The Dark and Deadly Pool Read online

  “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.

  Somewhere, high above the shoes, someone yelled, “Don’t do that!” and the shoes jumped back.

  I shot to my feet, slamming against the side of the car, and stared down at a guy who seemed to be as scared as I was.

  He was small-boned, with light-brown hair that stuck up in a cowlick, making a point at the top of his head. He had a pug nose and a narrow chin and looked something like I had imagined Puck ought to look when I read Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “What are you doing here?” I screeched at him.

  “Room service.”

  “In the parking lot? You’re crazy!”

  “Hey, I’m just telling you what I’m doing here. I work in room service. I was on my way home and saw you drop your keys and thought I could help.”

  I leaned against the side of the car and tried to calm down. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I was scared.”

  He looked around, then back at me. “Those arc lamps make the lot bright enough. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s just that a few minutes ago somebody came up from the bottom of the pool and grabbed my foot.”

  He gave me kind of a strange look. “Yeah? Well, I suppose that could scare some people, although I’ve done that in swimming pools—when I was younger.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand. Everybody had gone home, and the pool was dark, and he sneaked in somehow. Oh—forget it.”

  “You’re very pretty,” he suddenly said.

  It took me by surprise. I dropped my keys again.

  He picked them up. “You’re really unstrung, aren’t you? If you’ll wait until I get in my car, I’ll follow you home.”

  “I don’t even know you,” I said.

  “I was going to tell you my name, but when you screamed at me I forgot to.”

  “I didn’t scream! Well, it wasn’t a real scream.”

  “Francis Liverpool III.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my given name. Given, meaning I didn’t choose it. Call me Fran.”

  “Okay. I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” Fran said. “We’re in the same class at Memorial High.”

  “We are? But—”

  “I know. Because I’m short you think I’m younger than you are. Right? Well, I’m not. I didn’t choose being short either.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I don’t think lack of height is necessarily genetic. I’ve got two younger brothers who are going to be tall. One
of them is taller than I am already. I think shortness of stature is a direct result of stress. As a matter of fact, someday I’m going to be a geneticist and prove that stress in the classroom inhibits growth.”

  “Stress in the classroom? But everybody has—”

  “Some people more than others. That’s going to be part of my study. Does it affect the sincerely conscientious and the creative more than the others? For example, look at football players.”

  “You keep interrupting me,” I said.

  Fran looked surprised. “Oh? Sorry. What did you want to say?”

  I thought a moment. “Uh—nothing, I guess.” Great conversationalist, Mary Elizabeth Rafferty, I told myself. I was glad that Fran couldn’t see my cheeks turn red.

  “Then why don’t we go home?” he said. “Remember. I’ll follow you.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Yes, you do.” Fran turned and walked away.

  I drove home with the headlights of Fran’s car shining in my rearview mirror. As I pulled into the driveway of our house, he paused, gave a wave, then drove away. Even though Fran drove something that made Old Junk Bucket look good, it had been comforting to have his company on the way home.

  I had left a light on in the house. It felt a little funny to be at home alone, but everything in the house was so comfortably familiar I could handle it.

  Dad had been sent to Dallas on company business, and Mom had gone with him.

  “Are you sure you won’t mind being alone?” Mom had asked. “We’ve never left you alone before. Of course, Mrs. Zellendorf next door has promised to keep an eye on you—uh, on the house.”

  “Don’t talk baby-sitters. I’m a big girl now.” I grinned at Mom.

  “You could come with us,” she suggested.

  “No,” I said. “I took a job. Remember? Responsibility and all that stuff? Anyhow, I’m going to like the job, and I want to stick with it.”

  “Good for you,” Mom had said as she hugged me, but I had to remind her at least forty times before they drove to the airport that I was going to be all right during the week they’d be gone.

  Now I sleepily gave the house a check-over and washed down two of Mom’s double-chocolate-chip cookies with a glass of milk. I debated about writing another letter to my best and shortest friend, Amy Peters, who was spending the summer with her father in Connecticut. But I was too tired, so I went to bed. I had time only to smile at the bejeweled audience in Jones Hall and raise my baton before I fell asleep.

  Art Mart was working out with the weights when I arrived at the health club the next afternoon. His name is really Arthur Martin, director of the health club and my boss.

  “I have to talk to you,” I said.

  He put down the barbell and flexed his muscles, smiling smugly at his deeply tanned reflection in the huge mirror across the room. Tina told me that Art is the one who had the mirror put in.

  “Art,” I went on, “I have to tell you what happened last night.”

  He managed to pull his gaze away from the mirror and turned his attention to me. I was reminded of the facial exercises we had to do in junior-high drama class. First he stared, trying to remember who I was. Then he smiled. And finally, as what I said dawned on him, he scowled. “What happened? You didn’t disturb any of the hotel guests, did you?”

  “Of course not,” I said, and told him about the late-night swimmer.

  Art sighed, hitched up his shorts, and started for the outdoor section of the pool. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll take a look.”

  I followed him, but not as closely as the appreciative stares of two girls who were splashing around in the shallow water of the indoor pool. They were welcome to him. Art wasn’t my type.

  “If you think that Art is nothing but a pretty face,” Tina had told me during my first day on the job, “you’re right.”

  Mrs. Bandini, one of the afternoon regulars, yoo-hooed at me from her chair across the pool. I just waved back and managed to bang into the edge of the glass door as it swung shut.

