The Dark and Deadly Pool Read online

  Praise for

  The Dark and Deadly Pool

  Winner of the Indiana Young Hoosier Book Award

  “Suspense and plot twists are ample … refreshingly humorous underpinnings.”

  —Booklist

  “Rounded out with touches of humor and romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Books by Joan Lowery Nixon

  FICTION

  A Candidate for Murder

  The Dark and Deadly Pool

  Don’t Scream

  The Ghosts of Now

  Ghost Town: Seven Ghostly Stories

  The Haunting

  In the Face of Danger

  The Island of Dangerous Dreams

  The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore

  Laugh Till You Cry

  Murdered, My Sweet

  The Name of the Game Was Murder

  Nightmare

  Nobody’s There

  The Other Side of Dark

  Playing for Keeps

  Search for the Shadowman

  Secret, Silent Screams

  Shadowmaker

  The Specter

  Spirit Seeker

  The Stalker

  The Trap

  The Weekend Was Murder!

  Whispers from the Dead

  Who Are You?

  NONFICTION

  The Making of a Writer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1987 by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Cover photographs © Lonnie Duka/Index Stock (top); © Sean Kernan/Photonica (bottom)

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Delacorte Press, New York, in 1987.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-385-29585-7 (trade) — eISBN: 978-0-307-82345-8 (ebook)

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Eileen

  with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  Moonlight drizzled down the wide glass wall that touched the surface of the hotel swimming pool, dividing it into two parts. The wind-flicked waters of the outer pool glittered with reflected pin-lights from the moon and stars, but the silent water in the indoor section had been sucked into the blackness of the room.

  I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, trying to see the edge of the pool that curved near my feet. I pressed my back against the Wall and forced myself to breathe evenly. I whispered aloud, “Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, there is nothing to be afraid of here! Nothing!” But even the sound of my own wobbly words terrified me.

  I remembered how glad I’d been to get this summer replacement job at the Ridley Hotel health club. The Ridley is one of those super-beautiful hotels with fresh flowers in silver urns on all their gigantic carved tables and sideboards, and paintings that are the real thing, and a whole collection of sterling pieces which they plan to use if the President ever stays there, which so far he hasn’t.

  Their health club was designed by an interior decorator in coral and green with loads of looming ficus trees and palms, and white-blossomed “closet plants,” and giant-leaved philodendron—all in huge brass planters—which right away tells you that nobody really goes there to get healthy. There’s a small room with weight equipment; separate dressing rooms for men and women, with a large sauna in each; a bubbling Jacuzzi; and the pool, which is magnificent. Even though the salary wasn’t anything to cheer about, I eagerly agreed to five days a week of scrubbing the tiles around the pool, manning the desk in the health-club office, and keeping a sharp eye through the office window-wall on the swimmers in the indoor section of the pool.

  As Mom told me, it was the perfect job for someone who had grown too tall too fast and had been politely dismissed from her first summer job at a hamburger chain because she knocked over too many filled glasses of cola and stumbled over too many table legs.

  And, as usual, Mom was right. During the three days I’d been working at the health club, no one seemed to pay attention to a little clumsiness—except for the first day on duty when I fell into the swimming pool—but let’s not talk about that. And so far no one here had asked me if I played basketball or what the weather was like “up there” or if I got my red hair from being so close to the sun. At least, here at the health club I wasn’t made to feel like an ungainly klutz.

  “What you need is confidence in yourself,” Dad had said. “A summer job should help you gain confidence.”

  “We hope it will help you learn to appreciate yourself,” Mom had wistfully added. “Mary Elizabeth, you have got to begin to think good, positive things about yourself. Concentrate on ail your best qualities.”

  “That’s a blank,” I said.

  Dad put an arm around my shoulders. “You’re a wonderful girl, and the world is filled with wonderful things for you. Just concentrate on what you can put into life and what you want from it.”

  “What do you want?” Mom asked.

  “A tall boyfriend,” I said flippantly. I wasn’t going to tell them what I dreamed of being someday. It was an impossible dream. For that matter, I supposed that a tall boyfriend was too. I thought about some of the tall guys I knew at school. They were all dating girls who were under five feet two. “Might as well make him handsome, while you’re at it,” I added.

  Mom sighed and began to say, “Be serious. You don’t understand what we’re trying to—”

  But Dad held up a hand and said, “All right, sweetheart. If that’s what you want right now, keep your goal in mind and don’t settle for less.” He kissed the end of my nose. “We’re proud of you. Good luck with your new job.”

  I may have flubbed the first job, but here I was with a second-chance five-day-a-week job that lasted from three in the afternoon until eleven at night, when the health club closed.

  It was a good job, and I liked it, with one exception: those few terrifying minutes at closing when I was alone in that echoing, cavernous room with the dark, lonely pool.

  The first two nights I had to shoo out a few dawdling guests—politely, of course. Then I checked both the men’s and women’s dressing rooms to make sure everyone had left, locked the door to the outside deck, and turned out the pool lights and club lights in the office. In the dark I secured the office door with a loud click that shuddered through the steamy silence, then trembled across the twenty feet between the office door and the door to the corridor leading from the club to the side lobby of the hotel. I frantically slammed and locked the large door to the health club, grateful to be out in
the brightly lit corridor, glad to be leaving that humid, watery darkness, and thankful that no one had heard those little gasping noises I’d been making. I couldn’t help feeling ashamed that I was behaving not like a sixteen-year-old with my first real job, but like a child who was afraid of being alone in the dark.

  I knew I had to grow up, and the only way to do it was to conquer this childish fear. So on this, the third night at work, I deliberately waited outside the locked office door, next to the dark pool. I pressed my back against the cold rough-textured wall and quietly willed myself to relax. I squeezed my eyes shut while I took two deep breaths. It worked! My breathing slowed, and my shoulders relaxed against the wall. But droplets of sweat trickled down my backbone, and my bare legs were clammy from the humidity in the room.

  As I waited, shapes crept out of shadows and became familiar patio chairs and tables and potted palms and ferns. Shining tiles edged the pool, and the surface of the black water gleamed like polished jet stone.

  I had to smile. It wasn’t so bad here in the dark. This room was a crazy place in which to be alone, but I could manage. I was proud of myself. I would never let that unreasonable fear get to me again.

  When I heard the splash outside I first thought it must be my imagination. It was a small noise, not the wild splashing the kids made, and certainly not the loud belly-flopping splash caused by some of the overweight hotel conventioneers who were under the impression they were diving. I listened carefully and stared into the darkness, stepping to the very edge of the pool.

  A shadow at the bottom of the pool, blacker than the dark water above it, slipped under the glass divider and quivered in my direction like a shimmer of lightning. I watched it come, too terrified to move, too frightened to scream, as the shadow loomed upward, ripping the water. Hands clutched at the edge of the pool, one of them grabbing the toe of my sneaker, which was in the way; and a face—eyes and mouth gaping and gasping—met my own.

  I screamed, and an echoing scream came from the mouth below mine. With a loud gulp of air and thrashing of water, the face disappeared under the dark surface. I could see the shadow quickly slip under the glass wall and enter the outside part of the pool.

  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.”