California Schemin'

by Carolyn Keene

  “You mean it’s not there?” she squeaked. “But all the evidence is on it.”

  “Don’t remind me!” I said.

  Bess and I turned my pockets inside out. I even checked all five pockets on my jeans, but there was no phone. Anywhere!

  “Maybe you dropped it on the beach somewhere,” Bess said. “Or in the rowboat while you were climbing in and out.”

  My heart raced as I turned toward the door. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s retrace our steps.”

  It was already past midnight as Bess and I ran downstairs and shot out the back door. I expected the beach to be empty. Instead we saw people filing inside the covered tent—Ralph, Linda, Brad, and Mia.

  “What’s going on in there?” Bess wondered.

  Mia was the last to slip inside the tent. That’s when something clicked.

  “Bess, Mia was sitting right behind me during meditation,” I said. “She probably took my phone while my eyes were closed. Why is she waiting to show it to Roland and Inge? What’s her plan?”

  “I don’t know,” Bess said. “But if she has it, we have to get it back.”

  Bess and I sneaked up to the tent and slipped through the entrance. Once inside, I gasped. The temperature must have been over a hundred degrees!

  I looked around and saw Ralph, Linda, Terrence, Daisy, Brad, Danielle, and Mia—all sitting on towels facing a pile of smooth black stones. Underneath the stones were flaming sticks and pieces of wood. The fire caused the stones to sizzle and smoke and heat up the tent like an airless oven. What was going on?

  Mia was sitting on the opposite side of the tent. Her eyes were shut, and her face was beaded with sweat.

  “Well, now!” Roland’s voice said. “We weren’t expecting you two to show up to our purification ceremony.”

  Roland and Inge were seated on opposite sides of the doorway. They were the only ones drinking from water bottles. Two retreat attendants stood near them, looking more like guards than friendly spa employees.

  “How come we weren’t invited?” I asked.

  “We were going to invite you to our sweat lodge,” Roland said, fanning himself with a straw fan. “You ran to the house before we could.”

  “Sweat lodge?” I repeated.

  “It’s like a sauna, Nancy,” Bess told me. “We’ll probably just sweat a little until it gets too hot.”

  “Stop talking,” Inge commanded. She tossed us each a white towel. “Find an empty spot and sit down.”

  The heat was unbearable, but so was the thought of losing my phone. While everyone closed their eyes in meditation, Bess and I squeezed into a spot between Danielle and Mia.

  “Hand it over, Mia,” I demanded in a whisper.

  “What?” Mia asked.

  “Silence!” Roland called out.

  Mia glared at me. She got up with her towel, marched to the opposite side of the tent, and sat next to Daisy.

  “I know it’s hot in here,” Roland said. “But we must welcome the intense heat, as it draws the impurities from our bodies and minds.”

  Bess and I sat on our towels, ignoring Roland’s sermon. By now the temperature was so high that everyone was sprawled on their towels, their faces glistening with sweat.

  Ten minutes slogged by, but the sweltering heat and airless conditions made it feel like ten hours.

  I watched Roland fan himself with one hand and chugalug water with the other. Water he wasn’t sharing with the rest of the group.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” I told Bess. “Forget my phone. I’m going to faint.”

  Bess needed no convincing. Her hair was plastered against her neck, and her skin was beaded with sweat. “Let’s go,” she rasped.

  But as Bess and I stood up, Inge barked, “Where are you going?”

  “To get some air,” I answered. “Before we pass out.”

  “Whoa!” Roland said as he blocked the doorway. “I didn’t take you two to be quitters.”

  As if they’d gotten a second wind, the others began chanting, “Quitters, quitters, quitters!”

  “So we’re quitters,” Bess said wearily. “Who cares?”

  I stared at Roland standing in front of the doorway like a Doberman.

  “Move aside,” I ordered. “Let us out.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me in that tone,” Roland said through gritted teeth.

  The two beefy retreat attendants made their way over. They took their place in front of Bess and me and crossed their arms.

  “If I were you,” one of them growled, “I’d sit right now.”

  “Or you won’t get the full benefits of my renewal process,” Roland said.

  “Nancy,” Bess whispered. She grabbed my arm to hold herself up. “The heat’s really getting to me. I can hardly stand up.”

  “Hang in there,” I told her. I tried to figure another way out, but the heat was making it hard to think.

  Maybe we can crawl out from underneath the tarp, I thought as my eyes darted around the tent. Unless they stop us from doing that, too.

  “Bess,” I muttered as we made our way around the hissing rocks. “When we get to the other side, we’ll slip under the—”

  “Somebody help!” Linda’s voice interrupted. “Something’s wrong with Ralph.”

