Chloe Afloat: Being the Adventures of Calico Clo, Buccanette of the Coast: A Chloe Crandall Adventure, #3

By Geraldine Burrows

"Chloe Afloat is a spectacular and page-turning contemporary young adult novel with a fierce main character that meshes well with the author's witty writing style and understanding of teenage conflicts and characterizations…its plot is a total knockout." — IndieReader 5 stars

 

An IndieReader Best Reviewed Book of the Month.

 

After surviving two retro-crazy summers out West, Manhattan teen Chloe Crandall wants to spend her seventeenth summer being Normal…until her sometime crush, Shane, recruits her for a lucrative but really abnormal summer job with his father's private security firm.
 

She goes undercover in a college drama troupe that sails a tall ship along the New England coast, performing pirate-themed shows. Her mission: keep lead player Madison Dandridge away from drugs and a stalker ex-boyfriend.

 

At sea, Chloe attracts a stalker of her of own — a studly young crewman who seems to have found out her secret phobia. He's using it to gaslight her, trying to drive her off the ship. She needs to find out why before he succeeds.

 

She also suspects that Madison's stalker ex-boyfriend isn't really so ex and that Madison isn't to be trusted.

 

Worst of all, she's beginning to doubt Shane's motives for shipping her out to sea.

 

Too late, she realizes she's sailing into dark waters and there's not a lighthouse in sight.

 

81,000 words

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenarvon Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393185727

Geraldine Burrows

Geraldine Burrows is the author of nine novels, including the Chloe Crandall YA adventure series.  She lives with her husband in a coastal village in Rhode Island.

Book preview

1

FATE JUST KEEPS ON happening to me.

Because I, Chloe Victoria Crandall, am the teenage poster girl for strange twists of fate.

My life started getting strange and twisty two summers ago when I was fifteen. That was the summer my history professor parents went on a sabbatical from reality and traveled to North Dakota to relive the lifestyle of the fur trader and the mountain man.

Yes, really.

My parents made me go with them even though I didn’t wear fur and didn’t date mountain men. But it all worked out for the best because while I was in North Dakota, I met my Forever Crush, Zach Pendleton, who rode out of the prairie and into my city girl heart.

I knew we were fated to be together. Which was why I had to spend my sixteenth summer traveling the Santa Fe Trail in a covered wagon.

So, yes, another summer of twisty strangeness for me. Because the only way I could get out West to see Zach was to compete in a reality show about modern Americans trying to survive an actual pioneer wagon train journey. And somehow I did survive, though just barely.

Zach and I had a wonderful romantic reunion at the end of the trail even though I’d been—um, how to put this?—romantically distracted along the way by a good guy cowboy named Toby Varner and a bad boy biker named Shane Duchaine. I’d started down the Santa Fe Trail because of one boyfriend, and by the time I reached the end of the trail, I had three of them.

Don’t ask me to explain. It’s...complicated. And fateful, very fateful.

But now, with my seventeenth summer fast approaching, I’d had enough of strange, twisty, and fateful. I wanted to stay in Manhattan and have a normal summer with my BFFs, something I hadn’t gotten to do since I was fourteen.

But then fate stepped in and stomped all over my best-laid plans. No Normal and the City for me.

Instead, I’d be sailing on the tall ship Incorrigible, reenacting a female pirate.

And WHY would I do that? WHY would I agree to spend my summer acting, dressing, sailing, and talking like a pirate?

For the treasure, of course. The loot. The doubloons. The pieces of eight. Money I could put in a secret account if I wanted to. Money my parents would never know about unless I chose to tell them.

And who was going to pay me all this secret, under-the-table money?

Shane Duchaine, that’s who. The mysterious biker dude who’d stalked me from one end of the Santa Fe Trail to the other. That Shane Duchaine. He was going to be my handler and my paymaster.

Like I said, strange, twisted fate.

ABOUT THOSE THREE BOYFRIENDS.

It might seem like I was a sultanette with a three-boy harem, but actually, none of them rated as a steady crush. In fact, all three of them were pretty unsteady.

Boyfriend #1, Zach, was a college freshman in North Dakota. Neither his parents nor mine wanted us to be a couple. And until I could figure out how to overcome our oppositional parents and the two thousand miles between our lives, Zach would have to be a long-distance crush instead of a steady one.

