“Pretty impressive goal,” Bess commented. “Are these some of the custom-made boats they built?” She was standing in front of several framed photographs. Joining Bess, Nancy saw that the sailboats in the photos were much larger than the Skipper’s Surprise.
“Yeah,” Parker answered from behind them. He pointed to the two photos on the left. “Those two are boats they designed and built for clients in Florida.”
Nancy nodded, then started toward the hallway. “Which one is Andy’s office?”
“Third door to the left,” Parker answered. He twisted a key from the ring Andy had given her and handed it to Nancy.
Nancy took the key and headed back to the office, with Ned right behind her. When she reached the door, she noticed that it was slightly ajar. Puzzled, she looked back at Ned.
“It’s open,” she mouthed to him.
It was dark inside, but Nancy thought she glimpsed the glimmer of a flashlight. She slowly reached for the doorknob, but Ned put a restraining hand on her arm. “Be careful,” he whispered.
Nancy nodded, then cautiously grasped the doorknob. Slowly, she inched the door open. Then, suddenly, she gave the door a shove and jumped into the room.
At the same time, a beam of light flashed in her eyes. Nancy blinked as a dark figure leapt out of the darkness, straight at her!
Chapter
Six
BEFORE NANCY could react, the figure crashed into her, knocking her against the office door.
“Ned! Stop him!” Nancy cried, as the person pushed past her and shot into the corridor. All she saw was a glimpse of a tweed jacket.
Ned put up his hands to grab the fleeing person, but the man shot out with a solid punch to Ned’s chin, propelling him backward. Ned cracked his head against the wall and slumped to the floor.
In a flash Nancy was beside him. “Are you all right?” she asked, gently touching his cheek..
Nodding, Ned gestured toward the hall. ‘Go get him!” he gasped.
Nancy didn’t have to be told twice. She jumped up and sprinted down the hallway toward the door that led to the warehouse. “Parker, Bess!” she called over her shoulder. “Someone was in Andy’s office and hit Ned!”
“What!” she heard Parker exclaim. The sound of his running footsteps echoed behind her.
Nancy raced for the warehouse door, with Parker right behind her. She pulled the door open, then stopped to get her bearings. A huge, windowless room spread out before her. Tiny emergency lights set into the high ceiling provided just enough light to see.
Holding her breath, Nancy listened. It was silent. Unless the man had escaped already, which she doubted, she knew he must be hiding.
Just then Ned and Bess jogged through the doorway. Ned was rubbing his jaw. Bending toward Nancy, Parker whispered, “There’s an exit to the right. The only other way out is a big garage door that leads to a loading dock.”
“Let’s split up,” Nancy suggested. “Parker, you and Bess cover the exit. I’ll bet that’s how our intruder broke in. I’ll hunt around and try and scare him out of hiding. Ned, you guard this door. That way we’ll have him trapped.”
Quickly the group spread out. Nancy made her way silently among piles of lumber, stacks of wooden poles, and boxes of metal fittings. In the middle of the warehouse was the skeleton of a boat hull. Nancy was making her way around it when a shuffling noise to her left made her freeze.
In slow motion she turned in the direction of the sound. Behind some metal shelving, she glimpsed a patch of tweed fabric.
Bingo! she thought. Crouching, Nancy stalked around the shelving. The person was huddled down with his back to her, peering around the end of the shelf in the direction of the exit door.
Spying a coil of nylon rope, Nancy carefully reached for it, curling her fingers around one loop. She was slowly inching it from the shelf, when suddenly the person turned. Brown eyes stared at her from under a black baseball cap. The man appeared to be in his late forties, and he had a mustache and whiskery chin.
“Don’t move,” Nancy warned in the firmest voice she could muster. “We have you surrounded. Guys, over here!”
Ned dashed to Nancy’s side, and the man looked back and forth at them. He let out his breath in a relieved sigh.
“You’re just kids!” he scoffed, straightening. He arched his back and stretched. “Oooh. I need to get back in shape.”
