Pool Party
Page 5
“Yeah. The police have searched the house from top to bottom,” added Vicki. “No bodies.”
Irene picked just that moment to show up with her tray. “I don’t know Dan that well. It’s true. So I’m waiting to see what happens. As somebody famous once said, ‘the truth will out.’”
Later, Sharon passed her father in the principal’s office. She wished she could fall through the floor. Her father didn’t realize that everyone could hear him pounding the principal’s desk. He proclaimed that Dan was to be kept away from her at all costs. Mr. Jones didn’t want them to have the same classes. He didn’t want them to have the same lunch period. He didn’t want their lockers near each other.
Everyone was staring at her and whispering. Sharon tore out of the school and headed for the athletic field. She ran behind the bleachers all the way back to the woods and threw herself to the ground next to a pond. She hurled her backpack away.
The pond was almost dry because of the long, late summer drought that would probably last well into September. There was almost no room for frogs and minnows. She stirred the muddy, shallow water with her finger. Her reflection was distorted in the murky water.
Suddenly there was another face beside hers, and she froze—afraid to breathe. Then there was a hand on her shoulder.
Sharon started and looked up. She gasped. It was Dan.
“So, I remind you of Frankenstein, huh?”
She stared at him.
“You know, that famous scene in the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff where the monster sees a little girl playing by the pond and drowns her?”
“I—I don’t know what to think, Dan. I’m so on edge—like something terrible’s about to happen.”
“You think I did it?”
“The Dan I thought I knew would never do anything horrible. But you confessed to planting the jewelry and writing those notes that the police found. I’m confused.”
He sat down beside her. “I never really put the jewelry under your mattress. I just wrote up those phone conversations when I was hangin’ around the inn lobby that day—right on the spot. I overheard what you confessed to the police.”
“The gold?”
“I bought some before I came at Dave’s Treasure Trove.”
“The gun?”
“Have you ever heard of pickpocketing a policeman?”
“But—but why?”
“I began to put two and two together as soon as I heard about the jewelry on the radio. You’d never steal anything! I was afraid somebody was setting you up. I didn’t know what else to do to protect you, to give us time to discover who it was—to stop Phil.”
“Why do you keep mentioning him?”
“He seems to hang around you too much for your own good.”
“That’s just because you’re jealous.”
“Maybe I am,” Dan said. “Maybe the kidnapper’s somebody else. But somebody’s trying to get you arrested or drive you insane. First the jewelry. Then the doll.”
“That note in my pocket. Why did you tell me to look upstairs?”
“When I searched the house the night of the party, I could tell somebody had been up there. There were dirty footprints.”
“The police didn’t see them!”
“Somebody cleaned them up.”
There was a pause.
“You really care about me that much?” she asked. “When we used to go out, it was like I was just there. I might as well have been your rock collection.”
“I care.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Do something?”
He shrugged. “I never thought you wouldn’t be there, just like you were a member of my family. I didn’t know I had to say anything special. I thought you knew how I felt. Stupid, I guess.”
“You’re not stupid, Dan! You’re the most courageous person I know with all those kids hounding you—and the police.”
“Maybe it’s just my way of showin’ you I care now, unless of course it’s too late.”
She found herself leaning forward to kiss him. He kissed her tentatively. They bumped noses. Then he pulled her toward him and kissed her again and again, each time with more feeling, lingering longer on her lips.
She responded, not wanting to let go, until she couldn’t think of anything except his kisses.
“All right, sergeant, we’ve got both of them right here!” came a harsh voice.
Sharon and Dan fell apart. They gaped at the uniformed policemen surrounding them. Dan reached for her hand.
“All right, Miss Jones, come with us. Mr. Evans, you come, too. We want to see both of you at the station.”
“What for?” asked Sharon.
“It would be easier, miss, if you’d confess. You’re both in this up to your necks. It’s getting pretty obvious.”