And then there was Boyfriend #2, Toby Varner, my showmance from Bridal Train. He’d been nicknamed Studly Do-Right because he was such a good-looking, good-hearted guy. Last summer, as I struggled along the trail, I’d been captivated by Toby’s good heart and helping hand, and, okay, by his extreme studliness too.

Toby was an Oklahoma transplant attending Solar Vehicle Tech in Brooklyn. His younger sister had Down syndrome or Up syndrome as Toby called it, so he and his family were big supporters of the Special Olympics. Now that Toby was living here, he spent all his spare time volunteering for the local chapter.

Which is what made him Unsteady Boyfriend #2. Because if I didn’t volunteer along with him, I’d never get to see him. And that’s how I ended up spending my Saturday boiling hotdogs for the Special Olympics Bowl-Off.

The bowling alley where the event was being held was crammed with Special Olympians, their families, and the volunteers working the event. The noise level was constant and thunderous. Bowling balls thudded, bowling pins crashed. Cheers of triumph or groans of disappointment erupted from the bystanders.

Five hours of this had left me with a pounding headache, aching feet from standing over a hot stove, and a face that was marinated in hot dog steam. A local supermarket had donated an endless supply of hot dogs that I’d been assigned to boil in an industrial-size cookpot.

I’d just finished my latest batch when I spied Toby heading my way. The sight of him was like a cool breeze blowing into the hot kitchen. Even smack in the middle of Brooklyn, he had a wide-open-spaces allure that got to me every time.

Our eyes met and he gave me a cheerful grin. I’ve come to rescue you.

Really?

Yup. And you deserve it. You’ve been here the whole time without a break. For some reason, nobody else signed up to do the hot dogs.

I wonder why. So...we’re done here? I asked hopefully.

You are. I’ve got to drive people home in one of the handicapped vans. I’d take you along, but there’s not room. I’ll walk you to the subway and then come back.

And that was the sum total of my Saturday date with Unsteady Boyfriend #2.

See what I mean.

BACK IN MANHATTAN, I got off the subway and trudged the four blocks to my parents’ high-rise. Leaning against the front of the building was a brawny, dark-haired guy wearing bike leather and beard bristle. He was observing the passing pedestrians like he was waiting for someone.

Me. That’s who he was waiting for.

Because it was Unsteady Boyfriend #3, Engerard Sainte Marie Shane Duchaine. The last time I’d seen him, he’d given me a goodnight kiss and told me he’d call me in a few days. But he’d kissed with forked tongue. Because I hadn’t heard from him in a month. Not a text, not a call, not an email. Nothing.

Seeing him lounging against our building like he was so Joe Cool made me furious. I wanted to dis him with a really clever insult, but the insult-generator part of my brain was too tired to generate anything clever.

So I just gave him a death glare and marched past him without a word. He came after me, catching up to me in a couple of strides.

Okay, Chloe. I get that you’re mad.

Ya think? Wouldn’t you be mad if you were me?

Hell, no. I’d be welcoming my conquering hero home with some hot and heavy PDA.

He held out his arms like he expected me to throw myself into his leather-jacketed embrace and start making out with him right in front of my parents’ building. Which, okay, I might have done a few times in the past. But only because I couldn’t bring him home to Mom and Dad. Shane was a college dropout, a life form my parents considered to be lower than pond scum.

I folded my arms across my Bowl-Off T-shirt and gave him a scathing look. "Okay, Mr. Hero—I air-quoted Hero just to make sure he got the point—what exactly have you been conquering for the last month?"

The Pipeland plumbing supply warehouse in Newark, Delaware.

Doesn’t sound very heroic to me.

Maybe not to you, but we’re big heroes in Pipeland. We broke up a multistate theft ring that was robbing them blind.

I felt a sudden sense of relief. Shane hadn’t dumped me after all. He’d been away, working for his father’s private security firm, Duchaine Security and Investigations. If he was telling me the truth, that is. Shane could be a convincing liar. He’d had me completely fooled last summer before I finally discovered who he really was.

I frowned up at him. I thought you weren’t going to be your dad’s flunky anymore. Shane and his father have issues.

He shrugged. It was an emergency. We had a guy doing nighttime surveillance at the warehouse...until he got whacked from behind and wound up in the hospital with a concussion. Dad needed somebody to replace him on short notice.

Like you.

