Funhouse (12 page)

“You’re turning into a nervous wreck,” he accused gently. “Everybody says so. If you don’t relax—”

“Of course I’m a nervous wreck!” she shouted, losing control. “And you would be, too, if you had half a brain! Haven’t you even noticed that the kids hurt the worst so far all have parents on The Boardwalk’s board of directors?”

He hadn’t. She could tell by the startled look on his face. “What?”

“And that’s something they all have in common with
you,”
she continued. “Your father is a director, too. So is mine.” Her voice rose again, “So why
aren’t
you a nervous wreck?”

Sam began walking in a small circle around her, his head down. “Never even crossed my mind,” he said. “What made you come up with such a crazy theory?”

“Facts, Sam, facts,” she said crossly. “Can’t you
see
it? Can’t you even admit that it’s a possibility? That someone is out to ruin The Boardwalk and hurt a lot of people at the same time? It’s the only answer that makes sense.”

He stopped pacing to look at her. “Got any idea who it might be? This crazy phantom of yours? And why he’s freaked out?”

She shook her head. “I have a couple of possibilities, but no proof. And it’s no phantom, Sam. Phantoms don’t send threatening notes and make nasty phone calls.” She should have kept the note. It was more convincing than anything she could say. Too late now.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not saying you’re right or you’re wrong. But if you’re even close to the truth, why haven’t you moved back to your father’s house? You’d be safe there. I don’t see how you can think what you think and still stay alone in that condo out there in the woods. Makes no sense.”

She had been thinking about doing exactly that, moving back with her father and Guy Joe, just until this nightmare was over. But if Sam wasn’t convinced that her theory was a valid one, what business did he have accusing her of being foolish? Either there was a reason to be afraid or there wasn’t. Sam couldn’t have it both ways.

“Then you agree that my theory makes sense?”

“I didn’t say that. But if
you
think it does, why are you still in the condo? If Chalmers and the board are covering up something, this is no time for someone like you to be all alone out there in the woods.”

“Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?” Occasionally biting her nails and twisting her hair didn’t mean she needed a keeper! He was being so patronizing, she thought angrily.

“Someone,” he said firmly, “who gets spooked just looking at a roller coaster that isn’t even working. Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“And why can’t you take me seriously?” she shouted. “Why can’t you admit that everything I’ve said makes sense?”

In exasperation, he reached out and took hold of her shoulders, as if he was about to shake her. Instead, he pulled her close to him, bent his head, and kissed her. “There,” he said as she pushed him away, “is that taking you seriously enough?”

The kiss had unsettled her. Flustered, she said angrily, “What is that, some kind of therapy for people you consider nervous wrecks? Well, it didn’t work. I still think I’m right, and until you do, too, I don’t want to talk to you. Go away!”

“Oh, I give up!” he shouted in disgust, and turned in the sand to stride away from her, throwing his hands up in the air as he walked.

She watched until he became a blurred shadow in the darkness. She was sorry she’d ever agreed to take a walk with him.

Why hadn’t he been willing to discuss her question about the victims being kids of the board of directors? It was worth discussing. It could be the key to this whole, ugly business.

She was
not
going to follow him. Not yet. No trailing after him like a lost puppy. She wasn’t wild about staying out here under The Devil’s Elbow by herself, but it was better than following Sam as if he were her keeper. She’d sit on the sand for a while to cool off, and then rejoin the party. Laughter and music rang out from the place where Trudy was celebrating her birthday. It sounded like fun. She’d go back in a few minutes.

The sand was damp, and soothed her fingers as she dug into it, molding little hills on either side of her as she watched the surf teasing the shore.

Her left hand touched something hard and sharp, buried in the sand. She pulled out the object and turned toward The Boardwalk to give herself more light. The object appeared to be a small stone—some type of gem. Holding it up to the light, Tess saw that it was blue. And she’d seen stones like this before. It wasn’t particularly valuable, she was sure of that. It was something very common.

Of course!
It was the kind of stone worn in Santa Luisa High School class rings. She’d bought hers early in September. But it had proved to be so bulky that she seldom wore it, keeping it instead in her jewelry box.

Someone in town wasn’t wearing theirs at all. A class ring would look pretty stupid with the stone missing.

