"What kind of full-time profession are you in?" Regina had asked him. I could sense by her voice she was frightened but doing her best to appear calm and collected.
"Well, it's um, I'm a uh—"
"Yes?"
"Let's just say I'm in advertising and leave it at that," the annoyingly effeminate voice replied.
"You're the dude who was leaving those nasty messages on Cooper Claypool's phone, aren't you?"
Silent pause. Reggie's voice is then heard again. "Call yourself Captain Hook, don't you? Does calling yourself that cartoonish name make you feel more intimidating? If so, it's not working. Very childish, if you ask me."
"Well, I, um, it's just that I, uh—"
"Spit it out, numb-nuts. I ain't got all day to talk to some idiot who showed up uninvited on my doorstep."
I was relieved to hear the fear in Reggie's voice disappear and an assertive, almost aggressive tone replace it. It's clear the guy she was speaking to was stymied by this sassy broad he'd encountered. It took him awhile to counter her jab.
"Listen up, sweetheart. I'm not Captain Hook. Captain Hook's a great big muscular guy. A body-builder, you know. Real scary dude. Eats guys like your husband for lunch."
There was no response from Reggie other than a scathing snicker, and the man began to sound desperate to convince her it wasn't he who left the messages. He was realistic enough to know his appearance made it evident that any eighty-year-old female librarian could take him out if she so chose and his wimpy physique wasn't going to induce anyone to cave in to his demands. "Captain Hook competes in cage-fighting on the weekends. You're surely familiar with those fights where the competitors beat each other half to death? Look at me. Now, do I look like the kind of guy who'd compete in something as barbaric as that?"
"Not at all. You look more like the kind of guy who'd aspire to be the hop-scotch champion on the neighborhood playground."
After I heard her response on the recording, I reached across the table with my hand up to give her a high-five. I couldn't recall the last time I'd been so proud of her. I enjoyed seeing her exhibit this seldom-revealed spunky side.
"Listen," the man said defensively. "You can think what you want about me. It's Captain Hook you should worry about. Unless, of course, you don't mind if your husband suffers a similar fate as his friend. Captain Hook shows no mercy to guys like those two. Nor does he go easy on the wives and children of men who won't pay him back the money he loaned them in good faith. You better see to it Claypool's debt is covered for Tiffany and Dusty's well-being, if nothing else."
"Oh, really?" It was clear by the cynicism in Reggie's voice she was not convinced this cage-fighting fiend existed.
"You better believe me, Regina. I work for the loan shark, all right, but more as a consultant. I am not the animal who left those messages, I assure you. That dude's a mean son-of-a—"
"Methinks thou dost protest too much." Reggie cut the man off, but not before I winced at the idea this creep not only knew my daughter's name, but my grandkids' names, as well. Watch it, girl, I thought. Don't let your mouth write checks your cheeky behind can't cash.
Milo had claimed Captain Hook had also mentioned all three names in his latest threatening voice message, which made me even more convinced Paulie Winterkorn was the man who'd made those calls.
Apparently, this guy was not in Reggie's college Shakespearian Literature class. In response to her "methinks" remark, he uttered, "Huh?"
"That's a line from—"
"Whatever. Just give Milo the message. 'I know exactly what happened to Cooper Claypool and he better be careful how he—'"
"Just give me the dude's number and I'll have Milo get in touch with him." Regina was clearly disgusted with the creep at this point. It was obvious she just wanted this slime-ball off her property as fast as possible.
"Milo doesn't need to get in touch with Captain Hook, or my boss. I can promise you, they'll be in touch with him if a cashier's check for seventy-five grand isn't delivered to this address in the next five days." This last remark was spoken in an intimidating tone. Regina told us he'd written down a P.O. box number in El Paso on a frozen burrito wrapper he'd pulled out of his back pocket and handed it to her. The last thing we heard before the recording ended was the slamming of the wooden front door.
* * *
Rip and Regina hashed over her encounter with the man I was sure was the Paulie Winterkorn who Royce had told me about. I sat back and took in the discussion without adding my input to their exchange.
