A scream welled up from deep in her throat. A knife point pricked her neck.
“Dan!” She screamed. “Help me! Dan!”
The knife dug in a little deeper. A trickle of blood ran down her neck.
Phil squeezed her so tightly against his body that it hurt. “No cop is gonna nab me and stick me with four murders. You’re gonna help me, baby. As long as I’ve got you, they won’t dare touch me.”
There were only minutes until the pool enclosure blew sky high. She heard the sizzle of the fuse burning toward the dynamite.
“Leave her alone!” Dan shouted. He swallowed hard. He didn’t dare make a move in her direction with that knife so close to her throat.
Phil dragged her out of the pool enclosure. Her eyes clung frantically to Dan’s until Phil turned a sharp corner, and the blackness of the night closed in around them.
Phil made her race through the gardens. His van was parked alongside the street. He threw her into the passenger side, climbed in over her, and locked all the doors with the driver’s control so she couldn’t escape.
Just as he was backing away from the curb and shifting gears to drive forward down the street, Sharon heard a deafening explosion. The pool enclosure disappeared. A giant cloud of grayish-white smoke rose toward the stars and spread outward all over the yard until Sharon couldn’t even see the house anymore, not even the tower.
Dan, Dan, are you all right? Did you get away?
Then, after a moment’s pause, bits of cement, plants, and even tiny scraps of gold came raining down all around the estate and all over the street. One particularly big clod of cement came crashing through Phil’s windshield, nearly hitting Sharon. She put her hands over her face. Phil cursed, and when she looked up again she saw a crack that resembled a spider’s web in its intricacy all over the passenger’s side of the windshield with a big hole in the middle. Scraps of gold and cement covered the carpet of the van.
Even as he was trying to drive with one hand on the wheel, Phil was leaning over trying to pick up the scraps of gold and stuff them into his pockets. The shiny metal meant so much to him that he didn’t even care about driving into a tree or running off the road. The knife was clenched between his teeth.
In the distance the police sirens started wailing. They were headed this direction all right, but not quickly enough.
This was all so much of a nightmare she couldn’t believe it was real. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms for comfort. The charms on her golden bracelet clattered. She froze. She hardly dared breathe as she lowered her arm to her lap and hid the bracelet with her other hand. She’d take it off and stuff it in her pocket, even toss it out the window, but the slightest motion would attract Phil’s attention.
Why, oh why, had Dan put that bracelet on her wrist? Was it somehow part of his pool party scheme gone bust? Sharon couldn’t even imagine. But she wouldn’t put it past Phil to come after that gold, too. Maybe he’d cut off her hand in his haste to get at it.
“I told Tony to tail me when I made my rounds tonight. I thought that creep Dan might be up to somethin’. As soon as that pool blew, man, Tony was outta here. He knows what to do.”
Of course! How stupid could she have been! Phil wasn’t in this thing alone. Those buddies of his that worked for Fun & Sun had a stake in finding the gold. Phil had told them all about his plans, given them a cut, and for all she knew they’d been snooping at the estate when they came over to give lessons. They’d been sneaking through the hallways at night, taking turns trying on the wigs and dresses, going through her dresser drawers, and digging up plants all around the inn.
No wonder she’d felt so uncomfortable around them that evening at the beach. Something deep in her subconscious had felt fidgety about sharing a dinner and a bonfire with a group of bloodthirsty murderers.
“How do you know your buddy didn’t just keep on running?” Sharon dug her fingernails into the bucket seat.
He snorted. “We have a doomsday plan in case our cover gets blown. Tony knows he has to spread the word. By tonight we’ll be out on the boat headed to a deserted island off the coast of Florida.”
“We?” she asked.
“You’re my ticket to freedom.” He slapped her thigh. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I told you about my new job prospect and gettin’ serious. But Dan’s ruined that for good.”
Sharon looked around desperately. There had to be a way out of here.
