Her parents were, of course, totally out of the question. Phil certainly picked her up from school every day. He would have been able to retrieve a mike when he leaned across the seat to kiss her. But Phil wouldn’t have been willing to share her with Dan even for the purpose of a police manhunt.
That left Sue, Angel, Vicki, and Irene.
Irene often changed into a fancy robe when she came home from school. She would sit by the pool for hours painting. Today she was wearing a pink silk Chinese robe that contrasted gorgeously with her thick black waist-length hair, bound back with a gold barrette.
She had set up her easel by the deep end of the pool inside the glass enclosure. Her stool was backed up against a camellia bush. The pink blooms blended in with the color of her robe.
Sharon stalked up behind her and practically shouted, “Why did you plant a mike on me, Irene?”
Without flinching, Irene stood and guided Sharon by the shoulders to a chair. Then she gently but firmly forced her down. Sharon found herself staring at an oil painting of the pool itself. She didn’t know much about art, but she could tell that this painting was done in an “impressionistic” style with all sorts of mottled brush stroke effects. She could make out the black pool and the surrounding potted plants. The plants were wild strokes of green with clouds of pink and red paint floating above them to represent the blooms. It was hard to tell where the black-tiled pool began and the black-tiled walkway ended. Above the surface of the water hung blotches of bright gold and blinding white.
“I know I’m no Renoir or Cézanne, but what do you think?” Irene asked.
“Irene, did you hear anything I said?”
“The blotches of bright gold and white above the pool are supposed to be the light reflecting off the surface of the pool.”
Sharon gaped. Right in the middle of a black swirl of paint she spotted the doll. It was unmistakably the doll from upstairs in her bedroom, the doll with the blond curly hair, the blue eyes, and the pale skin. It wasn’t very big, but it was there all the same. The doll seemed to be holding a knife!
Sharon leaped up and almost knocked the canvas over. “All right, Cragmoor, what game is this? What do you mean by painting the doll?” Sharon pointed accusingly at it.
“That’s just another wave.” Irene shrugged casually. “But if it bothers you, I’ll paint it over again.” Irene took up her paintbrush and stroked over the offending spot in heavy black paint. The doll disappeared. “See? Now you can’t possibly think it’s anything except a black pool.”
“I’m sick to death of your dirty tricks, Irene Cragmoor! You pretend you’re my friend. But you’re just a rich snob playing games with us peasants. I saw you the other day standing on the balcony. I saw you hurl a knife into the pool. I’ve found all those drawings you leave everywhere around the house. Are you trying to drive me nuts, sneaking around the house, bumping into things, and acting like a ghost?”
Irene put finishing touches on her canvas.
“You planted the mike on me, too. You were the only one who could do it because you live here. You planted it on my clothes before I got dressed, and you took it off when I threw everything in the hamper. You—”
A big smile appeared on Irene’s face. “Now you just sit down and relax,” she said as if she were humoring Sharon. “Irene will get you a snack.”
“Do you hear me?!” Sharon shouted after her.
Sharon spotted a half-finished can of Coke that Irene must have been drinking while she was painting. She felt very thirsty and gulped a few sips. She didn’t know what she was going to say to Irene when she got back.
Sharon started to feel very sleepy. Her thoughts became disoriented and confused. Finally, she seemed to be doing nothing except staring into those compelling violet eyes. Irene had returned with more Cokes and pretzels. Sharon hadn’t even seen her!
“You look sleepy,” said Irene in that measured, clipped English accent.
Sharon lurched to her feet. She had to get out of here.
“Poor thing! I’m afraid all this has been too much for you.” Irene helped Sharon walk to the inn, putting her long, slender arms around her shoulders.
Sharon’s eyelids were blinking shut as she passed her mother at the front desk. She started up the stairs to the tower room. Then she began to stumble.
Through her foggy brain she remembered the Coke as she groped for the bannister railing and tried to keep herself on her feet long enough to reach her room. She hadn’t felt sleepy before she drank the Coke. Every time in the past when she’d started to feel unaccountably sleepy, it had been right after drinking a Coke.
