"What?" the governor inquired weakly as he emerged from his private bathroom and straightened his plaid vest, making sure the railroad watch that had been passed down for generations was safely tucked back into the watch pocket. "The island boy's a journalist? What island boy? And what in thunder are you talking about, and you know not to just walk in on me."
"Fonny Boy's his name. Some island boy named Fonny Boy, and we've got a description," Trader excitedly said. "And no. Trooper Truth disguised himself as a journalist, not Fonny Boy."
"He's disguising himself not as Fonny Boy but as a journalist?" Crimm fished his office magnifying glass out of a landfill of papers. "You're supposed to be a bloody press secretary and you butcher the King's English, simply butcher it. Constantly and consistently. And for God's sake, don't you ever take your suits to the dry cleaners? Doesn't your wife complain?" The governor cast an enlarged eye over Trader's slovenly bulk. "You have chili on your shirt and your tie's too short. You look like Big Daddy after he's been on a goddamn bender, and I'm thinking very seriously about firing you one of these days."
"Please, Governor!" Trader cried out. "Don't kill the messenger. I'm not the one leaking all this classified and embarrassing information onto the Internet!"
"I certainly know that." The governor weakly seated himself behind his desk and motioned for Trader to take a chair and lower his voice. "Whoever Trooper Truth is, he's at least a writer."
"Now, I take that very personally," Trader said. "That was naughty, naughty to insult me that way. I think you should apologize for wounding my creative sensibilities."
"The only thing creative about you is your rendition of the truth," the governor retorted. "And if I weren't so preoccupied with important matters, including my health, I would catch you in your lies more often and do something about it."
"How is your health?" Trader sweetly asked.
"Did you bring me this latest essay?"
Trader unfolded the printout and smoothed it open on the ink blotter. The governor was silent for many long minutes as he moved his magnifying glass over Trooper Truth's words and grunted now and then and made other inarticulate sounds of disapproval, surprise, and constitutional discomfort.
"There's only one thing to do," he decided in his most sovereign tone. "We're going to have to find a special operative who will finger this Trooper Truth scoundrel and bring him to justice."
"Bring him to justice for what, Governor? I don't believe he's committed a crime."
"Why, I believe he might just be guilty of treason, don't you? Isn't he sticking his nose in state business and referring to my policies as being idiotic? Furthermore, I don't appreciate this tireless obsession with pirates, when we've been working so hard to play down that problem. Now Blackbeard's even dragged into the fray and is on everybody's mind."
"I know, I know." Trader couldn't have agreed with him more as he gleefully thought of his Captain Bonny website. "We certainly don't want the public thinking that Blackbeard was welcome in Virginia or was ever even in Virginia, not even once. What we need to do is emphasize that Blackbeard and North Carolina were as thick as thieves, and it was our own Governor Spottswood who…"
"You know how I feel about Spottswood!" the governor blurted out as his submarine went on alert. "I don't want him getting any more credit than he already has, do you hear me? I have to live with his alleged descendants, and I'm sick and tired of being invited to their plantation pig roasts and shad roe plankings and hearing endless apocryphal stories about Governor Spottswood, who was probably a blowhard with gout and the clap." The governor pulled out his railroad watch again. "It's getting late. Why don't you drop by the mansion for supper and we'll discuss this further and come up with a plan?"
Andy already had a plan, but he feared Hammer was too riled up to listen, as he watched her storm out of her car and stride through the Ukrop's parking lot in his direction.
"Unplug the website immediately," she said as she yanked open the door of his unmarked Caprice. "That's it] You're totally out of control. Am I to believe you've been doing undercover work on Tangier Island and you never bothered to let me know? And what awful thing turned up at your house last night?"
"I'm sorry. I was wrong not to tell you about my secret mission. But I was afraid you'd try to stop me," he replied calmly. "And you can't unplug a website. I could close it down, but you don't want me to do that, trust me. There's too much at stake."
"The only thing at stake right now, it seems to me, is my career and good name and the life of a dentist," she retorted.
"A scoundrel of a dentist. You should see the chart I looked at! And what about Popeye?" Andy asked.
Hammer's grief resurfaced and silenced her.
"I believe there was a lot of premeditation involved in her dognapping, and therefore it is most likely the work of someone who has something personal against you," Andy told her.
"That could be half the universe," she dismally replied.
"This isn't about money, not directly," he said. "If it was about a ransom, you would have been contacted long before now. I think someone has something pretty nefarious up his sleeve. And I've been getting some clues because of Trooper Truth-e-mails that are suspicious. I believe if I continue posting my essays and following every lead I can, we're going to get to the bottom of this and a lot of other things. And I swear to God, if Popeye is alive, I'm going to find her for you."
"I refuse to get my hopes up," she stoically said. "Do you really think she's still alive?"
"It's just an instinct. But yes. For one thing, Boston terriers are not a hot item for dog thieves. They have bat ears, bulging eyes that look at the walls, and their little nub of a corkscrew tail doesn't cover anything important, if you know what I mean. Not to mention their flat faces, their tendency to get bald in spots, and their intelligence, which far surpasses that of most of their owners-not including you, of course. I would assume the dogs of choice for thieves are Labs, miniature collies, cocker spaniels, and maybe dachshunds."
"Then Popeye may have been stolen as part of some bigger scheme that we don't know about yet," Hammer deduced.
"Exactly." Andy nodded as their conversation steamed up the glass.
"That was very risky and probably foolish and reckless for you to pretend to be a journalist and go to Tangier Island," Hammer then said.
"Look," he replied, "based on an e-mail tip to Trooper Truth, I knew even before I went there to paint the speed trap that the state police was being set up for a political fall to take attention away from the governor, who is increasingly viewed as a blundering potentate because of that asshole Major Trader. It's just a crime that nasty slob of a press secretary manipulates him so blatantly, but the poor old man can't see it because he can't see anything, period. You wouldn't believe some of the stories I've heard when I've been poking around this past year."
"Such as?" Hammer was getting interested.
"It seems, for example, that every time Trader brings Crimm cookies or candy, the governor soon after gets a gastrointestinal attack that completely debilitates him. And let me add, the goodies are always chocolate or have chocolate in them."
"No. You don't think…?"
"I most certainly do, and I intend to prove it just as soon as the labs complete testing on the chocolates the governor supposedly sent you and what's left of a fudge cake Trader had sent over to Ruth's Chris."
"You sent those to the lab?" She was shocked.
"Of course I did. I'd heard the rumors and the governor never even calls you, so why would he send you chocolates through guess who! I think that bastard, no-good Trader is lacing the governor's goodies with Ex-Lax and has been doing it for years. What better way to confuse and manipulate someone than to have that person doubled over with cramps and embarrassment whenever it's time to make key decisions, which, in the case of the governor, is daily?"