Chapter 10
Shaggy's eyes were filled with tears as he stood underneath the final piece of his first trap. The tears were due less (much less) to a sense of accomplishment and more due to the throbbing pain in his thumb which he had just hit with a hammer. He could say that it was unfair that this injury had occurred on literally the final nail of the installation except that it was only the last in a series of minor injuries which had left him scratched and bruised. But the trap was done and set. Now, all he had to do was…
And that was when he felt the tap on his shoulder.
He didn't really have to turn around. He knew exactly what was standing behind him. Maybe, just maybe, if he ignored it, then it would just go away. The second tap on his shoulder belied that thought but, ever the optimist, Shaggy waited it out until the third. Then, he slowly turned and, of course, found himself face-to-face with the ghost.
He muttered under his breath, "Every… single… time." And then bolted.
The bolt lasted for one step until he (speaking of every single time) hit the tripwire of his own trap which released the bent-down tree that was attached to the rope that was attached to the lasso that was now around his ankle. He felt the jerk on his ankle, "And away we go."
The rope with Shaggy attached swung upward, hit the sharpened garden shears nailed to a telephone pole which cut the rope and sent Shaggy flying in a smooth arc to the inflatable water slide in the kiddy area. He went down the slide at high speed until he hit the new ramp which Shaggy had built at the bottom and coated with cooking oil. The ramp lofted him straight up into the air where he apogee'd and then plummeted back to earth, landing on the bouncy bounce which bounced him – now wet and covered in oil - back up into the air where he hit netting which wrapped itself firmly around him, snagged him on a trapeze which was attached to the top of the entrance gate into the dinosaur park. The trapeze, in turn, slung him out over the dinosaurs and into the waiting maw of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He slid out of the side of the dinosaur's mouth and fell toward the ground before being stopped when the netting snagged on a tooth. There he hung, upside-down, and awaited the ghost. And it was a good wait. The route from the storage building to the middle of the dinosaur exhibit was long and circuitous. But the ghost finally arrived and walked up to Shaggy.
Shaggy opened the dialogue, "Believe it or not, this is how this usually turns out."
The ghost holstered his gun – good sign. And took out a knife – bad sign. Maybe, Shaggy thought, the knife was just to cut him down. But better not risk it. He took in a breath to scream and the ghost lifted a finger to its lips and shushed him. That was a new twist and it stopped him in mid-intake. He couldn't recall ever being shushed by a ghost before. But then, being Shaggy, he thought of a scene from Saving Private Ryan involving a shushing and a knife and freaked completely out.
The ghost reached in, clamped a hand over Shaggy's mouth, and whispered, "Quiet! I'm just cutting you down."
Being cut out of a net when you are hanging upside-down hurts. Well, not the cutting out part. Not even the falling part. But the landing on your head part hurts. But with all of the other cuts and bruises he had suffered through the night, it blended right in.
Shaggy stood and dusted himself off, "All in all the trap worked pretty well." He got shushed again. This ghost was heavily into shushing. As Shaggy kicked his way out of the pieces of netting that had fallen with him, the ghost began walking away and beckoned Shaggy to follow. Which, as an idea on a scale of one to ten, seemed like a one… or a ten… whichever was the worst one. A bad idea. But so was building a trap in the first place. Might as well keep up the streak. Shaggy followed.
xXx
Scooby had always considered mental flow-charting a nerdy thing. But he was non-stop flow-charting as he walked over to Amanda's apartment. If she says this, then I'll say that. But if she says this, then I'll say that instead. And then the most logical follow-up… etc. Being a dog, Scooby was not allowed to go to high school and was home-schooled mostly by Shaggy's mother. She got a bad rap on the old shows but she was a pretty wonderful person. Maybe a little high-strung. But Shaggy had to get it from somewhere. But, if Scooby had gone to high school, he would be thinking that this flow-charting thing made him feel like he was back there. But he didn't think about stuff like this back then. Then he had been young and embraced his dog side. There was food. There was Shaggy. And then everything else was a distant third.
But now, he was older, and Amanda was in his life. She was sitting on the other side of this door. And the door was not going to knock on itself. He knocked. There was the sound of running feet from inside, the door flew open, and there she was. Scooby was on his hind feet to knock and she was a little shorter than he was in that position. He looked past her and noticed that the apartment was dark.
"Rerr roo asreep?"
She didn't move from the door, "No."
"Rhy are the rights off?"
"I guess the sun went down and I didn't notice." She reached over and hit a switch and a light went on just inside the door, "Come in." She led him inside and went around the living room turning on lights. As she reached up to the light switches, Scooby noticed that the knuckles on her right hand were reddened. He then noticed a pillow on the couch which had been punched flat. How does someone who can't express emotion vent their emotions? Probably punching pillows.
