005 Hit and Run Holiday (2 page)

“Kim?” Nancy tried to keep her voice from shaking. “It’s going to be okay. Just don’t move.”

Gripping Nancy’s hand, Kim licked her lips and tried to say something. Her voice was so weak that Nancy could barely hear her.

“Rosita,” Kim whispered. “The . . . it was . . . Rosita.” She took another breath and
started to say something more, but then her eyelids fluttered closed and she was silent.

Nancy looked up and was surprised to see that a crowd of ten or fifteen people had gathered. She’d been concentrating so hard on Kim that she hadn’t even noticed them.

“Could someone call an ambulance, please?” Nancy asked.

An elderly man nodded his head. “Of course,” he said, and hurried away.

A voice close to Nancy asked, “Is she dead?”

The person who’d asked about Kim was a young woman, wearing the uniform of a hotel maid.

Nancy swallowed hard and shook her head. “No, she’s not dead,” she told her. “She’s breathing. But she passed out.”

The woman nodded and started to leave.

“Wait!” Nancy called. “Did you see what happened?”

“No, I didn’t,” the woman said. “I was inside. I heard a scream, but that’s all. I came out to see, and on the way, I told my boss to call the police. It sounded like a bad accident.”

“It was bad,” Nancy agreed grimly. “But it wasn’t an accident.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, miss,” the woman said, backing away. “I have to go to work now.”

In the distance, Nancy could hear the wail of
a siren, and she knew help was on the way. Still holding Kim’s hand, she glanced up at the other people. “Did anyone see it happen?” she asked. “Did anyone see who was driving the car?”

A few people shook their heads, but no one said anything.

I couldn’t have been the only one on the sidewalk, Nancy thought in frustration. Somebody must have seen something.

She knew they couldn’t have gotten the license plate number, though. In those few awful seconds before the car hit Kim, Nancy had noticed that it didn’t have a front plate, and as it tore off down the street, she realized that the back plate was missing too. But she’d been in such a hurry to get to Kim that she hadn’t taken the time to look for anything else.

“How about the make of car or the year?” Nancy asked the onlookers. “Or whether it had two doors or four doors?”

A few more heads were shaken.

“Anything?” Nancy asked desperately. “This is important. Didn’t anyone see
anything?”

Nancy scanned the crowd, trying to catch a sympathetic eye. At the edge of the group she noticed a young guy, about nineteen or twenty, wearing a black swimsuit. He was one of the handsomest boys Nancy had ever seen, with black hair and eyes and smooth, dark
gold skin. But it wasn’t his looks that caught her attention—it was the expression in his eyes. He’d been staring at Kim, but as Nancy watched he raised his head and glanced down the street, in the direction the car had gone. His eyes glittered, and his lips curled into a tight smile.

What kind of smile? Nancy wondered. An angry smile? A satisfied one?

But Nancy didn’t have time to do more than wonder. Its siren shrill and piercing, a police car rounded the corner, followed by an ambulance. The moment they came into sight, the crowd scattered, leaving Nancy alone with Kim.

“It was a hit and run,” she told the officer who hurried over to her. “The car didn’t bother to slow down for a second.”

The policeman nodded and began firing questions at Nancy. What was Kim’s name, where was she staying, where was she from? Nancy answered and then told him all she could about the accident, which wasn’t much. “There were a lot of people around,” she finished, “but they all split the minute they saw your car.”

Closing his pad, the policeman nodded again. “Illegals, probably,” he said. “Afraid to get involved.”

Nancy suddenly understood. If people were in the country illegally, they’d rather keep
their mouths shut than come forward and tell what they saw. Because if they had to testify in court, they’d be discovered, and then it would be goodbye, U.S.A.

Nancy looked over at Kim, who was being lifted gently onto a stretcher. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said, feeling both sorry for the illegals and frustrated with them. “My friend gets run down in front of half a dozen witnesses, but I’m the only one who sees anything.”

