“Oh, maybe twenty minutes ago.”
“Did you come in through Green Gate One?”
“Yep.”
Jupe looked grim. “I think the beggar must have followed you in here.”
“Not a chance!” cried Pete. “No way!”
Ignoring Pete’s protest, Jupe went on. “Maybe he spotted you at that rally and followed you back to Rocky Beach. Or maybe he spotted the two of us at Denicola’s yesterday, or maybe all three of us at Mr. Bonestell’s the night before. Sometime in the last three days we crossed his path, and he followed us here. And just now I think he followed you inside. I wonder if he had a chance to plant another bug before I came in.”
Again Pete looked around as if the blind man lurked at his elbow. Then he and Jupe began to search the workshop. There was no trace of a second bug, and no sign that anything had been disturbed. The barriers of junk that surrounded the workshop were just as usual.
Pete looked very troubled. “I came here from home,” he said. “If he followed me here,’you . . . you don’t suppose he was watching my house, do you?”
“Not necessarily,” said Jupe. “He could have been waiting here at the yard.”
Jupe got nails and a hammer and was preparing to nail up the gate in the fence when Bob appeared. After Bob helped close the secret gate, the three boys withdrew through Tunnel Two to Headquarters. Jupe took his accustomed place behind the desk and prepared to listen to Bob’s report on Gracie Montoya.
“It got interesting for a while,” said Bob, “because somebody named Ernie showed up to see Gracie. He looked like the guy you told me about. He rang the doorbell and Gracie didn’t invite him in. She came out of her apartment and stood by the swimming pool and they yelled at one another in Spanish.”
“No kidding!” Pete looked amused.
Bob nodded. “Actually, she did most of the yelling. He sounded as if he was trying to explain something to her, and she wouldn’t listen. Finally he got mad and he yelled, too. A lady who lived in the next building came out and stood on the sidewalk and listened, and then she threatened to call the police.
“Then the guy left, and Gracie Montoya went back in and got her handbag. I saw her drive away a few minutes later. I waited for half an hour or so but she didn’t come back, so I left.”
“Hm!” said Jupe. “I wonder what that was all about. Now, let’s see where we are.”
Jupe leaned forward, intent. “We can place the beggar at the scene of the crime,” he said. “And through the wallet, we can also connect him with Ernie and his friends up near the pier. Gracie Montoya is involved with that group and also with Mr. Bonestell, and it is most interesting that she is a makeup artist. Could she have been the one to disguise someone as the dead terrorist from Mesa d’Oro–Altranto? And could she have disguised herself as a man and taken part in the robbery? She’s tall enough to be one of the thieves, according to Mr. Bonestell’s description. And he told me this afternoon that only the thief who impersonated the cleaning man spoke during that robbery. The other two people never said a word.”
“If one of them was Gracie Montoya, she wouldn’t have said anything,” Pete said. “Her voice would have given her away.”
“So one of the other robbers may have been a woman,” said Jupe, “or perhaps the other robbers didn’t speak English and didn’t want to reveal that fact. Perhaps they’re from Mesa d’Oro.”
“They could be the two guys who share the house with Ernie,” said Pete. “I mean, I don’t know where those guys come from, but they speak Spanish like natives. Maybe they don’t know any English.”
“And Ernie is fluent in both languages,” said Jupe. Suddenly he was brisk. “I think it’s time we learned more about Ernie and his friends. Bob, you’re the only one who isn’t known to the people at Denicola’s. You could simply hang around the pier. Someone is always hanging around watching whenever a person works on a boat. Ernie has already seen both me and Pete, so we can’t do it.”
“Sure,” said Bob.
“Then I’ll go to Gracie Montoya’s and see what’s to be seen there,” said Jupe. “And Pete, can you stay here in Headquarters? The blind man made a move today. I have a feeling we’ll see him again, and if we do, we may need to contact one another. You can be our liaison person.”
“You mean I can mind the phone,” said Pete. “Okay. Glad to do it. But if the blind man shows up here, you can bet I’ll use the phone to call the cops.”
“You do that!” said Jupe cheerfully. “Of course,” he added, “I think we should all be careful. The beggar knows where we are, and he may know–or suspect–what we’re doing. He ran earlier, but he may not always run. He could be a threat–anytime!”
13
The Warning
“THAT LOOKS FUN,” said Bob Andrews.
Bob stood on the edge of the Denicola pier. It was Friday morning. The tide was out, and Bob looked down on the deck of the Maria III. Ernie was there, painting the outside of the wheelhouse.
Bob waited for a moment. Ernie did not respond to the remark. He did not even look up.
“We had our house painted last year,” said Bob. “The painters let me help. I did the window boxes.”
Ernie paused and looked up at Bob. He looked down at the brush in his hand. Then he stepped back away from the wheelhouse and held the brush out to Bob.
Bob jumped from the dock to the deck of the boat. He grinned, took the brush, and began to paint, being careful and neat. Ernie watched with amusement.
After a few minutes of silent work, Bob started talking.
“Gee, it must be really neat to work on a boat!” he said.
Ernie merely grunted.
“I went on a boat ride once,” confided Bob. “My friend’s uncle took us. It was terrific–until the waves got rough.” Bob then made up a long gruesome story about being seasick. Ernie finally laughed.
“Yeah, it hits some people like that,” said the young man. He spoke without a trace of accent. “Me, I never get seasick.”
With a little prompting, Ernie told Bob about the worst storm he’d ever been in. Bob questioned him like an admiring little kid, and Ernie got more friendly. But before Bob could learn anything useful, two men about Ernie’s age came strolling down the pier. They addressed Ernie in Spanish, and when he answered them he looked sideways at Bob. An instant later Ernie had climbed on to the dock, and he and his two friends walked away from the Maria III.
When they were out of earshot, the three men plunged into a discussion. Bob tried to watch them without seeming to. The men gestured towards the shore, and one pointed as if to indicate that something was approaching down the coast from the north. Ernie shrugged and one friend clenched his fists and waved his hands in the air. The other pointed to his wristwatch and made some extremely emphatic statement to Ernie.
Ernie turned away from his two friends at last. They wandered off the pier and back up along the beach to the shabby little house that stood with its face to the highway and its back to the sea. Bob concluded that they were Ernie’s room-mates.
Ernie came back on to the boat and examined Bob’s work with appreciation.
“Very good,” he said warmly.
“You sure talk Spanish like a whiz!” Bob exclaimed. “Your friends, too.”
“It’s my second language,” bragged Ernie. “My friends are from South America. They aren’t so good with English, so we speak Spanish.”
Bob saw old Mrs. Denicola come out of the house near the parking lot. She was carrying a tray with what looked like a Thermos jug and some cups. Halfway between the house and the little office where Eileen Denicola sat, the old lady looked out to the Maria III. She saw Ernie and Bob there, with Bob holding the paintbrush, and she paused for an instant. Though he was at least thirty metres away from the old woman, Bob saw that there was tension in her figure.
After a few seconds the old woman went on into the office. A moment later Eileen came out along the pier.
The younger woman wore a rough blue work shirt, open at the neck, with a blue and white bandanna knotted around her throat. She had on faded jeans and worn blue sneakers. She looked confident and also somewhat angry.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be painting the wheelhouse,” she said to Ernie. She did not raise her voice, but she sounded stern.