What can I say? I’ve got a strong back and I know how to run a forklift. I had two hours’ notice before I left for Delaware. I was on the job the next day.

I shook my head inwardly. As the daughter of helicopter parents, I never understood how Shane’s father could send him on these risky missions even though he’d been training Shane as a private investigator since he was in kindergarten.

"You’re lucky you didn’t get your head bashed in."

My head’s pretty hard. Besides, I was too young to arouse suspicion. It just took me awhile to get some solid evidence.

And in all that time you couldn’t send me one single text?

He shook his head. I didn’t take my personal phone. I used a special one our tech guys put together. It’s disguised to look like a cheap burner, but it’s got a lot of hidden capabilities. Every call, every text was recorded in real time back at DSI headquarters.

Okay. But I still wasn’t letting him off the hook. They do have mailboxes in Delaware. You could have at least sent me a postcard.

Nope, that would have violated DSI protocol. When we go undercover, it’s 100% immersion. No contact with anyone in your real life. Not even the girl you left behind. His voice softened. But it didn’t stop me from thinking about you. Every night when I was trying to fall asleep in that lousy roach motel I was staying at.

I melted. Of course I melted. Like he knew I would, darn him.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. So you forgive me?

I guess.

And I forgive you for going bowling with Cowboy Chucky.

I opened my mouth to ask how he knew that, but then I realized the information was plastered all over my T-shirt.

We were not bowling, we were volunteering. And don’t call him that. Cowboy Chucky was what Shane insisted on calling Toby because of Toby’s red hair. Which actually was more of a rich coppery auburn. Though I doubted Shane would appreciate the distinction since he considered Toby a rival.

So, he wanted to know, is Cowboy Chucky going home to Cletusville for the summer?

That’s Broken Arrow to you. And yes, he’s going home for the summer.

Shane looked happy to hear it. How about you? Got any plans?

As a matter of fact, I do. I’m going to have a normal summer. And I’ve got a job at the donut shop around the corner.

Shane wasn’t impressed. Sounds boring, fattening, and not very profitable.

It’s a summer McJob. It’s all I could get.

Don’t be too sure about that, he said.

2

THE AROMA OF FRESHLY baked doughnuts surrounded us in a warm cocoon of carbs.

Is this really where you want to spend your summer? Shane asked, eyeing the impatient customers waiting to be served by the harried counter help.

He’d wanted to go someplace where we could talk, and I had a feeling it was no accident we’d ended up here, sitting at a tiny table littered with colored sprinkles. Shane was adding more sprinkles to the mix since he’d ordered four—yes, four—jelly donuts dipped in sprinkles, along with a large black coffee.

I’d been good, sticking to unsweetened ice tea. But Shane’s donuts looked sinfully tempting. I just hoped I wasn’t drooling.

It wasn’t fair. If I ate what he was eating, those calories would glom right to my waistline. But Shane’s calories just naturally converted to upper body muscle, which I couldn’t help noticing since he’d taken off his leather jacket. His black T-shirt was stretched tight across his wrestler’s shoulders, the short sleeves were filled with biceps.

Seriously, Chloe, this place will rot your teeth and ruin your figure.

It’s not like I had my pick of jobs, I retorted. And I need the money for college. Because I was never going to achieve my parents’ dream of getting an Ivy League scholarship the way they had. I wasn’t getting a scholarship anywhere, that was for sure.

Shane leaned forward across the tiny table. Forget this dump. Come work for DSI this summer, and you’ll make enough to pay for your entire freshman year.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. That’s tens of thousands of dollars.

He shrugged like it was nothing. So?

There had to be a catch. Yes, Duchaine Security and Investigations was one of the world’s largest private security firms, and their pockets were very, very deep. But their willingness to pay me that much money seemed, well, unbelievable.

Still, I found myself asking, What would I have to do?

Not much. Just make like a pirate wench, sail a tall ship up the New England Coast, and keep a young heiress away from drugs and a stalker ex-boyfriend. That’s pretty much it.

I stared at him. Are you crazy? I can’t do any of those things.

Sure you can. You’ve already reenacted a Métis girl in a tipi and a mail order bride on a wagon train. So now you’ll be a pirate girl on a sailing ship. What’s the problem?

I don’t know how to sail. That’s the problem.

You won’t have to. They have a crew for that. All you have to do is not fall overboard. Oh, and remember your lines.