Irene had drugged her! Irene had conveniently put Sharon to sleep while she got ready—probably for another nighttime session of spooks and goblins.
Sharon fought with all her strength the effects of the drug. But she knew she couldn’t win. The last thing she remembered was plunging headlong down onto her bed. Darkness washed over her.
A woman was whispering. “Stop him! Sharon, you’ve got to stop him. Don’t let him get away with murder.”
Sharon suddenly remembered with a jolt that she’d been drugged and forced her eyes open.
There the woman was again, the same one with the long blond hair, the pale complexion, and the old-fashioned, floor-length dress. She sat on the side of Sharon’s bed silhouetted by the moonlight. She was weeping and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.
Before Sharon had always been rooted to the spot in abject terror. But now as she raised herself on one elbow, anger surged through her. Irene had taken the time to dress in this getup while she was knocked out. Now she was trying to terrorize her again, probably while she planted more bloody knives in her room to get her in trouble with the police.
Sharon grabbed for the shadowy woman’s dress. Her hand closed around real material, not ghostly, invisible stuff. It was as real as she was. “Why are you doing this to me, Irene!” Sharon called out.
Sharon heard a quick, indrawn gasp. The last time she’d checked, ghosts didn’t breathe, either.
It was hard to move after such a heavy, drugged sleep. But she thrust her legs over the side of the bed and went lurching after the woman in the long dress. She bumped into her. The body under the dress was solid enough and all quite real. The woman disappeared out the door.
The hallway was pitch black. Sharon lost sight of the “ghost.” So instead of stumbling around in the dark trying to find her, Sharon slammed the door shut and locked it.
Sharon flicked on the overhead light switch. Immediately she spotted her purse. Beside it was the flip phone she hadn’t been able to use at school lately. She dialed Dan’s number, though when she squinted hard at the alarm clock it was already midnight. He was the only one who would believe her.
“Dan, you’ve got to come over here right now!”
“What’s happened?”
“Dan … Please just come!”
“Has somebody tried to hurt you?”
She wet her lips. “Don’t come to the door. Just climb up the oak tree outside my bedroom window. I’ll be waiting.”
She hung up.
Sharon paced back and forth in front of her window for what seemed like an eternity. When Dan showed his face at her window, they hugged each other wordlessly. They hadn’t even talked since the day at the police station.
They sat on the floor. She poured out everything that had happened since they last spoke. She told him her suspicions about Sue, Angel, Vicki, and especially Irene. She insisted that Irene had spiked the Coke this afternoon so she could have time to change into her costume. Sharon was sure it had been Irene all along.
“Can’t say it surprises me,” Dan said. “I’ll spend the night. Upstairs in your tower, of course. Then if somebody tries to come back, just give me a yell.”
Before Dan had been upstairs ten minutes, he called down to her, “Hey, Sharon, look at this! What luck! I’ve caught the murderer redhanded.”
She raced up the stairs, practic
ally tripping over her own feet.
He was waving a letter at her. At least it looked like a letter, old, yellowed, and crinkled up. He was beaming triumphantly.
“Where’s the murderer?” she asked breathlessly.
He pointed at the doll sitting by the door to the balcony. The doll looked just the same as always, dressed in her elegant clothes, her golden hair gleaming, her complexion pale as death, and her eyes staring straight ahead—but every feature as real as life.
“The doll? How could the doll be the—” Then she saw the doll’s foot was cut open. The stuffing was falling out.
“I found this letter in the doll’s foot. It was the last place I could think of. I was right. Thank God.”
“I don’t get it, Dan.”
“You’d better get it Sharon. I’ve just saved your life.”
He told her to sit beside him out on the balcony while they read the old papers together. The manuscript was written in an elegant script. But it soon became obvious that the story was composed a very long time ago. It was the life story of a girl named Charlotte Williams.
“Charlotte’s the missing clue you’ve been looking for?” asked Sharon. She couldn’t believe it.
“You bet!” said Dan. “Just read.”
