everyone out?”

  “Oops,” Lily said. “I didn’t know they were filming yet. Wasn’t Monica just yelling at Celeste?”

  I sighed. A big, heavy sigh, as if to say, You have so much to learn. Then I said, “It appears that ‘Celeste’ is also the name of a character who was just doing a scene with Monica Heathcliff. A scene that you interrupted.”

  “Double oops. I thought there was something dead in the water again,” Lily replied, and I sighed again dramatically. Clearly Lily needed to watch different television shows to keep up with the real-life show going on below.

  “Okay, boy, let’s go face the music,” I said to Mango. He wagged his tail, excited to go outside.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Dartmouth, sir,” I said as I opened the front door to our cottage. Eight adults were looking directly at me, and not one of them looked happy.

  “Marcus! I am exhausted, and I have no patience for continually having to redo scenes out here.” Monica Heathcliff looked positively furious. “We need to wrap this up and get out of this waterlogged world and get back to L.A. I insist that you take care of things.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes and started barking orders for the crew as he walked away.

  “Don’t you walk away from me,” Monica shouted at him. “Come here! Now!”

  Hearing those three words, Mango’s ears perked up, and he lunged toward Monica.

  “Mango! No!” I cried. But it was too late. The dog bounded toward Monica. He’s sweet and smart, but he must have honed in on her last few words, thinking she was urgently commanding him to “come here, now.”

  I charged after him, and Monica threw her hands in the air and started to back away as Mango neared, then jumped up on her.

  “Mango! Down! Off! Off!” I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to say “down” to get off or “off” to get off. I grabbed him by his collar, but he got up on his hind legs again as if he were dancing with the actress. I had never seen Mango jump up on anyone like that—her hand movements must have been giving him some sort of “up” signal.

  Monica continued to stagger backward away from him, and I grabbed for his collar again, shouting, “Down, Mango, down!”

  And down he went—pushing the actress who, according to Lily, People magazine had recently named one of the Ten Hot New Stars to Watch, with him—and into the water. Unfortunately, my fingers had finally managed to hook his collar, so I went in, too.

  “Aaaaarrrgh! Help! Get me out of here! There were dead things in here yesterday!” Monica flailed her arms around, splashing water frantically.

  “Here, Miss Heathcliff,” I said, treading water. “Take my arm.” I bent my arm and held it out so she could steady herself. “Just take a couple strokes down here. There’s a ladder.” She came along with me, sputtering and spitting and crying all at the same time. Black globs of mascara ran down her cheeks. I guided her to the ladder and then backed up so she could get out first. She was practically hyperventilating she was crying so hard now. “Don’t look at me! Don’t anyone look at me! That awful dog! He attacked me for no reason!”

  “Sorry,” I squeaked. “I think he thought you were calling him.”

  As she climbed up the ladder, Monica bent her arm so that her elbow and forearm covered the top of her face. The TV people stood around gawking at her. Only Lily ventured forward, helping her up the ladder. Once Monica was all the way up on the dock, she took her arms and covered her chest. Celeste—the real Celeste—draped a huge blanket over Monica Heathcliff’s shoulders. Two other women guided her off the dock and to one of the trailers out on the street.

  Everything was eerily silent. I sensed that the entire cast and crew of Dockside Blues were holding their breath.

  Marcus Dartmouth’s laughter cut through the air like a gas-powered leaf blower roaring into action. “That was priceless! Did you get all of that, Roxy?”

  A woman peeked out from behind the camera. “Oh yeah. I got it, all right.”

  “I couldn’t have scripted this better myself. Celeste! I mean the real Celeste, the P.A. Celeste! Where are you?” Marcus demanded.

  Celeste stepped forward, looking as if she was going to barf.

  “Celeste, I want you to find out who owns this dog and get permission for him to join the cast of Dockside Blues. You! Up on the dock!” he said, motioning toward me.

  Being up on the dock getting chewed out by a TV director was the absolute last place I wanted to be.

  Until I turned around and saw the fish. The dead fish.