  I turned to see Ralph lying on his back, gasping for breath. No longer flushed, his face had a sickly pallor.

  “He’s probably dehydrated, just like Brad was,” I said. “Roland, give him some of your water.”

  Roland handed his water bottle not to me, but to one of his attendants. As if to mock me, the attendant splashed water onto the rocks, making them hiss and heat the tent even more.

  “Creep,” I said under my breath.

  “Ralph is fine, everyone,” Roland announced. “He’s in a state of ecstasy. Just like Mia here.”

  Mia? When I looked at Mia, she too was lying on the towel, breathing heavily.

  “You mean a state of emergency,” I snapped. “Let us out so we can call an ambulance.”

  “And stop the purification ceremony?” Roland said. “Why don’t you sit down and shut up…or you’ll soon need an ambulance too.”

  I got the threat, but each breath seared my lungs, making it impossible to fight back or argue. I sank back down on my towel next to Bess, who was fading fast.

  “We can’t crawl under the tent,” Bess managed to whisper. “The tarp’s too close to the sand and way too heavy.”

  “Let’s use our hands to dig some space,” I whispered, my eyes fixed on Roland and Inge. “We’ll have to dig behind our backs so no one sees us, okay?”

  But when I looked at Bess, I knew she hadn’t heard a word I said. She had collapsed against the tarp, her eyes shut, her face pale.

  “Bess!” I gasped painfully.

  I called her name over and over again.

  It wasn’t long before my voice began echoing inside my head, and everything around me became a blur.

  RESCUE AND REVENGE

  “Nancy!” I heard a voice shout my name. “Nancy, can you hear me?”

  My eyes flew open to see George kneeling over me. Instead of answering, I took a huge, long gulp of cool early morning air. It was still dark as I lay on the beach, but I wasn’t on a blanket or towel. I was lying faceup on an ambulance stretcher.

  “Welcome back,” an EMS worker said, smiling down at me as he adjusted my IV. “You had some serious heatstroke going on, but you should be just fine.”

  Heat stroke…the tent…Bess!

  “Where’s Bess?” I asked, trying to sit up. “Is she okay?””

  George put her hand on my shoulder to keep me down. “Bess is going to be fine too,” she said. “She’s on her way to the hospital, which is where you’re headed.”

  “How did we get out?” I asked.

  “Me,” George replied. “When you didn’t text me after the cruise, I got worried. So I sneaked onto the retreat’s beach. That’s when I heard screaming coming from the tent.”

  “Scr
eaming,” I repeated, remembering Linda.

  “I called the police, and they came right away,” George said. “It’s a good thing, too.”

  I heard Roland’s voice and turned my head. The sinister guru was waving his arms in the air as he spoke to police officers.

  “I told you, officers, it was nothing but an unfortunate accident,” Roland was insisting. “I must have turned the heat up a bit too much. You know how these saunas can get.”

  I wasn’t worried about Roland. I knew he would get what he deserved. But what about the others?

  “How’s Ralph?” I asked George. “And Mia? She was in pretty bad shape.”

  “If you mean that older guy, he was taken to the hospital too,” George said, helping me to sit halfway. “As for Mia, see for yourself.”

  I looked to where George was pointing across the beach. Mandy and Mallory, wearing their usual four-inch heels, were stumbling after Mia, who was being carried away on a stretcher.

  “We heard the police cars and came right away,” Mandy was shouting after Mia.

  “Sorry, Mia,” Mallory said next. “This wasn’t the makeover we had in mind. You’re our sister, and we love you!”

  As I watched them lift Mia into an ambulance, I remembered my phone.

  “George,” I said, feeling dizzy again. “I recorded Roland ordering everyone to dump trash into the ocean. But Mia has my phone. We’ve got to get it back.”

  “Calm down,” George said with a hand on my shoulder again. “Mia doesn’t have your phone.”

  “She doesn’t?” I asked. “Then where—”

  “Ta-daaa,” George sang as she wiggled my phone in front of my face. “That girl Daisy gave it to me.”

  Daisy, of course! Bess and I were so busy suspecting Mia we had forgotten about her.

  “Daisy knew I had a phone too,” I said. “She must have been watching my every move on the yacht and was planning to rat on me after the sweat lodge.”

  “Well, she’s had a change of heart,” George said, and grinned.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Daisy was the first to escape the tent after you passed out,” George said. “She told me that you were right about this place all along.”

  “But…how did she know to give you my phone?” I asked.

  “She recognized me from the picture you showed her,” George said. She then frowned. “She called me…Georgia.”