That was for sure, Nancy thought. He was a couple of inches taller than she was, with a beer belly sticking out from under his sport coat.
“Did you get him?” Parker asked as he and Bess came running up. They stopped short when they saw the man.
Raising his brows in confusion, the man stared at the four teens. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you kids be at the mall or something?”
Nancy glared at him. “We’re the ones who need answers. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I can explain all that,” the man said. He started to reach under his sport coat, but Nancy caught his arm.
“Hold it!” she said. “How do we know you don’t have a weapon? Parker, see what he’s got under his coat.”
The man rolled his eyes. “Hey. I’m just reaching for my wallet. Left inside pocket.”
Cautiously, Parker stepped forward and felt under the man’s coat. A second later, he pulled out a wallet and opened it. “ ‘Stan Yadlowski, Private Detective,’ ” Parker read aloud, looking surprised.
“What are you doing breaking into Lazlo Designs, Mr. Yadlowski?” Ned repeated Nancy’s question.
“That’s privileged info,” the detective said, frowning. “Besides, how do I know who you are? Maybe you’re here to rip off the place.”
“I’m Parker Wright,” Parker explained. “Andy Devereux, one of the owners of Lazlo Designs, is my cousin. We have permission to be here and keys to get in.” Waving the keys in the air, Parker leaned closer and fixed his gaze on Yadlowski. “Neither of which you have.”
Stan Yadlowski scratched his head. “You got me there,” he said. “Look, I can’t tell you what I’m doing here without getting an okay from my client.”
Bess shot Nancy a doubtful look. “Is he just stalling?”
“No, he’s right,” Nancy said. “He also doesn’t have to tell us who his client is, but he will, right?” She turned to him. “Unless you prefer we call the police.”
“Yeah, yeah. I do a lot of work for Bayside Insurance. Now, if I can get to a phone—”
“Bayside Insurance?” Ned repeated as they escorted Stan back to Andy’s office. “Do they insure boats?”
Yadlowski nodded. “Right.”
Turning on the office light, Nancy saw that the room contained a desk, two filing cabinets, and some shelves with books and papers on them. Stan went over to the phone on the desk, picked up the receiver, and dialed.
“Mr. Aquino,” he spoke into the receiver. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. . . .”
After he’d spoken a minute, Nancy whispered that she wanted to speak to Mr. Aquino. Yadlowski handed her the phone.
“Mr. Aquino?” Nancy said in a sweet voice. “How about a deal? We won’t turn in Mr. Yadlowski to the police for unlawful breaking and entering if you tell us what Bayside Insurance is up to.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then a smooth voice replied, “All right. Put Stan back on, and I’ll give him the okay to answer any questions you may have.”
A few minutes later, the detective hung up. “All right, kids. You’ve got me for an hour. But how about we do this over lunch? I’m starving.”
Soon after, the five were seated in a booth at a local diner. After the young waitress brought their drinks and took their orders, Nancy sat back and gave Stan an appraising look. “Now, what’s so interesting about Lazlo Designs?”
Stan took a gulp of his coffee, then grinned lazily. “Why are you kids so interested in why I’m interested?” he countered.
“It’s like this, Mr. Yadlowski,” Parker
said, putting his palms down forcefully on the table. “My cousin, Andy Devereux, is a suspect in the possible shooting of his partner, Nick Lazlo. We want to clear his name. We’re not fooling around here.”
Yadlowski’s mouth dropped open, and he abruptly set down his coffee cup. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” Bess answered, stirring her malted milk shake with a straw.
Just then, their waitress set several plates on the table. “One medium burger, one still mooing,” she said in a flat voice. “Two fried chickens. Club sandwich coming up.”
Stan Yadlowski grabbed the rare burger and took a huge bite. Bess took the other one, and Parker and Ned took their chicken dinners. While Nancy waited for her sandwich, she watched Yadlowski tear into his food.
