Surveillance
Two private investigators go undercover at a nudist resort and uncover an unexpected truth
“Should we go in there?”
“I think we have to.”
“Do we have to— you know…”
“We’ll need to blend in, so yeah,” I said.
“Can’t we just report to the client that she went into a nudist resort and leave it at that?” Rebecca asked.
“No. We were hired to find evidence of infidelity on the part of his wife, and her simply driving into a nudist resort doesn’t qualify. And besides, if she’s seeing someone inside the resort, we need to get documentation of that.”
“Well. Shit. OK. You can’t look at me though.”
“Hey, I’m going to be as naked as you are.”
Rebecca, our investigator trainee, and I had driven past the entrance to the Sunny Oaks Nudist Resort while tailing the wife of our client Richard Boone. I had slowed and turned into the driveway of a country farmhouse before backing out onto the two-lane highway to go back in the opposite direction. Boone had hired us because he suspected his pretty and much younger wife Gina was sleeping around and wanted proof of that.
Personally, I thought the guy was just paranoid. Either that or was just tired of Gina and wanted a way to void the prenuptial agreement she had signed. Whatever the case, I was happy to take his money and follow the pretty redhead around town for a few weeks. I was surprised on this warm Saturday when she led us out here into the country and shocked when she had turned into the entrance to Sunny Oaks. What was even more interesting was that she hadn’t spent very long at the gate, which told me that she had her own code to get in.
Behind the gate
I turned slowly into the entrance of the nudist resort and pulled up to the keypad. I nodded to the camera above the gate as a way to point it out to Rebecca.
“Smile, you’re on candid camera,” I said.
I rolled down the window and looked at the note next to the keypad. There was a number for deliveries and visitors to call. I supposed that one could call on the keypad—there was something that looked like a speaker and microphone—but I called on my cell phone which was connected to the car.
“Sunny Oaks,” a female voice answered.
“Hi. We’d like to come in and visit for the day.”
“For today you mean?”
“Yes. We’re at the gate now.”
“And did you make an appointment?”
“Uh, no. This is kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“And you’re a couple?”
I looked at Rebecca and shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Normally, we like our visitors to call ahead of time. But since you’re already here, I’ll buzz you in. Turn right just past the gate, park, and come into the office.”
“Will do,” I said.
I did as instructed, and Rebecca and I got out of the car still fully clothed. The registration at the office was simple enough. We had to show the lady our driver’s licenses. She photocopied them and told us she was running a simple background check to make sure we weren’t felons or sex offenders. As the partner of a firm that performed such background checks, I had to restrain myself from trying to sell her our services.
Learning the rules
“Have either of you ever been to a nudist resort before?” the lady asked while she was, apparently, waiting on the background check results.
“No,” I said.
“In that case.”
She handed each of us a brochure with several guidelines. The one she pointed to first was the one about always having a towel between us and whatever surface we sat on. Rebecca and I looked at each other. I glanced around the office and saw that there were several things for sale, towels and sunscreen among them. The prices for the towels were a bit high, I thought, but the towels were nicely thick with “Sunny Oaks” embroidered on them. I bought two of them along with a bottle of SPF70 spray-on sunscreen. I didn’t want to have to rub anything on the nude body of my new investigator trainee. The price of the towels didn’t bother me so much since we would be putting that cost on the expense report that would be paid by the client, Richard Boone.
Once our background checks came in clean and our purchases were bagged and paid for, the lady invited us on a tour of the resort on her golf cart. She took us all around the place, showing us the clubhouse, pools, and hot tub along with the cabins and campsites available for rent. I looked for any sign of Gina Boone from our seat on the golf cart, but I didn’t see her. What we did see was a whole lot of exposed skin. It was Saturday, so the pools and pool deck were crowded.
“Water volleyball is really popular this time of year,” the lady told us, and there were a lot of people playing in the pool with the net strung across it.
Most of the pool lounge chairs were occupied by either naked bodies or towels. I wondered how Rebecca and I were going to find a place that would be good for spotting and surveilling Gina Boone.
“We also have a strict no photography rule,” the lady said once we got back to the office. She handed us two small round paper stickers. “You can put these over the camera lenses on your cell phones. That way, no one will question you.”
Rebecca and I took the stickers and placed them in the proper positions on our phones. Photographic evidence was a big part of what we provide for our clients, but we also had much smaller and inconspicuous cameras, like the one on the end of what appeared to be my ball point pen. We’d just have to be discreet.
“Any other questions?” the lady asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Great. Then have fun.”
Thus dismissed, we carried our purchases back to my car. We had been told during the tour that we could drive down to the pool area and park near the clubhouse, so that’s what we did. I switched the car engine off, and Rebecca and I looked at each other.
Blending in
“I guess this is it,” I said.
She looked toward the pool deck and all the naked people there. “It doesn’t seem so scary now, seeing all the people there like that.”