Remember my lines?

Yeah, and maybe learn some songs and dances too.

I’d have to sing and dance?

Just in the chorus. The talent agency already told the Pyrate Players’ director that you didn’t have any musical training, but you’d do great with the sketches and the street theater acts.

My head was spinning. Who told who I’d do what?

The New England Pyrate Players. That’s Pyrate-with-a-y, by the way. They’re a pirate reenactment troupe that sails from Long Island up to Maine doing their act at Ren Faires, harbor festivals, charity galas, events like that. Most of the Players are college theater majors. It’s sort of like summer stock on the sea.

"And they want me to join their troupe?"

Actually, it’s Clorinda Crabtree they want.

They wanted my reality show persona on Bridal Train???

I found that hard to believe. The show was now being broadcast on the American West Channel, but it wasn’t exactly making me famous. All the female characters had worn historically correct sunbonnets that overshadowed our faces. So far, absolutely no one had recognized me except my friends and family. So why would the Pyrate-with-a-y Players want me?

You’re good publicity, Shane explained. "It helps the Pyrate Players get hired if one of their members was on Bridal Train. There’s a lot of crossover appeal between Old West and pirate reenactments. Having you in the troupe looks good to the reenactor types who run these gigs."

So my torturous stint on Bridal Train might actually be paying off. Or was it just landing me in a new predicament?

But why does your dad’s firm even care about the Pyrate Players?

Because a couple of our clients care. On account of their daughter. Here’s her picture.

He slid his phone across the table. The girl on the screen was all that and then some: late teens to early twenties, long blonde hair, huge royal blue eyes, high cheekbones, gorgeous features, perfect skin.

It was only a headshot, but I was willing to bet that below that long graceful neck, she looked like a catwalk model. I gave Shane his phone back, and it seemed to me that he stared at Ms. Royal Blue Eyes for longer than necessary before he blanked the screen.

So who is she? I asked with a tinge of foreboding. Jealous foreboding.

Madison Prescott Dandridge.

Her name sounded as high end as her appearance, an estimation Shane confirmed.

Her parents didn’t name her Madison because it was a popular name. They named her that because their family is distantly related to James Madison, as in the fourth President of the United States. Which is how long her family’s been building up their fortune. They’ve got old money and plenty of it.

Well, somebody had hit the genetic jackpot. She sounds very upscale.

Yeah, but she’s a typical example of too much too soon. Like too much nose candy at age fourteen. Her parents sent her to a boarding school for troubled rich kids, but she only found more trouble. A guy, of course. A bad guy. His gaze intensified. You’ve seen his picture. You know his name.

My mouth fell open. I do?

Chad Pomeroy. Remember him?

Did I ever. Not that I’d actually met him. But I knew his entire family had been disinherited by the late Joseph Pomeroy, who had left his sizeable fortune to a charitable trust instead. That trust had underwritten Bridal Train, and DSI had provided security for the show.

The DSI operatives (one of whom was Shane) had been concerned about the Pomeroy bad boy, Chad, who had a history of violent acting out. They suspected he might try to sabotage the wagon train as part of his family’s long-running battle to get Joseph Pomeroy’s multimillions into their bank accounts.

It hadn’t happened, but I knew Chad Pomeroy was not a nice person. And then I remembered something Shane had said last summer.

Is Madison Dandridge the debutante girlfriend who dumped Chad when he got disinherited? The one whose parents had to get a restraining order because he wouldn’t leave her alone?

That’s her.

But what does she have to do with the New England Pyrate Players?

She is one.

She auditioned for the troupe?

Not exactly. Her parents basically bought her a spot. They thought being at sea would keep her away from the drug dealers and Chad. They also thought a sailing cruise would be good therapy for her.

Yeah, but would it be good for the Pyrate Players to be stuck with her?

Actually, it would, he said quickly. Madison has a great voice. She’s been taking lessons since elementary school. And you have to admit, she’s hotter than half the starlets in Hollywood.

He sure was a big Madison fan, considering he’d never met her.

I get that poor little Madison needs a keeper, I said coldly. But I don’t see how I fit in.

All you have to do is keep an eye on her while you’re at sea. The minute the ship docks, our guys take over until the ship sails again and you’re back on duty. Your main job is to be on the lookout for drug use and attempts by Chad Pomeroy to contact her.

In other words, spy on her.