“I was on a stakeout all night,” the private investigator mumbled as he chewed. “That’s why I got to Lazlo Designs so late.” He snorted. “If I’d been there earlier, you never would’ve caught me.”
“How did you get in?” Ned asked.
Yadlowski shrugged. “Easy. I jimmied the warehouse door, then got into the office with a credit card. Tricks of the trade.”
“What were you looking for?” Nancy asked. She looked up as the waitress finally brought her turkey club. As soon as the waitress left, Nancy bit into the sandwich. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.
“I was looking for evidence that Lazlo Designs was defrauding the insurance company,” the investigator replied.
Nancy’s eyes widened. When she glanced at Parker, she could see he was surprised, too.
“A year ago, we paid out a big sum of money on a sailboat that Lazlo Designs claimed was lost at sea,” Yadlowski explained. “It was a boat they built for some bigwig client in Florida. The client had only paid a deposit on it, so when the boat disappeared, we ended up paying Lazlo Designs.”
“What’s so suspicious about that?” Parker asked, picking up a french fry. “I mean, that’s why companies have insurance.”
“Yeah, and we paid the claim. Six hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
Nancy jerked her head up. Beside her, Ned whistled. “Wow. That’s a lot of money!” Bess gasped.
The investigator shrugged. “It was a lot of boat, and Lazlo Designs pays big premiums.”
“So what was the problem?” Ned asked, taking a bite of mashed potatoes and gravy.
Stan Yadlowski wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then set his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The problem is that a month ago, the same thing happened. Another one of their boats was ‘lost at sea.’ Seems a little strange, don’t you think?”
“And that’s when you decided to investigate?” Nancy guessed.
Stan nodded. “At first we did it all above board. But we were getting some really weird answers from the people involved. So we decided to investigate more covertly.”
“You mean Nick and Andy were giving you the runaround?” Bess asked.
“No,” Stan told her. “Actually, we were mainly interested in the husband and wife Lazlo Designs paid to pilot the two boats to Florida. About two weeks after they left on their second delivery trip, the wife was found off the coast of Florida in a rubber raft.”
Nancy stopped eating and stared at Yadlowski, fascinated by the story he was telling.
“She was half-starved and hysterical,” Yadlowski continued. “This time she claimed that the sailboat wasn’t lost at sea—it had been stolen by pirates!”
Everyone looked at Yadlowski in amazement. “What!” Parker exclaimed.
“That’s what she said,” the investigator confirmed. “Not only that, but she said that when her husband tried to fight back, the pirates killed him and threw him overboard!”
Chapter
Seven
FOR A LONG MOMENT, all Nancy could do was stare at Stan Yadlowski. “I don’t believe this!” she finally whispered.
Stan smiled, as if amused by her reaction. “Yeah, pirates. Seems pretty crazy, huh? But there really is such a thing.”
Nancy frowned. “Are you telling me modern-day pirates are out there hijacking boats and killing innocent people?”
“Actually, I’ve read about them,” Ned put in. “They’re renegades who sail up from South or Central America and wait for unsuspecting boats.”
“Right,” Stan agreed. “Usually they go for big luxury powerboats, but they’ve been known to steal anything that’s worth a lot of money.”
Bess was staring at Ned and Stan as if they were crazy. “So Blackbeard is still around flying the skull and crossbones and attacking boats?” Everybody laughed, and for a second the tension was broken.
“Not quite. Modern pirates are trickier,” Ned explained. “The article I read said that they sometimes raise their distress flag. Then when the unsuspecting boat comes up to offer help, the crew members pull out their guns and force the other people off the boat.”
“That’s disgusting,” Bess said. “I mean, you can’t even go out for a pleasure cruise these days.”
“They must go only after boats far at sea,” Nancy commented, thinking out loud.
“Right. Usually they try to get somebody in international waters.” Stan took another bite of his burger and chewed for a minute. “That really confuses the issue. No one’s quite sure who to call for help. By the time the victims get back to port or are picked up by someone, the pirates are below the equator.”