  I smiled as I felt my stretcher being lifted. It was Daisy, not Mia, who’d taken my phone. But at least I had the phone and video footage of Roland and Inge and the trash dumping. And that would lead to a crackdown on Roland’s Renewal Retreat and Spa!

  Bess and I were in excellent hands at Malachite General, the same hospital that had treated George. We were released in the afternoon, but poor Ralph needed to stay for observation. Luckily, the police and ambulances had gotten to him in time to save him—thanks to George.

  We said good-bye to Mia, who also needed another day or two in the hospital. The drugs Roland had given her were slowly leaving her system, and so was her anger.

  “Another relaxing day in Malachite,” George joked as she drove us back to the house. “If you ask me, we’ll need a vacation after our vacation.”

  I sat in the passenger seat while Bess sat in the back. Our energy had returned, along with the color in our cheeks.

  “At least I got to show the video to the police at the hospital,” I pointed out. “They were pretty impressed when we told them we were detectives.”

  “I’m sure Roland wasn’t thrilled,” George said. “With the dumping of the needles, the sweat lodge, and more embezzlement charges, he’ll end up in prison for sure.”

  “Talk about a renewed life!” Bess laughed.

  I was happy to see our borrowed beach house in the distance. We stared out the window as George drove slowly past the retreat.

  “Wow,” she said. “Check out the news trucks. And cop cars.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “The police have plenty of evidence to arrest Roland and Inge.”

  George stopped the car in front of the retreat. Rolling down my window, I called, “Excuse me, Officer, but are you here for Roland?”

  The police officer approached our car.

  “Roland? You mean Marty Malone?” he said. “Yeah, we’re here to bring him in. There’s just one small problem.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s not anywhere in the house,” the officer said. “His accomplice insists she doesn’t know where he went.”

  George glowered. “You mean Inge?”

  “That’s her,” the officer said. “But don’t worry. We’ll find him sooner or later.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Thanks, Officer.”

  George drove the car up our driveway. She held the doors open for Bess and me as we slowly got out of the car.

  “What a pal!” I teased George.

  “What a cuz!” Bess giggled.

  Once inside the house, I saw another message on Stacey’s phone.

  “It can’t be for us,” Bess said. “We already spoke to our families back home.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about creepy messages anymore.” I smiled as I pressed the play button.

  “You have one message,” the machine droned. Then we heard Stacey’s voice saying, “Hi, girls. Guess what? I’ll be coming home tomorrow. Alas, the event was canceled, but as they say, c’est la vie. Of course, you can still stick around if you want to. The more the merrier.”

  George deleted the message.

  “We have over two weeks left of our vacation, but do we really want to stick around?” she asked. “I mean, after all that’s happened?”

  I gave it a thought. “I still love California, and we did make friends with the Casabian sisters. But River Heights is starting to look awfully good to me.”

  “Especially since it’s far away from Roland,” Bess said. “Where do you think he went?”

  “Who knows?” I shrugged. “I just hope the police—”

  BOOOOOOM!!!!

  Bess, George, and I jumped sky-high at the sudden explosion.

  “What was that?” Bess gasped.

  “I think it came from outside,” I exclaimed. “Somewhere in the back.”

  We ran out on the deck and stared at the water. I could see what looked to be a fiery boat in the distance. The three of us raced to the beach. Police officers stood on the shore watching the boat too. With them, her hands in cuffs, was Inge.

  “That’s Roland’s yacht!” Inge was crying. “He didn’t want to be taken alive. He didn’t want to be taken alive!”

  “Roland set fire to his own yacht?” I gasped as we stared at the shooting flames.

  “It’s more than a fire,” George said. “It looks like an explosion.”

  “Nancy, the oil drums we saw on the yacht,” Bess reminded me. “Roland probably blew them up—along with the fuel tank!”

  Blowing up the yacht didn’t make sense to me. But then again, neither did Roland.

  “He probably wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,” I said with a sigh. “Literally.”

  “The yacht isn’t all that Roland destroyed,” George muttered. “Look what he did to our beach.”

  I saw rainbow-colored oil puddles drifting ashore and knew exactly what she meant.

  “Oh, noooo,” I cried.

  All those oil drums plus the fuel tank meant hundreds of gallons of oil. The damage to the beach and its wildlife would be catastrophic!

  “And we thought the trash was bad,” I said.

  “How am I going to explain this to Stacey when she gets back tomorrow?” George groaned.

  “So this is our fault, isn’t it?” Bess asked sadly. “I mean, we provoked Roland, and this was his revenge.”

  I looked out over the ocean. Soon the oil would reach our beach, turning the sugary-white sands a dusky black.

  “I don’t know if it’s our fault or not,” I admitted. “But something
tells me we’re not going back to River Heights…at least anytime soon.”