She decided to check out one last building before taking a break for lunch. As Nancy approached a long narrow hut just behind the kitchen, she saw steam billowing out from a vent on the roof. She knocked on the door a few times, and when no one answered, she swung the door open and glanced inside to see rows of men and women pressing bed linens with steam machines. A quick look told Nancy that nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
Nancy stepped back on the small porch and closed the door. She turned around—and found herself staring directly into the glaring face of Daniel!
Nancy’s heart leaped into her throat. Her face was just inches away from Daniel’s brawny neck. His strong hands closed around her arms and moved her aside.
“My, my,” he said, laughing. “I’ve never seen a girl so fascinated with steam pressers before.”
How long had he been watching her? she wondered uneasily. Had he just seen her by chance, or had he been keeping an eye on her all morning? Nancy’s pulse was racing, but she hid her nervousness with a tight smile.
“Actually, I’m interested in everything that goes on behind the scenes at Pineapple Grove.”
“Oh, sure,” Daniel teased, but his jovial smile couldn’t disguise the cold gleam in his eyes. “All of our guests are fascinated by launderers and bakers.”
The bakery was one of the first places she had checked out that morning. So he had been watching her.
“I’m serious. My boyfriend is thinking about opening a hotel, and he asked me to check out everything.”
“No fooling? What kind of a boyfriend would ask a pretty girl like you to go snooping around when she could be enjoying herself in the sunshine?” Daniel laughed again, and the hollow sound made Nancy shiver despite the heat.
“I guess I’m just an explorer at heart,” Nancy said in a lighthearted tone, ignoring his question.
Daniel gave her a piercing look, then said, “Well, you’d be better off exploring less and relaxing more. That’s what Pineapple Grove is all about—a slice of paradise.” With a wink, he turned away from her and started down the path.
Nancy watched him until he disappeared from sight, then she turned in the opposite direction and headed toward the terrace for lunch. She still felt uncomfortable, and couldn’t help wondering just how much longer she would be safe at Pineapple Grove. Daniel hadn’t overtly threatened her, but she knew he was onto her. She had to solve this case, and soon—before something else happened.
Nancy filled her plate with fruit salad, then sat at a table overlooking the beach. As she ate, she turned the clues over in her mind. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much to go on when it came to finding Maria Angeles. She had a feeling that she could search the resort for weeks without seeing everything. No, she had to come up with another way of finding Ricky’s sister.
As Nancy munched on a slice of coconut, she tried to think of everyone who might know about Maria’s whereabouts. Gibbs and his goons knew, of course. But they wouldn’t be likely to let such information slip. Unless—
Nancy suddenly stopped chewing as she remembered Vincent Lanchester. He’d been heavily sedated the day before, but maybe his condition had improved. She decided to pay him a visit right after lunch.
• • •
“He’s talking a little today, but he slips in and out of sleep very easily,” the nurse told Nancy at the infirmary.
“May I see him?” Nancy asked. She hoped they didn’t have rules limiting visitors.
“Of course.”
The nurse directed Nancy to a sunny room with two steel-frame beds. Vincent’s eyes were closed, but the patient in the bed beside him was sitting up and reading a magazine. “Hello,” the man greeted her. “You here to visit my roomie?”
Nancy nodded. “I need to ask him a few questions—if he wakes up, that is.”
“Well, good luck,” the man said. “I’ve been sharing this room for almost a day now, and it seems all he ever does is sleep.” He waved his hands in the air and babbled on. “That wouldn’t bother me, of course, except that he talks in his sleep. It’s very annoying when you’re trying to rest.”
Without any prompting, the man introduced himself as Melvin Bell, a guest at the resort. He was being treated for sitting on a poisonous sea urchin. “I have red marks all over my—Well, it was painful.”
“I’m sure it was,” Nancy said politely, then turned to Vincent.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, calling his name.
Vincent stirred, but his eyes remained closed.
When Nancy said his name again, he started muttering. Unfortunately, it was all gibberish. He kept saying something that sounded like “deaf-shane.”
