“Nah. That’s the first rule of Chuck’s Poker Club. You don’t talk about Chuck’s Poker Club.” Shaggy suddenly looked stricken and smacked himself in the face. “I just broke the rule!”
“I think you have bigger problems right now, Shaggy,” Frank reminded him.
“But I took the Chuck’s Poker Club oath, and it’s a bad omen to break an oath! First I summon a shark to eat Dr. Edwards, and now this! I think I’m cursed!”
“You’re a pretty superstitious guy, huh, Shaggy?” I asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said, looking up at me like I’d asked him a really silly question. “It’s bad luck not to be.”
“You know, there are ancient cultures where people believed in shark gods who would eat them if they were displeased,” Frank commented.
Shaggy’s eyes went wide.
“Pretty sure that’s not what happened here, Shag,” I said. “I don’t think the shark attack had anything to do with shark gods or omens, and I definitely don’t think you summoned anything.”
“You mean, like, maybe it was just a scientific thing? Like my fin attracted them, or I accidentally used shark sign language to tell that other shark to eat Dr. Edwards, or something? It’s still my fault!” Shaggy wailed.
“That other shark…,” Frank repeated to himself, then trailed off, lost in thought.
“I’m not an expert on shark behavior, but shark sign language seems pretty far-fetched to me,” I said.
“So, like, it was just a coincidence that another shark ate her?” he asked.
“Not a coincidence, and you didn’t cause it either.” Frank grinned confidently and ruffled Shaggy’s shag.
Shaggy squinted up at Frank through the hair in his eyes. “Um, what does that leave?”
I was wondering the same thing.
“There is a way Shaggy may have contributed to Trip’s disappearance, just not how he thinks,” said Frank. “Until now, our only suspect was the shark we saw a few minutes before we heard her scream. But that wasn’t a shark at all; someone just wanted us to think it was. If the sighting of the shark everyone thought attacked her was fake—”
I snapped my fingers. “Then the attack itself might be too!”
“Huh?” Shaggy said, clearly not following.
“Everybody assumed the shark swimming by the beach was the same one that attacked Trip, but it couldn’t have been, because that was really you!” I explained. “That leaves only two options. Shark attacks are rare enough to begin with, right? So either the timing of the prank was a super-unlucky coincidence and a real shark randomly attacked Trip while you were swimming around nearby with a fin on your back—or the entire attack was a hoax!”
“Whoever blackmailed you into wearing that fin just wanted us to think we’d seen a shark. So maybe they wanted us to think there’d been an attack as well,” Frank concluded.
My hopes soared with the possibility that Dr. Edwards was still okay. “Trip is still missing, right? Without her, we don’t have any proof that she was actually attacked!”
This time it was Shaggy who was a step ahead of us. “Well, I sure didn’t bite her paddleboard. Isn’t that proof?”
My shoulders slumped. In our excitement to believe Frank’s theory that EEE may not have been attacked by a shark after all, we hadn’t factored in a key piece of evidence. We’d seen with our own eyes the damage the shark’s jaws had inflicted on the paddleboard. So had Cap and Dr. Edwards’s research assistant back at the lab, who’d taken the board to analyze as part of an international shark attack study. The truth was gruesome, and there was no way around it: there had been an attack, the bite mark on that paddleboard was real, and the massive tiger shark responsible for it hadn’t been made of plastic.
9 ONCE BITTEN
FRANK
MY HEAD WAS SPINNING TRYING to make sense of the evidence we’d collected. The shark we’d thought we’d seen couldn’t have been the one that attacked Trip like everyone thought, because it wasn’t a shark at all! But Shaggy was right. Even if the fin we’d seen from shore was a fake, the paddleboard that washed up on that beach yesterday proved beyond a doubt there had been a very real shark attack. Were the two events connected as I’d suspected? Or was Shaggy’s phony shark fin really a red herring?
A burst of static from the motorboat’s radio stopped me from breaking the situation down further.
