Model Suspect 3 (13 page)

“And Sydney,” Bess put in.

I nodded. “And Sydney,” I agreed. “Anyway, there are plenty of suspects but none of them makes sense. Are we really dealing with MrSilhouette, or is someone just using that bit of Syd’s history to mess with her?”

“That would mean it’d have to be someone who knows about her stalker in the first place,” George
pointed out. “Would someone like Madge or Donald have that kind of knowledge?”

“I’m not sure. They might, after what happened before the wedding.” I stood up. “In any case, I think we’d better get over to the pool and keep an eye on things.”

When we reached the main pool area, we found Madge there pacing back and forth along the edge of the water. Butch and one of the other TV camera operators were standing nearby, along with the still photographer we’d seen earlier. Lainie and a few other assorted crew members were also there, along with a couple of resort employees who were busy passing out water and such. I also spotted Jamal; he was lounging on a pool chair sipping a soda and watching the action.

“Come on, let’s sit over here out of the way,” I told my friends, leading them over to some lounge chairs near where Jamal was sitting, well out of what I assumed would be camera range. Jamal saw us and raised one hand in a lazy wave, but made no effort to come over.

Just as we sat down, Bo, Akinyi, and Vic wandered into view from the direction of the bungalows. “It’s about time,” Madge snapped, hurrying over to them. “Where’s Sydney?”

“She’ll be here in a minute,” Vic said, sounding
distracted as he glanced around the pool area. “She can’t find that blue bikini she was supposed to wear for the shoot, so she’s tearing up the bungalow looking for it.”

“What?” Madge squawked. “Look, we’re supposed to be on a schedule here….”

Vic ignored her, brushing past her as his eyes locked on me. He rushed straight toward where my friends and I were sitting.

“Nancy, there you are,” he said when he reached us. “I need to talk to you privately. Now.”

“Um, okay.” I stood up. What was this all about? Could it have anything to do with his mysterious behavior earlier? Or was he just anxious to hear whether I’d made any progress on the case?

Before I could find out one way or the other, Donald rushed into the pool area, his thin face a mask of anxiety. “Vic!” he called out. “It’s Sydney!”

Vic turned, looking impatient. “What about her?”

“I just saw her,” Donald panted, his voice shaking. “She was running toward the lap pool, and she was crying pretty hard….”

Vic didn’t need to hear any more. “Uh-oh, what now?” he muttered as he took off in the direction Donald was pointing.

“Come on,” I said to my friends.

We all took off after him. The lap pool was located a short distance away from the main pool area past the large gym building. The pool itself was about six feet deep, rectangular and fairly plain compared to the other two pools on the property, though its bottom and sides were lined with attractive tiles in various shades of red and brown.

I was right behind Vic when we reached the lap pool’s small courtyard. What had he been about to tell me? Considering all that had happened, my heart was in my throat and my mind was filled with terrible possibilities. What if he really had gotten involved in some kind of secret romance with Akinyi—and Sydney had just found out?

No, that couldn’t be it, I told myself. It just didn’t make sense. Whoever was doing this wasn’t just trying to break Vic and Sydney up. He or she was trying to hurt them—especially Vic. There had just been too many close calls to imagine it could be anyone other than the real MrSilhouette this time. The question was, who was MrSilhouette?

We skidded to a stop at the edge of the lap pool. My mind was so busy turning over the facts of the case that it took me a moment to register what I was seeing.

There, lying facedown at the bottom of the pool, was a slim, pale figure with reddish hair, dressed in a blue bikini. And she wasn’t moving.

“Syd!” Vic screamed, racing toward the edge.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

“No!” I shouted at almost the same moment, grabbing at Vic. “Vic, stop. Don’t jump in there!”

Vic didn’t seem to hear me. Most of the rest of the group from the other pool had arrived behind us by now, and a few of them let out screams or exclamations as they spotted the still figure at the bottom of the lap pool. But the only one who reacted to my words was Butch. He reached out and grabbed Vic by the arm just in time to stop him from hurtling over the edge of the pool.

“Let me go!” Vic shouted, fighting frantically against the burly cameraman’s grip. “I have to save Syd!”

