Nancy looked desperately for another escape route. She was about to slip out of Lisa’s room when she heard the front door open. Footsteps crossed the entry and were heading her way.
Nancy was trapped.
Chapter
Six
SO WHAT DID YOU DO?” Bess asked, eagerly leaning forward across the dining table. She kept her voice low so the other guests wouldn’t hear.
“Yes, how did you escape without being found out?” George added quietly.
Nancy stopped buttering a roll to answer. “I’d figured out Lisa didn’t share a bedroom. So it was pretty good odds that whoever was in the living room wouldn’t come into Lisa’s room. So I just hid in the closet, and when I heard the other bedroom door close I sneaked out and left the cabin by the front door.”
“You’ve got guts.” Bess speared a cherry tomato, dipped it in dressing, and popped it into her mouth. “It’s a good thing you’re the detective, and not me. I would’ve panicked and tried to think up some unbelievable story for her roommate. Guess I don’t have the stomach to be an investigator.”
“No, your stomach is too busy consuming food,” George teased her cousin.
“And is this food good,” Bess answered, not at all bothered by George’s remark. “As far as I’m concerned, Nan, we can take forever to solve this case. When I’m not working, I’ll lie around the pool and eat.”
“And get fat,” George added under her breath. “Maybe you should consider doing a little jogging.”
“Uh-uh.” Bess shook her head. “You know jogging’s not my thing. But maybe a little after-dinner dancing might be beneficial.” She smiled at the retreating figure of a six-foot-tall hunk who had just passed their table.
“Back to the case,” George said in a low tone, looking around to make sure there was no possibility of being overheard. “Do you really think it could be Lisa Gregson who’s behind all this?”
“I’ll say this much.” Nancy took a sip of her ice water. “I consider her a definite suspect. She’s a girl who’s apparently desperate for attention. And desperate people do desperate things.”
“But hold on,” George argued. “Unless she had an accomplice, how could she have been in Quinn’s cabin, pushing you over the railing, and be in the infirmary at the same time?”
“That occurred to me,” Nancy replied. “I called the infirmary before dinner. No one was there, except Lisa, during that time. Even the nurse had stepped out for a little while. So Lisa doesn’t have an alibi. She could easily have left, gone to Quinn’s cabin, and returned without being seen. Especially if she went through the woods.”
“But what about Lisa’s accident?” Bess asked. “I can’t believe anyone would stage an accident like that on purpose. She could have been killed.”
“We still don’t know if the glider was tampered with,” Nancy said with a shrug. “Lisa has had some experience with hang gliding. So it’s possible she could fake a problem that only looked dangerous.” Nancy reached for the salt.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I’ll know more tomorrow. On my way over here tonight, I stopped and signed up for a hang-gliding lesson early in the morning. I’ll talk to Gil Forrest about the damaged glider then, too. He should have had time to check it out.”
“I should take the class with you,” George suggested. “I could keep my eye on Gil.”
“I’ve already signed you up,” Nancy answered her friend with a grin.
“Well, that’s fine for you guys. But I’m going to stay on the ground where it’s safe,” Bess said. “Now, for tonight, I want to stop thinking about the case and start dancing.”
Bess shoved her chair back and stood up. “I think I see my partner now,” she said mischievously.
• • •
Early the next morning Nancy and George were standing, along with five other students, at the top of a gentle slope at the far end of a meadow. Gil Forrest was talking to them, a row of gliders behind them. Their multicolored sails were bright against the green grass.
The students all wore standard orange jumpsuits. Nancy cradled her helmet in her arms as she listened to Gil introduce them to the sport of hang gliding.
“First, let me assure you that there is nothing complicated about this sport. There are successful twelve-year-old hang-glider pilots. And good gliders don’t have to have a lot of strength.” Gil glanced in the direction of one of the more petite students.
“But the wings,” the petite student spoke up. “They’re so huge. How are we supposed to carry those things?”