“Hardy boys, come in now!” Cap shouted over the radio. “Where are you? The rendezvous at the R/V was ten minutes ago. Are you okay?”
I radioed back with a brief message that we were fine and were heading to the R/V now. Then we took the fake fin, left a grateful Shaggy behind—we still had unanswered questions, so we made him give us his cell phone number first by threatening to return the fin to him if he refused—and raced back to the R/V in the motorboat.
Cap was pacing the deck, muttering to himself as we boarded. The muttering turned to shouting as soon as he saw us.
“What in the world were you thinking? I gave you an order to be back here in exactly two hours. You think this is some kind of game? People can get hurt out here. I—” He slammed his fist down on the rail, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Getting yelled at during an investigation wasn’t new for us. If there was a case to work, that usually meant something bad had happened, and emotions tended to run high. Sometimes, though, when people yell at you, it’s not really so much about the thing they say they’re mad about, but other things they’re feeling.
Cap lowered his voice, then continued calmly. “I’m responsible for the safety of everyone on this vessel. I’ve already lost one person this week. If anything happens to you boys on my watch—” He took another deep breath. “With everything that’s already happened in the last few days, when you boys didn’t show up, I started to think the worst.”
Aww, I thought, trying to hide my smile from the angry skipper, Cap cares about us.
He forgot all about us missing the rendezvous once we told him why we’d missed it. Cap stared at us dumbfounded as we recounted Shaggy’s story and showed him the fake fin. He turned it over in his hands like it was an alien artifact from outer space.
“Why would anyone do something like that?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Joe said. “I think we should keep it on the DL for now. If word gets around town, it could tip the blackmailer off that we’re onto their scheme.”
“Whatever you boys think is best,” Cap agreed. “I know boats and sharks; this whole crime thing is out of my wheelhouse.”
“I was hoping we could also take another look at Trip’s paddleboard to see if there’s anything we missed that might give us a clue about the attack,” I said, earning a confused look from Cap.
“What good will that do? The lab techs onshore are already planning to analyze the bite to estimate the shark’s size and see if they can figure anything out about its behavior from the angle of approach. As rare as attacks are, they do happen, and the more we can learn about them, the better we’ll be able to prevent more tragedies. Trip always said attacks like this are probably cases of mistaken identity—the shark confuses the board’s silhouette for a prey animal, like a seal. Tiger sharks are ambush predators, so a strike from the rear wouldn’t be unusual. That’s what we see when we study them with bait on the R/V. But even if the lab does find out something useful, I don’t see how any of it would be connected to this fake fin business.”
“Neither do we,” Joe admitted. “The type of clue we’re looking for falls into the ‘we’ll know it when we see it’ category.”
Cap shrugged. “If you think it will help, I guess, sure. I’ll put in a call to the lab to have one of the techs stay so you can head over when we get back to shore.”
We waited on deck while Cap headed inside to make the call. He returned looking as stunned as he had been when we’d told him about Shaggy.
“The board’s gone,” he told us.
“What!” Joe and I cried.
> “Somebody smashed the back lock and took it from the storage room, along with a bunch of research equipment. The cops are there now. I told them about the chum prank, and they think whatever shark-hating punks vandalized the motorboat did this, too.”
“Did the culprit leave another threatening message?” I asked. I had to resist the urge to shiver when I thought about my hunch that this morning’s warning was really meant for us.
“No. Whoever it was just dumped chum all over a bunch of expensive gear instead.” Cap punched his fist into his palm. “I blame Boothby for riling everybody up with his blasted shark-hunting stunt. I’d better tell the crew to keep their heads up onshore in case these thugs try anything with them.”
Was the theft another unlikely coincidence? I wondered as Cap retreated to break the news to his crew. Or did someone want to make sure no one else examined EEE’s board?
“Why do I get the feeling this robbery was about more than troublemaking shark-hating vandals?” Joe asked, echoing my thoughts.
