Chapter Eleven
“I missed it!” Nancy said. “I completely missed it!” She stepped into her new yellow drawstring shorts, pulled on a stretchy, yellow-striped tank top, and reached for the blow-dryer. “Kim said, ‘The . . . it was . . . Rosita.’ I kept thinking she meant a girl, and all the time she meant a boat!”
“You really think Lila Templeton brings people in illegally?” Bess asked.
“I think she does more than that,” Nancy said over the whine of the blow-dryer. “I think she brings them in, takes their money, and then ships them off to her family’s orange groves to work for nothing.”
“Cheap labor,” George remarked.
“The cheapest,” Nancy agreed. “No wonder she’s got so much money. No wonder the Rosita is just a big water toy to her. Except it isn’t really a toy,” she added. “It’s a perfect front for what she’s doing.”
“You mean while everybody’s partying on the island,” Bess said, “Lila takes the boat, picks up the immigrants, and hides them somewhere on the boat until she gets back to Fort Lauderdale?”
“Why not?” George asked. “The Rosita’s big enough.”
Nancy turned off the dryer. “I don’t think it’s just Lila, though,” she said. “Remember the guys I told you about—the ‘maintenance’ man and the one who dropped off the flowers at the hospital? When I was out on that pier, I thought I’d imagined them. But now I’m positive they were there.”
“You think they work for Lila,” George said.
“Right. It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Nancy asked. “That maintenance guy was as phony as a three-dollar bill; I just didn’t know what he was doing there. But he was probably checking the room to make sure there wasn’t any evidence against Lila. And the florist guy must have been checking to make sure Kim wasn’t spilling the beans.”
“I’ll bet they followed you around last night,” George told her. “And you led them right to Maria and Ricardo.”
Nancy nodded. “Lila’s got a whole fleet of gorgeous men doing her dirty work.” Her feet still sore, she limped over to the cot and, wincing, slipped on a pair of thongs. The sandals she’d worn the night before were lost forever on the beach. “And, Bess,” she said, “remember what happened when you first introduced me to Dirk?”
“How could I forget? He practically tripped over his own feet to stand next to you.” Bess rolled her eyes and shook her head. “The minute he met you, it was like I didn’t exist.”
“Not the minute he met me,” Nancy reminded her. “It was the minute I started talking about Kim.”
“That’s right,” George said. “He said he was ‘sort of a mystery nut’ and he’d like to help you.”
Bess shook her head again. “What a line!”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t using that line because he was interested in me,” Nancy said. “The only one he was interested in was Kim, and that’s because—”
“Because he works for Lila Templeton,” Bess finished with a groan. “How come I always fall for the wrong guy?” she asked, plopping down on one of the beds. “This time I really, really thought I’d found somebody special, and he turns out to be a creep, the creep!”
Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “Don’t feel too bad, Bess. I fell for him, too.” Grinning, she told them about the broken pole on her windsurfing sail. “I mean I really fell for him!”
“Well, now that we’ve got it all figured out,” George said, “what are we going to do about it?”
“Good question,” Bess remarked. “The only one who can prove anything is Maria, and who knows where she is?”
“Kim could prove it,” Nancy said, “if she’s still . . .” Instead of finishing the awful thought, Nancy reached for the phone and dialed Kim’s hospital room. “Now there’s no answer at all,” she reported.
“What could that mean?” Bess asked.
“I don’t know.” Nancy suddenly jumped up and headed for the door. “Come on, let’s get to the hospital and find out.”
Half an hour later, Nancy, Bess, and George were standing nervously outside the door to Kim’s hospital room. They looked at each other for a moment; then Nancy took a deep breath and pushed it open.