Chapter 6
That evening, Dan and Sharon were interrogated at the police station in separate rooms. It was the most embarrassing thing that she’d ever experienced. The police asked her personal questions. They assumed that she and Dan were a thing. Nobody seemed to believe the truth.
The reporters snapped her photo outside the police station. They appeared at her front door. They followed her to school.
It was hard enough to deal with school recently. The other kids started calling her “lover for hire”—and worse.
Everything was happening so quickly. When she wasn’t worried about the police, Sharon worried about her feelings for Dan. She’d thought she’d left all that baggage behind when they broke up. Sharon had assumed that she was in love with Phil and Phil only.
Why had she kissed Dan and liked it? How could she have liked it when everybody said he was guilty?
These worries never left her. Not when she was in class taking a test. Not when she was at lunch. Not when she was helping her mother at Ocean House.
Her father didn’t help. He accused the police. He claimed that they hadn’t watched Dan closely enough and now Dan had “seduced” his daughter.
The next day Phil picked her up at school and drove her home as usual. She hunkered down and prepared to be ejected from the car. But Phil chatted on and on about his job at Fun & Sun Resort Services. He talked about the heat wave they were having. He gossiped about Tony. He asked her about school.
Finally Sharon couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe he was trying to see how far she could go before she broke down. So she just blurted out, “Phil, I’m sorry about Dan. I—I don’t know what came over me.”
Phil smiled as if nothing had happened. “Don’t worry,” he said as he pulled into the Ocean House driveway. “I’ll take care of Dan.”
And a chill shot up her spine.
As soon as she got home, Irene, Sue, Vicki, and Angel surprised her with refreshments at the pool. Sharon changed into her suit and joined them.
Phil said, “I need your help, gals. I want you to help me convince Sharon here to have another pool party.”
Vicki stopped in her tracks and stared at him.
“I couldn’t!” said Sharon. The color drained from her face.
“It would be sorta bad luck. Don’t you think?” asked Sue. “Like temptin’ fate?”
“I’ll say!” gasped Angel, tucking her blond curls inside her bathing cap.
“Gotta get her mood back up.” Phil stripped off his T-shirt and jumped into the pool.
“It’s certainly hot enough,” Irene said, changing the subject. “It hasn’t rained since I got here.” She dove in and swam underwater the length of the black pool.
Phil floated on his back in the deep end. He chatted on and on endlessly about how they should do everything they could to rehabilitate Sharon’s reputation, especially now that Dan had “gotten to her.”
“I mean, it could be sort of a celebration,” he said. “The police have caught the kidnapper, haven’t they? Everybody knows Dan did it.” Phil glanced pointedly at her. “So why not get back to normal? What better way than to have another pool party?”
Ang
el, Sue, and Vicki shot her looks. Sharon knew they thought Dan was innocent, too.
Nervously Sharon asked, “Couldn’t we just go out by ourselves, Phil, and get away from it all?”
“You can’t run away from this thing, Sharon. You’ve gotta stand up and fight.”
Phil and Irene launched into a list-making effort. Irene promised to finance the party and make it even fancier than the first.
While Sharon was sort of half-listening, her eyes were drawn to a flash of light in the deep end. It seemed to scintillate off the dark surface of the water. She could almost make out the letters CW again. Then the light disappeared. Nobody else seemed to notice it.
At first she didn’t hear Phil calling to her, “C’mon in, Sharon, the water’s fine!”
She shook herself. She realized she’d been out of it. Everybody was looking at her kind of funny.
She slowly lowered herself into the shallow end and started swimming over to Phil and Irene, who were hanging onto the side in the deep end. Maybe she should explain her reasons for not wanting to have another pool party. They didn’t know about everything that had been going on. All the peculiar, spooky things that only Sharon had seen or heard.
But how could she avoid sounding as if she were nuts?
