Race to the Catarina

“How is that possible?” Delia asked, gaping at Bess and me. “They’re out on the Island Scout!”

“I don’t know, but we’d better find out,” I said, peering into the boat again. It looked empty, but I still heard George’s voice. It sounded like she was asking a question, and then I heard Diego’s deeper voice answering.

“Too weird. Where are they?” I murmured.

I glanced furtively around, but I didn’t see anyone watching us. “Here goes,” I said. I turned the doorknob and pushed—and the door opened.

“Excellent!” Bess said approvingly from behind me. She practically pushed me over in her hurry to get inside. “George?” she called softly.

The voices were clearer now. They seemed to be coming from the table in the living area.

“It’s coming from the stereo!” I realized.

Sure enough, George’s voice was coming from the speakers. “Here’s another one, Lucy,” she was saying.

“Great,” I heard Lucy say. “Thanks, George, I’ve got it.”

I heard splashing, and then the thunk of something heavy being put down. “Oh my gosh!” I said. “We can hear everything that’s happening on board the Scout right now!”

“Huh?” Delia murmured. But I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. She and Bess were sitting on Chick’s couch, so focused on the voices that they didn’t even glance my way.

I ran my finger along the plastic-coated wire that was plugged into the speakers. The other end of the wire was connected to a silver, palm-sized, digital music player. I suddenly knew exactly where I’d seen it before. Chick had been wearing it when Bess and I saw him at the Key Largo flea market.

“Except it’s not really an audio player at all,” I said out loud. “It’s a listening device!”

“Come again?” Bess shook herself and turned to stare at me. “What are you talking about, Nancy?”

“Chick has been eavesdropping,” I said. “He must have put some kind of bug on the Island Scout. Remember when we were at the flea market and he had those earphones on?”

“That’s right!” said Bess. “I thought it was just music, but he must have been listening to George and the Salazars!”

Delia nodded, and her eyes widened. “He had the earphones last night, too. He took them from his truck right before he went inside, remember?”

“Which means he’s been eavesdropping on the Island Scout for at least two days,” I said. “Well, that explains how he knew about the coins and gold bars George and Lucy and Diego found yesterday. But”—I glanced curiously around the small houseboat—“where is he now? Why’d he stop listening to what’s going on aboard the Scout?”

Delia and Bess looked worriedly at each other. The sounds and voices on the boat had been a steady murmur in the background while we talked. Now we heard Diego say, “There must be four or five hundred gold bars down there, Lucy. And look what George and I just found!”

Again I heard splashing, and the heavy sounds of something hitting the deck.

“My goodness... look at that old box! Is it cedar?” came Lucy’s fascinated voice.

“That’s what Diego thinks,” George told her. “It’s full of jewelry. Gold, emeralds, rubies...”

The incredible excitement in their voices came through loud and clear, even over the speakers. Bess, Delia, and I were all totally speechless. But finally Bess found her voice.

“They got it!” she squealed. “They found the mother lode from the Catarina!”

“Gold bars, gems...,” Delia marveled. “It sounds more magnificent than I ever imagined.” All of a sudden she jolted upright, gasping. “Oh my gosh... that’s why Chick’s not here. He knows they found the Catarina ’s treasure too!”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I knew she was right. “Of course! He knows... and he’s going to steal it. Chick must have heard George and the Salazars say where they are, and now he’s going after them!”

I went into the sleeping quarters at the back of Chick’s boat. As soon as I looked out the small windows there, my suspicion was confirmed. “His boat’s gone,” I announced.

“Which means that George and Diego and Lucy could be in danger,” Bess called back.

I was about to rejoin her and Delia when I caught sight of something blue on the floor next to the bed. “Hey,” I murmured, “a T-shirt.”

Sure enough, when I picked it up, I saw that a piece had ripped from the sleeve. “Check it out,” I said as I went back into the living area. I held out the shirt, wiggling a finger through the hole in the sleeve.

Delia took one look and grinned at me. “Mr. Rinaldi will be glad to see that. If it matches the scrap we found, it proves that Chick is the one who stripped all those butterfly orchids from the tree we saw,” she said.