"Can't we track the loan shark through the post office box?" Reggie asked her father.
"I doubt it, honey. These kinds of dude are pretty slick and know how to play the system. They operate on a need-to-know basis. The mail box was probably rented under an assumed name and is checked for mail about once a week by someone different every time before being closed after a month or two. Do you remember anything uniquely specific about this guy; identifying tattoos or other remarkable physical features?"
"Not really. Didn't notice any tattoos, but he did have an unusual odor. I recognized the scent but haven't been able to place it yet."
While the two chatted, I flitted around the kitchen, using a dishrag to wipe off a small coffee spill on the granite countertop, placing several dirty utensils in the dishwasher, wrapping a twist tie around the neck of a overflowing bag of trash and replacing the bag with a new one I'd found in the walk-in pantry. The fact the size of the kids' pantry exceeded the entire square footage of our trailer did not escape me.
I listened to Rip and Reggie's discourse with one ear while I listened for Milo to get home with the other. Reggie had said he was on the way home from his office.
When Milo finally walked into the kitchen, his first words were, "Anything to eat? I'm starving."
"That's it!" Reggie exclaimed. "The dude smelled like Canadian bacon."
"Canadian bacon?" Rip asked, as Milo simultaneously asked, "What dude?"
As Rip and Reggie were filling Milo in on what had occurred earlier, I was thinking to myself, Where does one usually find Canadian bacon? I can think of no more likely place than a pizza parlor.
Chapter 22
Milo had left his boat in the water after we'd handed over Cooper's body at the boat launch Sunday evening. While I had driven his truck and trailer home from the boat launch parking lot, he and Rip had taken the boat home and left it on the electronic lift attached to the kids' dock. There was also a Jet Ski lift, and I was a bit surprised Reggie hadn't made sure there was a brand new shiny Sea-Doo proudly displayed on it. I don't imagine either she or Milo would have used it very often. But, just adding the illusion of its owners being affluent would no doubt have served Regina's purpose in purchasing it.
I don't know from where she got this spend-thrift trait. Was it an act of rebellion from growing up with a mother who'd scour through Good Will stores and flea markets rather than buy her child a closet full of new school clothes every year? My reasoning was there seemed no point in spending a lot of money on clothes Reggie would outgrow within months anyway.
However, I do remember feeling bad—in fact remorseful enough to apologize the afternoon she'd exited the school bus sobbing uncontrollably. A boy one grade ahead of her had pointed at her attractive, but well-worn t-shirt in front of the entire class, and exclaimed, "Hey, that's one of my old shirts! My mom sold it in our garage sale last month for a dime!" I learned my lesson that day. Saving a buck here and there was not worth causing your child to be humiliated at school.
After that incident, I always bought Regina inexpensive, but brand new outfits she could wear unabashedly to school. Not an over-abundance of outfits, but an adequate supply. We weren't vagrants, after all, and I didn't want her classmates to treat her as if we were.
As I rested on a chaise lounge on the kids' back deck, I was surprised when Regina hollered out the kitchen window, "Mom! Let's go! The men are going to load the boat with everything we'll need while we're gone."
We took Regina's car to town and I had her drive by every dining establishment she could think of that offered pizza. We were looking for the faded green S-10 pickup. There were not many of them still on the road, so I figured it'd be easy to track down.
Regina could only think of a few places likely to serve pizza. There were no S-10 pickups in the parking lots of the first two restaurants, but parked next to a dumpster behind the third one, Pirate's Cove Pizza Parlor, was a vehicle matching the description. I was pretty certain it was the one we'd seen that morning pulling out of the kids' driveway. Regina recognized it immediately.
"That's it!" She exclaimed. I motioned for her to pull into the parking lot.
"Milo expressed the desire to squelch his hunger, and there's still plenty of daylight left. We all should get a bite to eat before we head out on what might well be a long day on the water. How does a Canadian bacon pizza sound?" I asked.
