Deadly Attraction (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  “Hi!” the tallest girl said. “I’m Amy. This is Rita,” pointing to the white wicker-basketed girl. “We’re in 420. And that’s Delsey, with the school supplies, and that’s Ann, with the towels. They’re in 414. We heard what happened, so we collected a few things to tide you over. Welcome to the fourth floor.”

  Hailey and Nell were so touched, they had to fight against fresh tears. They managed to thank the girls and promised, when requested, to let Amy know if they needed anything else.

  When the gift-bearing group had returned to their own rooms, Hailey, Nell, and Finn left for Burgers Etc. Hailey was very careful to lock the door of room 416 as they left.

  When they arrived at Burgers Etc., they noticed a brand-new bright yellow Miata in the parking lot. The color made it difficult not to notice it.

  “That’s Robert Q’s,” Finn said. “Delivered this afternoon at three o’clock. Less than twenty-four hours after his old one burned. Papa Parker’s a man of action. Not to mention big bucks.”

  “Darn!” Hailey declared, glaring at the car. “I was hoping Robert Q would have to suffer for at least a day.”

  “Well, I think it’s ugly,” Nell said. “And Gerrie will hate it.”

  “She’s leaving,” Finn said.

  “Leaving? Gerrie’s leaving campus?”

  Finn nodded as they entered the diner. It was warm and noisy inside. “Yeah. She has to have some delicate surgery if she’s going to see okay again. Her parents are coming up here next week to take her to Philadelphia for the operation. She won’t be riding in Robert Q’s new car for a long time, if ever.”

  As they glanced around, however, it quickly became clear that, in spite of Gerrie’s absence, Robert Q wouldn’t be riding alone in the new yellow car. He and Lyle were seated in a large corner booth. Each had an attractive girl seated beside him. The tall, dark-haired girl with Robert Q seemed fascinated with him.

  “She is practically,” Nell said with disgust, “sitting in his lap!”

  “A few of Gerrie’s friends,” Hailey pointed out, “are over there staring daggers at Robert Q. Maybe now they actually see him for the faithless toad he is.”

  “I wonder where Richard Wentworth is,” Nell said. “Their booth looks unbalanced without him.”

  To Hailey, Darlene’s absence from Burgers Etc. was more noticeable than Gerrie’s. The last time they’d been in the diner was the night Darlene had met Robert Q. And now, there he was, busy impressing someone else without a thought for either Gerrie or Darlene.

  Hailey picked up her menu. “I wonder if your boss has a side dish featuring arsenic? We could have a complimentary serving sent to Robert Q’s table.”

  When they had made their own selections, Hailey realized they were being stared at. Word of the vandalism had obviously traveled across campus already.

  Suddenly she found herself slowly surveying the room with her eyes, studying each table’s occupants, looking for … what? What did she expect to see? A clue? Some sign that one of the people sharing this warm, comfortable diner with them had entered their room at Devereaux Hall and totally trashed it?

  Could you recognize a vandal just by looking at him? What would someone that sick look like?

  She noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Everything at Burgers Etc. looked the way it always did, as if nothing extraordinary had happened that afternoon. But it had. Something horrible had happened, and she knew now that there was someone out there who hated Hailey Kingman. She didn’t know who and she wasn’t sure why. She only knew that it was so.

  Chapter 10

  THE NEXT MORNING, HAILEY and Nell were awakened with a start by a knock on their door. Hailey threw on a robe and stumbled over to yank the door open. A security guard stood in the hall.

  Disoriented upon waking up in an unfamiliar, barren room, Hailey had trouble understanding what the man wanted.

  “I hate to bother you,” he said. “But I have to ask you both to come downstairs to your old room and tell us if anything is missing.”

  “Missing?” Hailey echoed. “Everything is … ruined. How could we possibly tell if anything is missing? And I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “The difference,” the officer said, “is that when we catch this guy, we’d like to lay as many charges on him as possible. We have a suspect in the car arson, and we think it might be the same guy. So we need all the information from you that we can get.”