  And then the water was the absolute last place I wanted to be.

  “Mango! Let’s go, boy!” I said.

  CHAPTER 13

  “ICK! ICK, ICK, ICK!” I took six freestyle strokes to the ladder, keeping my head above water. I pulled myself up a couple of rungs, panting heavily. “Come on, Mango! Lily, help me get Mango out of the water! We need to get him out of the water!” I was panicking. If something killed fish, who knows what it could do to Mango. Or to me. Alice had been so adamant that we wash the dog if he got lake water on him. Why hadn’t she just told me what was wrong with the water?

  My heart seemed to lurch at the same time my brain was whizzing at full speed. Maybe Alice hadn’t told us anything specific because she was the one who was doing something weird to the water. No time to think about that. Mango and I had to get clean.

  One of the guys who’d unloaded the equipment earlier bent over and effortlessly hauled Mango up on the dock. “Back away!” I commanded. “He’s about to shake.” Amazingly, people did what I said. Everyone took a couple steps back, as if Mango was some kind of weapon that was going to explode. Mango started to do his predictable wet-dog shake to start getting the water off him.

  “There’s something wrong with the water here. I just saw dead fish. And Monica saw dead fish yesterday,” I explained. Mango sat down and looked at me with his head cocked. “It’s okay, boy. We’ll get you a bath.” I don’t know if it was my imagination, but he didn’t look too excited about the bath idea.

  “Well, I don’t see any dead fish,” Marcus proclaimed, having glanced over the side of the dock into the water.

  “Well, I did!” I said, trying to imitate his tone, with the emphasis on “I,” because I am just as important as he is.

  “You might think you saw dead fish, but it was probably just some plant floating by,” Marcus said.

  “Monica saw dead fish, too,” Lily said, handing a beach towel to me and wrapping a second towel around Mango.

  “Monica Heathcliff is an actress. An actress must act. That’s what she was doing yesterday—acting,” he said.

  No one seemed to challenge him o
n that one. No one was agreeing either.

  “I know what I saw,” I said, looking directly at Marcus. “There were dead fish in the water, and earlier I saw your parents—”

  “Aunt Alice,” Marcus said as he quickly turned away from me. “How delightful of you to stop by.” He said “aunt” like “aaaaahnt,” instead of like “ant.” It sounded phony. Then again, this is a guy who calls his mom “mum.”

  “I live here, Marcus. Or did you forget? I seem to be kicked out of my home while you work on this project of yours.” Alice Campbell turned from Marcus and looked directly at me. “Hannah, you need to get into a shower right away. Wash yourself first, and then you girls need to get Mango in the bathtub and give him a thorough shower, too. Here, I brought some special soap for you to use on him.”

  “Aunt Alice, we’re in the middle of something here. I’m sure the girl’s and the dog’s baths can wait,” Marcus said.

  “And I’m sure they can’t wait,” Alice said. “You should know that as well as I do.” They stared at each other.

  I looked from Marcus to Alice. Neither one said anything. Neither one flinched. I was certain that Alice believed something was in the water that wasn’t supposed to be there. Something that could kill fish.

  And now I had a feeling that Marcus knew, too. I had a feeling Marcus knew exactly what was going on.

  “Hannah, I encourage you to get cleaned up,” Alice urged me. “I can help you, if you’d like.”

  “No!” The thought of someone helping me get clean caused instant and thorough mortification. “I mean, no, thank you.”

  She smiled kindly. “I meant I could help you with Mango. But I know you’re an experienced dog washer. Just make sure you rinse him thoroughly. Try to rinse him twice as long as you think is necessary. And be sure to get his belly, his face, and his ears. Inside his ears as well.”

  Thirty minutes later and Lily was as wet as I was. Washing a dog Mango’s size is no easy matter, especially when the usually obedient dog was getting a little testy, seeing as how we were washing him even more thoroughly this time. Alice had me a little alarmed about what chemicals might be in the water at Portage Bay. And let’s not forget that I’d actually seen dead fish. Touched dead fish.