Well, yeah. He sat back in his chair. That’s kinda what private eyes do. And it’s for her own good.

I don’t know if I’m the best person to do this.

"You’re the only person who can do it. You’ve got a free pass into the Pyrate Players and the perfect cover to be on that boat. DSI mostly hires ex-cops and ex-military. We’re fresh out of college kids who can sing, dance, and do street theater."

This was nuts. I ought to say no. But...

Shane leaned forward, his dark eyes intense. You won’t be going into this blind. We’ll prep you and give you all the backup you need. I’ll be your handler, and you know I’d never let anything happen to you.

I shook my head. My parents will never go for it. A crazy stalker boyfriend. Restraining orders. An emotionally unstable drug addict. They won’t let me do it.

Shane was watching me intently. Who says your parents have to know about it? Just tell them you developed a sudden interest in maritime history. They’ll eat it up. They don’t have to know the rest.

But how will I explain the money you’re paying me?

Easy. You’ll win the scholarship that DSI gives out to promising high school graduates.

I had to laugh. Me? Win a scholarship? Are you kidding?

Nope. I’ll send you the paperwork. Just fill it out.

But don’t you get tons of applicants?

Nah. This is the first year we’ve offered it.

What makes you so sure I’m going to win?

I’m the chairman of the selection committee, a committee of one, so I get the deciding vote. In fact, he went on, saying more devious stuff with a perfectly straight face, you don’t even have to spend the money on college if you don’t want to.

Yeah, like my parents would let me do that.

He shrugged. So don’t tell them about it. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

This sounds really sketchy. Are you sure it’s legal?

It will be by the time our lawyers get through with it. And it’ll look a lot better on your resume than this place.

He had a point. I looked at the donut gobblers around me. I was probably absorbing excess poundage by osmosis just sitting here. Would I have the willpower to come here every day and not eat a donut or two? Or five or six?

No, I would not. And there was more than my figure at stake.

I could just imagine the look of pride and relief on my parents’ faces when I told them I’d won a scholarship. They’d finally—finally—have a reason to brag about me in the faculty lounge. Plus, they could stop obsessing over Chloe’s College Fund. And surely they’d let me spend some of the money on a few plane tickets to North Dakota to see Zach.

All right, I said to Shane. I’ll think it over and let you know what I decide.

But I already knew what I was going to decide.

I was going to do it.

3

I STOOD IN FRONT OF a soaring lower Manhattan skyscraper, dressed in my most lower Manhattan-appropriate outfit—black, black, and more black, with a touch of white blouse showing beneath my suit jacket’s neckline.

I just hoped I looked sophisticated enough because my destination was the offices of Duchaine Security and Investigation, Est. 1860. This date was helpfully etched on the double glass door that confronted me when I stepped out of the elevator onto the 24th floor.

A security guard checked my ID and then buzzed me into a ritzy reception area, all ice-white walls and black leather furniture. A model-slim receptionist sat behind an ebony desk equipped with a built-in computer and a black vase filled with white orchids.

Good morning, Ms. Crandall, she said in mellifluous tones. Someone will be out for you shortly. In the meantime, please have a seat.

I sat, trying my best to not look out of place in this adult setting. As much as I wanted to escape high school and get on with my life, I still would have felt more comfortable surrounded by walls of banging lockers with scuffed linoleum underfoot instead of marble tile.

I tried not to fidget as well-dressed DSIers hurried through the reception area, leather messenger bags in one hand, lattes in the other. I may have been sitting in a corporate palace in my best black outfit, but I didn’t feel like a corporate princess. I felt like a peasant who’d stumbled into the palace by mistake.

And then who should walk in but the palace prince himself. He didn’t look like a prince though. He was wearing his usual lumbersexual outfit, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt over a worn T-shirt.

Good morning, Mr. Duchaine, the receptionist chirped. Ms. Crandall is here.

Thanks. I’ll take her in.

The doors to the inner sanctum slid open to reveal a maze of frosted glass cubicles where scores of Duchaine Security and Investigation personnel were busy securing and investigating. Many of the cubicles contained whiteboards plastered with photographs, just like on TV crime shows.

In one cubicle, three men were watching CCTV footage of a bank heist. In the cubicle next door, a woman was giving a PowerPoint presentation comparing two handwriting samples, one real, one forged. A small audience of black suits sat watching intently.