She was pretty, too. Like Meggie. But this woman didn’t look friendly. She looked cold.
Eric dropped his eyes to his cereal. His heart pounded and he tried to think why she might be looking at him with that hard stare.
Because she knows you’re keeping a secret. That’s why. You were staring at Meggie and she saw.
He tried to eat his cereal, but it tasted like yuck. Mushy, squishy yuck. He’d left it too long in the milk. When he looked up, the woman was standing above his table, staring down at him. He looked away quickly.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“It’s mushy. I don’t like mushy mush.”
“Look at me.”
He didn’t look.
The woman pulled out a chair and sat in it. When she spoke again, she didn’t sound so cold. She sounded friendly.
“I saw you watching that woman. Do you know her?”
“What woman?”
“You know who I’m talking about. The one in the wheelchair. I can’t remember . . . what’s her name again?”
“Meggie.”
A smile spread across the woman’s face. “Ah, so you do know her. That’s right, it’s Meggie Kerr. What’s your name?”
“Eric Elwin Pilson.”
She frowned. “Did you say Ruk?”
“No, I said Eric.”
“I still don’t understand. Ruk?”
“It’s okay, a lot of people think that’s my name.”
“Oh, Eric. Tell me. Why were you looking at Meggie?”
This woman made him squirm and he couldn’t think of a lie. So he blurted the first true thing he could think of that wouldn’t get him into trouble. “I like pretty ladies.”
“And you think Meggie is pretty?”
“Yes, a pretty lady.”
He blushed as he remembered how he’d been coming out of the hydrotherapy room a couple of nights earlier and glanced into another room where an aide was getting Meggie dressed. There was another woman in there besides the aide, standing to one side, watching. This wasn’t the same woman, was it? Eric knew he should have looked away, that staring at naked ladies was wrong. And he did look away . . . eventually. But first he stared and imagined touching Meggie’s body. Of course, a pretty, smart lady like that would never want anything to do with a man like Eric.
“You’re up to something, aren’t you, Eric?” The woman leaned in, too close. It made his hands sweat. “Someone told you to watch the pretty lady. Who was that?”
“Nobody told me! I’m sorry!”
“What did you do, Eric? Tell me—you know it’s the right thing to do.”
He couldn’t stand the way she was staring, like she could see right into him. “I looked at her boobies!” he blurted.
The woman drew back with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“Someone was getting her dressed and I stood and watched. I looked at her boobies. I’m sorry, don’t tell Mr. Usher. Please.”
“Oh, God, is that all?” She rose to her feet and looked down at him with a disgusted expression, like she’d found half a worm in her food. Then she snort-laughed. “I don’t know who is more stupid, the retard or the idiot who questions the retard.”
“What?” he said, outraged.
“Must have been someone else. But who? And yes, you are.”
He sprang to his feet, his face turning hot. “Take that back!”
She stood her ground and Eric faltered. There were a few residents still on the patio, finishing their breakfasts, and they stared. The woman seemed to notice the others at the same time, and took a step back.
“Don’t mess with me, Eric,” she said in a low voice. “And stay away from the pretty lady if you know what’s good for you.”
“I will! I’ll stay away and I won’t look at her boobies ever again!” He wasn’t sure why he was shouting.
Her heels clacked on the stone as she walked away. Eric sat down and tugged at his hair, muttering to himself.
“Stupid idiot. Stupid dumb-dumb idiot.”
He thought he was talking about the mean woman, but gradually realized he was angry with himself. He felt guilty about watching Meggie get dressed. And he should have kept his yapper shut about watching. Now the woman would go to Usher and tell him that Eric was naughty and he wouldn’t be able to go to the hot springs. Maybe he’d even get KICKED OUT. That was bad. It’s what happened when you broke the serious rules. Like when Gary at the group home walked down to buy an ice cream sandwich at the Gas-Mart, only he forgot to put on his pants. Then he threw his ice cream sandwich at the lady behind the desk when she told him to leave. He got KICKED OUT. They sent him back to Riverwood.