"Pizza sounds perfect, Mom! But make it pepperoni, please. I'm afraid I'll never be able to choke down Canadian bacon again without seeing that jerk's face in my mind."
We took a seat on a bench inside after we'd placed our order for an extra-large hand-tossed pepperoni pizza to go. When I spotted an older gal who pranced around as if she owned the place, I walked over to her and asked her if a Paulie Winterkorn was an employee there.
"Captain Hook?" She asked with an amused lilt to her voice. "Sure does. He's right up the street."
Puzzled, I followed her to the window next to the bench where Reggie still sat. The jovial lady pointed to an intersection almost a block further down Market Street. Pacing back and forth was a guy in a pirate costume depicting Captain James Bartholomew Hook, the Disney character who antagonized Peter Pan after Peter cut off his hand and fed it to the crocodiles. The costume, complete with a humongous fishing hook duck-taped to his left hand, and a toy-like steel sword in his other hand, was comical and had to be embarrassing for a grown man to be seen wearing. Just standing at an intersection wearing a pizza banner was degrading enough.
There were cardboard signs draped over Paulie's shoulders; one across his chest that read, "Ahoy there, Mates! Now serving lunch at Pirate's Cove," and another spanning his backside that read, "Offering large three-topping pizzas for only $10."
Laughing almost uncontrollably, I thanked the lady for pointing Paulie out to us. After she had returned to her station, I sat back down beside Reggie, who couldn't quite wrap her head around the fact the comically dressed guy on the corner was the same guy who'd threatened her husband on his own doorstep a couple of hours earlier. "If Cooper knew he'd been intimidated all that time by, well, that 'little weasel-faced dweeb' peddling pizza in a pirate costume, he'd turn over in his grave!"
I had to giggle along with Reggie at her remark. Our quiet giggling turned to out-right laughter again after I quipped, "Well, 'Captain Hook' might be all of that, but he did tell you he was in advertising, didn't he?"
* * *
The guys were sitting on the back deck with Miller Lite bottles in their hands. After I explained what we'd just discovered, we all went inside and polished off the pizza.
"You all ready to go?" Milo asked after Regina and I had cleared off the table and put the saucers and silverware in the dishwasher. I was delighted to see Milo acting almost giddy about our decision to try to locate the murder weapon. He'd told us he had several very possible locations to check out where we might just get lucky and stumble across Cooper's spear-gun. He said, "The Coast Guard and detectives probably searched all the standard places where most guys go spear-fishing, but Cooper, Pinto, and I had some great spots no one else seemed to know about, and like most fisherman, we kept their locations close to our vests. Of course, when we came in the other night it was almost dark, so we'll have to swing by the marina first to fill up."
Rip reached for his wallet instinctively.
* * *
If Earth spun as rapidly as the numbers on this gas pump dial, our planet would be flinging people off it right and left, I thought, watching the price increasing in leaps and bounds as Milo held the nozzle while filling the fuel tank. I was shocked, but pleased, he hadn't asked us to cover the cost this time. After all, it was his neck we were trying to drag off the chopping block.
"That comes to $98.27," the attendant said casually. Of course, the price sounded nominal to the attendant, no doubt. He probably filled up fuel tanks on the large yachts moored in the marina frequently and was accustomed to totals in the thousands, making our tab sound like chump change.
"Dang it!" Milo exclaimed, reaching into his back pocket.
"What?" Regina, Rip, and I asked in unison.
"I must have left my wallet at the house."
"Of course you did," Rip replied, without even trying to disguise the skepticism in his voice. He turned to give me a look of disbelief as he pulled his wallet out and extracted a credit card that was still warm to the touch from the scorching it had endured the last time Milo stopped for fuel.
Finally, we were underway. Rip sat silently for a good fifteen minutes, still simmering from being screwed over once again by his son-in-law. I leaned over and spoke quietly enough so Milo and Regina couldn't hear me, but loud enough for Rip to make out my words over the roaring of the motor. As usual, he wasn't wearing his hearing aids.