Gil grinned at her. “The ground maneuvering of what is essentially a large kite—with about a twenty-two-foot wing span for women, and a twenty-six-foot span for guys—can be a bit of fun to get used to at first.” There were a couple of groans. “But, I promise”—Gil held up a hand—“it’s easier than you’d believe. And once you’re in the air, you’ll be very glad you have all that sail to play with.”
“You just said the magic word,” a good-looking blond guy yelled out. “When do we get to do that? Go into the air? I thought you had to jump off a cliff, or something. But I don’t see one around here.”
“Whoa!” Gil smiled. “We’re not going to do any jumping off cliffs for a while. You’ll need a few lessons under your belt before you tackle that sort of thing.”
“Then what do we do?” the blond guy yelled back with a grin. “Just run and jump into the air and hope we take off?”
‘You’ve got it,” Gil told him and grinned back. “And since you’re so smart, I’m going to let you go first. Come up here with me and we’ll get this harness on you.”
There was some easy laughter as the boy swaggered boldly up to Gil. “What’s your name?” Gil asked.
“Drake Reynolds.”
“All right. And thanks for volunteering, Drake.” There was another ripple of laughter before Gil went on. “Now, remember, there’s nothing difficult about this sport. There aren’t many rules. But you want to avoid breaking any of them—”
“Because then you’ll crash,” a student at the edge of the group interrupted. “Just like Lisa Gregson did, right?”
“We don’t know what happened with Lisa,” Gil replied in a subdued tone. Nancy noticed a muscle twitch at the corner of the instructor’s mouth. Then he recovered smoothly. “But you’re right,” Gil said. “Ignore the rules, and you will find yourself in trouble.”
Gil began helping Drake into a harness made of the nylon webbing Nancy recognized as being similar to those used by parachute jumpers.
“One of the first rules,” Gil was saying, “is to make sure your equipment—both your harness and glider—are in good condition.”
Nancy watched and wondered if Lisa had thought about this before she’d taken off on her last flight.
“Now let’s talk about getting off the ground,” Gil said. “What makes the glider sail like it does is the wind. When the air flows over the top of the wing surface, the sail creates a vacuum. The air flowing under the wing pushes the glider up as it tries to fill that vacuum.”
“That’s interesting,” George said to Nancy. “I’m going to remember that when we fly back home.”
“And the glider is constructed,” Gil continued, “so that you can get into the air with minimal wind speed. You’re going to be doing just what the Wright brothers did when they first began playing with the idea of flight.
“After you’ve put on your harnesses and attached yourself to your gliders, you’re going to run down this slope and allow the wind to pull you up into the air. You won’t be that far off the ground this first time, but it’ll seem high enough for most of you.” He patted Drake’s shoulder. “Even for you, I bet.”
“I’m ready.” Drake raised a fist into the air. “Let’s go for it!”
“All right. Let’s go over and hook you up.” Gil led Drake and the others to the waiting gliders.
When they had regrouped, Gil went on. “Now to learn how to stay up when you want to stay up. It has to d
o with the way you maneuver your glider.” He put his hand on a large triangle of aluminum tubing fixed to the bottom of the glider. “This is your control bar. Push it forward and the nose lifts, pull it back and the tail lifts, shoving the nose down—”
“Why would you want to push the nose down?” someone asked. “I thought you wanted to stay up.”
“Give me a second more and I’ll explain why,” Gil said. “Remember that wind that is keeping you aloft? Well, if you tilt your nose up too far your glider will stall. In order to get that airflow back, you’ll have to tilt your glider’s nose down.” He paused. “Ignore that rule, and you’ll drop like a rock.”
“Oh, boy,” the small girl spoke. “That does it for me. I’ve decided to skip this sport.” She sat down cross-legged on the grass. “You guys go on without me. I’m sticking to commercial jets.”
“That’s all right, Vicki,” Gil said. “This sport’s not for everyone. Anyone else who wants to drop out, please do. Don’t feel as if you have to prove something by staying in.” He waited, but no one else said anything.
