Chapter 08

We stared at the until-recently-deceased Captain Cutler and his wife.

He turned back to her. "You were outsmarted by a bunch of children."

That wasn't completely true since a lot of my previous assumptions had been wrong. But I was catching up quickly and it was time for the big reveal.

"Embezzlement!" It seemed as good of a place to start as any. "You were using your position at PiscineCo to embezzle a huge amount of money." That would explain why the company had clammed up when we asked them about Cutler. "But then they were getting suspicious so…" There were two possibilities from this point.

Fred grabbed one. "You went out to sea at night to hide your money at the bottom of the ocean until you could make your escape. Then…"

"Just kill them." Mrs. Cutler got our undivided attention.

Captain Cutler turned back to her. "Kill a bunch of kids? And with what? My bare hands?"

I wasn't thrilled to be referred to as a 'kid' but I was on board with the idea of not getting killed, so I kept quiet.

"Okay. I'll do it, then." Mrs. Cutler reached into her purse and pulled out a gun. This was the second time we had been threatened with a firearm. It was getting old.

Before she could raise her pistol toward us, there was a rush of motion from the shadows to our right and Scooby Doo came bounding in with a menacing growl. He leaped up, slammed into Mrs. Cutler's chest, took her down to the ground, and then placed his powerful jaws around her throat.

For just a moment, I thought he was going to bite down.

"Scooby, hold!" It was Shaggy's voice sounding stern and commanding almost as if he was a trainer commanding a guard dog.

Scooby remained tense and growling with his teeth pressing against the skin of Mrs. Cutler's neck just enough to leave a mark.

The woman was slowly moving the gun in her hand toward Scooby.

Shaggy barked. "If that gun moves one more millimeter toward my dog, I'll give the command!"

She froze.

I was agape. Who was this? It was as if Scooby and Shaggy were consummate actors playing their parts to perfection. I was even a little scared. A quick glance told me that Fred and Daphne were equally taken aback. 'Stunned' was a facial expression I could read.

Captain Cutler looked to Shaggy imploringly. "We give up. Just call him off."

Fred stepped forward and removed the gun from Mrs. Cutler's hand, walked it away from her, and laid it gently on the ground. He did not throw it and he made sure that it wasn't in his hand when the police showed up. He was smarter than I thought, too.

That commanding voice again. "Scooby! Release!"

Scooby removed his mouth from the woman's throat, backed away several steps, and sat. He continued with the low growl for several seconds.

The sound of approaching voices in the distance confirmed to the two adults that the jig was up.

The dam broke and Captain Cutler began to speak. "This would have worked if that jerk Ambrose Pearson was a decent boat pilot and was watching where he was going. When he rammed my boat, the money flew off and sank before I could put the homing beacon transmitter inside."

I jumped in again. "Then…"

Daphne grabbed my arm and whispered. "It's much better video if he says it."

And he did. "Then Pearson figured out what I was up to and demanded a cut of the action. The only way out was to work with him and fake my death so my company would stop their investigation."

"Which added his life insurance into the payout." Mrs. Cutler got into the action. "But we had to wait forever for the insurance company to declare him dead. Why do they take so long?"

Shaggy got this one. "Uh-h-h-h-h, like, in order to stop people from doing exactly what you were doing?"

Captain Cutler continued. "But I needed to keep searching so I needed access to a boat that no one was looking for."

This puzzled me. "But the Coast Guard knew that your boat wasn't sunk."

"With as understaffed as they are, how long would it take for them to even start to worry about that?"

Shaggy took a stab. "And you invented the ghost to frighten people away so you could search without being bothered?"

"No, you dolt." Mrs. Cutler was venomous now that Scooby's teeth were no longer wrapped around her throat. "We invented and publicized that nonsense so that anyone reporting seeing anything would be considered a lunatic and ignored."

My turn again. "That was the first clue. When we interviewed Mr. Pearson, he referred to Ebenezer Sharp as a 'homeless guy'. They never called him that on the media reports. He was referred to as a 'beach hermit'. Those two phrases don't directly correlate with each other and the only reason Pearson would have known that Mr. Sharp was homeless would be if he had actually met him. And the only reason for such a meeting would be to plant the story and pay Sharp to spread it.

Captain Cutler was shaking his head. "Pearson was such a moron. If I could have just found the money, then we would have paid him off and been long gone. We even had a doctor ready to prepare papers to put Eloise into an institution. She wouldn't have gone, but as far as anyone knew I would be dead and she would be in an asylum. No one would ever have even looked for us."

Mrs. Cutler was speaking wistfully now. "We already bought the house in Guatemala under assumed names. As long as the money transfers cleared, no one asked any questions. We would just sail down the coast, put in at the nearest dock, and move in. New lives with all of the money we would ever need."

"Except for that jerk Pearson and you stubborn and annoying kids." 'Stubborn and annoying' is a pretty good synonym for 'meddling'.

I jumped when Fred turned to the woods and yelled. "Over here!"

In a few minutes, the deputies burst into the clearing and, per usual, made us lie down on our stomachs on the rocky ground while they assessed the situation—even though several of them knew us by this time.

"You can get up now." It was just our luck that Deputy Bucky was running the operation. "Can you explain to me why you are all interfering with another Sheriff's Office investigation?"

"Do you mean solving?" Sometimes I can't help myself.

"You haven't solved anything. You're just here on the shore with these suspects getting in the way. You've probably compromised the site. In real police work, we need real evidence. Not just play-pretend."

Daphne held up her phone and played him the video. He watched it all.

When it was over, he held out his hand. "I'll take that phone."

Daphne's spine straightened. "You most certainly will not!"

"That is evidence in a police investigation and you will turn it over!" He stepped closer to her in an effort at intimidation which fell flat since he was only about an inch taller than she was.

It also fell flat for other reasons. "Do you really want to take on the Blake's again? That went so well for you last time. Besides, I just sent a link to the video to your boss, the Sheriff. He'll know what to do with it. Oh, and I also might have sent him a link to you trying to harass me just now."

Deputy Bucky's cell phone went off. He answered it and walked away. All we heard were the words 'yes sir' being repeated over and over.

We heard a strange sound and turned to see Scooby spitting on the ground.

Shaggy stepped over to his friend. "Scoob, what's the matter?"

"Rhat rady uses roo much moisturizer, yuck!" He kept spitting.

"Well old buddy, old pal, I guess we finally found something you don't like to eat."

Boringly, it was still a school night and we had a curfew. We made out way back to the car and Fred took us all home. While I was doing my homework, and instant message popped up on my screen. It was a group chat with the entire group. Fred had linked a news article which described Ambrose Pearson's immediate arrest.

Sheriff Stone's press conference was the following day. We weren't mentioned. I uploaded the first segment of the investigation to our YouTube channel two days later which caused Sherriff Stone to issue a very short press release thanking us for our small part in his investigation.