“Oh, he’s on that kick again,” Melvin announced, shaking his head as if he were speaking about a naughty child.
“Pardon me?”
“He says that over and over again. Devil’s chain, Devil’s chain.” Melvin shivered. “Gives me the creeps.”
The Devil’s Chain? Wasn’t that the name of those small islands near the mouth of the cove? Nancy tried to get some kind of response from Vincent, but he merely repeated the same words over and over.
Nancy was frowning as she said goodbye to Melvin, thanked the nurse, and left the infirmary. She took off her shoes and ambled aimlessly along the beach, deep in thought. Devil’s Chain—did it mean anything? As the cool water splashed over her calves, she curled her bare toes in the sand and stared out at the cove.
From there the islands in the Devil’s Chain were just tiny black mounds in the water. She stood staring at the bleak-looking islands. Vincent himself had said they were uninhabitable.
That was when it hit her. Had Vincent given away Maria’s hiding place? Nancy blinked, then took another look at the black, rocky pieces of land. It was just a hunch, but she had to check it out.
Nancy hurried down the beach to the boathouse, where she arranged to take out a small sailboat. While she was waiting for a staff member to check out the gear, the waterfront director waved Nancy over to him.
“There’s a slight hitch with your boat,” he said. “We’ll have to find you another one. If you’ll just wait over there,” he said, pointing to the far side of the boathouse, “I’ll call you when we get one ready.”
As Nancy rounded the corner of the boat-house, she wondered why the director, and not the staff member checking her sailboat, knew the boat wasn’t fit to sail. But then she stopped short.
Steven Gibbs was sitting on the edge of a motorboat, his arms crossed over his chest. “Still exploring, eh, Nancy?” He smiled, but she wasn’t fooled by his fake charm.
Nancy glared at him, then realized that it was deserted on this side of the boathouse. A deep sense of foreboding came over her as her eyes darted around the empty dock. But before she could move, everything went black.
Chapter
Fifteen
A DEEP BLUE SKY dotted with silky white clouds whirled above Nancy’s eyes. She blinked, wondering why her legs and wrists were throbbing and her head hurt so much. Then she remembered—Gibbs. Someone must have hit her over the head and tied her up.
A sideways glance told her that she was lying in the hull of a motorboat. She heard the rumble of the engine and felt the rocking of the boat as it slapped across the surf.
“Ah, our guest is awake.” Gibbs’s blond head loomed into view as he leaned over her. “I’m sorry about that little bump on the head, but we didn’t want you to miss the cruise, did we?”
An eerie laugh rang out from the rear of the boat, and Nancy recognized Daniel’s voice right away. No doubt he was the one who had knocked her out. No one must have seen him hit her, and no one would have noticed her tucked low in the hull as the boat sped out to the cove.
Pushing with her feet, Nancy managed to prop herself up so she could sit upright. Daniel objected at first, but Gibbs called him off.
“We’re far enough from shore,” he said. “No one will be able to see her. We want our guest to be as comfortable as possible, afte
r all.”
Somehow, Nancy didn’t think that her comfort was truly his prime consideration. “I should never have listened when that guy asked me to step around the boathouse,” she muttered, her head throbbing.
“Who, the waterfront director?” Gibbs asked. “Fortunately, some employees follow directions. He had no idea what we were up to—though, of course, I knew what you were up to.”
He tossed back his blond head in an arrogant gesture and continued, “I was suspicious of that story your friend gave me last night. A bouncing coconut? Come on. When I went back and checked the roof, it was obvious that someone had been spying on us.” He leaned closer to Nancy. “In other words, you’ve been caught snooping around.”
Nancy glared at him but didn’t say anything.
“Actually,” Gibbs continued, “I’m sorry about the turn your whole vacation has taken. Imagine a beautiful girl detective disappearing from an exclusive Caribbean resort! The press will have a field day with us, but I’m afraid I have no other choice.”