Charlotte Williams was born in a big old house on Amelia Island at the beginning of this century. Her father was a sea captain who sailed the Atlantic and the Caribbean trading merchant goods. Charlotte didn’t see her father very often, but when he did return after a long voyage he brought little Charlotte many wonderful things.
Never did she treasure a gift more than when Captain Williams brought her a doll. This was no ordinary doll. She was so beautiful she looked almost human. The doll had long, golden locks that curled over her shoulders. This hair was soft like real human hair. Her lips were cherry red. Her complexion was sheeny white and seemed to glow from within like real human skin, though it was only wax.
The doll’s eyes were blue and very arresting. Charlotte loved to stare into them for many minutes at a time, hardly able to look away. She could swear that sometimes the doll would stare back at her and even bat her long, spidery blond lashes.
It did not take Charlotte very long to figure out that the doll resembled her. In fact, if the doll had been real, she could have been her own twin sister. When Charlotte asked her father about this, Captain Williams said, “You’re a bright little girl, Charlotte. I commissioned a Jamaican doll maker to fashion that doll from a photograph of you. I even took some clippings of your hair. The doll will bring you good luck.”
“Really, father?” Charlotte asked with wide open, eager eyes.
“Yes, sugar!” he chucked her chin and smiled. “Maybe if you make a wish, your doll will make it come true.”
Charlotte tried making little wishes such as for an extra piece of cake at dinner or getting to stay up later that night. Often she was pleasantly surprised when her little wishes did come true. She named her doll Charlotte and gave her an extra kiss.
But the doll became even more special as the years went by and Charlotte grew into her adolescent years. She used to sit in her bedroom in the tower and crush the doll to her when she felt melancholy. She told the doll all her troubles since she was frequently all alone at Ocean House, except for the legions of servants.
Likewise Charlotte’s doll came to share the good times as well. On the days when her father finally got home from a voyage, Charlotte spent the day celebrating. At the end of the day, she came up to her tower room and told her doll all about everything. Occasionally she even brought her doll a piece of cake.
Originally the doll had been a little girl like her. But now the doll’s cheeks didn’t seem to have baby fat anymore. They’d lost their roundness and become sleeker and more grown up like hers.
Charlotte thought that no one else noticed except her. But she was wrong. The servants crossed themselves and made the sign to ward off the evil eye. They said the doll was “not nice.”
She rather liked the thought of it. She even had the seamstress make the doll new dresses that were miniature versions of her own but complete in every detail from lace trimming to gold braiding. Every time Charlotte had a new dress, her doll had a new dress.
“You are practicing black magic, Mistress Williams!” The upstairs maid scolded her one day when she was helping her dress. “You’re becoming a witch.”
“Maybe I am,” said Charlotte. She liked to keep the servants in line. Maybe it wasn’t so bad if they were a little bit afraid of her.
Frequently she’d talk aloud to herself when she was preparing for bed. Since there was no one else around except the servants, she often complained that the parlor maid hadn’t dusted sufficiently, that the cook had burned the dinner, or that the butler had been slow that day. Charlotte wasn’t surprised when the servants claimed the doll had taken its revenge every time one of them met with a little accident.
But on her sixteenth birthday Charlotte Williams forgot all about her doll. Captain Williams invited his daughter to accompany him on his next voyage. Captain Williams steered his steamer ship all the way south along the coast to the Caribbean, stopping at all the ports of call. She was so curious about the new people and sights that she begged to go ashore every time they docked.
Captain Williams gave Charlotte money to go shopping at every port of call. But after one day of shopping, Charlotte had a surprise waiting. A sailor told her it had been brought aboard in great secrecy in the middle of the afternoon and was draped in a dark blanket.
Charlotte clapped her hands with glee. She assumed the present must be from her father. Was it a piano? A harp? A statue of great value? Perhaps new bedroom furniture? It had to be something large to be draped in a blanket.
