The Dark and Deadly Pool (2 page)

I stumbled and tripped to the office door, dropping the keys. Somehow I managed to find them, get the door open, and turn on the office light. Sprawling across the desk, I grabbed the telephone and rang the hotel’s security office number.

“Yo,” a deep voice answered.

I couldn’t mistake the voice. It came from Lamar Boudry, Ridley chief of security, who styled himself a Symbol of Controlled Confidence and who periodically roamed through the corridors and lobby of the hotel like a marked patrol car. His impressive appearance in black, from his tightly cropped hair and moustache down to his shining black shoes with elevator heels, silently informed the guests they could retire with ease, knowing they were well protected at the Ridley Hotel.

“Mr. Boudry,” I shouted, “it’s me, Liz Rafferty! Help me! There’s someone in the swimming pool!”

“Tell him it’s closing time, and he’s got to get out.” Lamar Boudry yawned loudly into the phone and my ear.

“I can’t tell him anything! He grabbed my foot, screamed in my face, and disappeared under the water!”

“Can you describe him? Did he have webbed fingers or green fangs?”

“I’m not kidding, Mr. Boudry! Come and help me!”

“I’ve got both the inside and outside pool area on camera right now, Liz, and I don’t see anyone there, except you in the office.”

“But outside—”

“Nobody’s outside. Place is empty.”

“Somebody must have sneaked in!”

“No way to get over those walls.” He yawned again. “I saw you turn off the lights in the club ten minutes ago. How come you’re still hanging around there?”

“Well, I—that is, I wanted to get over being scared in the dark, and I—” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Let me start over. It sounds like—”

“It sounds like you’ve got a big imagination. Maybe the hotel should get you a night-light.”

“Mr. Boudry! Aren’t you even going to come down here and look?”

“I’m looking, I’m looking. That’s what these monitors are for. Why don’t you just lock up now and go on home?”

“No!” I thumped a fist on the desk and managed to upset a jar of pens and pencils, which rolled off the desk and over the floor. “Whoever was in the pool might be hiding somewhere around here, and I can’t lock up the club with him in it!”

“Okay, okay,” Boudry drawled. “Tina hasn’t checked out yet. I’ll send her down to look around. And I’ll keep an eye on the area through the cameras.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and hung up. I flipped on all the switches, so that the entire area—inside and outside—was colored in intense artificial light. The pool became a bright-blue jewel. The trees and shrubs that rimmed the outside tiles dripped in lemon-green. With the black sky beyond, the club resembled one of those garish paintings on black velvet that were sold on vacant lots along Highway 6 and Westheimer.

The door to the club swung open and Tina called out, “Help has arrived. Where are you, Liz?”

I skidded across the pencils, managing to steady myself by hanging onto the door frame as I swung out of the office to face Tina Martinez.

Tina’s dark hair was cut short and straight, in line with Boudry’s regulations for security personnel, but Tina filled out her uniform of white shirt, maroon jacket, and slacks so well that her hair was not the first thing people noticed about her. When Tina was my age she had worked at the hotel health club, but this summer she was nineteen and had been hired for a full-time position with security. “She nagged me into hiring her,” Boudry told everyone, but he let everyone know that Tina was good at her job.

According to Tina, however, her mind was set on higher things. She’d enrolled in a couple of summer college courses and was going to work and study her way eventually into a master’s degree in psychology. At least then she could analyze everyone legally. Legal or not, I’d never met anyone so full of advice.

As I regained my balance, Tina tried to peer around me. “Somebody chasing you, or what?” she asked.

I shook the hair from my eyes. “No, no. He was in the pool.” I told Tina what had happened.

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. It was dark, and I was scared. Tina, it all happened in just a few seconds!”

“Records show,” Tina said, “that most eyewitnesses are not very accurate, so don’t worry if you can’t give me details. Basically, it’s an emotional problem. Your space is threatened, that sort of stuff. It’s in all the books.” She walked to the glass wall and tried to open the door. “Get your key, Liz. We’ll check around outside.”

My fingers trembled, but I managed to unlock the door.

The slight breeze was warm and heavy with moisture, yet I realized I was shivering. “What if he’s hiding out here somewhere?” I whispered.

While she talked, Tina poked in and under the shrubbery that lined the outer brick wall. “You forget, Liz, you’re protected by the Ridley Hotel security force. Our brave leader has put down the espionage novel he was reading to keep us on camera. And I’m here. Did I tell you that I made top scores in my marksmanship test last week?”

“I didn’t know you took the test.”

Tina scowled at me over her shoulder and mouthed something that I couldn’t make out. She gave a final sweeping glance to the pool area, then came over to join me.

“Whoever he was, he’s not here,” she said. “My guess is that he went over the wall, probably the same way he came in.”

“Isn’t the wall too high?”

Tina shrugged. “Maybe he’s a super athlete. We have to keep our options open.” She gave one last glance around. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, and since you lock the door between the club and the hotel, whoever it was couldn’t get into the hotel. At least
the Symbol of Controlled Confidence and his security staff protect the guests while they’re
inside
the hotel.” She sighed. “I wish we could do something about protecting them when they’re
outside.
”

“Protecting them from what?”

Tina lowered her voice. “Don’t blab it around, because the hotel is trying to keep a lid on it, and Lamar is having fits about what’s happening. A lot of the guests are having their wallets lifted during their first or second day in Houston.”

“You mean pickpockets?”

“Right.”

“But that could happen to anyone in any city.”

“Not in such quantity. Not from one hotel in particular.”

“I don’t see how the hotel could be involved,” I told her.

“None of us can,” she said. “That’s the trouble.”