“Yeah, it’s tough,” the officer agreed. “There’s a lot of ugly business going on down here in paradise.”

Kim was being loaded into the ambulance by then. One of the medics jumped in after her.

“What about the car?” Nancy asked. “Do you think you’ll find it?”

“There’s not much to go on,” the officer replied frankly. “But we’ll give it our best shot.”

“Okay,” said Nancy. She climbed into the back of the ambulance and settled herself next to Kim. The medic closed the doors, and the ambulance pulled away, its siren going full blast.

Nancy thought about what the officer had meant—that if the car ever did turn up, it would probably be weeks later, in a junkyard somewhere. If they were lucky.

But Nancy wasn’t going to put her trust in luck. She might return to River Heights with her skin as winter-pale as when she left, but she was going to find out why her friend was deliberately run over on a bright, sunny day in the middle of paradise.

• • •

It was two o’clock by the time Nancy left the hospital. Kim was still unconscious, but the doctors were almost certain she’d be okay—the worst they could find were a bad concussion and a broken wrist. Nancy had called Kim’s mother, and Mrs. Baylor had said she’d be down later that afternoon if she had to hijack a plane to get there.

As Nancy walked down the street, she suddenly realized she was famished. She bought a hot dog from a stand on a street corner and wolfed it down while she headed toward Kim’s hotel. What she really wanted to do was jump in the ocean and swim until her nerves stopped jangling. But she couldn’t relax, not then. There was too much to find out. What kind of dangerous business had Kim gotten mixed up in? Why had the lock on her door been broken? Who was Ricardo? Who was Rosita?

Nancy knew that Kim’s room just might hold some of the answers to those questions, so she tried to ignore the gorgeous beach only yards away from her. She also tried to ignore
the gorgeous boys around her, but it wasn’t easy.

“Hey,” one of them said, “you look frazzled. I just happen to know a nice, secluded little spot half a mile down the beach . . .”

“Hey, you’re going to look like a cooked lobster soon if you’re not careful,” another one told her. “I’ll be glad to rub in your suntan lotion personally!”

Nancy turned them down, but even though she was worried about Kim, she couldn’t help smiling. Bess must be in absolute heaven, she thought. She glanced over at the crowded beach and realized that Bess and George didn’t even know about Kim yet. I’ll tell them later, she thought. First I’ve got to get a look at that hotel room. Remembering the broken lock, she figured it wouldn’t be too hard.

Nancy bounded up the stairs again instead of waiting for the elevator. Quietly she pushed open the door and stepped into the hall. Good. It was empty.

Nancy kept her fingers crossed that it would stay that way. The last thing she wanted was to be seen nosing around Kim’s room. She didn’t have any idea yet whom she was up against, and until she found out, she couldn’t trust a soul.

When Nancy reached room 207, she checked to make sure she was still alone, then
put her hand on the doorknob, expecting it to turn easily.

The knob didn’t turn at all. The door was locked.

Great, Nancy thought, just what I don’t need—an efficient hotel. She didn’t have her credit cards with her, so she couldn’t force the lock that way. She rummaged through her beach bag, trying to find something thin and made out of metal.

No luck. The only hardware she had was the small hook in the top of her extra bikini.

Well, why not? she thought. It took five minutes, but finally Nancy had the metal hook free of the cloth. She spent another minute unbending it, and at last she held a thin metal probe about as long as her little finger. If this works, she told herself, you will have set some sort of record for ingenuity.

Grinning, Nancy gently slid the “pick” into the keyhole.

Suddenly the knob turned, and the door started to open. Nancy was about to congratulate herself when she realized that she didn’t have anything to do with it. Someone—who probably didn’t belong there—was inside Kim’s room. And Nancy and the intruder were about to come face-to-face.

Q
UICKLY
N
ANCY
dropped her pick into her beach bag, stepped away from the door, and put on a confused expression, as if she were having trouble finding her room.

