by Lisa Doan
The engines roared on and the captain began to edge the boat away from the dock.
The men in suits reached the end of the pier. They were close enough that Charlie could see their faces. The tall one was consumed with fury, the shorter one had descended into madness. He threw his briefcase on the ground and then stomped on it for good measure.
The Aladdin’s Dream edged out a few more feet. The tall one shouted, “That’s it! I have had it!” He dropped his briefcase and ran back down the dock. Then he turned around and took off at a sprint toward the boat.
Charlie grabbed Gunter’s arm. “He’s going to try to jump.” Charlie and Gunter picked up deck chairs, ready to use them as weapons.
The man made a flying leap. He smashed into the side of the boat and slid down into the water, like Wile E. Coyote failing to make it across a canyon.
Charlie and Gunter dropped the chairs, ran to the railing, and looked over the side.
As the boat drifted farther away, the man flailed in the water, his nose bleeding.
“Wow, he looks mad,” Gunter said.
The man’s partner threw him a rope and began hauling him back to shore as the boat turned toward open sea.
Charlie heard the adults chattering behind them. What is going on? Why did that man just fling himself into the water? Why didn’t we pick him up? Why are we leaving so soon?
Various theories were floated, including another military coup, or skipping out on the bill at the conch farm.
Captain Wisner hit the throttle, and they went full speed ahead out of the marina.
Gunter said, “What do you suppose the captain will say now that everybody has seen those guys?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But something about this doesn’t add up. Why didn’t they shoot at us? Don’t they have guns in those briefcases?”
“Too many witnesses,” Gunter said. “What would be the chances of them hitting all of us, plus James and his friend the pastor?”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “Or maybe the crime boss gave them specific instructions. Maybe they’re supposed to put cement boots on the captain and throw him overboard. You know, to send a message.”
“Send a message to who?” Gunter asked.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I think it’s just something they do, like, ‘look what happened to the guy who crossed us.’
“Oh, right.”
“Folks!” the loudspeaker blared. “My apologies for the rushed departure from the Turks and Caicos! Once again, it seems our own Olive-tsunami has stirred things up. Claiming to be a witch is frowned upon here. Would Wisney Cruises allow a beloved child to go to jail? And as far-fetched as it seems, she is probably beloved by somebody. When I think jail, I think no, sir, not my witch and not on my watch.”
“Jail?” Charlie said.
“Yes, folks, when I see a conch farm tour guide, a religious-type fellow, and two executives from the ministry of culture, I think jail time for whoever insulted the country’s dignity. Your bigger cruise lines might allow a six-year-old to waste away in the slammer, but I won’t have it. Sit back and enjoy the sunshine, folks, secure in the knowledge that imprisonment is out and sun and fun are in. We barrel straight ahead to our next destination, which will be … our next port.”
Jimmy Jenkins’s parents debated what Olive could have done to merit jail time. His father did not believe that a six-year-old could commit a serious crime. Mrs. Jenkins was firm in her opinion that you couldn’t put anything past Olive Pennypacker. As Charlie had seen no sign of his parents on deck, he assumed they remained down below with the now notorious Olive Pennypacker.
Charlie said, “The ministry of culture. He’s creative, I’ll give him that.”
“He doesn’t even know where we’re going,” Gunter said.
“That’s the last straw,” Charlie said. “If there is any strategy to get away from those guys, we have to know what the captain did in the first place. The only person who might be able to tell us anything is Cankelton. If it’s about money, maybe we can figure out how to raise it to settle the debt. We could do a GoFundMe page. I mean, it has to be money? Right?”
“It could have been anything,” Gunter said. “The captain might have bad-mouthed Italian Americans. My dad says bad things about Italian Americans all the time.”
“Your dad says bad things about all kinds of Americans all the time,” Charlie pointed out.
“There goes Cankelton,” Gunter said, pointing at the insect as he trudged toward the stairs.
“Let’s go,” Charlie said.