Dog's are not huggers. Their legs really aren't built for it. But right then, he wanted to hug Amanda. But he couldn't do it and she wouldn't like it. A match made in heaven.
She whirled, "Are you here to break up with me?"
"Do roo want ree…" He realized the rathole he was going down and stopped himself, "No, igrore rhat. Rye do rot want to 'reak up rith roo." He looked into her face trying to see some form of expression or reaction. There was none and it was not as if he could accurately read it, anyway. But he did see her shoulders relax away from her neck as some tension was released.
He had returned to all fours as he followed her into the apartment and she dropped to her knees, bringing her eyes to level with his, "Can you forgive me?"
"Roo rere afraid."
"That's no excuse."
"Ro, it isn't. Ree are all afraid all of rhe time. Fear exruses rothing. And Rye ras afraid today and rhat also is rot an exruse for ree. I believe rhat ree need to forgive each other. And stop the fear and the anger."
She nodded, "I can do that. Can you?"
"I rwant to try."
That was really all that needed to be said. Neither Amanda nor Scooby were prone to unnecessary melodramatic speeches. Amanda was just eager to get on with the rest of their lives, "I'm still up for a restaurant. It's your choice."
He shook his head, "Rye don't have the energy to change the rorld tonight. Raybe tomorrow."
She stood and walked into the kitchen, "Then how about I show you something I worked on this afternoon." She reached into the refrigerator, pulled out a tray, and placed it on the counter. Scooby's nose went crazy. He stood on his hind legs and looked down upon euphoria…
Scooby Snacks covered in melted cheese with pickle.
Scooby Snacks with cheese and black olive.
Scooby Snacks with ham, salami, and bologna.
Scooby Snacks with pineapple and peanut butter.
An entire tray covered end to end and top to bottom in Scooby Snack hors d'oeuvres. Maybe Amanda was the perfect woman.
Scooby took a picture with his phone and texted it to Shaggy with the caption "Eat your heart out." The tray lasted another seven seconds and then Scooby cooked dinner for them. After dinner, they sat on the couch watching television quietly together until they fell asleep.
xXx
Shaggy heard the ding of an incoming text on his phone but ignored it as he followed the pink glowing ghost through the back ways of the park. They ended up in an old stable that hadn't seen a horse since 2016. A single string of low wattage light bulbs ran through the center of the building in an effort to reduce the chances of it becoming a make-out spot for the teen-age summer employees. The lights weren't necessary, the smell would have done that. Even after five years, the stable smell remained intact.
Once inside, the ghost reached inside the neck of his shirt and started picking at the edges of the latex mask underneath. He turned toward Shaggy and peeled the latex edges away, working them up around his chin and mouth. When his mouth was clear, he spoke, "Sorry if I scared you."
Shaggy was mesmerized. A ghost taking off their own mask, another first. "No problem. I'm scared most of the time."
"You don't really act like it."
"Fooled ya'"
The ghost smiled as he gently pulled the mask clear from his head and revealed himself to be a man of about fifty with salt-and-pepper hair and a bald spot at his crown. His face was flushed and covered in sweat from being inside the latex. His hair was soaked and plastered down on the top of his head. He reached inside his shirt again and this time pulled out a pouch which was hanging from a lanyard around his neck. From the pouch, he pulled an ID card and handed it to Shaggy while he wrestled his way out of the rank shirt and hung it on a stall. The ID said 'Randall Harding, Drug Enforcement Agency'.
Shaggy looked at the photograph on the ID and then up at the sweat-covered face in front of him, "I know you."
The DEA agent shook his head, "I have one of those faces."
Shaggy answered with a headshake of his own, "No. You totally don't. Where do I know you from? Are you a fan?"
"Not in any way that would cause you to know me…"
"You're a bus driver." He almost had it. Then the memory jelled, "You're the one that Clive Matthews hired to drive us around in Los Angeles when he was trying to control Velma."
The agent smiled and agreed, "No, I took the place of the driver that Matthews hired. I was undercover. The DEA had an open file on Tabitha Strickland based on significant discrepancies between the number of controlled pharmaceuticals she was prescribing and the number of patients she had. That usually entails a doctor who is an addict or, in rare cases, a doctor who has become a street supplier. We had taps on her phone and Clive Matthews' phone and his call to your team raised enough red flags that I wanted to check you out. Needless to say, that one was a little more interesting than I expected." This was the part where he was supposed to keep talking and explain why he was at the park. He didn't.