“There’s no shortage of shark-hating suspects, either way,” I said. “Captain Diamond for one. But Cap’s theory that Diamond’s been too busy shark hunting to mess around with prank calls or chumming the motorboat makes sense.”
“Don’t forget Ron,” Joe said. “He’s one of the mayor’s biggest anti-shark cheerleaders, and Cap did threaten to batter him like fried squid at Chuck’s the other day.”
“It seemed like half the people at the town council meeting were on Team No Shark right along with him,” I said. “We don’t even know if it really was one of the anti-sharkers. There could be another motive we haven’t figured out yet.”
“You mean motives!” Joe moaned. “This investigation has gone from a missing persons case to a shark attack search-and-rescue to a shark defense mission to a vandalism and harassment case to a shark hoax hunt to grand theft. And we still don’t know how or if any of it is connected!”
“Well, let’s start by working the one solid lead we actually have,” I said, pulling out my phone to call the newest number in my contacts.
* * *
Unfortunately, our one lead wasn’t answering, and when we made it back to the marina, the Scuba-Doo Dive School shop was locked up tight. According to the woman at the bait shop next door, Shaggy had never made it in to open, which wasn’t exactly surprising, given where we’d last seen him.
“I’d hoped a follow-up interview with Shaggy might shake some more suspects loose.” I sighed.
But when I looked at Joe, he was grinning. “You said we only have one lead, but I just thought of another one. Who’s the one person Shaggy mentioned who definitely knew about him losing all that money in those poker games?”
“The game’s hostess!” I shouted. “Feeling hungry, Joe? Because I think a trip to Chuck’s Shuck Shack is in order.”
Joe rubbed his stomach. “Always. But I doubt she’ll break the first rule of the poker club with a bunch of customers around. The Shuck Shack sign said they close at ten on weeknights. I say we slip in at nine forty-five to take Chuck up on those free shrimp, so we’re already inside when she locks the doors.”
* * *
We sat at the bar chowing down on endless shrimp poppers as planned. To make sure we’d still be there after everyone else was gone, Joe ordered three baskets. For each of us. And whale fries with old salt. And calamari. And spiny lobster roll sliders. The only thing he passed on was the pickled red herring tacos.
“This case may have too many red herrings already,” he’d said. “I don’t need them on my tacos, too!”
I’d thought his ordering frenzy was going a little overboard, but it turned out he was just really hungry. He was still stuffing his face at closing time!
Chuck had already asked us for an update on the search for EEE when she served us our food. Word had spread about the chum stink bomb and the stolen board, but we conveniently forgot to mention our run-in with Shaggy and his fake fin. At ten fifteen, Chuck started clearing her throat and yawning conspicuously in our direction.
“Okay, boys. I know I offered you all the free shrimp you can eat, and I don’t want to rush you, but I’d really like to get home,” she finally told us at 10:32, when the last of her staff had left for the night and the three of us were the only ones there. “Can I get a doggie bag for you guys to take the rest of that to go? I promise you can come back tomorrow morning for all the pink shrimp breakfast burritos you can cram down your gullets.”
“I’ll see your breakfast burritos and raise you everything you can tell us about the guest list at Chuck’s Poker Club,” Joe replied, popping another shrimp into his mouth for emphasis.
Chuck crossed her arms and stared us down for a minute before replying. “Somebody broke the first rule of the poker club.” She grabbed a shrimp out of Joe’s hand and tossed it into her own mouth. “I can’t let you join, if that’s what you’re getting at. Pretty sure letting minors play in a high-stakes poker game is against bigger rules than mine.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure underground high-stakes poker games are against the rules for adults, too, but we’re not interested in busting you, and we don’t want to play,” I told her. “We’re here to get to the bottom of all the other rules that have been broken in the last few days.”
“If you’re talking about this whole anti-shark mess the mayor started and whoever’s messing with Shark Lab, then I’m with you, but I don’t see what that has to do with my little bitty game.”
“Your little bitty game is causing big problems. One of your members is using Shaggy’s losses to blackmail him, and we need to figure out who,” Joe said.