They casually strolled past Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, who had pulled the twins’ mom into a discussion of Olive Pennypacker. As it turned out, she had taken to calling Olive “Voldemort’s daughter.” Jimmy Jenkins kept tugging on his dad’s sleeve, saying, “This means I don’t have to marry her, right? Right? Dad, right?”
Cankelton had reached the bottom of the stairs, and instead of going left toward the cabins, he turned right toward the mess hall, or the stately dining room, as the captain liked to call it.
Charlie and Gunter ran down the stairs. Cankelton passed through a narrow door at the end of the corridor.
They raced to it and Charlie slowly turned the rusty handle. It made a rasping sound. He and Gunter froze, listening. There was no sound from the other side of the door. He gently pushed on it.
The door swung open with a squeaky whine into a long and dimly lit corridor. The air was cool and smelled like sea salt and Windex. Either side of the walkway was lined with deep shelves that ran floor to ceiling and had high sides so supplies wouldn’t fall out in rough seas. One side of the shelves was stocked with cleaning products, cans of paint, coiled rope, and marine equipment. The other side was filled with canned goods and a row of what appeared to be perfectly good boxes of cereal. At the end of the corridor, light seeped out from the sides of a badly fitted metal door.
Charlie tiptoed toward it with Gunter right behind him, breathing in his ear. He put one eye up to the crack.
The room was large, much bigger than his parents’ cabin. It appeared to have been decorated by a madman from the 1960s. A lava lamp cast shadows on the walls, which were covered with hand-painted signs. The lettering on the signs was expert, but they all said the same thing: SANCTUARY. There were no chairs, but large pillows were strewn on the lime-green shag carpet that covered the floor. Cankelton’s bed appeared to be a large black velvet couch. Cankelton was still in his insect costume, lounging on the couch.
Gunter leaned over his shoulder to look inside. “What the…?”
Cankelton sat up. “Who’s there?” he asked. “This is private quarters. Go away.”
Charlie pushed the door open. “It’s us, Cankelton. And we have a few questions for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cankelton jumped up from the couch and paced the room, the legs on his costume swinging in every direction. In between telling them to go away he accused them of mutiny, pretended to call the Coast Guard, and claimed the boat had sprung a leak and so they’d better go find life jackets. When those gambits didn’t pay off, he sneezed and swore he was coming down with the bubonic plague from a recent rat bite.
Charlie made himself comfortable on the velvet couch. “We want answers and we’ll stay here until we get them. We’re done messing around.”
“You can’t stay here!” Cankelton said, brushing his antennae away from his face. “This is my sanctuary.”
“I’ll say,” Gunter said, looking around at the signs covering the walls. “You’ve got quite the setup. What exactly do you do on this boat? Just hang out here all day?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Cankelton said.
“Absolutely not,” Charlie said, “as long as you don’t mind having us around.”
Cankelton wrung his hands and said, “I don’t like company!”
“Then you’d better tell us everything you know,” Gunter said. “What did the captain do to make those guys i
n suits so mad?”
“What guys? Which guys? I don’t know!” Cankelton said. “How should I know? I’m always down here. The captain does stuff to make people mad all the time. It’s his main thing—he drives people nuts.”
“No answers,” Charlie said, crossing his arms, “no leaving. Sooner or later, my parents will get worried. We’ll be reported missing. Then the boat will be searched. Then you’ll have everybody in here.”
“Everybody?” Cankelton muttered, pacing back and forth. “All those people in my sanctuary?”
“Everybody crowded into your sanctuary,” Gunter said. “I wonder if they would all even fit? It’ll be wall-to-wall people.”
Cankelton looked distraught and unnerved, which made Charlie wonder if he’d been the one to paint the dwarves in his cabin. He’d probably been told to think up new dwarves and looked inward for inspiration.
“I can’t have more people in my sanctuary! I don’t like people in my sanctuary.” Cankelton jogged over to the corner of the room and picked up a handheld radio. He pressed a button and said, “Captain, captain, Cankelton,” and took his finger off.
