White Water Terror

Chapter Seven

Nancy walked toward the raft, Bess following her closely. “Can I help you, Mercedes?” she asked pleasantly.

Mercedes straightened up and jumped back. “Help me?” she stammered. “No, I… I was just looking… in Paula’s pack. For-for some sunscreen.”

Nancy pointed. “The pack you’re looking in just happens to be mine.”

“Yours?” Mercedes looked down. She gave a nervous little laugh. “How silly of me. Of course it’s yours. It even has your name on it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry. I hope you don’t think that I-”

“Well, as a matter of fact-” Bess began hotly.

“No, of course not,” Nancy interrupted, overriding her friend. “I’m sure it must be easy to make a mistake like that.”

Nodding, Mercedes backed away, then turned and hurried up the beach.

“Now, what was that all about?” Bess asked, turning to Nancy. “Mercedes knew what she was doing.”

Nancy looked quickly through her pack. “Nothing’s missing,” she said. “But you know, in a funny way this doesn’t surprise me. I’ve had the feeling all morning that Mercedes has been watching me.”

“Could she have anything to do with the mooring line?” Bess asked.

“I suppose so. But so could almost anybody else-especially Paula and Max.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Bess said. “I still don’t think that Max-”

Nancy held up her hand. “Finding a criminal is different from defending him in the courtroom, Bess. Out here, everybody is guilty until we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they’re innocent. No exceptions.”

Bess sighed. “Well, I still don’t think he did it,” she muttered.

Fifteen yards down the beach, everybody was beginning to gather around the fire that Paula had built. She and Max had spread sandwiches on a towel, along with apples and bananas and bags of chips. George and Ned were there, helping themselves, when Nancy and Bess arrived. The four friends sat down on the sand with their lunches, a little apart from the others.

“… and then she just walked away,” Nancy said in a low voice as she finished telling George and Ned how she and Bess had caught Mercedes rifling her pack. On the other side of the fire, Sammy and Mercedes were deep in conversation. Nancy wished she could hear what they were saying.

“Mercedes is Paula’s cousin, isn’t she?” George asked quietly. “Do you think it’s possible that Paula or Max asked her to look through your pack?”

“At this point, there’s no way to know-she might even have done it on her own,” Nancy said, ignoring the look Bess gave George. “You know, this is really an odd situation. Usually when I’m working on a case, I know what kind of crime we’re dealing with-and the clues usually make some sort of sense.”

“Yeah,” Ned agreed. He trailed his fingers idly up and down her spine. “But this time, there are just these crazy things that keep happening. Since there’s no real crime, it’s hard to know whether any of the things are tied together.”

“It’s all so bizarre,” Nancy said, moving a little closer to Ned. The touch of his fingers tingled through her. At that moment, Sammy looked up and saw what Ned was doing. She glared at him and then turned back to Mercedes.

George pushed a brown curl out of her eyes. “You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe the most bizarre thing of all was my winning the contest in the first place.”

Nancy nodded. “None of the other kids can remember entering the contest, either. It’s as though this whole thing were invented.” A shadow fell across her shoulder and George’s cautioning glance made Nancy stop talking.

“So you’ve had your first taste of rafting,” Max said, squatting down next to Bess. “Did you like it?” His voice was friendly, but his eyes were watchful. From the way Max had reacted when Bess asked about his scar, Nancy knew she would have to be cautious questioning him.

“Yeah, we’re having a good time,” Nancy said casually. “And we’re getting curious about the rafting business. Are there many rafting companies on Lost River?”

Max picked up a stick and turned it in his fingers. “Maybe a half-dozen or so. Most of them are headquartered up at the Junction.”

“Have you and Paula worked together often?” Nancy asked.

“Nope,” Max said, shaking his head.

Nancy waited, hoping he would say something else. “We’re sort of curious about her company, White Water Rafting,” she went on. “The sign on the building looked new. Has she been in business long?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And the contest,” Nancy pressed. “What do you know about the contest?”

“Nothing,” Max replied. “Paula just hired me to run the raft for this trip. She didn’t even tell me there was a contest. I heard that from one of the kids after I got here. It seemed a little weird to me.”

“Weird?”

“Oh, you know-I mean, what was she running a contest for, anyway? But what do I know? I’m just a rafter. I don’t know anything about the business end.” He raised an eyebrow, “You sure are asking a lot of questions.”

Nancy shrugged. “Just curious.”

“You know, I’ve got this feeling that I know you,” Max said. “Like maybe I’ve seen your picture somewhere. Have you been on television or something? Are you famous?”

“No, I wouldn’t say I’m famous.” Nancy decided it wouldn’t hurt to tell him who she was. “Actually, I’m a private detective.”

“A pretty famous private detective,” Ned put in proudly. “Internationally famous.”

“So maybe you have seen her picture,” Bess added. “She’s been in the newspapers more than once.”

“A detective?” Max asked, surprised. “You mean a private eye, like in books and on TV?”

