The Sign in the Smoke (Nancy Drew Diaries #12)(26)

Was it possible that Miles didn’t want me looking into the “mystery” . . . because he had something to hide?

I pushed the thought from my mind as I knocked lightly on the screen door and then pushed it open. The camp office was on the lower floor of the modest two-story house on camp grounds where Deborah and Miles lived. When I walked in, Deborah was sitting at her desk, staring into a computer monitor. She looked a little surprised when she glanced up and saw me, but she soon gave me a little wave of welcome.

“Hi, Nancy,” she said. “Where are your campers?”

“Bella’s watching them for me,” I replied. “You know, they’re in the mess hall watching a DVD anyway. I thought maybe . . . Maybe this would be a good time for the two of us to talk more?”

Deborah took that in, looking at me with a not-entirely-eager expression. “Okay,” she said.

“I told Miles I could talk to both of you,” I went on, “but he seemed sort of convinced that, um . . .”

“?‘There’s no mystery to solve,’?” Deborah filled in, making her voice deep and goofy—clearly her impression of Miles.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Deborah gave a little rueful smile and pushed her chair back from the desk. “It’s not personal, Nancy,” she said, giving me a kind look. “Miles is a pragmatic guy. He’s not going to believe there’s something going on unless it’s really obvious.”

A question suddenly occurred to me. “Do you think there’s a mystery to solve?” I asked.

Deborah paused, looking thoughtful. “I think a lot of strange things have been happening,” she said quietly. “Unsettling things. In a weird way, it would make me feel better if one person were behind them.”

At least it’s not just me, then. There was a chair on my side of the desk facing Deborah, and I sat down in it. “Can you tell me more about what happened that night in the lake at Camp Larksong?” I asked. “It seems like—for whatever reason—all the strange things that have happened seem to lead back to the lake.”

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.