“But what should we do now?” Bess asked. “A guy who poaches endangered species and breaks into other people’s boats isn’t exactly going to respect a marker telling people to stay three hundred feet away. How are we going to warn George and the Salazars?”

Good question. I pictured George and the Salazars, totally oblivious to the fact that Chick knew exactly where they were and was probably on his way there. On the speakers, we heard the three of them still exclaiming over the box of jewels.

“Well, at least Chick’s not there yet—we’d hear him if he was.” I took my cell phone from my bag and punched in George’s number, but the call was routed to her voice mail. After leaving a message for her to call, I hung up.

“What about Diego and Lucy? Can you contact them?” I asked Delia, but she shook her head.

“They always turn their phones off when they dive,” she told us. “They might not check for messages until after they’re back in the Rock Harbor marina.”

“Which means that George and the Salazars are on their own,” Bess finished.

Delia sank her chin into her hands, frowning. “I can’t believe Steve actually did favors for Chick,” she said. “Chick is trying to cheat our friends... to steal treasure he doesn’t have any right to. And Steve actually helped him.”

No doubt about it, Steve wasn’t going to win any Most Faithful Friend awards. I even wondered if maybe he’d been the one who put the listening device on the Island Scout in the first place, as one of his “favors” to Chick.

“We can’t change what happened. All we can do is figure out what to do next,” I said.

A pad and pencil lay on the table next to the speakers. As I listened to George and Diego and Lucy talking, I picked up the pencil, ready to write down anything that might help us find them.

“Hey,” I murmured, staring at the pad. “Maybe there’s another way...”

I picked up the pad and tilted it in the light. “We could try taking a rubbing of whatever Chick wrote down on this pad,” I suggested. “See those indentations? It looks like he pressed down so hard that the pencil made marks on the page underneath.”

Gently, I rubbed the pencil across the blank page. When I was done, we all leaned over to get a look at the indented marks that were left in white:

25*19N

80*38W

“Is that some kind of code?” Bess wondered.

“They’re map coordinates!” Delia said. “Latitude and longitude. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what they are. If we look at a map, I bet we’ll find that they mark a spot somewhere along the reef.”

That was all I needed to hear. Ripping the paper from the pad, I jumped to my feet. “We don’t know how much of a head start Chick has. Let’s go!”

Luckily, the Pelican Bay Trailer Park was close to Pennekamp. Within twenty minutes we were back in one of the state park motorboats. As Delia steered down the mangrove channel from the marina, I barely noticed the tropical birds perched among the branches and on the channel markers. I guess I was too focused on looking for Chick’s boat to appreciate the tropical scenery. Tons of kayaks and motorboats were out on the water, but I didn’t catch sight of any weathered, blue-green hull that might be Chick’s.

Delia had gotten binoculars and a nautical chart from her office, and she consulted the chart as we cleared the mangroves and headed for the open water. “The coordinates Chick wrote down mark a spot that’s down from Molasses Reef and a little farther out,” she told Bess and me. “When we get close, we can keep an eye out for the Scout. ”

I knew we wouldn’t be within sight of the Scout for twenty minutes or so, but I kept gazing ahead anyway. The afternoon sun sparkled blindingly on the water, so we had to use the binoculars to get a clear look at boats in the distance. We must have passed half a dozen fishing boats, some sailboats, and a tour boat from Pennekamp. Just when I thought that maybe we’d gotten the coordinates wrong, Bess pointed ahead and said, “What about that one? Isn’t that the Scout?”

I peered into the distance. Out past a fishing boat was another boat that looked about the right shape to be the Island Scout. It was too far away to see clearly, but Bess was looking through the binoculars.

“Yes! I see George on the deck and… wow! Look at all those gold bars,” she said. “It looks like there’s a mountain of them!”

“What about Chick?” I asked.

“Oh—right.” Bess moved the binoculars left and right. “Looks like we got here first. I don’t see Chick or his boat anywhere,” she reported.

That was definitely good news. I wasn’t sure how we’d managed it. But figuring that out wasn’t nearly as important as making sure George, Diego, and Lucy were safe.