“You couldn’t kill me, could you?” Sharon pleaded. After all, they had gone out quite a lot. She’d even let him kiss her. He’d seemed to be really stuck on her. How could somebody fake all that?
He glared at her with wild eyes. It was easy to believe he’d do anything. He brandished his knife. “You’d better believe it, baby.”
She slid over to the farthest end of the seat, pressing against the door that wouldn’t open. “You—you killed the other four girls?”
“They got in our way.”
“How?” She couldn’t believe her ears. How could anybody talk about murdering someone so casually?
“They wore that gold jewelry from Dave’s Treasure Trove, you know, the one that supposedly sells finds from the Spanish shipwrecks. That stuff was real junk! Expensive but fake. We couldn’t let them get away with that. People wouldn’t appreciate the real stuff when we sold our finds from The Queen Isabella.”
“What about the ring you gave me? Did you get it at Dave’s?”
“I found it in the garden at Ocean House one night when Tony and I were digging. Made me keep lookin’. That, honey, was the real McCoy.”
Fear coursed through her as she gripped the gold charm bracelet that Dan had snapped around her wrist. Phil hadn’t heard its charms tinkle. He hadn’t seen it. But what happened when he did? Would he slit her throat, too, just because he didn’t like her wearing an expensive fake?
She wet her lips and tried to keep calm. “Was that the only reason you murdered them?”
“No, baby, we needed the gold to put under your mattress and make people suspect you. Get you Joneses cleared outta Ocean House. When that didn’t work, we left the bracelet on that ugly doll. Woulda worked, too, if that creep Dan hadn’t decided to play noble and make people think he stole the stuff instead.”
She’d thought Dan ignored her too much! Really he was the one who’d stuck out his own neck and risked his own safety for her. He was the one who’d been trying to warn her about Phil all along!
“Those nights when I heard a woman crying and footsteps above me in the tower room, was that Irene? Did Sue help you out? Angel? Vicki?”
“Irene and Sue? Angel and Vicki? Those busybodies? Not on your life! All they did was ask me questions. Especially that Irene of yours! She was almost as bad as Dan.”
Sharon was stunned. She couldn’t account for what she’d seen Irene do on the sly. Why had Irene thrown a knife into the pool? Why had she made such careful drawings of the doll? Of the dead girls?
Why had Sue, who hadn’t seemed to like Irene at first, suddenly become her best friend? Why had Sue, Angel, and Vicki found every excuse they could to stay over at the inn? Why had the girls been practically standing outside her door the night she found the bracelet on the doll?
“You mean you did everything all by yourself?” Sharon asked Phil.
“Me, Tony, and the other guys. We weren’t about to cut anybody else in for a share. We might have cut Dan in because he seemed to be onto us, but I just had the feelin’ I couldn’t trust him. Told the other guys we ought to waste him. But he always had cops followin’ him around.” Phil clutched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“So you were the one who dressed in those costumes and played those tapes?”
“Sure. You’d never see anything straight after I drugged all your drinks. Once I almost doped Irene, too, when I had to sneak up on her at the pool and dump some sleeping powder in her can. But she was too busy with her painting to notice, and she didn’t drink any more after th
at. You did, though, just like I figured. I knew you’d come wailing to her when school was over.”
“How did you record the girls’ voices after they were dead?” Sharon swallowed hard.
“Easy. Followed them around at the party before we wasted them.”
“How did you create the cold spots?”
“Even easier. I fooled with the air-conditioning every night.”
“You even scared the little girl?”
“Sure. Had to get her out of that tower room so we could mess around.”
“You moved the doll, too? You filled it with red paint?”
“Creepy, ain’t it?” He grinned evilly.
“You called me on the phone with that distorted voice and told me the jewelry was under my mattress?”
“Tony did that. Tony’s a swell guy.”
“What did you do with the caterer’s saltshaker during the pool party?”
“Easy street. I stuffed it in my swimsuit.”