She stood up, stone in hand. She looked around, frowning. And looked down at the spot where she’d been sitting. It was directly beneath that last gentle curve in The Devil’s Elbow’s tracks.

That probably meant nothing, Tess tried to assure herself. Everyone in town wore Santa Luisa High class rings. And stones probably fell out of them all the time.

Or did it mean the stone belonged to the person who had tampered with the roller coaster?

Anyway, the stone couldn’t be identified. Only the rings were identifiable. And she didn’t have the ring belonging to this stone.

But she slipped the stone into the pocket of her red long-sleeved shirt. She couldn’t have said why. It seemed the right thing to do.

Then she hurried back to the party.

She was halfway there when the quiet hit her. There was supposed to be a party going on ahead of her, but there was no noise. Quiet as a tomb. That didn’t make sense. Where had the laughter, the music gone?

Her steps quickened. They hadn’t left without her, had they? Left her alone out here? No, they wouldn’t do that. Guy Joe wouldn’t.

Then, half running across the hard-packed sand, she heard sounds coming from the direction of the blankets.

But they weren’t party sounds.

The sounds she heard were moans and groans, sounds of pain. Almost like a muted version of the sounds she’d heard on the boardwalk the night The Devil’s Elbow had crashed.

Heart pounding, she ran the last few steps.

And arrived on the scene to find everyone but Sam and Trudy writhing in agony on the sand, clutching their stomachs and moaning in pain.

T
ESS RAN TO
S
AM
and clutched at his elbow. “What? What’s happening? What’s wrong with them?” she cried, her eyes on her agonized Mends.

“Don’t know. They just doubled over all of a sudden, a second ago. Trudy,” he barked, “get an ambulance! Hurry!”

Trudy ran. When she had gone, Tess turned to Sam in tears. “I didn’t want to be right about something bad happening. I
didn’t!”

“I know that,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s see if we can do something for them.”

But the only thing they could do was cover everyone with a jacket or sweater, and wait.

When Trudy returned, breathless, she began wringing her hands as she saw that nothing had changed. “I can’t believe this is happening!” she shrieked. “What is the
matter
with them?” Then her eyes narrowed in suspicion, focusing on Beak, who was rolling from side to side on the sand, moaning. “Beak, if this is one of your practical jokes, I swear I’ll strangle you! You’re ruining my party.”

“Get real, Trudy!” Sam snapped as sirens began, once again, to approach The Boardwalk. “Look at their faces. Does it look like anyone’s joking?”

Tess, thinking wearily that she would be hearing sirens in her sleep for the rest of her life, knelt by Guy Joe’s side. His pain was so great he had bitten through his bottom lip. A thin stream of blood pooled on his chin. She took one of his hands in hers, but he gripped it so hard, she cried out in pain and he let go. Tess hadn’t felt so helpless since the night she’d been trapped in the muddy, unfinished swimming pool.

Sam bent over her. “Did you eat any brownies?” he asked, his voice low.

“What?” What was taking that ambulance so long?

“I said, did you eat any of those brownies Trudy passed around?”

“No. I wanted real food, remember? Why?”

Sam crouched beside her. A distraught Trudy was tossing party things into bags and baskets, muttering in distress to herself, and the injured were too preoccupied with their pain to listen to Sam. Still, he kept his voice low. “Because I didn’t eat any, either. And I’m fine. And Trudy’s on a diet. But Beak and Guy Joe each polished off a couple of pieces, and Doss had at least one. So did Candace. Get the picture?”

Before she could concentrate on the meaning of Sam’s words, the ambulance arrived.

When the attendants had asked about booze and drugs and been assured that none of either were used at the party, Sam handed one of the paramedics the red box, now empty of all but a small chunk of chocolatey cookie. “Brownies,” he said brusquely. “They ate them. We didn’t.”

Asking no further questions, the attendants took the red box with them when they drove away with the patients.

Sam, Trudy, and Tess followed the ambulance in Sam’s car. They were sitting in the now familiar waiting room when the parents of the victims began rushing in.

