For about an hour I tossed and turned, my ankle paining me, rehearsing over and over what I'd say to Briars, cursing him and Curtis and Rick. What was it Rick had promised they would get? Kristi's book? It was lying right there on the path. Still, if the moon hadn't been just right, I wouldn't have seen it, either. Maybe they weren't talking about that at all. The whole episode made me cross. Worse still, the book on the night table kept calling out to me. What was she going to say about us? Don't stoop so low, I told myself. But what was she doing out on the path? Spying, like me?
Finally I succumbed to my more primitive self, and turned on the light. What I found in her notebook made me so angry, I could barely see. Kristi Ellingham was keeping a list of what she considered to be deficiencies in the McClintoch Swain antiques and archaeology tour, shortcomings that no doubt would appear in good time in the pages of First Class magazine. Things like: No Elevator!! Or, No Diet Cola!!! Boring Ruins!! No Room Service after 10 P.M.!!!! Or even, since she apparently did not restrict herself to the location itself, Peculiar Bunch of Tourists! All her comments were punctuated with capitals and exclamation marks, the number of the latter presumably indicating the depth of her displeasure. It was a long list, and presumably getting longer, and the trip was shaping up to be a public relations disaster rather than the triumph Clive had envisioned.
All smiles and compliments, she hadn't voiced any of these criticisms, just scribbled them down in her notebook. Her comments were by and large unfair. True, there was no elevator in the Auberge du Palmier, but it was only two floors, and with abundant helpful staff at her every beck and call, the only weight Kristi had to heft up the one flight of stairs was her own. And surely, it should be possible to go without diet cola for a day or two. As for me, it was a source of considerable relief that there was no room service after ten at night, thus bringing Kristi's drink orders to a close for the day.
Rarely have I felt as angry as I did at that very moment, and helpless, too. Thinking rationally, I doubted that she could actually ruin McClintoch Swain. We were not really in the travel business, after all. But she could seriously harm us, and furthermore could adversely influence business, at the Auberge. The staff, including Sylvie and Chantal, had worked so hard to please her. And she hadn't paid one thin dime for the trip. We and the Auberge had covered everything, even her taxis. I wanted to scream at her, tell her how unreasonable she was being.
Calm down, Lara, I told myself. Everything will be fine. The other people are enjoying the trip. Perhaps they'll write letters to the editor; you never know. Aziza and Curtis speaking up for us certainly wouldn't hurt. And Emile must have some influence in this business.
Should I say something to her? Probably not. I couldn't do it without losing my temper. Should I tell Clive? He was going to be awfully disappointed. He'd get over it. He always did. And we'd survive this, no matter what she said. But the idea of poisoning her gin did cross my mind.
But even these unjust observations were nothing compared to what I found toward the back of the book, something she called her To Do list. I wasn't entirely sure what it was all about, but what I saw I didn't like. Ms. Ellingham had written down the initials of every person on the trip, and in several instances, had made some rather nasty insinuations. CC--freeloader or blackmail? it said. Aziza--too thin. Drugs? St. Laurent--rings a bell--fraud? CS--Lolita complex. Abusive father? Check RR--something fishy. NW--trailer-park trash/master manipulator. Get the poop on her and CF. BM/EL--uncle/nephew: Not! The list went on and on, and the fact that there was nothing noted next to LM, while something of a relief, didn't make me feel any better.
Maybe it was just idle curiosity on her part, but it had the look and feel of what she seemed to be accusing Curtis of--assuming CC stood for Curtis Clark--blackmail, in other words. Some of the comments were just uncharitable, like referring to Nora, NW that is, as trailer-park trash. Yes, it was true the woman didn't know how to dress, and her perfume made her smell more like a salad than a flower, but this was just plain unkind. And yes, she did seem to have Cliff under her thumb a little, and the relationship was a little ambiguous. As for Ben and Ed, did it really matter about their relationship? Maybe they were trying to be discreet, which was more than you could say about Kristi. But accusing a young girl of being a Lolita, and hinting that she'd been abused made me more than a little uncomfortable. What bothered me most of all was that I'd helped her compile that list, unknowingly, of course, during our talk. She hadn't been interviewing me, she'd been pumping me for information. Clearly she had to be stopped.
Maybe what it would take would be a list of my own: Just how much gin was that dreadful woman drinking? Was it enough that she might lose her job if her employer found out about it? I certainly had the receipts. What would her employer think of this little list of hers? Would they think she was no longer an asset to their fancy publication, or would they commend her for her brilliant investigative journalism?
Stop this, I told myself. Don't sink to her level. So what if she thought Curtis was a freeloader; I did, too. As for RR, I had heard enough that very evening to think something was fishy myself, to say nothing of the fact that he was probably a thief.
It occurred to me that I had another problem: what to do with the notebook. It was bad enough that I'd found it somewhere I wouldn't normally be, but now that I'd read it, the situation got a whole lot worse. Should I just hide it in my luggage? I didn't think so: It would drive me crazy knowing it was there. Should I take it into town and toss it in a dumpster far from the hotel? Or should I be very bold and hand it right back to her at breakfast, saying I'd found it outside? If I opted for the latter course, should I hint that I'd read it, or just hand it over with an "I think this is yours, Kristi"?
I carefully copied out the two lists--heaven knows, I might need them sometime, and most certainly I wasn't asking the front desk to make a copy for me--then extinguished the light and surprisingly, considering the huge weight of guilt and anger I was carrying, went to sleep. I awoke very early in the morning with an idea. Kristi would soon figure out, if she hadn't already, that she'd lost the book. I hadn't run into her in town as I returned to the hotel, so if she'd gone back for it, it would have been later. I wasn't sure I'd want to be out there on that path in the middle of the night again, and I suspected she wouldn't either. Presumably she wouldn't know exactly where she'd dropped it. If I got up right away, I could toss it in the bushes near the main gate. While there were three entrances to the hotel property, there was only one way into the grounds at night, a gate which required the use of a key, which all guests had in case they were late returning. She would have had to come in that way, unless she'd climbed straight up the hill from the beach way down below, a feat I'd already decided was too much for me. I didn't think she'd be up for it either, given her whining about one flight of stairs. She was always the last to arrive at breakfast, and by then the gardener probably would have found her book and turned it in at the desk. Failing that, I could go out a little later myself, preferably with one of the others along as a witness, and "discover" it, with some appropriate dialogue along the lines of "Is that something in the bushes over there? Oh, look. A notebook." That kind of thing.