The Mystery of the Cranky Collector - Carey M. V.. Страница 16

Jupe was suddenly awake. “You know who Sogamoso is?”

“Not who,” said Bob. “What. It’s a small city in South America — in Colombia. Only forty-nine thousand people, give or take a few, so if Marilyn went there and asked about the old woman — well, some of the local citizens might know what she wanted.”

“And she should watch out for Navarro while she’s doing that,” said Pete. “That’s the warning in the computer letter.”

“Okay, she asks for the old woman. She makes sure the person she asks isn’t named Navarro,” said Bob.

“No.” Jupe shook his head. “Navarro isn’t in Colombia. At least he wasn’t in Colombia when Pilcher put that message into the computer. Pilcher wasn’t sure Navarro was legal, and he mentioned the INS—and those initials almost always stand for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. So Navarro could be an undocumented alien, which means he was here in the United States.”

“Okay,” said Bob. “So until she leaves for Sogamoso, Marilyn watches out for an illegal immigrant named Navarro. Hey, maybe it was Navarro who tackled you in the attic, Jupe. Not the invisible guy who walked past Pete. The other one.”

“He certainly wasn’t a ghost, that one,” said Jupe. “He was a real live person.”

The telephone rang.

“Probably Marilyn wondering what we’re doing,” said Pete. “She went to her mom’s house last night. Just wouldn’t stay at her dad’s any longer.”

“I don’t blame her,” said Jupe.

But when he picked up the telephone, it was not Marilyn Pilcher calling. It was Luis Estava, the man the boys had known as Ray Sanchez.

Jupe had improvised a loudspeaker that allowed anyone in Headquarters to hear a telephone conversation. Now he put the receiver down on the loudspeaker so that Pete and Bob could listen.

“I’m surprised to hear from you, Mr. Estava,” said Jupe. “Yesterday you walked out on us.”

“Call me Ray, will you?” said Estava. “It’s my middle name, and it’s what my friends call me. And yesterday walking out seemed like the thing to do. Today I’m not sure. I just had a visit from the Rocky Beach Police Department. I didn’t know they were that concerned about Pilcher’s disappearance, but it looks like they’re moving on it. It also looks like I’m a suspect.”

“You had a motive for harming Pilcher,” Jupe pointed out.

“Well, yes,” admitted Estava. “I did want the old creep to pay for wrecking my dad’s business, but to pay the same way — business-wise. I’d have to be sicker than he is to hurt him physically. He’s an old man!”

There was sincere indignation in his tone. Jupe glanced at his friends.

“Sounds like he means it,” Bob murmured.

Jupe nodded. “All right, we believe you. But why are you calling? You can’t really care what we think.”

“I do care,” said Estava. “Marilyn seems to have faith in you, and I guess I do too. I want to say that if I can help find Old Man Pilcher, I will. Unless somebody locates the old pirate, I may spend the rest of my life being a suspect. So if you think of anything I can do, just call.”

“I can think of something right now,” said Jupiter. “Do you know anything about Sogamoso?”

“Soga — soga who?” said Estava.

Jupe repeated the name. It meant nothing to Estava. Neither did Navarro. “I know a few people named Navarro,” admitted the secretary. “In some areas it’s like being named Jones. None of my friends know Pilcher, however.”

“Did you ever hear Mr. Pilcher mention tears of the gods?” asked Jupe.

“Tears of the gods? You’re kidding.”

“No. The tears, whatever they are, seemed very important to Mr. Pilcher.”

“I’m sorry,” said Estava. “I can’t recall a thing.”

“One more question,” said Jupe. “Sogamoso is in Colombia, and Colombia is a major source of cocaine. Is there any chance that Mr. Pilcher was involved in drug traffic?”

“Absolutely not. He was violently opposed to drugs,” said Estava. “Pilcher used to fire employees just because they were rumored to use illegal drugs. Check with Marilyn if you don’t want to take my word for it.”

Jupe thanked him. Estava then gave Jupiter his telephone number and hung up.

“This case is full of loose ends,” said Jupe, “and none of them seem to connect anywhere. I don’t think we’re any closer to finding Mr. Pilcher than we were two days ago.”

“I bet Sogamoso isn’t going to help us either,” said Pete. “By the time Marilyn goes there and finds the right old woman, her dad could be dead.”

“Of natural causes,” agreed Bob, “like old age. Okay, what’s the next step?”

“Mrs. Pilcher suggested that we search the Bonnie Betsy,” said Jupiter. “We have already been over the house with a fine-tooth comb, so why not try the yacht? Marilyn must know where it’s moored.”

“And if we find the bishop’s book, she may get her dad back,” said Bob. “Then he can tell her firsthand about the old woman and the tears of the gods.”

Jupiter called Mrs. Pilcher’s house in Santa Monica. Marilyn answered the telephone. She told them her father’s yacht was in dry dock at the Central Coast Marine Corporation. “It’s that shipyard on Bowsprit Drive,” she said. “I’ll phone there and tell them you’re coming so they’ll let you go aboard the yacht.”

Soon the boys were riding their bikes up the Coast Highway. Twenty minutes of brisk pedaling brought them to the Bowsprit Drive turnoff.

Bowsprit ran onto a man-made finger of land that jutted out from the shore for more than a mile. A yacht club and a series of ships’ chandlers occupied the south side of this jetty. On the north were several shipyards. Central Coast Marine was about a quarter mile in from the highway. It was protected by a businesslike cyclone fence and by a gate where a uniformed security man kept watch from a small guardhouse.

Jupiter and his friends skidded to a halt at the gate and Jupe identified himself to the guard.

“Oh, yes, Miss Pilcher phoned,” said the man. “I was expecting somebody older, but if Miss Pilcher says it’s okay to let you in, I guess it’s okay. Sign in here.”

He thrust a notebook at them. They signed the book and he noted the time beside their signatures, then took a bunch of keys from a pegboard behind him and held them out to Jupe. “The cabins and the wheelhouse on the Bonnie Betsy are locked. You’ll need these.”

He pointed to the right. “Go down that way past that schooner — you see the one that’s having her bottom scraped? — and you’ll see the Bonnie Betsy. She’s in the dry dock down the quay. You can’t miss her. Big ship with a black hull and the name in gold on her stern.”

The boys thanked him and rode on, feeling the breeze that came fresh from the ocean. Gulls circled and swooped overhead, screaming harshly. The air was now filled with the smell of kelp and the fishy odor of the barnacles drying on the hulls of the boats that had been hauled out of the water for repairs.

Most of the boats the boys passed were large sailboats, wooden or fiberglass pleasure craft from forty to sixty feet long. The Bonnie Betsy, when they found her, turned out to be quite different. She was practically a small ocean liner. She had a black steel hull and a white-painted superstructure that gave her the look of a luxury cruise ship.

“Wow!” said Pete. “Old Man Pilcher wasn’t kidding around when he bought that one!

“He didn’t pinch pennies there,” said Bob.

The ship had not been hoisted out of the water like the smaller yachts the boys had seen. Instead she had been floated into a huge concrete trench called a dry dock. Gigantic waterproof gates on the seaward side of the trench had been closed. The water had been pumped out, leaving the Bonnie Betsy high and dry. She rested now on steel struts inside the dry dock.

A gangway led from the quay to the ship. Jupe was the first to cross. As he stepped onto the deck of Pilcher’s vessel he let out a small sound that was part surprise and part disappointment.