“How did you get Donna, Elaine, Marge, and Ruth to disappear without a trace?”
“Tony was waiting for the first three as soon as they entered Ocean House. He knocked them out one by one and dragged them to his van. With Ruth, it was a little trickier. Tony turned the lights off. Then he sneaked up behind her, clobbered her, and yanked her out of the pool. He’s a real swift worker.”
“What about the footprints Dan found in the tower room during the first pool party?”
“Tony again. We were gonna get the doll ready to bleed all over your bathtub the night of the first party, but Dan got in the way. Dan came upstairs to investigate so quickly that Tony had to climb down a tree and come back later.”
“You even tried to murder me with the barracuda?”
“Didn’t hurt to get you a little cuckoo and tangled up in it.”
“Where did you get this whole idea to begin with? Where did you hear about the buried treasure and the ghost story?”
“Tony again. He hangs around a lot. The guy who owns Dave’s Treasure Trove is an old codger. He has a big mouth.”
She thought to herself, And that’s why you dated me. Just like Charlotte in the story. You were a gold digger. All those hours donated to Ocean House were just so you could snoop around, dig up the garden, and ransack the dresser drawers.
They stopped so suddenly that Sharon was thrown forward. She practically hit the dashboard. They had reached the lonely, deserted strip of beach near the big dunes where they’d had the party in what seemed another lifetime.
“All right. Out of the van,” Phil ordered. When she didn’t comply immediately, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out. Then he pointed toward the big dune. “See that dune grass? Go hide yourself in it and don’t move until I get there. Stay down. Understand?”
She wasn’t about to argue with a crazy wielding a knife. She ran over to the dune and threw herself down. But what Phil did next seemed totally insane. He got back inside the van and drove it forward down the beach into the sea. For a wild moment she thought that he was committing suicide and that she was free to walk back to town. But he opened the door at the last moment as the waves started to swamp the vehicle. He swam back to shore.
He threw himself down on the sand beside her, breathing heavily. The van was buffeted by the waves and would soon be washed back on shore.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“False clue. Maybe they’ll think we killed ourselves. Besides, we won’t need the car anymore where we’ll be going.”
She thought that sounded pretty ominous.
Phil waited hunched down in the dune grass with her. He kept on looking up and down the beach and out to sea as if momentarily expecting his buddies to arrive. Time passed very slowly. After awhile when they didn’t see any boats, Phil started cursing under his breath. He had never put down that knife. He kept on jabbing the blade into the sand. She couldn’t take her eyes off that sharp point.
Then they heard sirens. At first they were far off in the distance and very indistinct. Then they came closer and closer until there wasn’t much doubt they were headed down the road toward the beach.
Sharon tried not to let her hopes soar.
“Damn!” Phil said. He thrust the blade into the sand dune and stood up, looking anxiously toward the road. He’d left the knife sitting there with the first rays of sun glinting off it.
Then Phil hunkered back down in the dune grass, grabbed the knife, and brandished it in her face. “Your Dan betrayed me all right. But it’s not just him. He didn’t know where I took you. It has to be Tony, too.”
Sharon gasped. The very possibility of it had never occurred to her. But Phil must be right. They’d been waiting for hours. It was almost morning. Dan wouldn’t have known where to find them. He hadn’t even been at the beach party. And Phil’s buddies did seem like the types to betray their own mothers if it suited them. They must have turned state’s evidence.
“That’s why Tony’s not here like he should be. I can’t make him pay. So you’ll pay. Yeah, you’ll pay for them all.” Phil’s eyes glowed with malice.
He lunged for her and pinned her to the ground. She wanted to scream, but she forced herself to stay calm. If she panicked and got Phil even more alarmed, she would die.
The knife flashed overhead. Phil was bringing it down right at her chest. But she managed to roll aside.
THINK!