Shaggy's phone dinged again. It gave him the opportunity to glance down and think for a minute. It was a photograph of an entire tray filled with Scooby Snacks with toppings. This immediately told Shaggy two things: first, Scooby was apparently doing better and, second, a dinner had been skipped in the preparation of the trap and Shaggy was starving. Through sheer force of will, he put his hunger on the back burner and looked up at Harding, "Sorry, if I don't reply to this, then Fred will call 911." Half-truths are the best lies.
He switched over from Scooby's food picture to Velma's phone and typed in Please confirm agent Randall Harding, DEA and send picture.
A little cloak-and-dagger was in order since it wouldn't do to have the DEA find out that Velma could hack her way into their computers as easy as tying her shoe.
Shaggy looked up from his phone. A little delaying was in order now, "So, why are you here?"
Harding shook his head, "I'm not sure I can tell you that."
"That's okay by me. I only have one job here and that's to figure out whether Jerry Pollack's death was an accident or murder. Right now, I have no motive for murder so I can say that everything points to an accident. The victim's family gets more money that way, the park is protected, the insurance company has done their due diligence and gets a satisfied client."
"Except that there was a motive."
Shaggy's phone dinged and he looked down to see the same picture that was on Harding's ID card. Underneath it was the caption from Velma, wth! That's Herbert the bus driver.
"Then I guess you have a decision to make, Agent Harding."
A DEA field agent made decisions quickly, "I was assigned to the opioid task force right after I got back from California to my home office in New York and I've been working the last few months on a single drug ring which appears to supply illicit prescription opioids up and down the East Coast and possibly further. As far as we can tell, it's centralized in New Jersey. This ring is large but extremely organized and tight-lipped. They appear to be using hundreds of false patients to go to doctors that are known to be more freely prescribing these drugs and then, as far as we know, they warehouse them and sell them at a mark-up in every major city from Boston to Miami. We've been able to identify a couple of these fake patients but we have to catch them physically in the act of giving their prescriptions over to the ring or they're guilty of nothing.
"We caught a break in the case when an accountant that we had listed as a person of interest in the case suddenly turned up dead and we were able to get to her apartment just as some bad guys were torching it. They got away but we were able to put out the fire and rescued one scrap of paper that was still legible. It was a list of small theme parks. That is how I came to be here."
"How was Jerry Pollack involved?"
Agent Harding appeared a little self-conscious, "When I first got here, my plan was to blend in with the summer employees and I got a job in one of the souvenir shops. This didn't work out well. First, I am thirty years older than any of them so there wasn't much blending in. And second, It turns out that conducting an undercover investigation and keeping a cash drawer balanced at the same time is harder than I thought. I got fired. I had heard the ghost stories about Lucky Luke in the evenings and it seemed to be a way that I could try and get a look around at night and have people stay away from me. So, I became the ghost."
And now for a question that had been burning in Shaggy's mind, "Why pink?"
"It was the only glow-in-the-dark paint color that the hardware store had in stock." Well, that was anti-climactic.
"You still haven't gotten to Jerry Pollack."
The agent now dropped eye contact with Shaggy but kept talking, "I assumed that they were using the various parks as staging areas in the shipment of the drugs so I spent most of my time at first around the storage building. But I was finding nothing and getting nowhere. One night, I bumped into Jerry and that girl and, while I was chasing them, I saw that he risked himself to make sure she was safe. So, when I caught up with him, I let him in on what was going on and enlisted his assistance."
Shaggy was stunned, "You enlisted his assistance? You enlisted the assistance of a seventeen-year-old and put his life at risk. And now he's dead."
"I explained the risks to him. He knew what he was getting into."
"He was seventeen, you asshole! When I was seventeen I didn't know which part of a doughnut was the hole."
"When you were seventeen, you had a television contract."
"Because I had people around me that I could trust. Not some gunslinger DEA agent out to make a name for himself – no matter what the cost."
"Fuck you."
"Why not? You already fucked Jerry Pollack… and his family… and his girlfriend… and his friends at church…"
"All right! I get the message. You're right. I screwed up bad and the kid's dead. That's on me. So, the only thing left that we can do is get justice for him."
"Wait! I think I hear the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. Come off it! You don't care about justice, you just want the bust."
"Damn straight I want the bust. And I'm an asshole. But that doesn't mean that the people who actually put the rope around the kid's neck should walk away from this scott free."
Shaggy was shaking his head, "How do you sleep at night?"
"Pills. Lots of pills. Are you in?"
Shaggy's glare was not as potent as Daphne's but he used it anyway before clicking on Velma's name on his phone. It began to ring.
She answered with "Shaggy, what's going on?"