“Okay, we’re almost finished.” Gil nodded. “You land by using the stall. But you do it only when you get close to the ground. You don’t want to crash, you want to land. Simply glide down to the ground, pull your nose up at the proper moment, and there you are—back on good old solid earth.”
At the end of her first hour of practice, Nancy discovered she had a real knack for hang gliding. It had taken her only a couple of false starts before she managed to maintain a short but successful flight. She was even able to make simple right and left turns by shifting her body as it hung in a free position in the harness.
“I really love this sport,” she told Gil as she slid out of her jumpsuit. “I guess it’s about as close as you can get to feeling like a bird.”
“Yes—free.” Gil agreed with her, and Nancy felt she was in touch with the real Gil—the man Marva loved. “I love it, too.” He took the jumpsuit and helmet from her. “You really should keep taking lessons after you go back home. Maybe join a club.”
“I think I’ll do that—”
“Hey, Nan.” George had hurried up and was interrupting. “I don’t mean to rush you, but if we’re going to make that rock-climbing class at Devil’s Rock, we’d better get a move on.”
“Okay,” Nancy said, lacing up her last hiking boot. “We’d better go.” She looked up at Gil. “I wanted to talk to you about the damaged glider. Did you have a chance to go over it?”
“I did. But what I found has me a little puzzled. I can show you now, if you want. Then I can drop you off at Devil’s Rock.”
The three of them piled into the club van and soon pulled up in front of a utilitarian-looking building behind the main complex.
“So this is all that was wrong?” Nancy asked, running her hand over the small bend in the frame of Lisa’s glider. “I would have expected more.”
“The thick grass absorbed most of the shock of the landing. There’s only that slight damage in the tubing of the leading edge—where you’re feeling now.” He shook his head. “What disturbs me is that there shouldn’t be any bends there at all. The glider came down on its keel, the other end.”
“You think this was done deliberately?” Nancy asked, pointing to the broken spot.
“Well, I can’t say for sure.” He ran a thumb thoughtfully down the side of his face. “But it’s possible. And whoever did it knew what he, or she, was doing. Because there’s just enough damage to affect the control but not enough that an experienced pilot would have too much difficulty saving himself.” He paused. “Or herself. Remember, Lisa Gregson’s logged a lot of time hang gliding.”
“Right.” Nancy nodded thoughtfully. Then, shaking her head, she said, “I guess we’d better get going.”
Back in the van, Gil headed for the foot of the mountains. “That’s Devil’s Rock,” he said, taking one hand off the wheel to point. “Over there.”
“I can see how it got its name,” George said, peering through the windshield.
Half a mile ahead of them a four-hundred-foot-high dome-shaped rock loomed bare against the dense forest of the mountains behind it. Natural ledges on the otherwise sheer granite front formed an evil-looking devil mask.
“It looks like a dangerous climb,” Nancy commented.
“Well, it can be. But any serious climb has its dangers.”
“It doesn’t scare me,” George said bravely.
“Here we are.” Gil slowed the van to a stop. “This is as close as we can get by road. That trail over there will take you up the side to the top. Normally the class meets down here, then goes up together. You’re a few minutes late, so they’ve probably gone on ahead.”
“We’re both in good shape,” Nancy said as she pushed down on the door handle. “I don’t think it’ll take us long to catch up.”
“Hope you enjoy the class.” Gil leaned over to pull the door shut after they got out. “Uncle Al is a good instructor. He’ll teach you everything there is about rock climbing.”
With a wave at the departing van, Nancy and George turned and started up the trail. The climb was steep and after several minutes the two had to pause to catch their breath.
“So, what do you think?” George asked, leaning back against a warm rock. “Do you think Lisa could have sabotaged her own glider?”
