The Chocolate Cupid Killings (28 page)

“Of course,” Mike said, “we're planning on living so long and so well that none of you gets a penny. And as for my personal plans—well . . .”

“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “I have an announcement myself.”

“Oh?”

“I'm resigning as city attorney.”

Mike looked dismayed.

“The job's been a godsend, Mike. You helped me get it, and I'll always be grateful. But it's time to move on. Beginning April 1, I'm joining the staff of West Michigan Defense—a new nonprofit legal agency. My buddy Webb Bartlett is one of the founders. I'll work two days a week.” Joe grinned. “Or that's the theory.”

I felt tears well up. Joe could have joined Webb's firm—or even Marty Ludlum's firm—and made a lot more money. But Joe is still true to his college dream of helping people who really need help to navigate the legal system.

I love that guy. And luckily, I love the chocolate business, because I'm not quitting anytime soon.

 

 

A
sunset cruise on Lake Michigan in an antique wooden power boat is the perfect way to celebrate the summer solstice, and the weather that particular June 21 was also perfect.

Joe's Shepherd Sedan, a 1948 model he'd restored until it looked and ran like new, was anchored in a broad cove, so the boat was surrounded by a semicircle of sandy shore and tall trees. The four of us had finished our picnic dinner and were starting on coffee. With it we passed around bonbons and truffles made by TenHuis Chocolade—an easy contribution from me, since I work here as business manager.

We had clumped ourselves into a conversational group inside the boat's cabin—a cabin that was much like the interior of an automobile of the 1940s, except that where the trunk should have been there was a small deck.

The huge red sun had just sizzled and sunk into the water over toward Wisconsin. The breeze was cool, but not chilly; sweatshirts were nice, but inside the cabin, jackets weren't needed. The water was a deep silky gray, the sky had exactly the right number of puffy purple clouds edged in gold, and gentle waves rocked the boat, making me feel as relaxed as a bird dozing off in its nest.

I was taking a bite of an amaretto truffle as the pirate came over the stern.

His head popped up first. It was wrapped in a bandanna, buccaneer-style, and sported a big, bushy beard and a gold earring.

I was looking straight at the head as it appeared, but I was so surprised all I did was blink.

Pirates on Lake Michigan? In the twenty-first century? Who could blame me if I didn't believe my eyes?

Then the pirate somersaulted over the side and leaped to his feet on the deck.

I leaped to my feet, too, banging my head on the sedan's roof. I probably yelled something witty, like, “Who the heck is that?”

The pirate wore black knee breeches and a black vest, open to show a hairy, muscular chest. A pirate pistol was jammed into his broad belt, and he was brandishing a cutlass. Add that to the beard, bandanna, and earring—plus a skull and crossbones tattooed on his biceps—and there was no question of what he represented.

The pirate waved his cutlass. He gave a loud yell, the traditional “Yo-ho-ho!”

My husband, Joe, and our friends Maggie and Ken McNutt were also on their feet as two more swimmers in pirate garb climbed over the stern.

The second pirate's outfit was almost identical to the first one's, except that over his bandanna, he had put on a funny hat with the brim flipped backward. He produced a whistle and began to play a rollicking sea chanty. Or I guess that was what it was.

The third pirate—a buccaneer queen whose vest had a plunging neckline to show her cleavage—began to dance, waving her arms in the air and weaving her feet into an intricate jig.

For the next two or three minutes, the pirates went wild. The musician pranced, and the dancer danced. The first pirate waved his cutlass—by then I could see that it was plastic—in a series of fencing moves. He yelled in a hoarse voice, “Avast, me hearties!” and “Lift up the top sheet and spank her!” He clinched the cutlass in his teeth and did a handstand on the gunwale—the low railing along the side of the boat. Next he clambered onto the top of the cabin—we could hear his footsteps as he crossed over our heads—and dropped onto the bow. There he walked around on his hands, weaving among the horns, radio gear, and other paraphernalia that the Coast Guard requires.

All this activity made the twenty-two-foot boat bob and buck. Joe, Ken, Maggie, and I grabbed our coffee before it could spill. We held on to any parts of the boat we could reach as the dancing and acrobatics made it bounce around. The show was terrific—after our initial surprise, we all started laughing—but I was afraid that the jumping around was going to knock one of the pirates overboard.