Eric went to his room to mope. When lunch came, he was feeling too glum to eat, so he told them he had a tummy ache and to save him two pieces of pineapple cake, but he didn’t want his noodles. Maybe he’d take some soda.
“Are you really sick?” Diego asked through the door. “Should I scratch you from the Devil’s Cauldron list?”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got a field trip to the hot springs this afternoon, remember?”
“You mean I can still go?”
“I don’t know, depends on how sick you are.” Diego pushed open the door and stood with his hands on his hips, staring. “You don’t look sick, you look bored. Come on, let’s grab lunch. You don’t want to get hungry up there.”
They didn’t know. The mean woman hadn’t told Usher that Eric was looking at someone’s boobies. Only now Eric felt doubly guilty, because he’d gotten away with something. He should be punished. They didn’t know, but if they did, they’d scratch him from the list.
“I can’t go, because I did a bad thing.”
Diego came and sat next to him on the bed. “What are you talking about, Ruk?”
“I looked at a naked lady.”
He explained how he’d been walking past the hydrotherapy room and how he couldn’t resist looking in while she got dressed. It was the pretty lady with the braided blond hair.
“You mean Meggie Kerr?”
“Uh huh.”
“Hombre, that’s totally normal.” Diego slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, don’t be obvious, either. And don’t make it a habit. But you saw something and you didn’t look away. Nobody is going to scratch you from any list for looking at a naked woman.”
“Oh.” Eric was confused. “Why did that woman get angry, then? She said she knew I was watching and wanted to know why.”
“What woman?”
Eric explained about the woman in the skirt with the clacky shoes. She wasn’t a nurse or doctor or aide, but he didn’t know who she was.
A frown spread across Diego’s face. “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about. Don’t know what she’s doing here, though. I thought she was upper admin or something. To be honest, she freaks me out.”
“Upper what?”
“You know, from the States. Whoever owns Colina Nublosa. They sent her down to check up on us. But she was asking about Meggie? Wonder why.”
“Wait!” Eric said. “My brother, he—”
Then he remembered quite a bit more. Wes told him to come in and talk to the pretty lady. Eric couldn’t remember why at the moment, but it was Sherlock Holmes business. He was UNDERCOVER. He couldn’t tell anyone.
“What is it? Do you know something?”
Eric shook his head. “Nothing.”
Diego looked at him a long time in a way that made him squirm, then he nodded. “Come on, let’s get some lunch. Everyone else is already eating. We’d better hurry.”
Eric followed him out, delighted that he’d be able to go to the hot springs after all. He looked around warily for the mean woman but didn’t see her anywhere.
Chapter Fourteen
Wes and Becca sank low in their hot pot when the staff and residents of Colina Nublosa came down the trail as it curved up and over from the backside of the mountain. There were maybe fifteen residents in total
, all capable of walking, as the direct trail was too rugged for wheelchairs. Similarly, few of the older residents had made the trip. Wes looked anxiously for his brother.
It was earlier in the day than when Wes, Becca, and Eric had hiked up the previous week, and the hot springs were busier. Costa Ricans used hot pots as family Jacuzzis, with moms and white-haired grandmothers holding babies in water-logged diapers, while their men drank bottles of Imperial beer. Kids in bathing suits had turned a flat stretch into a rocky soccer field with two opposing hot pots acting as watery goals. A few people glanced up at the handicapped people coming down off the trail, but quickly returned their attention to their own activities.
It was shady beneath the overhanging branches of the surrounding forest, but Wes pulled a baseball cap down on his forehead and both he and Becca wore their sunglasses. He didn’t see Jerry Usher, but there was Eric’s aide, Diego Palomar. Wes had chatted in Spanish with the man upon checking Eric into the facility; he didn’t want to be recognized.
“There’s Eric,” Becca said.
Wes spotted the neon blue shorts and the Sherlock Holmes hat and laughed. “What a goof. This place can’t be all bad if they’re letting him get away with that.”