"Might as well let it go, dear. He admitted they were in financial trouble, and the cost of fuel and maintenance on a boat adds up quickly. We both wanted to come out today to look for the spear-gun, and renting a boat to take us out would have cost a great deal more than the fuel did." Under normal circumstances my ears would be emitting more steam than Rip's in a situation like this. But at that crucial stage in our investigation, I was intent on finding the spear-gun and needed Rip to be focused on the prize, as well.
He nodded reluctantly, but his mood lightened up and soon he was back in the moment, directing Milo to start at the most likely locations Cooper might have been fishing the Saturday morning of his death.
As we left Aransas Bay and sailed out into the Gulf, Milo said, "First I want to try the place where we had good luck the last two times we fished there. I know the detectives probably searched around every oil rig between here and Florida, but they may not have known about this other special place of ours. It's off a remote island, not much more than a decent-sized sand bar that has a small oyster reef on its east side."
About ten minutes later, Milo appeared startled as he pointed and exclaimed, "What the heck?"
With our older and less efficient eyes, Rip and I gazed in the direction Milo had indicated. When it became apparent neither of us could make out anything but a far-away apparition that could have been anything from a barge being propelled by a tug boat to a Styrofoam cooler that had flown off the deck of a boat while it was in motion, Milo elaborated, "There's a boat out there."
"Boat?" Rip asked.
"What boat?" I added.
Clearly exasperated, Milo raised his voice as if hearing loss was the reason we were stupefied. Of course, in Rip's case, it very well may have played a part. "The boat! Over by the shore line of that island."
"And?" Rip asked. I still couldn't make it out, and I doubt Rip could either. It was unclear to both of us why seeing a boat would have caused Milo's exclamation to begin with, so Rip added, "Is that a problem?"
"It's an oyster boat!" Milo replied, as if that would clear up our confusion about why the boat was even worthy of pointing out. But for me, anyway, it didn't clear up anything.
"Why wouldn't an oyster boat be a normal sighting over there? I can see a sandy island beyond the boat now. Isn't that the one you just mentioned with the oyster reef by it?" I asked.
"Yes, but the reef is nowhere near the size a commercial boat would harvest oysters from. Besides, the reef is right up by the shore, not accessible with an oyster boat to begin with."
"Okay," Rip responded, making it obvious he still had no clue either as to why Milo was so animated by the boat's presence.
"It looks like Pinto's boat." We had gotten a little closer to it by this stage, and Rip, who hadn't put off obtaining new eyeglasses because of the expense as I had, held his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun. He stared a few seconds longer, and agreed with Milo.
"Yes, I think you're right. It does look like his boat. I can almost make out the 'e' and 'm' at the end of the boat's name on the aft."
As the vessel in the distance rocked in the waves, Milo said, "Yes, I can read it clearly now. That's definitely Pinto's boat, but what worries me is that it looks like it might be adrift. Maybe not, though, because the direction of the wind has the boat at an angle that would block our view of the anchor rope if it's out."
"Can you call Pinto on your phone? Maybe he needs assistance," Rip asked. There was trepidation in both Milo and Rip's voices as they spoke. Were they thinking what I was thinking? Had the killer struck again? Had Philip Bean suffered the same fate as Cooper Claypool? Had he been on the killer's hit list too?
We hadn't had a cell phone long enough to know much about them. Teaching us about new-fangled electronics was a bit like trying to train a cat to shake hands and fetch Frisbees. I repeated Rip's question to Milo. "Can you call him?"
"I have no signal out here and I'm sure he doesn't either. But I might be able to contact him on the marine radio," Milo explained.
All this time, Regina had been sitting silently in one of the aft chairs located on each side of an aerated live well, which, according to Milo, was in need of repair. Reggie appeared more interested in acquiring a suntan than locating a weapon or identifying oyster boats. It became apparent the ramifications of another one of Milo's friends' boats being adrift at sea had not occurred to her when, without even opening her eyes, she asked, "Can somebody hand me a bottle of water out of the cooler?"
Rip Tide (A Ripple Effect Cozy Mystery, Book 2) Page 24
