“Where?” Bess wanted to know.
“To the Rosita.”
“You think Lila has Kim on her boat?” George asked.
“Kim and Maria,” Nancy said. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? They’re the only two people who can point a ringer at Lila. She knows she has to get rid of them, and the Rosita is a perfect way to do it.”
Bess’s face turned pale under its tan. “You mean she’ll kill them and dump them in the ocean?”
Nancy nodded. “Don’t forget Ricardo,” she said. “Lila Templeton has killed before, and unless we stop her, she’s going to kill again.”
Chapter Twelve
At seven-thirty that night, the Rosita sat peacefully at the dock, swaying slightly in the breeze. It was a beautiful boat, sleek and trim, but with enough deck space for close to fifty people to dance on. Its rails were strung with brightly colored lights, and from somewhere on board, powerful speakers blasted rock music into the evening air. It was scheduled to leave at eight o’clock, and already the decks were filling with laughing, joking people, eager to party the night away.
As Nancy, Bess, and George joined a crowd of kids heading for the gangplank, Nancy raised her eyes and scanned the crew on the small upper deck. “I just spotted my friend the maintenance man,” she whispered. “The florist is up there, too.”
“And there’s Dirk the Jerk,” Bess hissed. “Is it my imagination, or does he look nervous?”
Dirk Bowman, wearing white cotton shorts and a muscle-hugging T-shirt, was standing at the rail, his eyes roving over the approaching partiers.
“I’d be nervous too,” George said, “if I had Kim and Maria hidden away in the hold somewhere.”
“Lila probably ordered them all to keep an eye out for me,” Nancy said.
“But she thinks you’re dead,” Bess reminded her.
“She can’t be sure,” Nancy told her. “If she sent one of her goons to check, all he would have found is the sash from my sundress. Until she hears about my body being washed ashore, she can’t take any chances.”
“We’re the ones taking a chance right now,” George remarked. “If Dirk spots the three of us together, he’s going to see right through our ‘disguises.’ ”
Nancy nodded. She wished they really could have disguised themselves, but after all, they had to wear clothes that were right for a party to nowhere. George had on a long striped caftan with a hood that covered her hair and shadowed her face. Bess, whose figure was a dead giveaway, especially to Dirk, had reluctantly decided on a pair of baggy cotton pants, rolled to the knees and topped with an oversized shirt patterned with gaudy palm trees. “I look like a tourist,” she’d complained, tucking her blond hair under a wide-brimmed straw hat.
Nancy was wearing a caftan too, but it didn’t have a hood. She’d wrapped her hair in a bright paisley scarf, like a turban, and put on so much makeup that her face itched and her eyelids felt weighted down. She knew she and her friends looked completely different, but she also knew they had to be careful. “You’re right,” she said to George, “we’d better split up. As soon as the Rosita gets going, we can meet somewhere—how about the bow?—and start looking for Kim and Maria.”
The minute the three friends parted, Nancy felt a hand on her arm. “Hey,” a voice said in her ear, “want some company?”
Nancy turned and found herself looking into the brown eyes of a boy wearing a fish-net shirt, a gold neck chain, and a self-satisfied grin that didn’t attract her at all, but she smiled at him anyway. “I sure do,” she said softly. “I don’t know anybody at all, and I was starting to feel a little lonely.”
“Well, now you don’t have to, because you know me. And I have a feeling that before the night’s over, we’ll be real close friends.” He squeezed her hand and grinned again.
Nancy forced herself to laugh, and as they walked up the gangplank she glanced over her shoulder. George, tall and mysterious-looking in her hooded caftan, was in deep conversation with two guys, and Bess had attached herself to a group of giggling, dateless girls. She must be miserable, Nancy thought, smiling to herself.