“How would you know that?” Dylan asked Mr. Starling. “You weren’t there.”
“I have my sources,” Mr. Starling said loftily. “I know for a fact that Julian, Lombard, and Marguerite were all absent from the ball during the time in question.”
Did they even know the time in question?
“Maybe they did it together,” Janet joked.
“Murder on the Orient Express…” Ellery said slowly.
“No, no.” Mr. Starling was impatient. “This wasn’t a lynch mob. Locke Lombard is the sole guilty party. He’s the only one with anything to gain.”
“Maybe Brett’s murder wasn’t about gain,” Ellery said. “Maybe it was a crime of passion.”
“Then Lombard is still our man!” Mr. Starling placed his last tile on the board with a decisive click. “Ha! TUNNELS.” He glanced triumphantly at the little stacks of tiles before Ellery, Janet, and Dylan. “And I believe once the tally is complete, you’ll see that I win.”
Mr. Starling had indeed won that game of Scrabble.
Ellery regretfully passed on playing another round, told everyone good night—assured them that no, he did not have a hot date—and drove over to Sandy’s to pick up Watson from his puppysitter.
He couldn’t help feeling that between TUNNELS and UNDERPASS, the cosmos—or maybe just the Scrabble gods—were trying to tell him something.
Nothing that he hadn’t already been considering.
Nora had said that Blood was the one who had originally devised the now abandoned network of tunnels beneath the village. Given that fact, and the fact that all the original Pirate’s Eight homes seemed to feature secret passages or hidden rooms, it didn’t seem a stretch that Blood might have built a tunnel leading from his fortress to the sheltered cove where his ship lay anchored. Ellery’s theory perhaps also explained why the first generations of Bloodworths were buried in the cemetery below and not up there in the family crypt—because the mausoleum had not been built to house the dead; it had been built to conceal the comings and the goings of the living.
Granted, it was just a theory.
“Wanna go on a little adventure?” he asked Watson.
Watson was curled into a ball in the passenger seat. Ellery could see the whites of his eyes, and heard the swish of his tail against the VW’s door.
“Yeah? Me too.”
Ellery turned left and wound through the village, passing Victorian cottages with friendly lights gleaming behind lacy curtains, boxy beach bungalows with summer visitors crowding their porches, until he turned onto the narrow road leading to the old cemetery.
It was not a long drive, but it was a dark and lonely one. There were very few reasons for Pirate Cove’s residents to make this trek.
It was also a bumpy drive—the road did not seem to be maintained, and the VW hit a few neck-whipping potholes before Ellery spotted the rough stone wall of the cemetery. He pulled onto the shoulder of the road and parked.
He snapped Watson’s leash to his collar, opened the car door, and let the puppy half drag him up the grassy verge to the tall iron gates. The night air was cool, and he could taste the salt in the sea breeze. Watson lunged in an effort to investigate every moonlit flower and shiny rock.
“Take it easy,” Ellery told him. “There’s no rush.”
Watson disagreed. As far as Watson was concerned, there was always a rush. He reached the gates and stood on his hind legs, peering through the bars.
“Yeah, you’re pretty cute,” Ellery admitted.
He had wondered if the gates might be locked, with an exception made for the Masquerade ghost hunt, but no. They opened on surprisingly well-oiled hinges.
Watson and Ellery slipped through, and Ellery studied the garden of mossy gravestones and tilting crosses and weathered stone figures.
They didn’t make cemeteries like this anymore. Nowadays it was all about speed and space. Back in the day, housing the dead had been a gracious and elegant effort. Also occasionally over-the-top ostentatious. Some of these tombstones were taller than him.
The ground was so soft, the footprints of Saturday night’s ghost hunters were still visible. That must have made it fun for CSI.
Trees rustled to his left, and Ellery’s head snapped toward the noise. Watson let out a startlingly deep growl and began to tug at his leash. Ellery pointed his phone’s flashlight in the direction of the whispering leaves. Eyes gleamed in the darkness.
The hair rose on his nape. But unless they were being hunted by someone only a foot high—or crawling on their hands and knees—Ellery was pretty sure it was another dog.
He let out a long breath. “No, Watson. Leave it alone.”
The better part of Ellery’s acting career had been spent in graveyards—the real thing and movie sets alike—but there was definitely something about this place.
Or maybe it was the knowledge that someone had been murdered in that mini temple on the hill.
Watson muttered unpleasant observations about critters who lurked in shrubberies, but allowed Ellery to lead him away.
The ground beneath their feet seemed to vibrate with the steady crash of the surf against the cliffs. The night was loud with crickets singing their sea chanteys—and an owl heckling them from the trees.
Was this a bad idea?
Jack would probably think it was a bad idea.
But then Ellery disagreed with Jack about a lot of things Jack thought were a bad idea.
Anyway, it wasn’t like this was a bad part of town. A dead part of town, maybe. But not particularly dangerous. The last time anyone had been mugged on Buck Island was way back before Jack had been police chief.
A little voice in the back of his head whispered, They don’t waste time on muggings here. They jump straight to murder.
Oh-kay. He did not want to start thinking those kinds of thoughts.
Thinking of Jack had dampened his enthusiasm. He missed Jack. He missed their previous friendship. But Jack had offered an olive branch yesterday evening. Maybe more than an olive branch.
“I’m not saying this out of jealousy.”
Of all the interesting things Jack had said, that had to be the most interesting.
On impulse he pulled his cell out and pressed Jack’s number. After all, it was only smart to make sure someone knew where he was, just in case.
It took several rings, enough that Ellery checked the time and blinked. Midnight. Yikes. He had been thinking it was still around nine. Jack was probably sl—
“’Lo?” Jack’s voice was thick with sleep. He cleared his throat, rasped, “Chief Carson.”
“Hey.” Ellery lowered his voice and then wondered why. “I woke you. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what time it was.”
“Whmm-hmm Ih Ih…” Jack mumbled. It sounded like he dropped the phone in the bedclothes—or maybe a bucket of water.
“Sorry? What?”
Jack swore, there came some mighty rustling sounds, bedsprings pinging, and then Jack’s voice came on crisp and clear. “I asked what time it was, but I can see for myself. Where’d you break down this time?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? I see.” The funny thing was, Jack didn’t sound irritated or impatient or suspicious. He sounded…almost amused. “Ah. Game night is over, I guess?”