The Sign in the Smoke (Nancy Drew Diaries Book 12) (12 page)

Deborah nodded slowly, then wheeled her chair back and over to a large pine filing cabinet. She opened the top and began digging around inside. “Let me find the file,” she murmured.

“You have a
file
?” I asked.

At that moment, Deborah pulled a manila folder from the cabinet and turned around, looking surprised at my question. “Of course I do,” she said. “I wanted to know everything about Camp Larksong before we bought the land. There were all these rumors and . . .” She stopped and sighed. “I just wanted to be prepared.”

She rolled her chair back over to the desk and pushed the file across the surface to me. I reached out and picked it up but didn’t open it yet. “So what happened?” I asked. “What did you learn?”

Deborah cringed like I’d poked a bruise. “I didn’t have to
learn
,” she said after a few seconds. Then she closed her eyes and began speaking, like she was telling a story she’d already told several times. “It was strange because up till that night, it had been a perfect week at camp. The kids were really easy, and my bunk got along well. I had one girl, Lila, who was homesick and could be a little quiet and intense. But the other girls really liked her, and they all clicked as a group.”

I rested my palm on the top of the folder, trying to follow what Deborah was telling me. My
bunk got along well?
Wait—she had been there?

“We got to the campsite a little too early to start dinner, so we all hiked down the path to the lake and went for a swim,” she said. “Lila had this ring she’d gotten from her parents for her birthday or something. It was pretty, a little flower with a pearl in the middle of it. She was really proud of it.” Deborah stopped and rubbed her eyes. “While we were swimming, I don’t know what happened exactly, but the ring slipped off her finger.”

“She lost it?” I asked.

Deborah nodded. “We spent at least an hour with everyone trying to find it. But you can imagine—fifty campers in a small space, a lake with reeds and sand on the bottom . . . It could have been
anywhere
. And with everyone swimming around looking for it, we could have buried it under more sand and reeds as we were trying to find it.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

“Anyway,” Deborah went on, “finally we had to give up and start dinner. After dinner, while it was still light, me and one of the other counselors swam out and tried to find it again. But we didn’t have any luck. We had the campfire, and Lila seemed like she was okay, she was over it. She was singing and telling stories with everyone. So when it was time to go back to our tent and go to sleep, I figured it was over.”

I figured it was over.
“Wait—you were her counselor?” I asked suddenly.

Deborah looked at me matter-of-factly. “Yes,” she said. “You didn’t know that?”

Bella’s tale suddenly came back to me.
A counselor went crazy and
drowned
a camper!
Did Deborah know that, in the rumors and stories about what had happened, she’d been painted as the culprit? Was that why she felt she had to have a folder full of research on the incident?

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But I’m sorry to interrupt. Go on.”

Deborah cocked an eyebrow at me, but then went back into her story. She looked uncomfortable now. “The next thing I knew,” she said, her words slowing, “I was woken up by screaming. It was the middle of the night, and one of the other campers had woken up and noticed Lila was gone,” she said. “They were all freaking out. They thought it was a bear! She’d been attacked by something! In all the commotion, it was a few minutes before we got out of the tent and I noticed the footprints leading down the path toward the lake. . . .” She stopped there.

“She’d gone to the lake?” I prodded gently.

Deborah nodded, her face tense. “When I got there, I could hear her struggling in the water.” She paused. “I screamed. It was all I could think of to do. God, I didn’t even jump in after her! It was another counselor I’d woken up with my screams. She jumped in and found Lila under the water. I thought she was dead.” Deborah’s voice broke on the word “dead.” I reached out and put my hand on hers sympathetically. But Deborah pulled her hand away.

“She wasn’t dead, of course,” she went on after a few seconds. “One of the other counselors pumped the water out of her chest and got her breathing again. We called an ambulance, and she was rushed to the closest hospital.” She took in a deep breath through her nose. “She must have gone back into the lake to find her ring,” Deborah said finally. “She was in the hospital for a long time, I know that. She’d been without oxygen for too long. There were rumors of brain damage. But I heard she recovered.”

“You heard?” I asked.

Deborah looked up at me. Something flashed in her eyes—annoyance or defensiveness, I couldn’t tell which. “Her parents were pretty angry with the camp, and me specifically,” she said. “They sued Camp Larksong. That’s what cost the previous owners all their money—they ended up settling with the family. Anyway, I couldn’t exactly go to visit Lila. I’ve lived with the guilt of not waking up earlier every day of my life since it happened. But I couldn’t tell her how sorry I was.”

Silence enveloped the office. I stared down at the folder, taking all of that in.
It wasn’t Deborah’s fault—or was it?
I tried to imagine one of my campers sneaking out to the lake in the dead of night. Would I hear it? If I heard it, would I be able to jump in after her and save her life?

What would it feel like to see one of my campers dragged out of the lake, barely alive? Hauled off in an ambulance to be in the hospital for weeks?

I shook myself, trying to disperse the terrible feeling that came over me. I glanced at Deborah, who was staring out the window, pain in her eyes.

“It sounds really hard,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.”

Deborah nodded slightly. “Don’t be sorry for me,” she said quietly. “I’m sure it was much harder for Lila and her parents. But maybe you can understand why, the lake . . . the thought of anything else like that happening there . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “I know what people say around this town. I know they say the camp is haunted, that something even worse happened here. But it
didn’t
.”

She was quiet for just a few seconds. “If there
is
someone behind the strange things happening around camp,” she said, “they
must
know about Lila. Or they know some version of the story.”