  He wouldn’t tell her who the suspect was.

  Hailey was disappointed. If she knew, she’d know who to be afraid of.

  The officer waited in the hall while Hailey and Nell dressed quickly.

  Entering room 242 was one of the most painful things Hailey had ever done. Seeing the wreckage a second time was almost as shattering as the first. The room was still a shambles.

  “It looks like a bomb exploded in here,” Nell murmured. Her eyes were glazed with fresh shock.

  Working through the rubble actually helped. Some of the clothes were unmarked by the black paint, which lifted their spirits. And remarkably, Nell’s stereo, upside down in a corner, still worked.

  “My father said it pays in the long run to buy the best,” she told Hailey, “and he was right.”

  When they had finished sorting through the ruins, they told the security officer that nothing seemed to be missing.

  But when they returned to room 416 with the salvaged clothes, and the officer who had volunteered to carry the stereo had gone, Nell announced, “I lied.”

  “Lied?” Trying not to think about the wreckage they’d just left, Hailey hung half a dozen shirts in one of the closets.

  “I lied to those security guys. There was stuff missing.”

  “What stuff?” Hailey walked to the window to gaze out over the Commons. An unusually early snowfall had arrived during the night. The campus looked so beautiful, so peaceful. “Are you sure? I didn’t notice anything missing.”

  “All our hair stuff. Our brushes, curling irons, mousse, gel, hairdryers, all gone. And our makeup, too. Yours was in that clear plastic thing. Mine was in a peach zippered pouch, remember? They weren’t anywhere in the room.”

  Hailey turned away from the window. The room suddenly seemed very cold. “Our hair stuff? Are you sure?”

  Nell sat down on her bed. “Well, of course, I’m sure. There wasn’t so much as a mascara wand in that room. I didn’t say anything to the officers because it seemed so silly. I mean, hair stuff?” She shivered. “Gives me the creeps. Why would someone take that?”

  When Hailey said nothing, Nell continued, “Weird, isn’t it? Nothing else was missing. Not even the pearls my grandmother gave me for my birthday, Hailey. And they’re worth a lot of money.”

  Hailey’s knees felt funny. They didn’t seem to want to hold her up. “That’s all that’s missing? The hair things?” She sank to the floor and sat facing Nell. “That’s too weird,” she breathed. “Whoever did it really does have a screw missing.” Hailey’s eyes widened. “Nell, do you remember the last time we used all that stuff? I mean, all of it at the same time?”

  Nell thought for a minute. “Sure. We dragged it all out the day Darlene was here.”

  They looked at each other silently for several seconds.

  The horrible image of Darlene’s vicious attack on the sweater filled Hailey’s mind again. She shook her head to erase the picture.

  “Nell, I think we should tell the police what’s missing. It is a clue. Now that they have a suspect, they need information.”

  “I wish we knew who it was.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You know, Hailey,” Nell said thoughtfully, “we were the ones who helped Darlene with her hair and makeup. And it didn’t work. Robert Q dumped her, anyway. Maybe … maybe she blames us.”

  Hailey thought about that for a minute. “She didn’t act like she was mad at me the night of her party. Not at me. But … she was mad.” Enraged might be a better word, Hailey thought glumly. “But Darlene couldn’t have
trashed our room. She’s in Willowcreek.”

  “You mean she said she was going to Willowcreek.”

  “You think she lied?”

  “I don’t know. But she lies to herself about Robert Q. We really don’t know Darlene that well, Hailey. Listen, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay? It’s too creepy. I’m still upset about yesterday.”

  Hailey nodded. Nell was right. They didn’t need to borrow trouble by speculating about Darlene. They had enough to handle already. Like, was the sicko who had destroyed their room the same person who had torched Robert Q’s car? And was he finished with them now? Or was there more to come if he wasn’t arrested soon?

  “You’re right,” Hailey said. “Look, we need to replace all that stuff. Why don’t we go to the mall at lunch? I’d really rather crawl into bed and stay there, but we can’t live like that, right? We need to do something constructive. If the roads are a mess, we’ll hop the shuttle. You’ll be back in time for practice.”