Looking over her shoulder, Nancy saw that the beach was shrinking from view as the boat moved toward the mouth of the cove. “It won’t do you any good to get rid of me,” she told Gibbs. “I’m not the only one who knows that Pineapple Grove is just a front for a secret moneymaking operation.”
“You make it sound so mercenary,” Gibbs protested, “when in fact I’m giving people a chance to buy their freedom. In many cases, I’m reuniting families. I like to see it as a humanitarian endeavor.”
“An illegal endeavor,” Nancy said.
Gibbs waved off her comment. “Save your arguments for the guys who smuggle drugs and jewels. There’s nothing immoral about helping people enter the U.S.”
Nancy couldn’t believe he really thought that there was nothing immoral about being a criminal! But she had to admit he was a slick one. “How did you come up with copies of the lawful permanent resident certificates?” she asked him. “I thought U.S. documents were difficult to forge—like dollar bills.”
“You’re right.” Gibbs beamed with pride. “But our certificates aren’t forged—they’re the real thing. I have a good friend in the Department of Immigration who managed to get me a packet of original blank certificates—for a price, of course.”
“They’re beyond dispute when our clients show them to immigrations officers. We supply our clients with nothing less than the best,” Daniel finished with a hearty laugh.
“After we found the means of supplying identification, we only needed to select a convenient location to process our clients’ paperwork,” Gibbs explained. “I considered a resort on the mainland, but it would have been much more difficult to get our clients past the Coast Guard and border patrol.”
Nancy looked at Gibbs curiously. “Doesn’t the U.S. Coast Guard patrol the waters in the U.S. Virgin Islands?” she asked.
“Yes, but so far we’ve been able to give them the slip. It’s easier here in the Caribbean, where territorial waters crisscross so much.”
“So you built this whole resort as a cover for the smuggling operation,” Nancy guessed. Gibbs was turning out to be slimier every second!
“Very perceptive,” he told her. “A resort is always filled with people from different countries who are constantly coming and going. What better cover? And most of my clients choose to stay for a few days, as a sort of adjustment period.”
He kept on talking, obviously enjoying bragging about his criminal activity. “Once our clients reach the continental U.S., they have the proper paperwork to get a job and a Social Security number. They have all the rights of a citizen. Our system usually works like a charm.”
Nancy couldn’t believe how arrogant Gibbs was, but at least he was answering some important questions. “What really happened to Eva Rivera? And the Cordero brothers?” she asked.
Gibbs gave Nancy a stern look. “I instructed them to leave immediately after you met them. When your friends told me you were a detective, I kept an eye on you. And it’s a good thing, too. In just a matter of an hour or so you almost got that girl Eva’s picture as a souvenir. And photographs of my clients could make for damaging evidence.”
Nancy nodded. So that was why Gibbs had thrown a fit over the appearance of “guests” in the Hot Rods’ video. She was beginning to see how all the pieces fit together. Except for one.
Looking closely at Gibbs, she said, “Something went wrong in the case of Maria Angeles. What?”
Gibbs sighed. “I have recently discovered that some of my employees are greedy.”
“You call it greed,” Daniel chimed in, “Vincent and I call it free enterprise. We take thousands of crisp American dollars into our hands—but they go straight to you. We want a bigger piece of the action.”
“I’m not cutting you in, and that’s final,” Gibbs snapped, losing some of his good humor.
“If you treated us better,” Daniel shot back, “we might not have kidnapped the girl.”
Nancy watched the exchange between the two men with interest. She had thought that Gibbs had called all the shots—including keeping Maria hostage. Now it seemed that Daniel and Vincent had pulled a fast one behind his back.
“Your feeble attempt at a kidnapping cost me!” Gibbs barked angrily. “How could you be so stupid as to rob the poor girl, then let her die? What kind of ransom do you expect for a dead girl?”
Maria, dead? Nancy didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it.
“And then the bumbling attempts on Ricky’s life—not to mention your little spat with Vincent that landed him in the infirmary.” Fury glittered in Steven Gibbs’s eyes.