“So it’s impossible to catch them,” Parker concluded.
“Pretty much,” Stan said, polishing off the last of his fries.
Nancy pushed her plate away. Her head was reeling with so much information that she wasn’t hungry anymore. She wondered why Andy hadn’t told them about the missing boats. What else was he hiding? And what, if anything, did the missing boats have to do with Nick’s disappearance?
“We’re also suspicious because we know that Lazlo Designs has had its share of financial problems,” Stan added. “The company has borrowed a lot of money, and business has been pretty slow.”
“So you think Lazlo Designs had their own boats stolen?” Nancy asked, taking a sip of her soda. “That doesn’t make sense. They would have received a good price from the sale to the clients in Florida. Why risk doing something illegal?”
Stan waved at the waitress for some more coffee. “Pretty smart observation, kid. One possibility is that they found other buyers. So, in effect, they got paid twice, once from the buyers and again from the insurance company. As I said, they needed money. Which is why we’re still investigating.”
“Did you find anything?” Parker asked.
“I wouldn’t know. While I was trying to get into the file cabinet, some blond broke into the office and scared me half to death.” Stan grinned at Nancy, then looked around at the others. “Now that I’ve told you everything I know, what’s this about Andy shooting his partner?”
As they finished lunch, everyone took turns telling Stan Yadlowski about Nick’s disappearance and Andy’s arrest. When they were done, Stan leaned back in the booth and frowned.
“Hmm. So how does this all tie in?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Parker said. “Only we’re out to clear Andy, and you’re out to get him.”
“Bayside Insurance just wants the truth,” the private investigator assured him.
Nancy stood up. “Then let’s go. We need to check out Lazlo Designs from top to bottom. Maybe we can find something that will help us all.”
• • •
“Find anything?” Nancy asked a few hours later, rubbing her eyes as she looked up from Andy Devereux’s desk. Ned, Bess, Parker, and Stan Yadlowski had all gathered in the doorway to Andy’s office.
After returning to Lazlo Designs, the group had gone over the office thoroughly. They had checked the locked desk drawer where Andy claimed he’d kept his gun. There was no sign that it had been broken into. Finally, Nancy had decided to go through the company’s accounting book, while the others continued their search of th
e office. She had spent the last half hour staring intently at the names, dates, and columns of accounts due and accounts receivable.
“We didn’t find a thing,” Ned replied. He sat on a corner of the desk. “Not that we know what we’re looking for.”
“Really,” Parker leaned against the file cabinet. “I hate poking around Andy’s business as if he’s some criminal.”
“Just remember we’re trying to help Andy,” Nancy reminded him. At least that’s what she hoped they were trying to do. After talking to Stan, she was beginning to wonder if Andy might be more involved in some funny business than he let on.
“We didn’t find much, either,” Bess said. She and Stan had hunted through all the file cabinets. “Except—” Pausing dramatically, she waved a manila folder in the air. “A file on the husband and wife who sailed the two boats that disappeared.”
“Too bad it doesn’t tell us anything that Bayside Insurance doesn’t already know,” Stan added in a frustrated tone. “References, addresses, the contract they signed saying they’d deliver the boat. That’s about it.”
Nancy reached for the file. “May I see it?” Quickly she skimmed through the contents. The couple’s names were Leah and Mike O’Halloran. Leah’s current address was in Annapolis.
“What about you, Nancy?” Ned asked. “Those account books seemed to be holding your interest.”
“Mmm.” Nancy closed the file and turned her attention back to the open ledger in front of her. “One thing puzzles me. I can’t find any record of the six hundred thousand dollars that Bayside Insurance paid Lazlo Designs for the first boat.”
Moving around the desk, Stan looked over Nancy’s shoulder. “The company paid it out some time last September.”
Nancy ran her finger down the figures for the month of September. “Nothing.”
“Maybe they put it in a different account,” Parker suggested.