  I rubbed my shoulder and hurried to catch up with Art. Some little boy was cannonballing into the pool, drenching the sunbathers, who yelled at him.

  “It’s against the rules,” I said to the boy, but he made a face at me and leapt into the water.

  I wasn’t going to worry about him now. I had to keep up with Art, who dove into a gap in the shrubbery and worked his way along the brick wall, moving toward the left. I thought I’d help, so I did the same thing, working my way toward the right.

  Near what should have been a ninety-degree angle in the wall, where a jasmine vine spread itself over the mottled brick, I saw bright cracks of light. I pulled back a handful of vine, startled that it swung so easily, and there it was—a gap at least a foot wide where the two walls didn’t meet. The shrubs on both sides of the walls were so thick that the gap was well hidden.

  I struggled from the shrubbery, pulling twigs from my hair, and bumped into Art.

  “So there you are,” he said. “I thought you must have gone back inside to start your shift.” He wasn’t very subtle. He stared at his watch and then at me.

  “I was helping you look,” I said.

  “It’s a waste of time,” Art said. “No way anyone could get in or out of here.”

  “Yes, there is!” I said. “There’s a gap where the walls don’t meet. I found it!”

  He looked surprised. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. Go look for yourself.”

  Art looked at his watch again. “Okay. But you’d better get into the office. And scrub the tiles around the Jacuzzi before you leave tonight. Deeley called in sick this morning, so they didn’t get taken care of.”

  I thought he’d be more excited by my news. “But somebody got into the pool last night. He must have squeezed through that gap.”

  “Some kid probably,” Art said.

  “We should have somebody close it.”

  “I’ll get maintenance on it.”

  “Do you want me to call them when I get to the office?”

  “I want you to do your job,” he said. “You’ll be the only one on duty. I’ll take care of it later. G’wan, Liz. Get busy.”

  Mrs. Bandini waved at me again. Her friend, Mrs. Larabee, had joined her. She waved too. “I’ve got something to tell you,” Mrs. Bandini called.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I called back.

  Quickly I locked my handbag in the bottom desk drawer and checked the women’s dressing room, picking up a few towels that had been dropped on a bench under the sign saying, PLEASE PUT TOWELS IN THE BASKET. I turned off a shower that had been left dripping and gave the rest room a once-over. I put a fresh stack of towels on the little table next to the door leading from the office to the exercise room, and scanned the pool area from the office window. There seemed to be only four hotel guests and eight club members. It was always pretty quiet in midafternoon. The hotel guests began to arrive around five-thirty. Their business meetings were over, and they were ready for a swim. The club could get pretty crowded during weekday evenings. Even though Art Mart had undoubtedly done the cross-check with the photo-ID cards, I went over them too.

  The photo-ID cards were Lamar’s idea. As the hotel guests registered at the front desk, they were also automatically registered on film by hidden cameras. They didn’t know they were being photographed, and Lamar thought it was better that way. No nonsense about posing or wanting a copy or getting embarrassed because it was a bad shot. He wasn’t looking for star quality, Lamar had said. He was simply taking one more step to guard the safety and well-being of all guests of the Ridley Hotel.

  The security force studied those photographs, and believe me, there were no strangers wandering around the Ridley Hotel. Duplicate cards were sent each morning and afternoon to the health club along with a list of guests who had checked out, so their cards could be tossed. The cards of regular club members, who lived in Houston, were also on file.

  I liked
to go over the cards. It helped me to remember names, and everyone likes to be addressed by name.

  It was also fun to study the types of faces and wonder who each person was and what he or she was like. There were glum faces and eager faces and faces with expressions from peevish to placid. Opening the card file and thumbing through it, guessing about the people behind the faces, made me think of opening a box of smooth-looking chocolates and trying to figure out which hid the chocolate creams and which held the cherries. Some of the faces stayed a few days and became familiar. Some came and disappeared and came back again. Some popped in on an afternoon, but were on their way the next day and never returned.

  I glanced at Sylvia Bandini’s card. She was a club member, here every day. Tina said that Mrs. Bandini had celebrated her seventieth birthday last May. Mrs. Bandini’s white hair curled around her face like the frame around a portrait. She read all the latest exercise books and tried to look like the models on the book jackets. Once she even wore striped red-and-green leg warmers with her blue bathing suit. On a scale of one to ten she would have got a ten for trying, but her figure was kind of a minus five. She was really nice. Her smile was always a bright-red gleam across the room, and I liked to talk to her.

  Her friend, Mrs. Opal Larabee, was five years younger than Mrs. Bandini. Mrs. Larabee pointedly mentioned this soon after I met the two women. Mrs. Bandini just smiled and added that Mrs. Larabee was one up on her there, and was also one up on her where weight was concerned, being fifteen pounds heavier. Mrs. Larabee smiled and said something about being an inch and three quarters taller, and I left in a hurry, not wanting to hear the rest.

  Mr. Asmir Kamara was at the club, as usual. I twisted to glance through the wide glass window wall that divided the office from the pool area and saw his shining bald head leading the way back and forth in a straight path from one end of the pool to the other. His daily routine. As usual, his terry-cloth robe was folded neatly over the back of a chair, and his thongs were placed side by side under the chair. Mr. Kamara, a wealthy retiree who lived at the Ridley Hotel, seemed to speak only enough English to imperiously insult all the male employees of the hotel and extravagantly flatter all the female employees.