The charms on the gold bracelet rattled and clinked. Dan had put the bracelet there. It must have been for a reason. His eyes had been desperately trying to tell her something as Phil was dragging her out of the pool enclosure. Up until now she’d tried to conceal the gold charm bracelet from Phil. But the sight of it now couldn’t get her any more dead than she was soon going to be anyway. She had to take a chance that maybe the bracelet held the clue to everything.
Sharon thrust her bracelet in front of his face as Phil was struggling to pin her down again. Maybe the gold would help her since it seemed to have such power over him.
“Here. Take it and let me live. It’s valuable. It’s not one of your cheap imitations,” she said with false authority, not knowing what she was talking about. But the important thing was to convince Phil. “It—it would be a shame to get blood all over it.”
His eyes grew big with amazement as he gaped at it.
“It’s all yours,” she said.
The knife dropped from his hands. Very gently he unfastened the clasp around her wrist. “Why, it’s the treasure I’ve been looking for, the one from The Queen Isabella.” He whispered hoarsely, his voice trembling with awe.
Dan had known what he was doing. He’d taken the charm bracelet from the tile lining of the pool ahead of time. That’s why the one tile had been loose, because the pool had always been meticulously maintained. No tile had been loose even one day before.
She scrambled to her feet and ran as fast as her legs would carry her toward the wailing of the sirens and the flashing red and blue lights that were now pulling up along the strip of beach.
“Come back here!” yelled Phil.
There was a guy with black hair leaping out of one of the police cars before it had quite stopped. “Sharon!” he yelled. It was Dan. He was running toward her. She headed for him, trying to focus on him and not on the footsteps gaining on her, ready to overtake her.
“Stop or we’ll shoot!” The police called.
Two shots rang out. The footsteps behind her stopped dead. Phil cried out and fell to the ground. She rushed weeping into Dan’s waiting arms.
Suddenly Sue, Angel, Vicki, and Irene appeared out of nowhere and rushed up to her. Her mother and father were there, too, crowding out all the others.
Sharon glanced over at the patrol car. In the backseat, Tony was smoking a cigar. He looked up and waved at her. Phil’s buddies looked very grim. She could see that they were handcuffed. She remembered Tony’s words, We take care of our own. Yeah, he’d taken care of them all right. Right straight to prison.
An am
bulance pulled up. Rescue squad workers leaped out of the van and picked up Phil. They carried him, still clutching the gold bracelet, back to the ambulance on a stretcher.
Chapter 15
One very warm Indian summer day in early November, Sharon and Dan met at the newly rebuilt pool. The construction crews and builders who had set up camp at Ocean House for weeks on end were gone. The investors had insisted upon rebuilding the pool as part of the resort—to be open for business again as soon as possible.
But this afternoon Sharon and Dan had the pool all to themselves.
“Looks as good as new. Doesn’t it?” Sharon sat by the edge of the deep end and dipped her feet in the water.
Dan dove into the pool headfirst with a big splash and got her all wet. She shivered a little. If it weren’t for the glass enclosure it would be too cool to swim now even in northern Florida. The pool was always kept at an even eighty degrees, but now it was clearly fall.
“Better than before.” Dan surfaced and began doing the breaststroke back and forth across the pool. “I’m glad they got rid of the black marble tiles, the coffin shape, and the CW lights. Kinda too much of a reminder if you ask me.”
“Yeah, the investors decided black marble tiles were too expensive, even for a resort that gets a AAA four-diamond rating and a Mobil four-star. Now it seems more like a normal pool. Doesn’t give me the creeps.” She looked at the pool shimmering in the sunlight. It was just an ordinary blue.
“It’s certainly not worth its weight in gold anymore.” Dan swam up to where she was sitting and rested on his arms.
Sharon shivered as she remembered all the photographers from National Geographic swarming around the estate in the days after the dynamite explosion. Gold had been littered all over the streets and the neighbors’ yards. They’d had to send out crews in all directions to recover what they could.
Pool Party Page 12