By the time we passed the fishing boat, I could see the Scout more clearly—and the two red buoys that floated right next to her. George was by herself on the deck, wearing a wet suit. As Delia steered around the buoys, Bess and I waved and shouted, “George!”

It took her about half a second to realize who we were. “Great! You decided to come after all! Boy, did you ever make the right decision. Check it out!” she cried, grabbing our mooring line from Bess. “Can you believe how much gold we found? We’re still not done bringing it all up. Diego and Lucy are getting another load from the bottom now.”

George was even more excited than she’d been the day before. And as we climbed onto the Scout, I saw why. I had never seen so much gold. A wall of it, five bars wide and the whole length of the deck, stood gleaming in the sun. Next to the bars were buckets of gold coins, chains, knobs of silver that looked like candlesticks, and silverware.

“You’re not going to believe what’s in here,” George said. Beaming, she bent to touch an ancient-looking wooden box with a carved top. “It’s—”

“Jewelry. Gold, rubies, emeralds—we know all about it, George,” Bess said.

“Huh?” George shot a cockeyed glance at her cousin, then laughed. “Yeah... right.”

“It’s the truth. Chick Russell bugged the Scout,” Delia explained. “He’s been listening to everything you guys have been saying.”

Once we started talking, we couldn’t stop. The three of us tripped over our words in our hurry to get the story out. George listened with this half-confused look on her face. But all at once, I could tell she got it.

“Wait a minute. Chick Russell is coming here? Now? I’ve got to warn Lucy and Diego!” George strode over to a rope that was looped through a pulley and stretched down below the water. “We’ve been loading the treasure into a wire basket that’s tied to the end of this. Two tugs is the signal to come up,” she said, yanking twice on the rope. “The bottom’s only about twenty feet down, so they’ll be up right away.”

We waited, but after a minute, Lucy and Diego still hadn’t surfaced.

“What’s going on?” George murmured.

We gazed over the railing, but the water wasn’t clear enough to see to the bottom. George tugged on the rope again, and this time, two heads popped up above the surface of the water.

“Finally! I was starting to get worried,” George said.

Diego and Lucy pulled off the mouthpieces from their oxygen tanks. I would have expected them to look excited, but the faces behind their goggles were grim.

“What’s the matter?” George asked.

Then a third head popped up right behind them. Even before the person pulled off his mask and mouthpiece, I knew who it was.

“Chick!” Delia said, gasping.

“That’s right, darlin’,” he told her. With one hand, he kept a tight grip on Diego’s wet suit. Then he held up the other hand, and I saw the shiny silver blade of a knife.

“Anyone gives me trouble,” he said, “and your friend Diego will pay for it.”

Pirate’s Payback

“Do whatever he says,” Lucy said gravely. Bess, George, Delia, and I all stood frozen on the deck. Just looking at that gleaming knife blade so close to Diego’s throat made my breath catch in my throat.

“How did he get here without us seeing him?” Bess asked.

Even as she said the words, my eyes searched the nearby water. I spotted the fishing boat we’d passed before—a big sporty model with an observation deck and fishing poles angled out in half a dozen spots. What I hadn’t noticed before was the small, sun-bleached motorboat that was anchored in the shadow of the larger one.

“His boat’s over there,” I said, groaning. “He must have swum underwater the rest of the way.”

I guess I spoke a little louder than I had intended, because Chick angled a quick glance up at me. “Nice deduction,” he said, keeping his grip on Diego while he kicked his feet to stay afloat. “Of course, it’s a little late for guesswork now. Get up on deck, Lucy.”

Chick gestured toward the ladder, and Lucy swam over to it and climbed on board. She kept glancing worriedly at Diego as she unstrapped her oxygen tank. Still down in the water, Diego let himself be pulled toward the ladder by Chick.

“Now, lock your friends inside the cabin,” Chick instructed, calling up to Lucy. “I don’t want any surprise superhero moves from them.”

As he spoke, he looked right at me. Okay, I’ll admit I was trying to figure out our options. But I wasn’t about to do anything stupid—not when Diego’s life was at stake. So when Lucy ushered George, Delia, Bess, and me into the cabin, we went.

