“Who?” But then memory clicked into place. “Wait. Yes. He did, in passing, mention the Witherspoon case.”
“Did he tell you—”
“When I say ‘in passing,’ I mean literally in passing. He said Pirate’s Cove had dark undercurrents, and he would tell me about the Witherspoon case when we have drinks.”
Jack’s brows drew together. “When you have drinks?”
This was awkward. Having spent five minutes bashing Brandon, he was now going to have to admit to planning to have drinks with him.
“Friday night. I agreed to meet him after dress rehearsal.”
Jack’s expression was Does Not Compute, and no wonder.
“I know,” Ellery said, “but it seemed easier to meet him and hear what he has to say. Otherwise, it’s liable to seem like a bigger deal than it is.”
Jack said, “It’s hard to follow your logic.” Which was honest, if not tactful.
“I don’t like to argue.” Ellery meant he hadn’t wanted to argue with Brandon, but maybe Jack thought he meant he didn’t want to argue with him because his blue-green eyes narrowed.
“All right.”
“No. I mean, I don’t mind arguing with you—”
Jack gave a short laugh. “I’ve noticed.”
Okay, possibly this was one of those situations where the more you tried to explain, the worse it got. Ellery said instead, “Anyway, who’s Rebecca Witherspoon?”
Jack seemed only too happy to follow this redirect. “A local girl who disappeared twenty years ago.”
“Disappeared? As in vanished?”
“As in made her escape after allegedly committing homicide.”
“Homicide?” Ellery stared at him. In the firelight, Jack’s face looked dark and unreadable. “You weren’t kidding about a cold case. And this has something to do with Skull House? What happened?”
“It’s everything to do with Skull House, given that the new owner is Brandon Abbott.”
Right. Because Brandon wrote fictionalized accounts of real crimes.
“Okay, well, I hadn’t heard anything about Rebecca Witherspoon and Skull House until now.”
“No. Well, twenty years later, it’s still a sensitive subject on the island.”
Ellery was silent, waiting, and Jack said slowly, “Thirty years ago, Skull House was still being used as the summer home of the Tideworths. But eventually the family died off. The only one left was a maiden aunt in Boston.”
“Do people still say maiden aunt?” Ellery asked.
Jack sighed.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Legally, the house wasn’t abandoned, but since no one ever stayed there, the servants were all let go. There was a caretaker, but once he died, his position was never filled.”
“The house just sat there?”
“Exactly. Fully furnished but uninhabited.”
“Hm.”
“Which naturally made it a tempting target for local teens.”
“Ah. Right.”
“As you’d expect, there were a few thefts, some vandalization, but basically, this is a pretty law-abiding island. For the most part the house just sat there collecting dust.”
“Why wasn’t it sold?”
Jack shook his head. “No idea. Obviously, this was way before my time. Anyway, one spring break, a group of kids came home from college, and a party was planned at Skull House—”
“I may have starred in this movie,” Ellery said, and Jack gave him a crooked grin.
“I hope it ended better for Noah Street.”
Was it goofy to be flattered that Jack remembered his character’s name? Probably.
“What went wrong?”
“Nobody knows for sure. Or at least, no one has ever talked. The evening ended with one kid dead and another presumably on the run. Although she may well be dead too by now.”
“She being Rebecca Witherspoon?”
“Correct.”
“Who did she kill?”
“A kid named Steve Robertson. He had been a big football star in high school, but unlike Rebecca, he didn’t go off to college. He stayed on the island and worked in the family business.”
This really was beginning to sound like one of the Happy Halloween flicks. “Were they a couple?”
“No. No, but there was history there. Her friends later claimed the Robertson kid had been harassing her. His friends claimed she was a tease, that she had been coming on to him. We may never know. Like I said, no one ever talked. We don’t have rumors so much as rumors of rumors.”
“In all this time? On an island this small?” In Ellery’s experience, gossip was a major pastime in Pirate’s Cove. It was hard to believe the truth hadn’t come out in twenty long years.
Jack shrugged. “I tried to reopen the case when I first moved here. I didn’t get any further than my predecessors. This is one secret the people of Pirate’s Cove keep to themselves.”
“But why, though? Why wouldn’t the islanders want this solved?”
“I honestly don’t know. I thought the same thing in the beginning. Maybe there’s a feeling of shared guilt? Shared responsibility for what happened—or what didn’t happen in the way of adult supervision? Two years ago, one of those true-crime shows tried to get permission to do an episode on Skull House. They offered a lot of money, but the town fathers shot it down. Not that I blame them. I didn’t want a film crew here either. I figured they’d destroy whatever might be left of the crime scene. It’s moot now.”
Yes. Because Brandon owned the property. Brandon had already hired contractors to start ripping the house apart.
Ellery said, “Brandon uses real crimes as the basis of his stories, but he doesn’t do any serious investigation. In his books, the true culprit is always supernatural. Like a demon or a ghost or a vampire.”
“That may be, but I’m still getting complaints.”
“From who?”
“Hard to say. They’re being funneled through the mayor’s office. Suffice it to say, Abbott’s stirring up bad memories.”
Ellery thought that over. “How did she—Rebecca—kill Steve?”
“He was bludgeoned to death with a marble bust. Supposedly, a replica of John Mansfield.”
“Supposedly? If the case remains unsolved, wouldn’t the murder weapon still be held in an evidence locker?” That was how it worked in most mystery novels.
“Somewhere along the line, it disappeared, along with any other physical evidence there may have been.”
“That seems…pretty strange.”
“I’ll say.” Jack’s tone was grim.
“And there was never any trace of Rebecca? She’d have had to leave the island on the ferry, wouldn’t she?”
“Spring break twenty years ago? It’s possible she could have managed to slip away. Robertson’s body wasn’t discovered for two days. Or she could have sailed to the mainland. She was supposed to be an accomplished sailor.”
Ellery had not been working in a mystery bookshop for four months for nothing. “A boat would have been missing, though, right?”
“Right. But the fact that it wasn’t reported doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Someone may have covered for her.”