"Things have gotten complicated here and I would like everyone's help. Can you set up a video conference?"
"Sure, I'll see if Fred and Daphne are still up. And Scooby is over at Amanda's."
"Let Scooby be, but wake Fred and Daphne up, please."
The somberness with which this request was given raised Velma's anxieties, "What's wrong?"
"I'll explain it when everybody's on."
The videoconference was up and running within five minutes and Shaggy started by pointing his phone at Agent Harding, "Guys, this is Randall Harding, you all know him as Herbert."
Daphne chimed in, "The bus driver?"
No one could see Shaggy's nod, "One in the same and also the ghost…"
Fred's turn to interrupt, "So the trap worked?"
"As well as they usually do. Agent Harding is with the DEA. I'll let him fill you in on what they're doing and then I'll give you what I've found out and I want us all to figure out how to solve this thing."
Velma, Daphne, and Fred remained silent and listened as first Harding and then Shaggy went through all of the details of the case. Shaggy finished with, "And guys, if this is a murder, there is no way that Ralph Barrymore isn't involved. He set up the noose. It doesn't work without him."
Harding nodded, "Agreed. And he's from New Jersey."
Shaggy spoke to Fred, "Fred, did you get a chance to look at the financial spreadsheets that I sent you?"
"Yeah, I've been going over them and the numbers all add up. It traces the income from the ticket sales through salaries and operating costs through to purchasing of supplies. The park has three main suppliers: CN Restaurant Equipment and Supplies, ATP Souvenirs and Vending, and Bartholomew Foods. Everything balances out. The only odd thing is that the restaurants and food service seem to do a lot more business than the souvenir shops and retail. But I guess people have to eat and they don't have to buy souvenirs."
Shaggy took back over, "Anything else?" There was silence so Shaggy continued, "Anybody have any ideas?" 'Anybody', of course, meant Velma and they all waited for what she would piece together.
They had to wait a moment as Velma made sure that all the pieces that were coming into her mind fit the facts. She then internally looked for holes and logic problems. There were none.
Velma had a special tone of voice for when she was explaining her deductions about a mystery. The entire gang loved it, "You won't find any drugs on the premises. They were never there and will never be there. The park is not a part of drug distribution. It is part of money laundering. And not only Ralph Barrymore but also Billy Tripper have to be involved. Between the two of them, they control the logistics and the bookkeeping for the park. And, by bringing Tommy Farrell in as restaurant manager while knowing he would not do the job, Ralph has control over the restaurant.
"It works like this: the syndicate on the East Coast sends the money to Ralph. That money is used to buy tickets for imaginary people that are never at the park. This makes visitor numbers appear much larger than they actually are which makes it possible for Ralph and Billy to make orders for materials to the suppliers for materials that are shown on the books but are never shipped. I am sure, Herbert, that you will find CN Restaurant Equipment and Supplies and Bartholomew Foods are fronts. The two fronts pay exorbitant salaries to their board members - who you will find are major players in your ring. Everybody pays their taxes, and the money comes out clean as a whistle."
"Billy controls the books and, thanks to Kyle's lack of interest in the details of the running of the park, he is able to make sure no one ever questions the numbers. Until, apparently, Jerry Pollack did. And the rest is obvious.
"As far as Emma Jean Baker goes, as much as I would like her to be guilty of something other than trying to kiss my fiancé, her records appear to match up with a reasonable actual attendance so she doesn't appear to be involved."
Agent Harding looked perplexed, "This makes perfect sense but how do we prove it? If what you say is true, then all we have are a bunch of documents that look legitimate and then your deductions. If we're going to roll this thing up through the front companies and to their actual ring leaders, I am going to need enough evidence to at least get a search warrant. It sounds like we've got nothing."
Daphne's head was tilted sideways in the screen and she was clearly deep in thought, "You need a confession and a whistleblower witness."
Harding was getting frustrated, "But why would they do that? We've got nothing on either of them."
Daphne was pulling at a thread, "But what do they have on each other? Velma, how long would it take to get this laundering system set up?"
Velma answered immediately, "Years. Ralph Barrymore was probably sent there 16 years ago to get it started."
Daphne continued, "Yes. Ralph Barrymore was sent there from New Jersey specifically for this purpose. But Billy Tripper is from Minnesota and, as far as we know, he met Barrymore in Las Vegas. Why is he involved?"
Fred hazarded a guess, "Money?"
Daphne shook her head, "No, Shaggy told us that Billy was heavily into his theatrical credentials and background. Billy was a theater person and he had dreams. But he gave them up to be a part of this scheme. The answer to why he did that is the key to getting your witness and your evidence."