“No, it’ll be fun.”
I opened my car door and stepped out. I took my shirt off first and threw it onto the driver’s seat. Rebecca got out of the car and looked at me over the roof as I stepped out of my shoes. She sighed, and removed her shirt, revealing her white lace bra. I looked away. We may be about to be naked with each other, but it still felt strange seeing her more intimate apparel. In fact, I decided to take my own underwear off with my jeans, taking a deep breath before I did so. After grabbing my phone and keys from my pockets, I rolled the pants up and tossed them into the back seat. I threw my shirt back there too and sat back down in the driver’s seat to remove my socks and then put my shoes back on, wishing I had a pair of sandals. Glancing over toward the open passenger door, I saw Rebecca stepping out of a pair of panties. She was naked now, her breasts hanging low as she bent over, her pubic region shaved bare. I turned away, resolving to myself not to make any comment on how amazing she looked.
I grabbed the bag with our newly purchased towels, tossed the keys, my wallet, and my phone inside, stood up, and shut the car door.
“Can I have my towel?” Rebecca asked after I walked around the car to stand next to her.
“Sure.”
I pulled one of the towels from the bag, and she wrapped it around herself as I locked the car.
“I guess we’ll start at the pool,” I said.
I led the way to the pool deck. The breeze on my skin and the natural movement of body parts that are normally bound up in clothes felt odd but not unpleasant.
“I don’t see her,” Rebecca commented as we walked through the gate. I guess Rebecca was concentrating on work to get her mind off how strange this all felt.
We found a pair of empty pool chairs in the corner although out in the bright sun. All of the shaded spots were already spoken for. I set my towel down and proceeded to spray myself with sunscreen. Rebecca stood watching and shaking her head.
“I can’t believe I’m naked with my boss.”
“But you’re not. You’re in a towel. And we are trying to blend in.”
She gave a loud sigh and unwrapped her towel and set it on the chair.
“Give me that,” she said, referring to the sunscreen.
Once she finished and got settled in the chair next to me, we had a good view of the two pools and of the main entrance to the clubhouse. We watched for Gina Boone but didn’t see her.
“Everyone seems so natural and comfortable,” Rebecca said after several minutes.
“How about you? Are you comfortable?”
“I don’t know. I think I am even though everything I’ve ever been taught is telling me that I shouldn’t be. If you know what I mean.”
“There she is,” I said, spotting Gina walking through the gate into the pool deck.
A much older man was with her, older even than her husband. They were both naked, neither of them carrying towels.
“Who’s that?” Rebecca said to me in a low voice.
“I don’t know.”
We watched the two of them make their way to a pair of lounge chairs with towels on them. A middle-aged lady sat in the lounger next to the two they took, and the three of them talked together. The older man leaned over and kissed the middle-aged lady.
“Maybe she’s gotten herself involved in some kind of threesome,” I whispered to Rebecca as I searched in the bag for my camera pen.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca replied. “Look at their faces.”
“What about their faces?”
“You don’t see the similarity?”
“What?”
I looked back up at them, comparing the three of them with each other.
“If I had to bet, I’d say that those are her parents.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?” Rebecca said.
“Here?”
A family affair
Just then, I saw a young couple enter the pool deck with three kids, two girls and one boy. The girls looked to be between the ages of 12 and 8, with the boy falling somewhere between them.
“Apparently, this is a family thing,” Rebecca said.
“Who woulda thought.”
“The client didn’t mention anything about his wife growing up in a nudist family, did he?’
I went over the initial interview in my mind, all the reasons he suspected his wife was involved in some kind of affair, but nothing was ever mentioned about Gina or her parents being nudists.
“No,” I said. “But we don’t know for sure that those are her parents.”
I grabbed my phone out of the bag and dialed our client’s number.
“Hello.”
“Rich,” I said. “This is Jack from Wallace Investigations.”
“Jack, how are you? Any progress?”
“I’m good. I was just wondering how much you know about Gina’s parents.”
“Her parents?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a whole lot. I think they were both teachers. Retired now. They live out near Decatur, I think.”
I looked over at Rebecca. The resort where we now sat was very near Decatur.
“Have you ever visited their home?”
“No. Gina has always seemed resistant to the idea.”
“Did she say why?”
“Just that I wouldn’t like their place for some reason.”
“But Gina visits them all the time, right?”
“Yeah, they’re her parents. I suppose she goes out there all the time. Why? Is that where she is now?”
“Yeah, I think so. We are near Decatur.”
“But you haven’t found her meeting anyone else?”
“A man, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“No, nothing suspicious as of yet.”
That seemed to be the end of the call, but I couldn’t just leave it at that.
“Gina never mentioned growing up in anything like an alternative lifestyle?”
“What? No. What is that supposed to mean?”