She led the way back inside and waited while I once again locked the glass door. “You shouldn’t have said what you did about the marksmanship test.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t know about the test.”

“There wasn’t any test.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“Don’t you see? I was psyching him out, in case he was hiding somewhere.” Tina smiled. “My theory is that the mind is a more potent weapon than a gun. When I’m a psychologist—”

The telephone rang in the health-club office. I rushed to answer it.

It was Boudry. “Since everything’s okay down there, tell Tina to get herself to room 902. Some complaints about a noisy party. Tell her after she’s handled that, she
can go on home.” Before I had a chance to answer, Boudry hung up.

I relayed the message to Tina. I grabbed my handbag and turned off the lights, scrambling to follow Tina out of the health club.

In the corridor Tina turned to face me. “This guy you think you saw in the pool tonight—there’s another possibility to consider.”

“But I did see him,” I began.

Tina interrupted. “Judging by the way you were breathing after you turned out the lights, sort of like the way a fish gasps when he flops around, we could be looking at something deeper.”

“What?”

Tina nodded solemnly and said, “Perhaps you saw only a manifestation of your inner fears.”

“I did not!” I yelled. “I saw somebody! A person! He screamed at me!”

“You were afraid of the dark when you were little and thought that something lived under your bed. Right?”

That stopped me for a moment, and I stammered, “Well, sure. But who didn’t?”

“I didn’t,” Tina said. “You have unresolved conflicts in your life. Right?”

“But everybody—”

“Be specific. Is there something you’d like to do, but think you can’t?”

Immediately a picture came to my eyes. It was the same picture that I liked to dwell on before I fell asleep at night. In the picture I’m standing at the podium in Jones Hall in front of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. I nod to the first violinist, raise my baton, and music swirls and swells to the back row of the top balcony as I once again
conduct the orchestra to greatness, fame, and good reviews in the Houston
Post
and
Chronicle.

But how can a superb conductor not be a superb musician? Over the last few years I’ve tried piano, guitar, and drums in that order; but Mom kept getting migraine headaches. The band director at school suggested I learn the flute, but every time I practiced at home Dad rushed out to take a walk.

Houston Symphony Orchestra conductor? The only symphonies I’ll ever conduct are those in the car, when I tune in KLEF. I didn’t like Tina prying into my private dreams. No one knew about them, and she wouldn’t either!

I stretched to my full height and yelled down at Tina, “My private life has nothing to do with what I saw in the swimming pool tonight! Someone
was
there, and I saw him!”

“Okay, okay,” Tina said. “I’m not a psychologist yet, so we’ll handle it your way.” She paused. “However—”

“There’s a noisy party in Room 902!” I shouted.

“You’re kind of a noisy party yourself,” Tina said, and giggled.

I couldn’t help laughing. I was being pretty huffy. I relaxed a little and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll probably be on camera duty,” Tina said. “Give me a call if any good-looking hunks come in.”

“I know you. You’ll find them before I do,” I told her. I followed Tina down the corridor and into the lobby.

As Tina headed for the elevators, I went toward the back of the hotel and out through the employees’ check-point. I guess all big hotels have a certain amount of theft from employees, but—according to Tina—the Ridley had been having a higher rate than usual. Lamar had set
up both rules and equipment. We could take nothing out with us except small, clear plastic handbags; and we had to exit and enter by one door only. We walked through a metal detector, and a swiveling camera followed us through the door to the parking lot.

I turned in my keys. The metal detector remained silent as I passed through, so the elderly guard at the desk reached for my handbag, examined it, and handed it back, nodding me through.

I thought about what Tina had said about unresolved conflicts and what Dad had said about going for what I wanted and not accepting anything less. The symphony orchestra was too far out of reach, but the tall, handsome guy? Maybe Dad was right. I could give it a try. Why not?

The employee exit was near the outside kitchen door and the huge trash containers. There was a car parked next to the containers. The driver’s door was open, and the inside light was on. As I approached, something my size leapt up from the dark plastic bags of trash and squeaked in fright.

Fortunately I recognized one of the assistant chefs in the main kitchen, and just as fortunately, he recognized me. His face had a kind of yellow color, and it wasn’t from the car lights. “You scared me to death!” he mumbled.

“What were you doing in the trash bags?” I asked.

“Emptying my ashtray!” he snapped. “I didn’t know I had to get your permission!”

Without waiting for me to answer he whirled and leapt into his car, and drove off with a squeal of tires. Apparently I wasn’t the only employee who was ready to chew fingernails, but I couldn’t understand why I had frightened him so badly.

The roofs of the cars, row after row in the hotel parking
lot, gleamed a weird green-blue under powerful arc lamps. I had parked as close to the hotel as I could, but the car Dad had lent me, Old Junk Bucket, was off to one side, the fifth row back. I looked around nervously. I was the only one in the parking lot.

I tucked my car and house keys between the fingers on my right hand, so that they faced outward like small daggers, and made a fist. Tina had shown me how to do this. “Self-preservation is our basic instinct,” Tina had said. “If some bozo wants to give you trouble, this will change his mind.”

I began walking briskly toward Old Junk Bucket, but soon broke into a run. As I got to the car I was embarrassed to realize that I was making that darned fish noise again. I dropped my keys, scooped them up, and tried to find the one that would open the car door.

I dropped them again.

Where were they? I squatted to find and retrieve them. But my fingers were shaking so much, it was hard to pick up the keys. I tried that relaxing thing again, squeezing my eyes shut and taking two deep breaths. Then slowly I said, “Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, there is nothing to be afraid of.”

I opened my eyes and found I was staring at a pair of dark trousers and shoes with somebody in them.

I screamed.