She thought what she couldn’t say:
Guys, did you ever think we should lay off for awhile—I mean, just to see if anything else bad happens? I get awful vibes about this place … I mean, that bloody doll. It might be a kind of warning to us that someone else is gonna disappear or get hurt.
It gave her the creeps breaststroking through the smooth, dark water. She couldn’t see the bottom. She felt as if there were something out there in the deep end—waiting for her.
Sharon waved to Phil, took a deep breath, and went under. That was the last thing she remembered for a long time. Something had grabbed her by the foot and dragged her down.
Sharon struggled. Something was wrapping and coiling itself around her legs. The more she struggled, the more she became entangled. She flailed her arms and legs. In the darkness of the black-tiled pool, which way was up?
Suddenly she felt arms around her waist dragging her up toward the light.
Sharon broke the surface spitting out water and gulping in air. Strong arms hauled her over to the side of the pool.
Phil’s face loomed over her. Four other faces looked over his shoulder—Irene, Sue, Vicki, and Angel.
Sharon found her voice. “Someone tried to kill me!”
“Get a grip!” Phil shook his head. “It was just the barracuda. You got all wrapped up in it.”
The barracuda! Her mother had authorized the purchase of the state-of-the-art pool cleaning equipment when they moved into Ocean House. It was an underwater vacuum cleaner attached to a long, flexible, expandable plastic feed tube that fitted into the pool filter. She and her mother had known they wouldn’t have time to clean the pool every day all by themselves.
They’d thought the barracuda would be a convenience, not an instrument of torture. What was going on? Was somebody trying to drive her crazy?
Sharon wondered again about the golden letters CW that she’d seen in the deep end several days ago and then glimpsed again today. Had it been a trick of the sun? Or had that been the barracuda, too?
“Are you feeling quite all right?” Irene asked in her crisp, English accent. “You’ve had quite a case of the jitters lately.”
“That settles it!” said Phil. “No more argument. We’re having the pool party!”
Angel, Sue, and Vicki looked as uneasy as Sharon felt.
They all helped Sharon into the Ocean House kitchen. Phil, who had become well-acquainted with the hotel, got them all Cokes. “Here, this ought to cool everybody off,” he said.
Sharon began to relax and was even able to laugh at herself. But she was feeling mighty tired all of a sudden and longed for a nap. Maybe it was the excitement, but she’d been feeling more sleepy lately.
Funny. She’d never been one for naps.
Sharon yawned. “Gee, guys, it was noisy here last night. Somebody checked in around midnight. I’m bushed.”
It was one of the worst things about this business and made her long for the days when they were just a family living in an ordinary house instead of a grand estate that had opened its doors as a resort. But as manager her mother got much of her business that way—weary tourists heading for Disney World getting off the interstate late and spotting the Vacancy sign.
Her mother left the front desk open until midnight. The tourists made noise checking in. They trudged up and down the stairs carrying luggage.
Of course the room directly overhead with the tower was the fanciest. It was often selected first. When there were guests at Ocean House, it was rarely empty.
After the guests went upstairs that wasn’t the end of the noise. Not by a long shot! They would turn on the shower full force. Some of them even sounded like they were moving the furniture. The thumping overhead went on half the night.
Everyone looked up as Mrs. Jones walked through the kitchen. Irene turned to her and said, “We’d better start closing down the front desk earlier.”
“But we have so few guests as it is!” Mrs. Jones protested.
“The guests that checked in late last night kept Sharon up.”
Her mother stared at Sharon curiously. “What do you mean, honey? No one checked in last night.”
As if things weren’t bad enough, Sharon soon had more to worry about. When she got home from school the next day, her mother was waiting for her. She had that suspiciously exaggerated, sugary smile on her face that usually meant she was going to ask a favor. “Dear, could you show our new guests around?”
Little old ladies stood in an eager circle around them. They’d just arrived. Their suitcases jammed the lobby.
Sharon whispered, “Who are they?”
