Title: Nurses Don’t Tell
Author: Jeanne Judson
Publisher: Avalon
Published: ©1962
Illustrator: Edrien King
Her signature is above the nurse’s shoulder, and she is also credited inside the dust jacket.
In a way, it was like a vacation—being nurse to wealthy and arthritic Mrs. Wendell at her luxurious estate, Idlerest, in the Florida Keys. Mrs. Wendell played bridge every afternoon, and when there was a fourth—and usually there was—Katrina was free to swim or do anything she liked. Still, it became a bit boring with no one around but middle-aged people. That was why Katrina welcomed the girl on the beach—a rather strange girl, with wide-set gray eyes and a disconcerting habit of saying exactly what she thought. Even before Katrina learned that Mary Cordell was under observation by a psychiatrist visiting at her uncle’s home, she had decided that Mary was “odd,” to say the least. But Mary’s brother was quite another story. Personable, wealthy, with a Government job in Washington, and a sense of humor as sharp as Katrina’s own, Martin Cordell was the answer to any maiden’s dream … When bronzed, athletic-looking Captain Paul Williams—Mrs. Wendell’s partner at bridge whenever she could snare him—began to show an interest in Mary, Katrina knew there would be trouble. Victor Brierly, Mary’s uncle and guardian, had no intention of relinquishing the reins to Mary’s fortune. The stage was set—with Katrina an unwitting participant in a drama worthy of the mysterious and often dangerous Keys. Setting out for an innocent game with Mary, Katrina found herself, instead, a prisoner on Paul Williams’ reconverted yacht, the Conch Shell. Katrina takes matters into her own hands in a night that threatens to end for her in the dark and menacing waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