“Captain here, over,” Captain Wisner said in a crackling voice.
“Captain,” Cankelton said, “I got some guests here asking questions you told me not to answer. Will you speak to them, sir?”
“All right,” the captain said. “Where are they? Over.”
“In my sanctuary,” Cankelton cried.
“Where?”
“I mean, my cabin,” Cankelton said.
“Your cabin?” the captain asked. “I thought you slept under a table in the mess hall. Over.”
“That was only the first night, ten years ago.”
“Where the heck is your cabin?”
“At the end of the supply closet. Hurry! Over, over, over!”
There was a long pause, then the captain said, “The end of the supply closet? Really. Right, I’ll be down as soon as I can put us on autopilot. Over and out.”
Cankelton laid down the radio.
“The captain didn’t even know where you stayed?” Gunter said. “How come he doesn’t know what you do on his boat or even where you sleep?”
Cankelton wrung his hands. “Stop badgering me with questions!”
“Well?” Charlie asked. It wasn’t an answer he needed to help solve the mystery of the men in suits, but he was beginning to be fascinated by the mysterious Cankelton.
“All right!” Cankelton said. “I’m the captain’s brother-in-law. My wife pressured him to give me the job, as she don’t like me hanging around the house. Or hanging around any town she’s in. It wasn’t ever specified exactly what the job was, so I took my own initiative and decided to load and unload the bags. Course, I ran out of initiative after that. Initiative will only take you so far, in my experience. Then I found this room. Oh yes, it was full of junk when I found it,” Cankelton said wistfully. “But I got it cleared out fast enough. Little by little, I brought in my flea market finds. Now, nothing makes me happier than puttering around my sanctuary. It’s like I’ve gone back to the days when I dropped out of college and joined a commune. Except I’m not communing with anybody and I think I’m becoming a hermit. There. That’s all of it.”
“And you don’t know anything at all about those guys who are chasing the captain?” Gunter said.
“I try not to know things,” Cankelton said. “If I know something I shouldn’t know, then I just unknow it. The only thing I haven’t been able to unknow is that I’ve been miserable since this whole Disney-like thing started. Used to be I could wait until everybody was asleep and go make a sandwich, nobody the wiser. All the sudden, I’m forced to eat with the guests. I hate guests! And on top of that, I have to wear this ridiculous getup. Look at me! I don’t have any peace anymore. I’m an insect without peace.”
“But why?” Charlie said. “Why did the captain start running this Disney-like disaster? Does it have anything to do with those men? Gunter said the fishing trips used to be great. It doesn’t make sense why the captain changed to this.”
“Fishing trips. Those were the days,” Cankelton said softly. “I’d load the last bag, then creep down here until the trip was over. Good times.”
The door flew open and Captain Wisner charged in. He came to a sudden stop as he took in the room. “A lava lamp on my boat,” he said softly. “You’re kidding me.”
The captain noticed Charlie and Gunter. “Well, it’s you two. Cankelton, why didn’t you say? These boys have questions and I have the answers! How deep is the deepest part of the ocean? How—”
Charlie put his hand up. “No, captain,” he said forcefully. “You are not going to throw an avalanche of questions and answers at us.”
“That’s right,” Gunter said, going behind the captain. He closed the door, turned the key, and put it in his pocket. “This time, we ask the questions.”
“Of course, you can ask questions,” the captain said in his too cheerful voice. “Just not at this moment because I’ve got to be up on the bridge making an important announcement. But I shall see you soon!”
Captain Wisner made a run for the door, pushing Gunter out of the way. He tugged on the doorknob. “It’s locked. Where’s the key, Cankelton?”
Cankelton had curled up on a corner of the couch, not even bothering to brush the antennae out of his eyes. “The key was in the lock,” he whispered. “Now there are people locked in my sanctuary. People are supposed to be locked out of my sanctuary.”
“All right kids, ha ha, very funny. Now, really, give me the key,” the captain said, sweat running down the sides of his face.