  Relieved that the discussion was over, Nell agreed to the mall trip.

  By noon, although the roads had been plowed, it was snowing again, drawing a thick white curtain across campus.

  “We’re taking the shuttle,” Hailey told Nell when they met at the fountain, shut off for the winter, in the Commons. “The shuttle, like the post office, always operates.”

  Hailey was delighted to see Finn sitting with Pete on the wide seat at the rear of the small yellow shuttle bus that ran from campus into Twin Falls.

  She was not pleased to see Robert Q, flanked by Puffy and Lindsey, occupying a middle seat.

  “I guess he’s not taking any chances with his new toy,” Nell said drily. She and Hailey moved down the aisle toward Finn and Pete. “Driving in this weather could land his new car upside down in a ditch somewhere.”

  Mimicking Robert Q’s voice, Hailey said, “But this car is a miracle of engineering. It can handle anything.”

  “Except an early snowfall, I guess,” Nell said, laughing.

  Robert Q overheard the exchange. The corners of his lips turned down in annoyance.

  “So, where are his sidekicks, Richard and Lyle?” Hailey asked.

  Finn explained, “Richard’s father finally gave in and let him lease a car to drive. So Richard went out and got the most expensive car he could find. Pig-headed fool that he is, he said he was driving into town today even if it snowed twenty feet. He talked Sutton into going with him.”

  Thick, wet clumps of snow clung to the shuttle’s windows, turning the interior an eerie grayish-yellow.

  “They’re probably in a ditch somewhere,” Nell said. “Serves them right. But why didn’t Parker go with them? I never thought of him as sensible.”

  “He’s not,” Finn said, pulling up the collar of his jacket. Every time a passenger got on or off the shuttle, a cold wind and blowing snow boarded the bus. “Robert Q had an argument with Lyle and Richard. Everyone on the Commons heard it.”

  “What about?” Hailey asked, mildly curious. She couldn’t imagine those three arguing. They seemed so much alike. All style and no substance, like figures in one of those slick men’s magazines. What could they possibly have to argue about?

  Finn hesitated. “Nothing. Not important.”

  But something about the way he said it disturbed Hailey. She turned to look at him. “Finn? What did they argue about?”

  After another moment’s hesitation, he said, “Okay. I guess you’ll hear about it, anyway. It was about what happened to your room.”

  “I heard about that,” Pete said. “Nasty deal. You two okay with it now?”

  “No, not really,” Hailey said coolly. She knew Pete was trying to be nice. But did he really expect them to be “okay” with it? It had happened less than twenty-four hours ago. To Finn, she urged, “Tell us about the argument.”

  “Robert Q said if you two had minded your own business, your room wouldn’t have been trashed. So Lyle and Richard asked him if we’d done it.”

  Hailey shivered in revulsion, picturing Robert Q’s hands on her things.

  “Well, Robert Q freaked. He shouted at them, said that wasn’t what he meant, that they were both idiots. Then he said he’d rather walk to town than ride with birdbrains. But,” Finn grinned, “as you can see, he hopped the shuttle instead.”

  Hailey sat in silence, staring at the back of Robert Q’s head. Why would he trash their room?

  “Nell,” Hailey said quietly, “Robert Q wasn’t the least bit happy when he came to get Darlene in our room that day. Remember?”

  “Hailey, I know he’s a creep, but do you really think he’d trash our room and steal all our hair stuff because we were nice to Darlene? That’s crazy!”

  “Maybe. But maybe he had a reason we don’t know about yet. And it is a connection, Nell. Robert Q and Darlene …” The idea of someone as cool and controlled as Robert Q wreaking the havoc in their room would once have seemed impossible. But Hailey had seen his dance of rage the night his car had burned to a crisp.

  Now, it not only seemed possible, it seemed … likely.