“Save me?” repeated Sydney, wandering into view behind the others. She looked radiant in an emerald green swimsuit that set off her flaming red hair. “From what?”

Vic goggled at her, going limp in Butch’s grasp. “Sydney?” he gasped out. “But—but I thought …”

He looked as confused as I’d ever seen him. Actually, just about everyone looked confused. Murmurs rose up from the onlookers.

“What’s going on, Nancy?” Akinyi spoke up.

“I’m just working on that question myself.” I kicked a handy pebble into the water, watching carefully for anything odd to happen as it hit the water. But it merely plunked in and sank. “Okay, looks like it’s not electrified….”

“Huh?” Vic said. Butch had let go by now, and Vic had both arms wrapped around Sydney, who still looked perplexed.

I glanced around and spotted a long-handled pool net leaning against a wall nearby. Grabbing it, I stepped to the edge of the pool.

“Okay, I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” I said. “But I suspect there’s some kind of trap here, so you all might want to stay back just in case.”

Using the net, I reached down and poked at the “body” on the bottom of the pool. As soon as I
moved the figure a few inches, its hair detached from the rest of it and floated upward.

“Hey!” Lainie cried. “That’s my wig!” Then she slapped a hand over her mouth and glanced around. “Oops.”

“Wig?” Bo repeated.

I ignored Lainie, though everyone else turned to stare. It wasn’t easy to make the long, thin handle of the pool net do what I wanted. But finally I poked the hairless figure at the bottom of the pool hard enough to make it flip over. That revealed its blank, contoured face.

“It’s a mannequin!” Bess realized. “Like the ones in some of the shops here.”

“Exactly like one of those,” I said. Then I gasped, pointing as there was a sudden flash of movement in the water. “Look!”

Several spiny reddish-brown fish had just darted out from the shelter they’d found beneath the mannequin. They immediately swarmed the end of the net and started attacking it.

“Whoa!” One of the resort employees had stepped forward for a better look. Now he took a quick step back, his expression alarmed. “Those are lionfish!”

“What’s a lionfish?” Madge demanded.

The employee shook his head. “Terribly venomous,” he said, waving his hands around. “It is a good
thing that is only a mannequin in there. If any real person had gone into that water and disturbed them, they surely would have attacked! Very serious!”

Bo let out a low whistle. “Okay, but this pool is way far from the lagoon,” he said. “So how’d those things get in there?”

I was pretty sure I knew. And when I turned and scanned the onlookers, what I saw confirmed my suspicions. Donald was sidling off to one side, unnoticed by anyone else so far.

“It was Donald,” I said, pointing. “Somebody grab him!”

Bo and Jamal looked confused. But when Donald made a break for it, dashing for the nearest gap in the fence surrounding the lap pool, they leaped after him and grabbed him.

“Let me go!” Donald yelled, kicking at them. But he was no match for the two much larger, stronger guys, and after a moment he seemed to give up. “I did it all for you, Sydney!” he cried, twisting around to gaze at her. “We were meant to be together!”

Sydney blinked, looking startled. “What?”

I marched over to Donald. He didn’t even seem to notice me coming. His full attention was focused on Sydney. That meant it was no trouble at all for me to reach over and yank his floppy brown hair right off his head, revealing his gleaming bald scalp.

Bess gasped. “A wig!”

“Sydney,” I said grimly, “meet MrSilhouette.”

“Okay, Nancy.” Akinyi tapped her water glass with a spoon. “It’s been hours since the police took Donald away, and I think we’re all dying to know. How did you figure out it was him? That he was MrSilhouette all along?”

I’d just taken my seat in the dining room. Glancing down the long table, I caught Sydney’s eye. She gave me a barely perceptible nod and smile. She and Vic had been with me, Bess, and George at the local police station for most of the afternoon, so of course they knew the whole story already. But I couldn’t blame the others for being curious. Nearly everyone connected with the filming had gathered together for dinner, and most of them were now staring at me curiously.

“It was the steak thing,” I said, raising my voice enough to make sure everyone could hear me even at the adjoining tables where the crew was seated. “Well, mostly that. Lainie kind of helped too.”