When she removed the blanket, before her stood an artist’s canvas. Quickly sketched in charcoal was a portrait of a young lady with blond hair in the market shopping for goods. It looked very much like herself. The dress was identical. The artist had captured her expression exactly.
In the bottom left-hand corner it was signed, “To Charlotte from Your Admirer.”
Charlotte had never had an admirer before. She had read about them only in romantic novels. But the idea made shivers go up and down her spine in a delicious sort of way. She couldn’t wait to show the portrait to her father.
Captain Williams was conducting a meeting of the crew when Charlotte burst in upon him. Her father excused himself to humor his daughter. But when he saw the portrait signed, “Your Admirer,” he looked stern. “You must not encourage this fellow!” He warned. “He’s not suitable.”
“But, Father, how do you even know who he is?”
“The man is obviously a pauper looking for a rich girl to marry.”
Charlotte turned a deaf ear to him. When she received a dozen long-stemmed red roses the next day she carefully hid them from her father. But she managed to retrieve the note asking her to meet her admirer at a studio in port.
The artist turned out to be a young man named Charles Worth. He was as handsome a fellow as ever existed. As soon as she saw him smile at her, Charlotte lost her heart to him.
He invited her to return day after day so he could paint her portrait in oil colors. He claimed that he’d fallen in love with her exquisite beauty glimpsed from afar. Now he wanted to paint a portrait that captured her essence. Then he could hang it on the wall of his bedroom and keep it by his side forever to remind him of his one true love.
At first Charles Worth actually painted. But soon they occupied all their time kissing. On the last day that her father’s ship was in port, they eloped.
Charlotte wrote her father a long letter describing her new husband and his work as a portrait painter, how they lived in an artist’s studio, and asking him to visit them before he left port. She signed her letter, “CW.”
He father reacted quickly. He didn’t come himself. He sent a group of his rowdiest sailors. They broke down Charles Worth’s door, beat him up, and dragged po
or Charlotte shrieking and kicking back to the ship.
Instead of forgetting about Charles, she went on a hunger strike. Her father told her it wouldn’t do her any good. He would have the marriage annulled as soon as they reached shore. But Charlotte persisted. She took to her bed and grew weaker by the day.
Captain Williams tried to reason with his daughter. But nothing worked. At last he had no choice. He relented. As a wedding present her father gave them Ocean House. In addition he agreed to send them a yearly allowance.
Captain Williams went to sea aboard his steamer and said he would never return as long as Charlotte was married to Charles. His parting words to his daughter were, “You’ve married a fortune hunter, child. I wish you joy in him.”
Charlotte did not think much of her father’s words at the time, but soon they proved prophetic. Charles went through the first year’s allowance in a couple of months. He gambled and drank when he was not in his studio. He considered himself a gentleman and thought being an artist too lowly an occupation.
He threw lavish parties at the black-tile pool that her father had constructed. So that the pool could be used year-round, he even had a glass enclosure built over it. In addition to the statuary and fountains that her father had installed, Charles erected cabanas and tennis courts.
The first time they ran out of money, Charles casually mentioned it to his wife.
“Father says he will send our allowance only once a year,” Charlotte reminded him.
“But he couldn’t possibly be serious! We have a social position to maintain.”
“My father always means what he says.”
Her husband picked up a vase and hurled it at her. It shattered against the wall. She ran weeping from the room.
She locked herself in her old girlhood bedroom in the turreted tower overlooking the black pool. She took down her doll and began to talk to it. The doll seemed to be crying just as she was. A real friend, she thought. That night she slept in her old bedroom with only her doll for company.
Charles made Charlotte’s life a merry hell until the next check arrived. Then he installed electricity all over the estate and lighted up the pool area at night until it glowed like day. He even ordered telephones for all the rooms. He brought shrimp from the Carolinas and lobster from New England, served it all up with caviar from Russia, and washed it down with the best French wine. When Charlotte questioned him anxiously about whether he wasn’t spending a year’s money in one day, he merely lighted one of his fine, imported Cuban cigars with a hundred dollar bill, blew out the flame, and tossed it at her.
Pool Party Page 10