Linda and Ralph wandered over. “A girl detective?” Linda asked curiously. At that, Mike and Tod broke away from the fire and joined the others. They listened intently.

“That’s right,” Nancy said, laughing.

Max gave her a long look, as if he were trying to remember something. “What kind of cases have you worked on?” he asked.

“Oh, all kinds,” Nancy said modestly. “Blackmail, sabotage, embezzlement, murder, theft… you name it-”

Suddenly Max gave a quick flicker of recognition-and then, just as suddenly, it was as if a shutter had closed down over Max’s eyes. He stood up abruptly. “Got to see about a few things,” he said. And he walked quickly away.

Bess looked at Nancy anxiously. She got to her feet, too. “I think I’ll just make sure Max isn’t angry about something.”

Nancy watched Bess follow Max as he walked away. Why had he gotten so upset? She could swear that he recognized her-but she couldn’t remember meeting him, and he wasn’t exactly the kind of person she would forget. Was Max trying to decide whether to tell her something? That was possible-but it was also possible there was something he would go to any lengths to keep her from finding out.

She frowned as Bess caught up with Max a little distance away. She wished that Bess could manage more control over her feelings. It really wasn’t a good idea for her to get so involved so quickly.

Linda stepped forward. “Gosh, I’ve never known a real detective,” she said with a shy smile.

“Well, I don’t know if I count,” Nancy said. “I’m a real detective, all right, but I’m on vacation.”

“Well, I sure hope we won’t need your services,” Ralph said cheerfully.

“Okay, everybody,” Paula called. “Lunch break’s over!”

By the time the rafts were loaded up again, the sun had faded behind a bank of threatening clouds. Mike asked George to trade places with him so he could ride with Tod. Sammy asked Mercedes to trade places with her, probably because she didn’t want to be around Ned and Nancy, so Mercedes sat just ahead of Nancy and Ned, with Tod and Mike in the bow together. Secretly, Nancy was glad that Sammy was on the other raft. And she welcomed the chance to talk to Mercedes. But it was difficult to find out anything from her.

“I don’t know the first thing about the contest,” Mercedes insisted with a nervous glance over her shoulder at Paula. Nancy sensed that Mercedes was afraid of her cousin. “When I heard about the trip, I asked Paula if I could go. That’s all.” She bit her thumbnail. “I thought it would be fun to get out on the river. I’ve never been rafting.”

“Did you see any advertisements for the contest?” Nancy asked in a low voice. “The others can’t remember entering it.” Mercedes shrugged and turned away.

Mercedes was afraid of her cousin. But why?

The afternoon was uneventful. For the first couple of hours, there was as much drifting as paddling, then Nancy began to notice that the water was moving more rapidly. Her raft was following the other one down a deep, shadowy gorge where the water ran even faster, foaming and curling against the rocks as the channel of the river narrowed and twisted. In the distance Nancy could hear a deeper sound, like faraway drums echoing between the walls of the cliffs.

“What’s that?” she asked nervously.

“Dead Man’s Falls,” Paula replied.

“Do you think we can skip that landmark?” Nancy kidded.

Tod laughed. “The name makes it sound worse than it is,” he said. “A couple of guys drowned there last year, but the rafter was at fault. Sloppy handling.”

“You don’t know that, Tod,” Paula said sharply. “Even the best raft-handlers have trouble there in high water, because of the way the rocks line up.”

“Is the water high right now?” Ned asked curiously.

Paula shook her head. “Nope. It’s only a four-foot drop, anyway. These eighteen-foot rafts are big enough to take it easily when the water’s down, the way it is now.”

They came around another bend, and at the far end, the riverbed began to step down in a series of small, rough rapids that tossed the raft against rock after rock. Nancy found herself clinging to the side.

“There’s the falls!” Tod shouted, pointing. Nancy looked. She could see Max’s raft just ahead.

“Okay,” Paula shouted. “This’ll be just like going down a steep sliding board. Once we’re over, the water will suck us down and then force us up again. It’ll be like riding a bucking horse, so hang on. Check your life vests to see that they’re fastened.”

Nancy looked at the other raft. “That idiot!” Nancy gasped, pointing to Bess. “She’s not wearing her life vest!”

“She probably didn’t think it looked pretty enough,” Ned said with a laugh. He sobered quickly. “She’s not a very strong swimmer, is she?”

Nancy shook her head, cinching her own life jacket a little tighter. “Sometimes Bess doesn’t have much sense,” she muttered.

The raft gathered speed as the current dragged it toward the falls. A few yards upstream, Max’s raft seemed to hang up against a rock. Frantically, Max fought the current with his oars, and Ralph tried to push off.

“Uh-oh!” Paula muttered. “That’s real trouble!”

Nancy and the others watched helplessly as the raft broke loose from the rock and was captured by the swirling water. It somersaulted broadside over the lip of the falls, heaving its shrieking passengers to almost certain death in the raging torrent.

“Bess!” Nancy screamed into the cold spray, hardly feeling it sting her face. “Answer me! Bess! Where are you?”