Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
JJ PULLED HIS sister aside when they docked at The Château. Pope, John B, and Kie scrambled inside, and JJ waited for the porch door to close before he said anything. "Are you mad at me?"
Piper shrugged flippantly, "No."
"No?" Piper shook her head. "What's wrong with you then?"
Piper started walking and JJ jogged the first two steps to catch up. "I just think you're trying to be stupid."
JJ smirked to himself as Piper held the door open for him, "It is my specialty."
Piper shook her head and deadpanned, "Get inside."
It took everything in her not to swat JJ upside the head as he passed.
He scrambled inside, and Piper followed. They walked through The Château and found their friends in the guest room JJ usually sleeps in. Pope looked up, directly at JJ, and said, "Okay. So, um... we didn't see anything. We don't know anything. We need to have total and complete amnesia."
JJ sat down on the bed, and Piper turned just as she entered the room, keeping an ear open to listen, but, more importantly, scavenging for shorts that weren't still sopping wet. JJ nodded, "Actually, Pope's right for once. See—" he pointed— "I agree with you sometimes. Deny, deny, deny."
"Hey," Piper said, turning around and holding a pair of black and white gingham-patterned shorts. "JJ, do you know who these belong to?"
JJ turned his head. He stared at them for a moment, blankly. He shook his head. Piper shrugged and carried them out of the room. She picked one of her shirts off the clean clothes pile on the floor and changed in the bathroom. When Piper walked back to JJ's room, they were gone. So, she looked through a few windows, and saw them all sitting on the dock, JJ and Pope holding fishing rods.
Piper caught up to them as John B said, "All right, so think about it. How does a marina rat get a Grady White?"
Pope inhaled sharply, "Prostitution."
John B pointed his hand at Pope and snapped his fingers at Piper, "Square groupers, bro."
Piper shifted herself on her feet and pushed herself onto one of the horizontal beams while looking at John B skeptically. "You think Scooter Grubbs was a smuggler?"
"You said it this morning!" John B insisted, "There's a market for it."
There has always been a market for smuggling in America—good, old-fashioned ethical consumerism. Piper wasn't convinced Scooter Grubbs had what it took, though. His wife was, like, the poster girl for Earth Muffin-ism. "Right..."