“A psychics’ convention,” her mother whispered back. “The type attracted to crime scenes. But at least they’re paying guests. Humor them.”
One of the women addressed Sharon. “Dear, we want you to show us around. Teenage girls like yourself are frequently in touch with the spirit realm.”
Sharon groaned inwardly. She glared at her mother as if to say, “Do I have to?”
Her mother flashed her a forced smile.
They hadn’t even gone halfway up the stairs when a lady with a red bulbous nose shrieked out. “That’s a cold spot if I’ve ever felt one in my life!”
“A cold spot?” Sharon asked. She wondered if she should apologize for the air-conditioning.
“Yes. It indicates the presence of a ghost. Didn’t you know, young lady, that this house is one of the most famous haunted houses on Amelia Island?”
Ruth had said that at the pool party.
Sharon led them upstairs and showed them one room after another. The ladies clucked about the presence of a very unhappy female spirit in the house.
“Have you ever heard weeping at night?” A short, squat woman asked her.
“I hear all sorts of things. Tourists get cranky. Especially if they’ve been on the road too long.”
The ladies nodded at each other sagely.
Finally she showed them the suite with the tower. And the ladies crowded in. They examined the bathtub. They sat in the chairs. One lay down on the bed. One of the ladies was immediately attracted to the doll. “Look! It has real human hair. It looks just like a person.” They all gathered around it and handed it back and forth.
“You can take the doll back to your rooms if you want.”
“We wouldn’t dare!” said the lady with the bulbous nose. “This is the doll’s room. She lives here for a reason.”
Sharon didn’t much like the part about the doll “living” here.
The ladies were tapping on windows and walls as if they expected an answer from the beyond. One exclaimed something about a cold spot in the bathtub. Another found one on the spiral staircase.
It was the one
place Sharon wanted to avoid. She had to follow them up the staircase. But the door was locked. They couldn’t get out onto the balcony.
“The ghost is erecting a wall. She doesn’t want us to pass through it. Something awful must have happened here,” one of the conventioneers said.
Finally the ladies were finished with their questions about Sharon’s encounters with the “beyond.” They ended the tour and left to conduct a seance in the parlor on the ground floor.
Sharon stepped outside just to get away from them all and take a walk around the grounds. But then she spotted someone up on the balcony.
It was Irene. Nobody else had that long sheeny black hair. Was that why the door had been locked—because Irene had been up there?
She had her easel set up. A canvas was clipped to it. But she was scanning the treetops with her binoculars.
Sharon waved and tried to get Irene’s attention. But Irene took a shiny object out of her dress pocket and hurled it down into the deep end of the black pool.
Sharon watched Irene pack up her stuff and go inside. When Sharon was sure that she had gone, she got the skimmer and fished the object out of the pool.
It was a knife with a sharp, serrated edge that gleamed in the sunlight. The knife was very heavy, old-fashioned looking, and made of solid gold. The initials CW were carved on its handle.
CW. The same initials she’s seen on the handkerchief and in the pool. Now she’d found them on a knife, too.
Chapter 7
Irene acted totally normal when Sharon met her at school the following day. The girl never mentioned the incident and Sharon didn’t know how to bring it up. She would have been happy to believe she had been hallucinating or dreaming, except that she now had a gold knife hidden in her dresser drawer. She wanted to turn it over to the police, but Ocean House couldn’t stand any more gossip.
Sharon finally got her nerve up enough to ask Irene what she was doing on the previous afternoon.
“Oh, I just took a little nap!” Irene lied so smoothly it shocked Sharon.
Sharon started observing this girl from England more carefully. Was she who she said she was?
Sharon excused herself early from the gym class that she shared with Irene. She headed toward the girls’ locker room where she and Irene shared a locker. Sharon opened the lock and found what she was looking for. She peered into Irene’s purse. In her wallet she found a driver’s license with the name Sandy Roberts instead of Irene Cragmoor. And it wasn’t from England. It was from Richmond, Virginia!