The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up Read Online Free PDF

find the shop burned down when I got home, but everything was okay. It sure did ruin my evening. I had to beat the waves back down to Warner Pier.”
    Handling a small boat in fairly high waves isn’t easy. You have to head into the waves, which points your prow away from the shore and means you’re basically traveling sideways. Then when you go over the top of the wave, you suddenly swing the wheel toward the shore—or is it away from the shore? I don’t understand the process at all, and even Joe considers it a struggle.
    “I didn’t get back until way after dark,” Joe said.
    I slid my hand onto his shoulder. “Tonight we’ll just be on the river. No waves.”
    Joe grinned. “All we’ll have to look out for is weeds, mud, and other boats.”
    The Warner River is about a quarter of a mile wide at Warner Pier—which is one reason it was a good place to build a pier, I guess, when Captain Hoseah Warner decided to do that a hundred and fifty years ago. Still in the no-wake zone, we traveled slowly up the river, past the house Captain Warner built in 1850—now a bed-and-breakfast inn; past the pseudo-Victorian condos which sell for a half-million each; past Hershel’s funny little house, which always reminds me of the witch’s cottage Hansel and Gretel found. For the first time I noticed the bigger, restored Craftsman-style house behind Hershel’s. Now I realized that must be Patsy and Frank Waterloo’s home.
    Joe guided the boat out into the main channel and stepped up our pace. Joe’s a very safe boater, but he likes to rev it up and run his boat all over the lake or the river at top speed; it’s a guy thing. We sped past the entrance to Joe’s boat shop, on our left, and the turrets of Gray Gables, one of Warner Pier’s historic summer homes, came into view on the right. It wasn’t long before the broad glass windows of the Warner River Lodge appeared around a bend. Joe cut his speed way back, and we floated gently alongside the lodge’s dock. The dock attendant caught the mooring line, and we tied up. Joe cut the engine and stepped out—he makes it look easy—then held out a hand so that I could use the step pad to get out gracefully.
    “We’re early,” he said. “We can have a drink on the terrace.” He grinned. “Behind one of the umbrellas.”
    Two hours later we’d had drinks on the terrace and a marvelous dinner in the dining room. We came back down the stairs to the dock hand in hand. Joe helped me into the sedan, then tipped the dock attendant. The sun was still up. Once we’d cast off, Joe even gave me a quick kiss. I wanted it to last much longer, but Joe started the motor.
    I turned sideways in the passenger’s seat and slid my hand around the nape of Joe’s neck. He patted my knee as we moved away from the dock, the motor burbling softly. The boat headed upstream. We were alone.
    So it was quite a surprise when a sound like the final trump thundered over the river.
    “Joe! Joe Woodyard!”
    Joe whirled so fast he must have nearly given himself whiplash, and I jumped higher than I knew I could sitting down.
    Downstream we saw a large white boat approaching. Its prow was crowded with spotlights, and the roof of its little cabin was loaded down with radar gear and antennas.
    Joe cut the motor to trolling speed. “It’s the city patrol boat,” he said.
    I squinted at the boat, looking into the sun. “Chief Jones is aboard.”
    As a community that straddles a river and abuts a lake, Warner Pier has to be prepared for law enforcement and emergencies on the water. In the tourist season, there’s a full-time water policeman who enforces safety regulations on the river, and the city owns a nifty patrol boat which he uses. It’s also used to rescue boaters if there’s an accident and to drag the river if there’s a drowning. But the chief rarely goes out in the boat, and ordinary boaters who are obeying the rules and minding their own business—as Joe and I had been—wouldn’t