“It looks bad for her, doesn’t it?” Nancy remarked, bending down to tighten the laces on her hiking boots. “But the glider could have gotten that small dent another way, too. Maybe when it was loaded into the van, or taken out. Lisa could have forgotten her preflight check.” She straightened up. “It was pretty tough to spot. Gil had to show me where it was.”
“I don’t know,” George argued. “I say Lisa did it herself, to get attention.”
“But we need some hard evidence before we decide,” Nancy replied. She reached over to pat George on the arm. “If you’ve got your breath, let’s go. We have another lesson before the day’s over.”
George laughed and took the lead. “Right, boss,” she said.
After ten minutes of rough climbing, Nancy and George reached the top. When they got there, they found a class of eight students grouped about Uncle Al, the bear of a man Nancy remembered from the day before.
They were standing on the top of Devil’s Rock in the middle of an open area, about the size of a basketball court. All around them was a panorama of ocean, mountains, and forest.
Uncle Al was demonstrating the various types of knots used by rock climbers. As Nancy and George quietly took their places at the back of the group, Nancy noticed the instructor didn’t have everyone’s attention. A couple of guys were punching each other goodnaturedly, obviously enjoying some private joke.
“They’d better cut that out,” George whispered to Nancy. “If Uncle Al were glaring at me the way he is at those two, I’d be shaking in my boots.”
“I don’t blame him,” Nancy muttered. “This isn’t exactly the safest place in the world to horse around.”
Uncle Al had stopped his demonstration in midsentence.
Flinging away the rope he’d been using, he stared openly at the two guys. Then without warning he lunged at them, startling Nancy and the others.
Still moving, Uncle Al reached out a muscular arm and grabbed at the nearer, and smaller, of the two. The short guy nimbly stepped aside, and Uncle Al’s elbow caught the bigger boy in the shoulder. Al’s blow sent him way off balance.
A girl screamed, and Nancy and George watched, horrified, as the beefy teenager lost his footing, teetered, and flapped his arms. Almost in slow motion, the boy started to fall backward over the edge of Devil’s Rock!
Chapter
Seven
PUMPING HIS MUSCULAR ARMS, the boy managed to throw his weight forward and land sprawled on his stomach across the hard rock surface. He was breathing in ragged gasps, and Nancy saw the color had drained from his face, leaving it a pasty gray.
From the student, Nancy l
ooked to where Al Hunt stood, also breathing hard. He kept staring at the boy until he was sure he was all right. Was that a look of fear Nancy saw in Al’s eyes? He must have realized that he had overreacted and that his mistake could have been fatal.
With a shake of his bearlike shoulders, Uncle Al pulled himself together. Walking over to where the student was sitting, the instructor held out his hand.
“Sorry, son,” he apologized in a controlled voice, as he helped the boy get up. “Didn’t mean to be quite so physical there.” He paused. “But it looked like you two were headed for danger. The top of this rock is slippery and it’s no place for anyone to act like a six-year-old.”
The young man was on his feet now, looking both embarrassed and angry. “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” he mumbled.
“Well,” Uncle Al answered, “I don’t take kindly to students who don’t pay attention when I’m trying to teach them something that might just save their lives.” He had turned his attention from the boy and was talking to the entire group.
“Okay, okay.” Nancy saw the student’s face had gone from white to red and his eyes were narrowing in anger. He looked as if he was more than ready to lose his temper over being made an example for the rest of the class. “I get the message. You want our undivided attention. You got it, Uncle Al.”
“Cool it, Ron,” his friend advised, seeing how upset he was. He put a hand on the young man’s arm. “The guy’s just doing his job. Why don’t we just sit down and let him do it.”
Al had picked up the demonstration rope and was explaining the fundamentals of rappelling. The two young men sat down on a rock outcropping near where Nancy and George were standing.
Despite Al’s warning, Nancy found herself listening to their whispered conversation rather than paying attention to the demonstration.
“I don’t think that old guy’s playing with a full deck,” Ron growled. “That was a really crazy thing he pulled on us. He could just as easily have pushed me over as kept me from falling.”