“I don’t have it,” Gunter said, shrugging.
“I don’t have it, either,” Charlie said. “And that key will never, ever be found unless you answer our questions.”
“Never, ever,” Cankelton said with a sob.
“Those men in suits were not from the ministry of culture,” Charlie said. “They were the same guys that have been chasing you since Miami.”
“The ministry of culture,” the captain said, “if there is one, would have been very dismayed at today’s events. What was your sister thinking of, going around pretending to be a witch?”
Charlie was about to explain that Olive had only claimed to know a witch, but then he realized the captain was trying to steer him off track. The man was a magician at getting a person off a subject.
“Get out of my sanctuary,” Cankelton whispered.
“We know you’re on the run from the mob,” Charlie said. “What we want to know is why.”
“The mob? What mob?” the captain said. “No, the thing to focus on is that here we are, in the beautiful Turks and Caicos. That’s what everybody should be thinking about.”
“We’ve just escaped out of the beautiful Turks and Caicos,” Gunter said. “Just like we did from Miami, Nassau, and Eleuthera.”
“That’s right,” Charlie said. “And we’ve kept things quiet for you. I haven’t told my parents anything I’ve seen. Our silence has worked to your benefit, but we’re not going to keep quiet anymore unless you tell us everything.”
The captain crumpled onto the couch next to Cankelton. “You want to know everything about my upcoming demise, do you? Came to see the old captain say hello to Davey Jones’s Locker? Planned to watch this boat become as scarce as the Flying Dutchman? If it amuses you to watch this old sailor fail himself, fail his fellow captains, and fail the long and august history of seafaring, well, go right ahead. The jig is up anyhow.”
“What jig?” Charlie asked. As usual with the captain, Charlie had become a little confused. He wasn’t sure what the Flying Dutchman or Davey Jones’s Locker were or what they had to do with anything.
“The jig is up on this whole operation,” the captain said. “It’s taking on water fast and will sink, sooner rather than later.”
Gunter glanced at Charlie and shrugged. “I think you better tell us the whole story,” he said.
�
��The whole story, with nothing left out,” Charlie said. “And nothing added in like how deep the ocean is.”
“You want the whole, sad story, do you?” the captain asked.
“Sad, sad story,” Cankelton murmured.
“We’ll be the judge of whether it’s sad or not,” Gunter said.
“Very well,” the captain said. “Prepare yourself for sadness. As Gunter knows all too well, this boat used to be the Kingfisher. I chartered fishing trips, and fine trips they were. Those were the days, eh, Gunter? Fishing all day long and eating the catch for dinner.”
“It was fantastic,” Gunter said.
“Fantastic,” the captain said. “All except my finances. My finances were not fantastic, they were a fiasco! Sure, you and your dad loved practically having the boat to yourselves, but I was going broke running two or three cabins down to the Caribbean. This boat needs to be full to turn a profit!”
“Going broke,” Gunter said.
“I knew it,” Charlie said. “I knew it was money.”
“So you borrowed money from the mob and now you can’t pay it back.” Gunter said. He turned to Charlie. “I’ve been thinking about it and I’m pretty sure they’ll just break his kneecaps. They probably don’t kill people for owing money or they’d never get their money back.”
“What if they wanted to break our kneecaps, too?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t see why they would—we don’t owe them money.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the captain said. “If somebody was going to break my kneecaps just because I owed them money, I’d need a hundred extra kneecaps just to get started.”
“We’re not talking about everybody you owe money to,” Charlie said. “We’re talking about those two mobsters who have been chasing you all over the Caribbean.”
“Mobsters from Harvard Law, more like it,” the captain said. “I wish all I had to worry about was a crime family, heh, Cankelton?”
“Why would mobsters go to Harvard Law?” Charlie asked.
The captain waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. “Forget the mobsters. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up the kind of people who think extraterrestrials are in charge of the government and President Kennedy is still alive and living in Aruba.” The captain snorted. “Mobsters. That’s a good one.”