I turned to smile at the makeup artist, who looked confused. “I did?” she said.

“See, Donald never really made it past the least-likely group on the suspect list,” I explained. “That was partly because of his mild-mannered, professional,
and helpful act. But it was also because of his floppy head of hair.”

“Oh!” Akinyi nodded. “I see. We knew that MrSilhouette was bald….”

“And so we didn’t seriously consider anyone who had tons of hair like Donald did. Or seemed to,” I finished for her. Then I glanced at Bess and George. “That’s what started bugging me after we talked to Lainie. We really hadn’t considered that if MrSilhouette was hanging around, he could easily be disguising his baldness with a wig.”

“Duh,” George said. “Seems so obvious now, doesn’t it?”

“So it was really Donald causing all the trouble?” Bo asked.

“Right. Except for the stuff Candy did,” George put in. “She was guilty too. But Donald did everything else. The jet fuel, that big light that almost fell on Vic right before the wedding …”

Bess nodded. “He also managed to frame Akinyi and Jamal by planting that so-called evidence in their hotel rooms,” she said. “And he set up Pandora by giving her the note suggesting she perform that Native American knife ritual, pretending it was from the director.”

“He also sent most of the e-mails and texts,” I added. “And the fake RSVP card, and a bunch of
other stuff. He was the one who convinced Butch to try to get Vic to climb up that pool waterfall—I actually noticed the two of them talking together right before it all happened, before Bo talked to him, but I didn’t put two and two together then. And of course, Donald was the one who tampered with Vic’s steak after making sure Madge came in at just the right moment to distract the cook so he could snag the tray.” I sighed. “Like George said, it all seems so clear now, looking back. Donald had the access, the opportunity, and as it turns out, the motive—namely, that he was obsessed with Sydney. But it wasn’t until I saw that body in the pool that it all clicked into place.”

“But how?” someone called out from the next table.

“I remembered that Vic said Syd couldn’t find her blue bathing suit, and I guessed that that was because someone had sneaked in and stolen it to set up some new mischief. And since Donald was the one who came running with that story about seeing Syd crying …”

“Which meant it pretty much had to be him who set it up,” Vic said, nodding. “But hey, I forgot to ask earlier, Nance—how’d you know to stop me from diving in?”

“Just a guess.” I smiled at him, trying not to think about what might have happened if he’d managed to
dive into that pool anyway. “You’re lucky Butch was close enough to grab you. And that he likes man-handling the talent.”

Everyone laughed at that. Even Butch cracked a smile, though he almost immediately let out a snort and pretended to be very busy with his food.

“Anyway,” Vic spoke up, “Donald confessed to everything.”

“Yeah.” George shrugged. “It almost seemed like he was proud of all the chaos he caused.”

Sydney shuddered. “At least he should be in jail for a good long time,” she said. “Nancy, I’ll never be able to thank you enough. I can’t tell you what it means to finally be able to go about my life without having to look over my shoulder all the time.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, thinking of what she’d planned to do if we hadn’t solved the case. With any luck, Vic would never have to know how close he’d come to losing her. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t figure it out sooner, before your wedding was pretty much spoiled.”

“Hey, that reminds me. What about Pandora?” one of Lainie’s fellow makeup artists spoke up. “Does this let her off the hook?”

“I can answer that one,” Bo spoke up. “I called her just before dinner. She’s already been cleared of all charges and allowed to go home.”

“Good,” I said.

But I wasn’t really thinking about Pandora. I was watching Sydney as she turned to smile at Vic. Seeing the look they were giving each other reminded me that even though I’d solved the case, there were still a few loose ends I hadn’t managed to tie up. What had Vic been doing in Akinyi’s bungalow the night before? Why had the guys all lied about that imaginary poker game? What had all that thumping been from inside Akinyi’s bungalow while we were waiting for her to let us in? What had Vic wanted to talk to me about right before Donald sent us all to the lap pool? And come to think of it, there was even that phone call that Vic had hidden from us right after he’d received the photo message from MrSilhouette. He’d said it was from his agent—but was it really?