I noticed that Chick waited until both doors were bolted from the outside before he pushed Diego up the ladder ahead of him. He directed Diego and Lucy over to the rope and pulley and told them to pull up the basket.

“You don’t have any right,” I heard Diego say as he strained, pulling on the rope. “We’ve been searching for the Catarina for two years! Now that we’ve found her, you can’t just take her treasure from us. It’s piracy!”

“Oh, yeah? My folks were treasure hunting these waters two hundred years ago,” Chick shot back. “I’d say that gives me the right to take anything I want.”

“Nothing justifies stealing,” I called through the door, before I could stop myself. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut, but Chick’s smug, arrogant tone really got to me. “The coral reef could die out, thanks to people like you! Butterfly orchids and other rare plants could become extinct.”

Lucy shot me a warning glance. I could tell she was worried about what Chick would do if he got mad. Luckily for us, Chick looked more amused than angry. He just rolled his eyes and said, “Thank you for that touching display of eco-consciousness. Now, hurry up,” he added, tapping Diego’s shoulder. “The sooner you get the gold up, the sooner I can finish up here.”

I saw the scared glances that ricocheted among Bess, George, and Delia. “W-what do you mean, ‘finish up’? What are you going to do with us?” Delia asked.

“You’ll see,” Chick said vaguely.

Call me cynical, but something told me his plans didn’t include contacting the coast guard to turn himself in, or letting us go after we promised not to call the police. Our lives were in danger. I had to do something, and buying some time seemed like a good start.

“I have to hand it to you, Chick,” I said. “It was pretty clever, the way you gave that phony map to Steve in exchange for all the favors he did for you. He’s the one who put the bug on the Scout, isn’t he?”

Chick glanced toward the cabin before turning back to Lucy and Diego. “Well, it can’t hurt to tell you now, since you’ve figured it out,” he said. “Sure, Steve did it.”

Delia frowned darkly. Being reminded of what Steve did for Chick in exchange for the map had to hurt. But I needed to keep Chick talking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George feel around the computer and sonar. Everything had happened so fast that we hadn’t had a chance to search for the listening device. But after a moment, George pulled a small black disk from underneath the table and held it up.

“We know you borrowed Steve Manning’s boat when you poached those orchids,” Bess added. “Was it a coincidence that you were wearing the same color shirt as him, or did you plan that?”

Chick chuckled to himself. “I figured I might as well look as much like Steve as possible,” he told us. “After all, no one expects me to have a sleek red boat like that one he’s got.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Didn’t you make good money selling all those poached corals and butterfly orchids and things?”

Diego was just hoisting up the wire basket tied to the end of the rope. Half a dozen gold bars were in it. Chick watched greedily while Diego and Lucy lifted the bars out, one by one, and placed them with the others on the deck.

“I got by okay,” he said, his eyes still on the gleaming gold. “But I deserve better than that. My family’s been elbowed out by all kinds of tourists, coming in with their fancy equipment. If anyone deserves the treasure that’s down there,” he added, nodding toward the water, “it’s me.”

“That’s why you snuck onto the Scout last night, isn’t it? Since you had the boat bugged, you knew about the gold bars and coins we found yesterday,” George said.

“You got that right. I figured, why shouldn’t that gold be mine?” Chick said. “I must have missed hearing that your pals the Salazars took the gold with them. That probably happened when my neighbors stopped by to chat.”

I could just imagine the kinds of nosy questions the couple from the boat next to Chick’s would ask if they heard the conversations that Chick’s bug picked up from the Scout. Chick definitely would have had to turn it off while they were there.

“Anyhow, after you folks surprised me, I figured I’d be better off waiting for the big payoff, after Lucy and Diego found the mother lode from the Catarina,” he went on.

“Talk about twisted...,” George mumbled under her breath.

I wasn’t sure whether Diego and Lucy could tell, but Chick was barely paying any attention to them anymore. As he spoke, he stared at the gold bars in a kind of dreamy trance. I tried to catch Lucy’s eye, but she was under the same spell.

Come on! I thought. This is our chance!