Eric stood above the Devil’s Cauldron itself, which boiled over, casting gouts of steam like a giant witch’s pot. The way he leaned over to peer inside made Wes nervous and it was all he could do not to shout at his brother to step back. Then Diego pulled him back.
Unfortunately, Eric didn’t set off on his own as they were hoping, but stuck to his aide, chatting. The man nodded, but was watching his other residents, distracted. Together, Eric, Diego, and several others set up in the largest of the unoccupied hot pots. Someone inflated a beachball and they tossed it back and forth.
“What now?” Becca asked. “Wait?”
“Problem is, we have no idea how long they’ll be up here. Maybe not long. They come every week, after all.”
“Let’s try to get his attention. Walk by and see if he notices.” She put a hand on his arm when he started to rise. “Not you, me.”
“After that stunt the other day? One of the aides will recognize you.”
“I’m not the only pregnant woman up here.”
“You’re the only pregnant gringo.”
Becca fixed him with a look that said she thought he was arguing for the sake of arguing. Maybe he was. Nothing wrong with looking after your pregnant wife, he thought stubbornly.
She climbed out of the water and wrapped herself in a towel while Wes watched. And another thing. He was not going to feel guilty for still admiring her body. The glow of her skin, the healthy color in her cheeks. Her enlarged breasts and the extra padding on her hips and butt. Surely he wasn’t the only guy who thought his wife looked sexy when she was pregnant. She saw him watching and raised her eyebrows. He raised his right back, which made her grin.
Becca put on flip-flops and hiked up and around the cauldron. When she came down the other side, Wes saw what she was about. Eric sat in the hot pot with his back downhill, which left him facing back up the hill toward the steaming cauldron. Diego, on the other hand, faced away from her. At the moment, Eric was occupied with tossing the beachball with the other residents, but soon his gaze drifted uphill. She waved at him.
He let out a shout. Wes winced. Becca ducked behind the cauldron, into the narrow gap between the stone bowl and the cloud forest behind. The other residents and their aide looked to where Eric was pointing, but she was now out of sight. They turned their attention back to the game. A moment later Becca reappeared, and this time moved her finger dramatically to her lips, then away and back again.
Shh.
Eric climbed out of the pot. Diego watched him go, but Eric didn’t immediately hike to the cauldron. Instead, he wandered around, looking in on other residents from Colina Nublosa. A few wandered about the hot pots, and the staff left them alone until they bugged other visitors to the springs. Soon, Diego seemed to lose interest and returned to the game. Just when Wes started to worry that Eric had forgotten about Becca, he made his way uphill.
“Way to go, Ruk,” Wes said in a low voice.
Then he casually climbed out of the water himself, grabbed his towel and flip-flops, and hiked up around the cauldron. He met Becca and Eric in the trees to its rear.
Eric spotted him. “Wussy!” It wasn’t a nickname, so much as the result of a slight speech impediment.
Wes grinned and hugged his brother. Eric slapped him on the back.
“What are you doing here?” Eric exclaimed.
“Shh, not so loud. We’re undercover, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Sherlock Holmes!”
“That’s right. You were supposed to send me an email.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you remember?” Becca asked. “If you got the video, you’d complain about the food. But if you said the food was yummy, it meant you hadn’t filmed Meggie yet. Don’t you have email?”
Eric’s face darkened and his tongue stuck out a fraction of an inch from the corner of his mouth as he chewed on it. That meant he was confused.
Wes pressed him. “Did you get the video? You were supposed to ask Meggie questions.”
“Oh.”
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“I tried to remember.” Eric plunged his fingers into his hair and tugged at the roots. Then he made a fist and beat it against his forehead. “I’m a stupid dumb-dumb.”
Wes caught his wrist. “You know the rules, Ruk. You never say that, remember?”
This settled him down, and he nodded gravely. “Against the rules.” His face brightened. “Are you coming to take me home?”
