her bike against the side of the shack. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do anything that fancy.”
“Sure you will, Ellie, if you keep practicing,” Jerry said. He reached for Maryellen’s hand, held it up high, and gave her a dizzying twirl. She giggled with delight.
Maryellen still couldn’t quite believe that Jerry was her brother-in-law. He and Joan had begun dating when Joan was in high school, and they had gotten married only a few months ago. Jerry was the most handsome man Maryellen knew, and possibly the bravest. He had trained as a diver and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He once confided to Maryellen that he had gone on secret underwater missions. That seemed scary, and even more exciting than the television shows and movies Maryellen loved to watch—because it was real.
A couple draped in beach towels stepped up to the shack. Joan went behind the counter, pulled two icy bottles of Coca-Cola out of the cooler, and popped off the caps on a bottle opener attached to the side of the stand.
“Keep dancing,” Sandy said after the couple left. “Maybe you’ll attract a few customers who’ll order something besides a nickel soda.” He lifted a conch shell from a bucket, revealing the pink underside of its spiky white shell. “I don’t know why people aren’t lined up to order this delicacy.”
Maryellen felt her lips puckering at the thought of eating the rubbery shellfish Sandy pried from the shells. She couldn’t understand why anyone liked conch—even fried. She looked up at a chalkboard sign that hung under a plastic Christmas wreath next to Sandy’s counter. The sign read, “Daytona’s Best Fried Conch.”
“Most people want a hot dog,” Maryellen said. “Maybe you should have that on the menu.”
“Hot dogs?” Sandy frowned, his thin gray hair flopping down over his bushy eyebrows. “Why, you can get those anyplace. But fresh conch—that’s a Daytona Beach specialty. Jerry and his pal Skip deliver them right from the ocean to my stand.” Sandy emptied the conch shells from the bucket. “I think Skip’s glad to have you working with him. I just wish I could use more of these.”
Jerry smiled. “Skip wishes you could use more, too,” he said. “He keeps complaining that he’s barely making enough money to put gas in his boat tank.”
Joan turned up the volume on the radio and held out her hands to Jerry. Just as they were about to start dancing again, a muscular young man in a T-shirt and shorts came jogging up the beach, his blond hair bleached nearly white by the sun.
“Jerry!” he called out.
“Hey, Skipper,” Jerry said. “What’s up?”
Maryellen had heard about Jerry’s diving partner but hadn’t met him before. She was about to greet him, when Skip tapped Jerry’s arm. “Let’s get a move on,” he said. “Tank wants to talk about the next dive. And he’s in a hurry. We’d better get back to the dinghy before he blows his top.”
Maryellen looked in the direction from which Skip had come. She could just make out a figure standing next to a small rowboat beached on the sand. Out in the water, past the end of the pier, a larger boat with a covered cabin bobbed next to a red-and-white buoy. Maryellen knew that bigger boats would scrape bottom in the shallow water if they came in too close to the beach. Jerry and Skip used the smaller dinghy to bring the conch to shore for the beachside shacks and restaurants.
“So who’s Tank, and what’s he hired you for?” Sandy asked.
“We’re counting fish,” Skip answered after a brief pause. “Tank’s a professor at the university. He needed a couple of divers to figure out how many kinds of fish are just offshore. He’s a tough boss, and the pay’s lousy. The sooner I’m done with it, the better.” He chuckled and added, “I’m glad I’m not in school, or I’d have to take orders from guys like him all the time.”
Jerry’s shoulders stiffened, and Maryellen could see that he didn’t appreciate his friend’s attitude about school. She knew how hard it was for Jerry and Joan to hold down jobs and go to classes at the university, and how important finishing their education was to each of them. But Jerry was easygoing and didn’t like to argue.
“Let’s get going then,” was all he said. He and Skip set off toward the dinghy.
“Jerry didn’t even say good-bye,” Joan complained. “Skip’s right about one thing: Tank really is demanding, and the work has kept Jerry awfully busy.”
Maryellen nodded sympathetically. “Does he really have to dive for conch and work for Tank?”
“Jerry doesn’t like me to brag about it,” Joan said, lowering her voice a bit, “but what he’s doing for Tank is more than just a job. Tank teaches courses in oceanography—that’s studying the ocean, and everything in it. Jerry is the best student in the class, and an experienced diver, so when the professor needed a crew for his research project, he asked Jerry first. Then Jerry told Tank about Skip and his boat, and they both got a job.”
Sandy held out the dented bucket that had held the conch. “Your big brother ran off so fast, he forgot the pail,” he said. “How ’bout returning it for me?”
“Sure!” Maryellen said, taking the bucket. She liked the idea of having a big brother—which, in a way, Jerry was, now that he had married Joan—and she liked being able to help him out. She trotted off toward the boat, swinging the pail at her side.
As Maryellen neared the pier, a strange clicking noise coming from farther up the beach caught her attention. She turned toward the sound and saw two men walking slowly along the sand, their heads bent over some sort of machine. One man was dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts, a neatly tucked pink polo shirt, and leather dress shoes with thin socks. He looked odd, dressed like that on the beach, and the machine he held looked even odder. It reminded Maryellen of her mother’s new Hoover vacuum, but instead of a brush, it had a large, flat disc at its bottom end. Instead of the vacuum’s hum, this machine was giving off buzzing clicks. At first, the sounds came slowly, spaced far apart. Then the clicks came rapid-fire: clickety, clickety, clickety, clickety!
The second man walked alongside the machine, holding a pitchfork with bent tines. He was dressed in work pants, work boots, and a dark green shirt. Maryellen thought he looked about Jerry’s age, but unlike Jerry, he was short, and built like a barrel.
Curious, Maryellen walked over to get a closer look. The older man looked up and gave her a friendly smile. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen one of these before,” he said.
“You’re right about that,” Maryellen answered. “What is that thing?”
The man tapped his knuckles against the machine’s handle. “What you are looking at here, little miss, is a scientific breakthrough. You hear those clicks?”
Maryellen nodded vigorously.
“The faster they go, the closer the Buckley Metal Detector is to some metal object buried under the sand,” the man said. “This device is going to be a huge success, which is why I’ve bought the company and named it after myself.”
“Wow!” Maryellen exclaimed. “Then you must be Mr. Buckley.”
“Indeed I am,” the man said. “I’m Atherton Buckley, and this is my assistant, Pete Jones.”
Maryellen introduced herself and then asked, “Have you found