Too bad the moment didn’t last long. Chick seemed to snap out of his reverie. Turning to look at us with deadly serious eyes, he said, “And now I’m going to get what’s coming to me. As soon as this gold is unloaded, I’m afraid you’re all going to have a tragic accident.”

Chick turned his head for a fraction of a second to glance at the boat Delia and Bess and I had come on. But that was all it took.

Smack!

Diego swung the metal pulley so that it hit Chick on the side of the head. In the next instant, Chick slumped to the deck, unconscious.

“ That’s what you’ve got coming to you,” Lucy said. She bent over Chick to feel his pulse. “He’s still breathing. Quick, get some rope, Diego, so we can tie him up before he comes to.”

By the next morning, media hounds from all over the country had arrived in Key Largo. A mob of reporters, cameramen, and staff assistants jammed onto the dock where the Island Scout was moored. A couple of them even knocked on Delia’s door, trying to get the scoop on the Catarina ’s long-lost treasure and Chick’s plot to steal it from the Salazars. By midday it was so crazy that the Salazars decided to hold a press conference.

“Now I know how movie stars feel,” Bess joked as she, Delia, George, and I squeezed through the crowd on our way to the Scout.

A sea of cameras and reporters and lights closed in around us. Luckily, Lucy and Diego had sent a couple of security guards to accompany us. I don’t think we would have made it to the Scout without them.

“Over here!” Diego called, waving to us from the front deck as we climbed on board.

He and Lucy were standing next to the treasure from the Catarina —a mountain of gold bars, coins, chains, gems, silver candlesticks, plates, cutlery, and belt buckles. Even though I’d seen it the day before, being right next to it still took my breath away.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Lucy said. “Diego and I are still pinching ourselves.”

“So are we,” Bess said, stopping next to the gold. “Now I get why you were so hooked on treasure hunting, George.”

Cameras started clicking like crazy, and questions flew from all directions. How much was the treasure worth? Were the Salazars going to put any of it on display for the public? Were they going to search for any more Spanish galleons? Was it true that a modern-day pirate had tried to steal the treasure from them?

“I don’t want to romanticize what Chick Russell did,” Lucy told reporters. “He broke the law, and he would have hurt us in order to steal the Catarina ’s treasure. We were just lucky to have friends on board who helped to stop Chick and make sure he wound up in jail, where he belonged.”

“And as a token of our thanks, we’d like to present these coins to our friends,” Diego went on.

I couldn’t believe it when he held up four gold doubloons and handed them to Delia, Bess, George, and me.

The cameras started clicking all over again, and a reporter called out, “What are you going to do with the coins?”

That was an easy one. Bess, George, Delia, and I put our heads together for just a moment before we answered.

“I’m sure the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park could use the money to preserve and protect the reef,” I said. “And to protect rare and endangered plants and animals on Key Largo.”

That got Delia smiling. And so did the Salazars’ announcement that they were donating twenty-five percent of the treasure to the coral reef state park too.

“The money will go a long way toward stopping poachers in the state park,” she said, as reporters shouted more questions at Diego and Lucy.

“I hope so,” George said. Leaning close to Bess, she added, “Sorry I didn’t do more to help track down Chick. I guess I was so awed by the thought of finding the Catarina that I didn’t understand how bad the poaching problem was. That is, until I saw for myself how far Chick was willing to go to get what he wanted.”

“Greed makes people do awful things,” Delia said. “Even Steve.”

She looked a little sad, and I understood why. Bess and George and I had all been with her when Steve had called the night before to apologize. He’d gone to the police and admitted to putting the bug in the Scout for Chick. Since he was cooperating with them, the police were letting him off with community service. Still, Delia had decided she didn’t want to date anyone who would help a dangerous con man like Chick.

“I guess Steve’s biggest punishment is knowing that if he’d stuck with the Salazars, instead of making that dumb deal with Chick, he’d be getting a cut of the treasure too,” Bess said.

“Some people just don’t understand,” said Delia, “that the biggest treasure is having friends who’re there for you when you need them.”

It was so true. As I stood there with Bess, George, Delia, and the Salazars, I knew I was the richest person on the planet.

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