The door opened a little more, and a young man stuck his head out. In his left hand he held a very long pointed screwdriver. When he saw Nancy, his jaw hardened and his blue eyes turned icy. Nancy considered asking him what he was doing in the room, but his look stopped her. He might be involved in Kim’s “accident,” and if he was, Nancy didn’t want him suspicious of her.

“Oh, hi!” she said casually. “Can you tell me where room three-twelve is?”

Opening the door just wide enough to let himself out, the guy gave Nancy a long, cold look, then finally raised his chin and glanced at the ceiling.

Nancy looked up too, pretending she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. She noticed that he was wearing dark green pants and a matching shirt, the kind of uniform maintenance people wear. He must work for the hotel, Nancy thought, which was why he’d been in Kim’s room. He’d probably just fixed the lock.

“Oh!” she said, as if the light had finally dawned on her. “I’m on the wrong floor, huh?”

Nodding briefly, the guy pulled the door shut behind him, and then stood there, obviously waiting for her to leave.

Nancy heard the lock click and was glad she’d been prepared. Smiling brightly, she said, “No wonder I couldn’t find three-twelve! Thanks!”

“Mr. Friendly” glared at her again and finally headed for the stairs, so Nancy stood in front of the elevator, pretending to push the button. When she heard the last echo of his footsteps, she rushed back to room 207, fished out her pick, and went to work.

In just a couple of minutes, Nancy was inside Kim’s room.

It was a total disaster. Clothes were everywhere—hanging out of drawers, strewn across the floor, even spilling from the wastepaper basket. Postcards, paperbacks, makeup, and skin lotion were ripped, scattered, or overturned. The sheets were on the floor, and the mattress was half off the bed.

It was not the mess made by someone who was having too good a vacation to bother picking things up. It wasn’t even the mess made by a slob, Nancy thought. It was the kind of mess made by somebody who was looking for something.

Nancy didn’t have to wonder who had searched the room. It must have been handsome “Mr. Friendly,” the stone-faced maintenance man. No wonder he’d given her such a dirty look when he found her lurking outside the room. Obviously he didn’t work for the hotel, but just who did he work for? Ricardo? Rosita?

For a moment, Nancy was tempted to go after him, but then she decided it would be a waste of time. People who trashed hotel rooms didn’t wait around to answer questions. Mr. Friendly was long gone. She hoped.

The thing to do was figure out what he’d been looking for.

Afraid that somebody might be watching the hotel room, Nancy left the shades down and the lights off. The fluorescent bulb in the
bathroom was enough to see by. Not even sure where to begin, she started wading through the piles of clothes and paperbacks on the floor. A piece of newspaper caught in her sandal; as she picked it up she noticed the headline of a story about illegal aliens.

The story had been circled in red ink, and Nancy figured Kim had done it. Kim was like that—always interested in the underdog. If I keep my eyes peeled, Nancy thought with a smile, I’ll probably find a letter she wrote to the editor, saying what a rotten situation the illegals are in.

But Nancy wasn’t getting anywhere. She tossed the paper toward the wastebasket and headed for the bathroom. Medicine cabinets were such obvious hiding places, maybe Mr. Friendly hadn’t bothered to look there.

No luck. The “maintenance” man had pulled out every jar, bottle, and tube, and left them piled in the sink. Even the toothbrushes were out of their holders, lying like two pickup sticks on the fake marble vanity top.

Nancy was halfway out the bathroom when it hit her—
two
toothbrushes. She walked back in and took another look. Right, two of them—one blue and obviously well used; the other red, without a single bent bristle.

Kim didn’t have a roommate, she reminded herself. Or did she? Nancy looked more carefully at the countertop. One bottle each of
shampoo and conditioner. One tube of toothpaste, one can of deodorant. Two hairbrushes, one full of light brown strands, the other with several strands of long black hair caught in it.

Okay, Nancy thought. Kim might have bought a second toothbrush, but there was no way she could have used that other hairbrush. And if she hadn’t come to Florida with a roommate, then she’d invited some girl to stay with her once she got there.