“Not yet.”
He slumped, frowning. “I want to go back to the big house.”
Becca rubbed his shoulder. “We’re not staying there anymore. We’re in a lodge on the other side of the lake.”
“Far away.”
“Not that far,” Wes said. “Take that trail down to the lake, hire a boat, and you’re across. An hour or two, that’s all. Anything goes wrong, we’ll come get you. Don’t worry.”
“I want to go with you to the other side of the lake.”
“Not yet,” Becca said. “Soon, though.” She cleared her throat. “We don’t have much time, Ruk. Tell us everything that happened. Did you talk to Meggie Kerr?”
“She doesn’t talk much. But she’s really pretty.” He blushed.
It took a few minutes to cut through the confused jumble of Eric’s story. He’d struggled to remember the clear and simple instructions. Find Meggie Kerr alone, use Wes’s camera phone to capture her blinking answers to some simple questions, then send an email that the food was terrible. That was the signal to extract him. They’d have enough to bring pressure to get her out of here and back to the States where they could break her out of her LIS.
How frustrating. They’d spent so much time drilling instructions, but the instant Eric stepped onto the grounds of Colina Nublosa, that information evaporated from his mind like steam rising off a hot spring.
He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Wussy.”
“Not your fault, buddy.” Wes turned to Becca. “It’s not going to work.”
“He’s not in any danger, and Davis is giving us a pass, so why not try again?”
The Davis thing was odd, admittedly. It was now Sunday, six days after the flight from San Jose that they had blown off. They should have physically checked in by Wednesday, at the latest. Wes and Becca had been emailing back and forth with Davis, carrying on their work remotely, and he hadn’t yet asked why they weren’t coming out to the house.
Uncle Davis knew. That was the only thing that made sense. Somehow, he’d figured out they were still in Costa Rica, but wasn’t pressing the issue. But if he didn’t care, why had he been so insistent in the first place?
Wes studied his brother, who rocked back and forth on his heels. Eric chewed on his tongue, which still hung out the corner o
f his mouth.
“We have to try something else,” Wes said, “or the exact same thing will happen. He’ll forget.”
“I’m trying!” Eric said.
“I know you are.” Wes put an arm around his brother. “It’s not your fault.”
Becca threw up her hands, looking bewildered.
“I tried to remember,” Eric said. “I tried, I tried. Stupid bad memory.”
Wes fought down his own frustration and kept his voice even. “Your memory isn’t that bad, Ruk. You know the lyrics to movie musicals, right?”
Eric responded by belting out the theme song from Man of La Mancha in his off-tune baritone. Wes and Becca hushed him again.
“Wait,” Becca said to Wes. “He can remember some of it. The part about Sherlock Holmes—that’s the part that sticks. It’s the story that he remembers.” Her voice rose in excitement. “Dramatize the rest of it. Tell it like a story. Do that, and he’ll remember.”
It was a great idea. Wes planted a kiss on her mouth, which made Eric hoot in delight.
He turned back to Eric, thinking. “Okay, um . . . so let me tell you a story about Sherlock Holmes and the pirate queen.”
“Make her a princess,” Eric said.
“Right. There was a princess from the far away kingdom of Vermont. Every day for breakfast she ate waffles with maple syrup and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for dessert. And when she was queen she would banish kale and cauliflower eaters from Vermont, never to return on pain of death.”
Eric guffawed.
“She was happy,” Wes continued, “except then a wizard cast a spell—”
“A witch,” Eric interrupted.
“Okay, a witch. She cast a spell on the beautiful princess and trapped her in a deep dungeon. The dungeon is her body, Ruk. The princess can’t speak, ever—she can’t move—because the witch has trapped her up here.” He tapped his forehead. “If only she could tell someone, she could banish the witch and get her kingdom back.”
“It’s like a magic spell,” Eric said.
“Exactly. She can’t talk because of the spell. She can only blink her eyes. Maybe move one finger.”
“Wow.”
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