I let out a breath and pulled the manila folder into my lap. Carefully, I arranged it right side up and opened the cover. Inside were newspaper articles, pieces printed off the Internet, legal documents. I leafed through them all until something stopped me dead in my tracks, sending spikes of ice up through my chest.

A photo accompanied one of the articles. I held it up for Deborah to see. “Is this Lila?” I asked.

Deborah looked at the photo and nodded. “That’s her,” she said. “Lila Houston. She was thirteen years old.”

My hand shook as I turned the article back around and placed it back in the folder, faceup.

Lila Houston stared up at me from what must have been a school photo. She had round, dark eyes—
and long, silvery-blond hair
.

“IT’S A COINCIDENCE,” GEORGE WHISPERED
that night at the campfire. We’d settled on a log far from the main action, and I’d used the time to update her and Bess on everything Deborah had told me. “It has to be . . . right?”

“It seems like kind of a big coincidence,” Bess said. “A girl with silvery-blond hair nearly drowns in the lake . . . and a few years later, swimmers are attacked by a figure with silvery-blond hair?”

I nodded solemnly. It takes a lot to freak me out, and I’m usually not one to believe in ghost tales. But
this
was really weird. The only thing was . . .

“Lila isn’t dead,” George pointed out pragmatically, looking from Bess to me. “Is she?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Deborah says she’s alive and ended up without brain damage or anything. Or so she heard, anyway.”

George held out her hands. “Ergo,” she said, “Lila can’t be haunting the camp. Because people who are
alive
cannot
haunt
.”

I took in a breath, trying to think. We were all quiet for a minute. The sound of the campers’ current tune—“Kumbaya”—drifted over to us.

Someone’s crying, Kumbaya . . .

“What if she’s
not
alive?” Bess asked suddenly. “It’s not like Deborah ever saw her after the accident, right?”

“But her parents
sued the camp
,” George pointed out. “They settled, but for a lot of money. I think they would have mentioned if their daughter died.”

Bess held up her pointer finger. “Okay, so she survived the near drowning. But it’s been five years. Maybe she survived, only to die of some
totally
unrelated thing later. And then . . .”

“. . . then naturally she comes back to haunt the camp where she
didn’t
die?” George asked, frowning. “If she died of something else, wouldn’t she haunt the thing that actually killed her?”

“Maybe the other thing was really
boring
,” Bess retorted. “Like an allergy to bee stings or something. Would you want to waste your afterlife haunting a bee?”

“
Guys
,” I said, “I think we’re getting off topic here. And I have a confession to make. This afternoon, I called Lila’s parents on the pay phone and asked for Lila, pretending to be a telemarketer.”

Bess crinkled her brows. “Did you talk to her?” she asked.

“No,” I admitted, “but I did confirm that Lila is alive and well and still lives here. I also got an earful about the Do Not Call registry. Anyway . . . let’s assume Lila is alive and well, and not haunting the camp. That wouldn’t stop someone who knows about the accident from using it to harass Deborah and Miles . . . would it?”

Bess and George both looked thoughtful.

“Who would do that?” asked Bess after a few seconds.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but that’s what I intend to find out.”

Soon the campfire broke up, and I got to my feet to collect my campers. Before I could make my way over to where they were sitting with Maya, someone grabbed my arm.

“You’re
welcome
,” Bella said, “for watching your kids earlier.”

I turned around in surprise. Bella wore a scowl, and she looked from me to George and Bess like we were all something stinky she’d stepped in.

“Uh, thanks, Bella,” I said after a brief pause. “I’m sorry, I thought I’d thanked you earlier.”

“It’s just ironic,” Bella said, grabbing a lock of dark hair and twisting it around her finger, “that
you
guys think I’m the bad one, when you’re sneaking around when you’re supposed to be watching your kids, doing God knows what.”

“I was talking to Deborah,” I explained patiently, “but thanks for the feedback. And I never said you were
bad
, Bella, I just didn’t think involving a bunch of fifteen-year-olds in some made-up séance was a good idea.”

“It wasn’t
made up
,” Bella whispered fiercely. “You just don’t want anyone to know the truth about this place.”

“What truth is that?” I asked, curious now.

Bella rolled her eyes at me. “You
know
what truth,” she replied snarkily. “That this place is
mad
haunted. Anyway, it’s fine, Nancy. I don’t need you, or your little clique.” She looked past me to Bess and George, who had started collecting their own campers. “I have my own clique.”

With those words, she turned on her heel and strode away.

Why is Bella so interested in this supposed haunting?
I wondered again as I watched Bella walk back to her campers and lead them down the path back to the cabins.
She says she’s a Camp Larksong alum. . . . Could she possibly have been there that night?

I swallowed hard, letting my mind lead me on.
Could she have an ax to grind with Deborah?

I walked over to my campers and greeted them, listening to their cheerful stories about the day, and their banter with one another. I put my arm around Harper, who was bringing up the rear and seemed to be off in her own little world. But in reality, my mind was spinning on its own, a million miles away.

Bella could have dived back into the lake after she went to get her hoodie the day of our swimming tests,
I realized.
She could have snuck away from the campfire the night the sleeping bags went missing. But how would she have gotten away from her own bunk to come harass mine while we were swimming?

There was the matter of the silvery-blond hair, too. If Bella was at camp the year Lila nearly drowned, she might know her hair color, or she could have seen a picture in the news. But would she go so far as to wear a wig underwater to freak everyone out?

“Nancy,” Harper said suddenly, tugging on my sleeve, “you seem sad.”

I looked down at her, startled. “I do?” I asked. “I’m sorry, Harper. I don’t
feel
sad. I’m just trying to figure something out in my mind.”