“Who wants a pop?” he says-and all of a sudden the parrot flaps its wings and shrieks, “Who wants a pop?” Pete must've flicked the plastic bird's switch before he came out back to find me.
“Polly wants a pop!” he cracks, and the bird, of course, parrots it right back. Pete is chuckling so hard I think his baggy-butt jeans are going to slide down another inch.
Ceepak pulls up to the pier on his sixteen-speed trail bike.
“Evening, Captain.”
“Evening, Johnny,” says Pete. Then the parrot flaps and says it: “Evening, Johnny.” It's getting pretty annoying. Danny wants Polly to stick a cracker in it.
Fortunately, Pete decides it's time to flip the switch off.
He unlocks the office door. “Come in and look at my pirate booty!”
I fish a Stewart's Orange Cream soda out of the cooler. Ceepak passes.
“You sure?”
“No, thank you. I had a root beer earlier.”
“With Rita?”
“Roger that.”
Pete is in the back room retrieving his find.
“Give me a second, guys,” he calls out from behind the thick curtains, which look like old army blankets. “I put my little treasure in a shoebox. Now, I just have to remember where I put the shoebox!” More laughs. He cracks himself up sometimes.
“Take your time,” says Ceepak.
“So, where's Barkley?” I ask.
“Sleeping on the sofa.”
Suddenly, I want to tease him. I don't know why. Maybe it's an orange-pop-induced sugar rush. Maybe it's because my last female companion stole my emergency twenty. Whatever the reason, I'm in the mood to bust my partner's chops again, to give him a little grief about his girlfriend. Maybe it's because I don't have one myself.
“So,” I say, knowing, of course, that John Ceepak cannot tell a lie, “is Rita up there with Barkley?”
“10-4.”
“Is she gonna spend the night with you guys?”
Pete steps into the office with his shoebox.
“Affirmative,” says Ceepak.
Poor guy. He's blushing-but The Code won't let him fib, fudge, or weasel.
“She's sleeping over two nights in a row? Awesome.” I flash a manly wink at Cap'n Pete.
Pete doesn't wink back.
He's grinning but I can tell it's a strain. In fact, he looks the way the old nun from elementary school used to look whenever she caught us upside down on the monkey bars practicing our swear words.
“So,” I say, quickly changing the subject, “you found a charm bracelet, hunh?”
“Yep,” says Pete. “I got lucky for a change. All it took was following in the footsteps of our able friend here. I went back to where you found that ring, Johnny.”
“Oak Beach?”
“Right. Figured it might not be a bad idea. Might be something else buried there. It was just a hunch-but it paid off!”
He puts the box on the desk and angles down a gooseneck lamp so we can better see his find.
“I tried not to touch anything. Just like you said at the meeting. Pulled it out with hot dog tongs.”
“Let's see,” says Ceepak. He snaps open the cargo pants pocket where he packs his tweezers.
He snags the bracelet and holds it up under the light. The gold still sparkles in spots. Now he pulls out his photographer's bulb-brush. He keeps that one in his knee pocket. He gently dusts the charms.
“A charm bracelet is like a piece of frozen-or, in this case, buried-history.”
“We're all ears,” I tell him. Pete nods agreement.
Ceepak pulls a magnifying glass out of yet another pocket. Clearing his throat, he begins. “The wearer went to the 1984 World Expo in New Orleans, Louisiana. Or else someone brought her back a souvenir.”
“What else?” I ask. Come on-that one was pretty easy.
Ceepak fingers another of the charms.
“I also suspect this young lady was an Italian-American. She liked rock music and cats. And she either enjoyed going to church or someone encouraged her to do so.” Go, Sherlock.
He shows us the little Fortuna, the curved goat-horn that Italians say wards off the evil eye. Next comes a tiny electric guitar, then two kittens in pounce poses, and a silver church with a steeple.
“Mary,” says Cap'n Pete. “Her name was Mary!” He sounds like a gypsy reading Tarot cards.
I point to the last charm, the one cut in the silhouetted shape of a girl's head. “Because that's what's engraved on the back side of that one, right?”
Pete looks properly mysterious. For an instant.
“That … and this.”
He holds up the shoebox with both hands like he's the high priest in Raiders of the Lost Ark right before all hell breaks loose and the Nazis melt.
“I told you I had her picture.”
He turns over a plastic bag sitting in the bottom of the box to reveal a cutout panel from a wax-paper milk carton. It's one of those missing children mug shots. A teenage girl, seventeen or eighteen. I read her name: Mary Guarneri.
“This was buried in the same spot as the bracelet,” he explains. “Look!” He points to the top edge of the cardboard.
Embossed letters read AUG 12 85.
I say what we all know: “The milk's expiration date.”
CHAPTER NINE
I head back to The Sand Bar.
It's only about nine P.M. but Jess and Olivia are long gone.
Four sorority sisters sipping Aqua Velva-blue cocktails now occupy our table on the upper deck. They wear neon-green wristbands to prove they're old enough to get smashed. They shimmer in Lycra sundresses and muscle-cut T-shirts to show off gym-sculpted muscles and their honey-colored skin.
I love the sentiment stretched across the chest of the blondest blonde: NEW JERSEY. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE.
I head back down the steps.
It's still the weekend for another three hours. I figure I'll spend it flirting with Debbi, the bartender whose work outfit usually involves tattered logo wear and torn-off short shorts with frayed threads trickling down her thighs. On Debbi, it works. Trust me.
When I reach the bottom of the staircase, I feel like Jacques Cousteau fighting his way through a school of scantily clad tropical fish. All the girls flash ultra-bright smiles because teeth look even whiter when faces go cocoa brown. All of them are twentysomething. They're loose and giddy, made merrier by mango margaritas and pineapple martinis and raspberry mojitos-all served in frosty plastic cups instead of glasses so nobody will be seriously injured once they're totally tanked and start dropping their drinks.
Strings of Coors Light and Bud Light and Corona Light pennants flutter overhead. It looks like the grand opening of an indoor gas station that only pumps low-cal beer.
Lots of T-shirts call out to me as I sidle through the crowd. They're like personal ads these beach bunnies can post on their chests. I see JERSEY FRESH on one. MEN SHOULD BE LIKE DESSERT: SWEET AND RICH on another. One babe seems particularly pleased with hers: on the front it instructs passersby to REMEMBER MY NAME, while on the back it says, YOU’LL BE SCREAMING IT ALL NIGHT.
Oh, the poor neighbors.
But I'll spend my night wondering about Mary Guarneri and who buried her charm bracelet on Oak Beach along with her picture from a milk carton stuffed inside an old-fashioned sandwich bag.
It was Ceepak, of course, who had pointed out that the plastic bag was a relic of School Lunches Past.
“See how the flap tucks in?” he said. “No Ziploc top. No yellowand-blue-makes-green sealing strip. Those were all technological advances yet to come.”
Yes, thanks to my partner, I now know the sandwich bag development timeline.