So he had no clue his wife was a nudist. Was the hiding of her nudist activities what had caused his suspicion? And would this news be welcome if it meant that she was still faithful to him?
“Nothing yet,” I said. “We’ll go over the results of our surveillance at our next meeting.”
“All right.”
I ended the call and looked at Rebecca. She was looking back at me with a questioning gaze.
“I don’t think he has any clue she comes to a nudist resort.”
Rebecca laughed. “That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, he seems like a bit of a stick in the mud. If Gina thought the news wouldn’t be welcome, she might try to hide it.”
“Why did she marry him in the first place if he wasn’t going to be willing to at least accept his in-laws’ lifestyle?”
“Who knows why people do anything?”
“So what do we do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. First thing is, we need to confirm that those really are her parents.”
“We could ask her?”
“No, we couldn’t. If we made ourselves recognizable to her, we could no longer surveil her.”
“Does that even matter? We’ve been on her tail for two months and haven’t seen even a hint of infidelity. Coming here is the only thing she might have kept secret.”
The older man next to Gina got up as Rebecca and I talked, headed toward the clubhouse.
“Dad!” Gina called out to him, jumping up and running after him.
“Well, that solves that problem,” Rebecca said.
We watched Gina hand her father a ten-dollar bill and then go back to her chair to sit beside the older woman, presumably her mother. I got an idea, so I grabbed my wallet out of the bag and stood up.
“Stay here,” I said to Rebecca.
I hurried toward the clubhouse. Inside, the kitchen window had opened up, and someone behind a counter was serving snacks and drinks. Gina’s father was last in line, so I stood behind him.
The truth uncovered
“Nice day today,” I said.
The man turned and glanced at me. “It is. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“You haven’t. This is my first time.”
“Well, glad to have you here. I’m Ted.”
“Jack,” I said, unable to quickly think of a fake name I would remember.
We shook hands.
“Is that your family out there with you?”
“Yes, my wife and daughter.”
“I’m here with my girlfriend Rebecca.”
“Yeah, I saw you across the deck. What do you think so far.”
“Oh, we love it.”
“Great. If you’re able, you should think about getting a membership.”
“We will. Think about it, that is.”
Ted nodded to me and turned back toward the counter.
“I noticed your daughter had a wedding ring on. Does her husband come out here too?”
“No.” Ted sighed. “It’s a point of contention in the family. Gina, my daughter, says that he wouldn’t ever come out here. He’s got burn marks on his chest and side from his military service, and he won’t even go shirtless when he swims.”
“But he knows she comes out here, right?”
“No. She’s afraid to bring the subject up with him.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
The person in front of Ted left with her food, so he turned to order. I waited, thinking about the case. Rebecca was right. In over two months, there had been no hint of infidelity, not even a potential candidate for a lover. Keeping this case going would be milking the client beyond what was ethical. No, we would present our final findings at the next meeting. He could then decide on his own how to proceed. We were getting out of it.
“Nice talking with you,” Ted said, his drinks and snacks on a tray in his hands.
“Same to you,” I said.
I stepped up and ordered a couple of Diet Cokes and took them back to Rebecca.
“So the husband doesn’t know that his in-laws are nudists, and he doesn’t know that his wife comes out to visit them.”
“Told you,” she said.
“So, I think we’re done here. We can leave, and I’ll drop you off wherever you need to go, and then I’ll work on the client presentation.”
Rebecca took a sip of her Diet Coke, looking out at the two pools.
An unexpected ending
“Do we have to go right away?”
I shrugged. “I guess not. You’re getting into this, aren’t you?”
“It’s nice, you know. The sun, the breeze. And I’m about to get in the water. You want to join me?”
I looked at the pools and the people. If you had asked me about going to a nudist resort earlier, I would have denigrated it, said that it was for people without all their marbles. But now that I was here, seeing and talking to the people here, I could see the appeal in it.
“All right. But we need to steer clear of Mrs. Boone and her parents. We have a confidentiality agreement with our client, so we can’t disclose anything about being hired to watch her. All right?”
Rebecca looked away and then back at me. I could tell that she wanted to fix things. That was her nature. She wanted to tell Gina that she had to be honest with her husband. But she couldn’t do that in her position. We’d both just have to hope that Gina and her husband could work things out.
“All right,” she said.
“Good.”
“Now, let’s get in that pool and enjoy the rest of our little adventure without clothes.” 🪐
Editor’s note:
“Surveillance” by D.H. Jonathan was originally published in the anthology Adventures Without Clothes and is reprinted here with permission. The licensing fee for this publication has been donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) at the author’s request in support of their lifesaving work.
Buy Adventures Without Clothes here.
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This is a fun story. It reminds me of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in A Shot in the Dark entering a 'nudist colony' while clutching a guitar to try and preserve his modesty.
I thought this story sounded familiar. I read it before publication as I had to do the cover for the stories within.