Chuck recoiled like she was genuinely surprised, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t bluffing. I had expected the hostess of a secret poker club to have a good poker face.
Joe and I had planned to play our cards close to our vest and not tell her about the fake fin right away. If she had any insider info on the crime, she might accidentally tip her hand. We both liked Chuck a lot and didn’t feel great about doubting her, but we couldn’t ignore the hand we’d been dealt. So far, we’d identified only one person who definitely had access to the dirt on Shaggy. Until we saw Chuck’s cards, we couldn’t rule her out as the joker behind the blackmail.
“If someone’s trying to extort money from one of my members, then I’ll be the one to handle it. The poker club has a strict code, and if someone broke it, then I’ll break them.” Chuck pulled her wooden oar from under the bar and smacked it down on the counter. “Poor Shaggy. He really does have the worst luck.”
“It’s not just Shaggy they’re taking advantage of, and there’s more than money at stake,” I said. If Chuck knew about the fake fin, she wasn’t letting on at all. “Remember that huge dorsal fin everyone saw right before Trip disappeared?”
I nodded to Joe, who took the fake fin out of his bag and threw it onto the bar. “The animal sporting it wasn’t a shark. It was Shaggy.”
“It was what?” Chuck gasped at the plastic replica.
She went to grab it, but Joe pulled it away before she could. “Sorry. Gotta protect the evidence, just in case.”
“Just in case— Wait a second! Are you saying I’m a suspect?”
“More like a person of interest.” I shrugged apologetically. “Someone in a secret club used insider info to manipulate Shaggy into scaring a beach full of people into thinking they’d seen a shark. And that secret club has your name on it. We can’t clear you until we find out who else knew about Shaggy’s poker losses.”
“First of all, it’s not my name on Chuck’s Poker Club. It’s my dad’s. This game has been going for decades.” She pointed to an old, faded photograph of her dad with his arms around a bunch of buddies. “You know I want to help you. Especially if this has anything to do with finding Trip. I’m the one who hired you in the first place! But people trusted my dad to keep their identities a secret, and now they trust me. And what happened to Shaggy is exactly why. Sure, Lookout’s elites may dro
p in after-hours once a week to blow off steam and have a little fun. And sure, they occasionally wager large sums of money and other sundry items—cars, boats, the deeds to their houses. It’s not the kind of thing folks want getting out to the rest of the community, you know? But the only reason it works is because we keep the game a secret. How am I supposed to expect anyone else to keep Chuck’s first rule if Chuck can’t keep Chuck’s first rule?”
Her reason for keeping quiet wasn’t doing our investigation much good, but she had a point.
“Second of all,” Chuck continued, “I don’t know how much a membership list would help you, anyway. It’s a large club. We run tournament-style games with multiple tables, and different people drop in every week.”
“You said the town’s elites. That can’t be too many people,” I pointed out, hoping to get her to narrow the suspect list down.
Chuck laughed. “You’ve met a bunch of the locals. ‘Elite’ is a relative term. Basically, the club is open to business owners and town officials. Lookout is a small town, so that’s probably about a quarter of our citizens. Just about all of them come by to play a hand or twenty at some point. For all his good luck charms, Shaggy usually walks out with less than he walked in with. It’s not much of a secret among the members.”
“Can you think of anyone with something to gain by getting Shaggy to scare the town with the fake shark sighting?” I asked, hoping to open up a more productive line of inquiry without divulging the theories Joe and I had discussed.
“You don’t think Shaggy wearing that fin has something to do with the shark attack on Trip, do you? That doesn’t make any sense. How would you fake something like that? Pictures of her paddleboard were all over the news. Even the scientists confirmed it was a tiger shark that tried to eat it.”
“We were hoping talking to you would help us piece it together,” Joe admitted. “The timing’s suspicious to the max, but we know it wasn’t a plastic shark that bit Trip’s board, and we’re still trying to figure out the connection.”
A Treacherous Tide Page 6