  Chapter 11

  THE SHUTTLE DROPPED FINN and Pete off at the diner, then continued on into town. Robert Q got off, too, telling Puffy and Lindsey he was starving, he wasn’t eating “mall food,” and he’d catch them later.

  At the mall, Hailey and Nell went straight to the drugstore.

  It was there that Hailey thought she saw Darlene.

  She was trying to decide between two different shades of blusher when she glanced up and saw the top of a curly brown head of hair passing by in the next aisle. The bangs were pinned back by a small brown clip exactly like the one Darlene wore.

  Darlene’s grandmother must have recovered.

  Hailey hurried to the end of the aisle and turned the corner. The brown-haired figure looked back once and then slipped into another aisle.

  “Darlene?” Hailey called tentatively.

  There was no answer.

  Hailey hurried down the aisle and at its end, turned in the same direction taken by the figure. The aisle was empty.

  Hailey frowned in annoyance as her eyes scanned the tops of shelves, looking for some sign of the brown curls.

  There, over near the toy section! Between tall white doll boxes …

  “Darlene!” Hailey called again. “Wait!”

  The head disappeared.

  Hailey broke into a near-run, hurrying toward the shampoo section. She was almost there when a little boy sent a metal shopping cart sailing into her midsection, startling her and knocking the wind out of her. By the time she recovered and rounded a corner, there was no one there.

  Feeling foolish, Hailey returned to the hair accessories, unsure if she had actually seen anything at all.

  It couldn’t have been Darlene she’d seen, could it? If Darlene had returned to Twin Falls, she’d have called, wouldn’t she?

  Hailey took her purchases to the front checkout, where Nell was waiting. As the clerk rang up her items, she thought, I don’t want Darlene to be back in town. Because if she’s here, I’ll have to start wondering when she got back. Before our room was trashed? Or after?

  “If I don’t eat something in the next five minutes,” Nell declared as Hailey joined her, “I’m going to embarrass you by collapsing in a heap right here on this brick floor.”

  Hailey didn’t laugh. Why wouldn’t Darlene call her if she’d returned to Twin Falls? “The food court is right straight ahead of us. I’m not very hungry, but I guess I should eat.”

  But all the way there, her eyes scanned the mall for a brunette girl with a brown clip in her hair. It was an exercise in futility. There was no sign of the person she’d spotted in the drugstore.

  When they were seated at the food court, Hailey said, “I think we’d better munch fast. When you went hunting for French fries, the guy at the counter told me they might close the mall because of the weather. He said he’s worked here for four years and they’ve never closed it before. So it
must be getting pretty nasty out there.”

  “I hate gulping my food,” Nell complained. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Nell, you have on your tray two tacos, an order of greasy French fries, and a chocolate sundae. How dare you even mouth the word ‘healthy’?”

  “I’ll work all this off at practice. If,” Nell glanced up at the skylight over their heads, darkened now by a thick layer of white, “we even have practice.” She brightened visibly. “If classes and practice are canceled, we can spend the rest of the day fixing up our new room.”

  Mentioning the new room was a mistake. It sobered both girls instantly, reminding them of what had taken place in their “old” room. They ate quickly then, talking only about the weather.

  But Hailey found herself nervously checking out each new arrival to the food court, as if by simply looking at people, she could tell whether or not they meant her harm.

  She had to force down every bite of food.

  Fifteen minutes later, when they exited the mall’s main entrance, they were greeted by a thick wall of swirling white. No yellow shuttle bus waited at the curb.

  “It’ll be late,” Nell said as they backed up to share the shelter of the mall’s canopy with other waiting, shivering students. “Even if the shuttle has snow tires, visibility is practically zero.”

  The streetlights in the parking lot were on. Their faint yellow glow provided little illumination through the blowing snow. But a boy named Tom from Hailey’s English class remarked that he could see, over in the parking lot, the car that Richard Wentworth had leased that day. “Right over there,” he said, pointing. “The fancy silver job. With the headlights on. Wentworth must be leaving. Anyone feel like hitching a ride to campus with him?”