“Vincent was supposed to take care of Ricky Angeles on the bike trip, but he botched it,” Daniel said, defending himself. “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard, but after he messed up the bike accident, I flew off the handle.”
Gibbs turned to Nancy. “Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about all this nonsense until it was too late. Imagine, trying to kill off one of the guests! I only found out about it when Vincent was out of commission and Daniel needed my help in processing our new arrivals.” He shot Daniel a reproachful look. “Don’t talk to me about more money. Incompetence will not be rewarded. Your foolishness has put our entire operation at risk.”
Nancy noticed that they were approaching the Devil’s Chain. Now that Maria was dead, the rocky, blackened clumps of land looked more threatening than ever. Gibbs and Daniel had answered all her questions about the case, but now they were going to make sure she kept quiet about it—for good!
Nancy was still looking at the Devil’s Chain when Gibbs turned back to her. “I really am sorry that things have to end this way. Killing people is not what Pineapple Grove is about,” he said with a sigh. “But now that Daniel and Vincent started this mess, I have to see it through to protect my interests.”
Daniel cut the engine as the boat reached one of the rocky islands, and used an oar to navigate carefully through the jutting rocks. Finally he grabbed a craggy boulder and anchored the boat to it.
Gibbs stood up and climbed from the boat to the boulder. “Shall we?”
Before Nancy knew what was happening, Daniel lifted her in his arms and draped her over his shoulder. As she was being carried, Nancy searched frantically for a means of escape. She saw none—her only hope was in trying to talk some sense into Gibbs.
“You’ll never get away with this,” she called, bouncing against Daniel’s back.
“Save your breath,” Gibbs said.
A moment later Nancy felt herself being lowered to the ground. Daniel grabbed her by the waist and dragged her into a sitting position on the sandy bottom of a tide pool. Nancy gasped as seawater seeped into her sneakers and clothes. The water level came up to her shoulders, and she was leaning against the smooth edge of a large rock. “What are you trying to do?” she asked.
“Destroy incriminating evidence,” Daniel said as he looped a rope around Nancy’s waist and tied her to the boulder. “At the moment,
that includes you. You got away from that steel barrel. But this time the ocean will do our dirty work for us.”
It was no use arguing with him. After all, he’d already tried to kill both her and Ricky. Nancy looked around at Gibbs. “Steven, you can’t condone this. It’s just not your style,” she said in as firm a voice as she could.
Gibbs merely shrugged, then glanced at his watch. “Our timing is just right. The tide is coming in.” As he spoke, a wave crashed over the surrounding rocks, spraying salt water into Nancy’s face.
Nancy blinked until the stinging sensation was gone from her eyes. If the tide was coming in, the water level in the tide pool would be rising. In just a few minutes it would be over her head!
Daniel smiled down at her. “I’ll be back in a few hours to cut off the ropes.” His hollow laughter chilled her.
“The coroner’s report will say death by drowning,” Gibbs said wistfully. “And everyone will mourn the foolish girl who swam too far from shore.”
Drowning! Nancy squirmed, but the rope around her waist kept her in place.
“Don’t add murder to the charges you’re already facing,” Nancy told Gibbs. “Juries don’t take kindly to killers.”
“There will be no charges at all,” Gibbs said calmly. “Why do you think I’m going to the trouble of eliminating you?”
In a much calmer voice than she felt, Nancy said, “My friends went to the authorities this morning. Immigration agents and local police are probably waiting for you at the resort this very minute!”
“Ah, yes, George Fayne and Bess Marvin. My people told me they were taking the air taxi to Saint Thomas this morning.” Gibbs shook his head. “I had a hunch that they were part of your little detective team. That’s why I took the precaution of calling an old acquaintance of mine, in Saint Thomas. He’s very good with a knife. Of course,” Gibbs continued, “my friend will make it look like a robbery. Two unfortunate tourists who resisted a mugger and paid the price with their lives.”