The buxom pirate queen didn't seem to share my fear. She linked arms with the piper and they do-si-doed while he managed to continue playing.

Then the music stopped abruptly, and so did the dancing. The dancer and the musician gestured dramatically toward the front of the boat and the pirate who had boarded first.

“Yo-ho-ho!” His shout echoed over the water. He pulled the pistol from his belt and aimed it toward our group, right through the windshield.

I wasn't frightened. Despite their grotesque makeup and out-of-nowhere appearance, the pirates had done nothing but amaze and entertain us. I was wondering if Ken or Joe had hired them as some sort of joke. Besides, the pistol was patently fake—an imitation firearm, a stage prop. I couldn't believe it would actually fire.

So the pointed pistol didn't make me faint. The pirate king simply couldn't be threatening us.

Then he pulled the trigger, and a flag popped out of the end of the gun.
Bang!
it said.

We all laughed hysterically. I guess we
were
hysterical.

Just as quickly as they had arrived, the pirates left. One by one they dived over the side of the boat, and Ken, Maggie, Joe, and I crowded out of the cabin and stood on the small open deck to look after them. All of us were laughing.

Joe leaned over the side. “Where did they go?” I realized that none of the swimming pirates had come up again.

“I never heard of mermaids—or mermen—in Lake Michigan,” Maggie said. “And these pirates didn't have tails. So they must have a boat.”

We scanned the horizon. Ken and I exclaimed at the same moment. “There it is!”

Sure enough, around a hundred feet away, just outside the cove, was an inflatable boat, the kind Navy SEALs use. As we watched, bandannas popped up on the gently rolling surface of the lake. The pirates began to swim on top of the water. Within minutes all of them had reached their boat, and one by one the pirate crew climbed into it. They waved to us. Their outboard motor roared, and they left, throwing up spray behind them. The backwash reached our boat, bouncing us up and down. The pirate boat headed north, parallel to the shore, and was soon out of sight.

We were the first boat boarded in what came to be known as the Summer of the Warner Pier Pirates.

Maggie, Ken, Joe, and I all assumed that the pirates were some sort of promotional stunt. Warner Pier—Michigan's quaintest summer resort—was already full of pirates that year. We weren't too surprised that a few more had turned up.

The pirate craze was Marco Spear's fault. That was the year of his first big hit movie,
Young Blackbeard.
The film had everything: comedy, romance, a beautiful Caribbean setting, a cast of thousands, gorgeous costumes and sets—plus Action! Action! Action! It also had a handsome and charismatic leading actor who did his own stunts.

America's teenagers gathered in gangs outside movie theaters and chanted his name. “Marco! Marco! Marco!”

My stepsister, Brenda McKinney, was working at TenHuis Chocolade again that summer, and she admitted she'd seen
Young Blackbeard
twice. And she was nineteen and a little old for the fad. Marcia Herrera, the niece Joe and I had acquired when his mom remarried the previous spring, had just turned thirteen, so she was exactly the right age for the Marco craze. She had half a dozen Marco photos taped up inside her Warner Pier Middle School locker, she told me, and she and her friends had each seen
Young Blackbeard
at least five times. She brought me a magazine showing pictures of Marco Spear from infancy to age twenty-two. It had ragged edges because of the number of times it had been read.

Some of the pictures showed Marco in his
Young Blackbeard
getup of tight knee breeches and open vest with three days' stubble on his chin. Other pictures showed him in his pre–movie star life as an Olympic gymnastics champion. At thirty-one, I was too old for the Marco epidemic, but I was young enough to notice that he looked great in either outfit. Of course, the critics claimed he couldn't act nearly as well as he could swashbuckle, but America's girls didn't seem to care.

Marco Spear was clean-cut enough to please the mothers, athletic enough to impress the guys and sexy enough to attract the girls. That and a major publicity campaign had put him at the pinnacle of celebrity. The guy couldn't move without falling over a member of the paparazzi. The world received daily updates on Marco's life, whether or not it wanted them.

Because of the topic of his first starring movie, Marco had made pirates celebrities, too. The whole country was wearing eye patches and growling, “Arrr.”