“Tess,” her father demanded when he arrived, “what is going on? What’s happened to your brother? And where were you when it happened?” He was, as always, impeccably dressed in tan slacks and a pale blue sweater. His thick white hair was perfectly in place. And his blue eyes were as cold as ice.

“I was there,” she answered defensively. “And to answer your next question, it wasn’t drugs or booze. It was probably brownies.”

Thick, white eyebrows aimed for the sky. “Brownies?”

“Trudy had a box of them at the party. Everyone who ate them got sick,” Tess elaborated, sinking back into her orange plastic chair.

“Are you talking about ptomaine poisoning?” he demanded. “Who made these brownies?”

“I guess they were a gift,” she said vaguely. “Only we don’t know who from. From whom. There wasn’t any card on the box. Trudy said she found it sitting on the picnic hamper.”

The other parents had joined Tess and her father and were listening intently to every word. Mrs. Beecham, wearing a very expensive-looking but outdated black dress and black shoes with worn heels, hovered on the edge of the group as if unsure of her welcome. Beak’s parents, whose formal clothing told Tess they’d probably been enjoying a Saturday night at the Country Club, looked concerned, and Sam’s father, in golf clothes, stood beside his son, looking annoyed.

“Are you
sure
you weren’t fooling around with drugs?” Mrs. Rapp asked Trudy. “We have, of course, always considered the possibility that Robert might experiment with controlled substances. And he hasn’t been himself lately. He seems angry about something, and has been remarkably rude lately. His younger sisters have just about had it with him.”

“No drugs!” a teary-eyed Trudy shouted. “We said it wasn’t drugs or booze and it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t,” a strange voice agreed. The voice came from the doorway.

All heads turned. A tall, thin man in a white jacket came toward them. He wore glasses and carried a clipboard.

“Doctor Joe Tanner,” he said. “I’ve been pumping the kids’ stomachs. They’ll be okay. Miserable, but okay. We’ll keep them here overnight to make sure there’s no permanent damage.” Then looking at Mrs. Rapp, he added, “These kids are telling you the truth. It wasn’t drugs or booze. Their friends were poisoned.”

There was a stunned silence. Sam looked over at Tess, the expression on his face grim.

“Poisoned?” Trudy asked in a small voice. “You mean it wasn’t just someone making a mistake when they baked the brownies? Like putting in too much of something or not enough of something else?”

The doctor shook his head. “This was no accident, if that’s what you mean. Looks like rat poison, although we can’t be sure until the lab has analyzed the remaining brownie. But it’s definitely poison. Fast-acting.” He looked down at the chart in his hands. “Is there a Beecham here?”

Mrs. Beecham moved forward hesitantly.

“Your son can go home tonight. Donald, that’s his name?”

She nodded. “Doss. Everyone calls him Doss.”

“He must not have consumed as much of the tainted food as the others. Very minor damage to his gastrointestinal system. I’m releasing him.”

Maybe the reason Doss wasn’t very hungry, Tess thought angrily, was that he
knew
the brownies weren’t exactly a health food. And if someone had poisoned food at a party and wanted to avoid suspicion, wouldn’t that someone eat just a little bit of that food? Enough to make that someone look like one of the victims?

Was that what Doss had done?

“Are you telling us,” Tess’s father asked, “that someone tried to
kill
my son?”

Tess shot him a look of disgust. Wasn’t it just like him to see the problem only in terms of himself? There were two other boys and a girl in that emergency room.

“No.” Dr. Tanner shook his head. “I’m not telling you that. There wasn’t enough poison in any of the kids to kill them. Either the guilty party didn’t know his toxicology, or he never intended to take anyone’s life. Just make them suffer. A lot.”

Tess tried to take it all in. Poison! No way could this be called an accident. It had been deliberate. The doctor had said so.

“I’ve got to get back,” the doctor said. “But the police are here and I think they want to talk to all of you, so don’t leave, okay?”

Sam and Trudy and Tess nodded silently.

When he had gone, taking the parents with him, a depressed silence fell over the group. Trudy was crying quietly in a corner. But Tess wasn’t impressed. Trudy Slaughter had acted the lead in several plays at school. And she’d been very good. Very convincing.

Those brownies had shown up at
her
party. She’d told Tess tearfully that they’d been a gift. But there hadn’t been a card.