Home > Mystery at the Masquerade (Secrets and Scrabble #3)

Mystery at the Masquerade (Secrets and Scrabble #3)
Author: Josh Lanyon

 

Chapter One

 

“Burglary?” Ellery asked doubtfully.

“It looks like it.” Jack selected a French fry, considered it, folded it into his mouth.

They were having lunch on the outside patio at the Gull’s Wing Café. The patio was surrounded by July’s summer visitors to Pirate’s Cove and, yes, gulls. A lot of seagulls swooping in for the bites of burger and fried fish tourists offered up, despite the forest-worth of signs requesting people NOT to feed the birds.

“In your town?” Ellery joked.

Jack’s grin was sardonic. “I know. I must be losing my touch.”

Once upon a time, and not so long ago, Ellery would have made some little jokey, flirty comment about Jack’s touch, but they had recently decided to, er, hold the position. The position being friends. Strictly friends. Without benefits.

Well, no, because there were definitely benefits to being friends. Ellery was glad they were friends. Sure, he would have liked to see where things might have gone with Jack, but he was a guy who could take no for an answer.

“Why do you think it took the owners so long to report the break-in?” Ellery asked, staring down a particularly large gull watching him from the white railing.

“Nobody noticed. The burglar climbed vines on a trellis and got in through an upstairs window. There isn’t any staff when the Bloodworths aren’t staying on the island. The caretaker is about a hundred years old.”

“Was the window unlocked?”

“Nope. They had to break in.”

A gull landed on the pebble top table and fastened its beady gaze on Ellery’s grinder. Jack snapped, “Hey.”

The gull jumped, offered an affronted squawk, and took flight, wings beating the sparkling air. A few of the other diners—including Ellery—jumped as well. Jack’s hey was pretty commanding, even when it was off-duty. Not that Buck Island’s police chief was ever really off-duty.

Ellery said, “Maybe you should cut down on the caffeine, Jack. Just sayin’.”

Jack muttered, “It takes all winter to train them not to beg, and the first week of summer, it’s like living through the movie The Birds.”

“Mm-hm.”

Ellery was mostly kidding, though Jack did seem a little wound-up lately.

Jack grimaced acknowledgment. “Maybe.”

“So what did the burglar get away with?”

“Several thousand dollars’ worth of antique sterling silver. Picture frames, trays, serving sets and, of course, a whole lot of silverware.”

“Small items easily disposed of?” Five months ago, Ellery had inherited the island’s only mystery bookshop, and he was now something of an armchair detective. Not that it took a detective, armchair or otherwise, to draw that conclusion.

“Correct.”

Ellery said bracingly, “You’ll get ’em. It’s an island. People talk. Someone knows who your bad guy or bad guys are.”

“Or bad girls.” Jack chose another French fry. Sunlight gleamed off his wedding band.

Ellery wasn’t sure when Jack had started wearing his ring again—but then, he couldn’t pinpoint when Jack had stopped wearing his ring. He had not worn it on their sole “date,” but it had reappeared in the weeks since.

Honestly? Better not to try to analyze what was happening there.

But it was confusing sometimes. Sometimes like now, when Jack’s gaze would catch his own and linger, linger, until Jack finally looked away. Or sometimes Ellery would glance up and find Jack studying him as though Ellery presented a puzzle Jack just couldn’t figure out.

His thoughts broke off as a woman sitting a couple of tables away from their own suddenly squealed, “NO! NO WAY!”

She plucked a small black envelope from her companion, tore it open, and pulled out the small card inside. A wisp of tissue paper drifted on the breeze and was snatched up by a kamikaze seagull.

The other woman laughed, watching her friend, and then winced when the first woman lightly bonked her on the head with the card.

“I don’t believe it!” the first woman exclaimed. “Why you?”

The second woman laughed again. People at neighboring tables also laughed.

“What the what?” Ellery glanced at Jack, who was watching the exchange with a resigned expression.

“It’s the same every year.”

“What’s the same?”

“The countdown for the last golden tickets to the chocolate factory.”

Ellery always found Jack’s familiarity with children’s literary classics kind of charming, but this time he didn’t get the reference.

“Huh?”

“The hullabaloo over who rates an invite to the Marauder’s Masquerade and who doesn’t.”

Hullabaloo. What a great word. Ellery made a mental note, said patiently, “I think you think that I know what you’re talking about.”

Jack looked surprised, started to speak, but was interrupted by the crackle of the radio mic on his shoulder.

“Chief? Chief?” cackled Officer Martin. “Are you there, Chief?”

Jack sighed, threw Ellery a look of apology, and rose from the table.

* * * * *

“The Marauder’s Masquerade is one of the biggest social events of the season. Certainly, the most prestigious.” Nora Sweeny, head of the now-defunct Pirate’s Cove Historical Society, and Ellery’s assistant at the Crow’s Nest, was talking in an animated fashion. Ostensibly to Ellery, but really to anyone in listening distance.

“That’s interesting,” Ellery said absently. “So it’s a ball? A masquerade ball?” He was mostly being polite, his real focus on shelving new stock from the morning’s shipment from HarperCollins.

“Yes. Exactly. A gala ball and ghost hunt.”

“Ghost hunt?” That caught Ellery’s attention. He wasn’t much for gala balls, but a ghost hunt? That sounded like fun.

“Yes. The ghost hunt is the main event.”

“Whose ghost is being hunted?”

Nora’s face screwed up in thought. She was a small, slight, seventy-something with the energy of a woman half her age and the inbred fortitude of seven generations of staunch New Englanders. “There’s a difference of opinion there. Some claim the ghost of Tom Blood walks among the gravestones and statues of his descendants. That seems rather unlikely, as Captain Blood went down with his crew when the Blood Red Rose was lost at sea.”

“If it’s not Captain Blood, then who is it?”

Nora loved mysteries. Especially the real-life historical ones. It was safe to assume she would have a theory.

“His bride. Maria Catalina Isabella de Fontana. A seventeen-year-old Spanish noblewoman Blood abducted and then wed—supposedly with her full and willing consent. Which, given her age, doesn’t mean much. When his ship went down, she threw herself into the sea.”

“That seems to happen a lot on this island,” Ellery commented. “I’m starting to wonder if there’s something in the water.”

Watson, Ellery’s six-month-old black spaniel-mix puppy, waddled over and curled up between Ellery’s feet with a groan reminiscent of an elderly man lowering himself into his easy chair. Ellery had nearly tripped over Watson twice that morning already, but Watson seemed to be suffering a mild case of separation anxiety.

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