Page 5

What the infamous Ms. Fairplay thought of the Buck Island gig was anyone’s guess. She sat, sphinxlike, eating her seafood salad and sipping her sparkling mineral water. She was tall and thin and very brown, as though she spent every minute in the sun. Her salt-and-pepper hair was long and curly. Her eyes were dark and surrounded by laugh lines, though she had not smiled once during lunch, so far as Ellery could tell.

He was seated directly across from her. Which meant he was also across from her husband and manager, Neilson Elon, as well as her sister and PA, Jocasta. Neilson was sleeky and willowy. He wore snakeskin boots and a nearly overpowering aftershave. Jocasta was like a watered-down version of her older sister. Smaller, slighter, blonder. She wore oversized blue spectacles that Ellery surmised were more about camouflage than vision correction.

Though Lara Fairplay seemed to have forgotten his existence as soon as they were introduced, Neilson and “Jo” never took their eyes off him. He assumed they were trying to decide if the good people of Pirate’s Cove were out of their ever-loving minds.

It was a question that kept Ellery up at nights too.

Also present at the large luncheon table were Dylan (of course), Sue (unfortunately), Olive Earl, David Fish, and Phillipa Jones (the three other Sing the Plank board members), and (puzzlingly) Jane Smith.

Jane was one of the Silver Sleuths book club’s charter members, and Ellery was confused for several minutes as to whether Jane was there in her capacity as an amateur sleuth. That would be awkward for many reasons, not least because, frankly, Jane had as much qualification as he did to stick his nose into other people’s business.

But as the conversation continued around him, he remembered that a couple of weeks earlier, Jane, who worked in one of the island’s many antique shops, had discovered a scrap of music behind a drawer in a nineteenth century escritoire or secretary desk. The music was rumored to be a half-completed song by Stephen Foster, AKA The Father of American Music, called, “Angel Beneath the Waves.”

He wasn’t sure why Jane seemed to be the accepted “owner” of the document in question rather than Oriel Dolin, who owned the antiques store where the scrap of music had been discovered, but no one seemed in doubt as to Jane’s proprietary rights.

Anyway, Jane’s discovery had sounded unlikely at the time, and it still seemed pretty unlikely to Ellery, but there Jane sat, chatting away to David Fish about the authentication process.

“From what I understand, any historical document has to be examined from three different aspects: historical, scientific, and stylistic. I suppose, in this case, musicality will figure in somewhere, but then that’s subjective, isn’t it?”

“That must take some time,” Fish said. “The festival kicks off Friday night.”

“True.” Jane directed an apologetic glance in Neilson’s direction.

Neilson stopped staring at Ellery long enough to say, “So long as the appraiser is comfortable giving us a conditional thumbs-up, Lara will go ahead and perform the song on Friday.” He smiled grimly. “Even if the document can’t ultimately be authenticated to everyone’s satisfaction, the press Lara’s performance will generate is worth every penny.”

If only Nora had been present to inquire how many pennies they were talking about. The trace of smugness in Jane’s tiny smile led Ellery to think the Fairplay contingent were offering her a pretty decent amount, though probably not what she could get on the open market.

On the other hand, a bird in hand… Document authentication could take a fair bit of time (and money) as Ellery had learned from the mystery novels of John Dunning—with sometimes mixed results. Jane always seemed to be strapped for cash. Maybe it seemed smarter to take what she could get and let the Fairplays worry about whether the music was the real thing.

“How much of the original song is left to perform?” Fish, who owned and operated Garden Isles Florist, was also the leader of the Fish and Chippies, Buck Island’s favorite home-grown folk band. His curiosity was only natural.

Jane looked vague and murmured, “Well, I’m no musician, but there’s enough—”

Neilson cut in with a brusque, “Verse and chorus. That’s it. Lara’s completed the song herself, which is why her performance is going to belegend. Her first original piece since she started performing again.”

“Isn’t it exciting?” Jane exclaimed, gazing around the table.

Fish was noncommittal, but the rest of the committee seemed thrilled. Sue was scribbling notes like mad. Neilson smiled at Jo Fairplay. Jo Fairplay smiled at her older sister. It was a hopeful kind of smile, but Lara seemed unaware of the smile or her sister or her husband or really the entire luncheon table. She finished her sparkling water and, without a word, went outside to smoke a cigarette.

Feeling Dylan’s gaze, Ellery glanced at him, and Dylan did one of those chin-over-the-shoulder moves straight out of a 1940s gangster flick.

What the what?

Ellery pushed his chair back in tandem with Dylan, and they strolled in the opposite direction of Lara, through the white French doors and onto the grassy knoll overlooking the beach below.

“So. What do you think?” Dylan kept his voice low, though they were well out of earshot of anyone but the seagulls.

Ellery said honestly, “I don’t know what to think. I think Lara Fairplay doesn’t want to be here. I think that’s an uncomfortable family dynamic the three of them have going on. Also, I think Fish doesn’t like the idea of Lara co-writing with Stephen Foster when Stephen Foster doesn’t get a vote.”

“Right, right. But I mean, about taking the case?”

Ellery cocked his head. Dylan was probably about sixty (he was always vague about his actual age). A short, slim, dapper man with boundless knowledge of film and theater in addition to a wide array of other interests. His eyes were blue and lively, his nose rivaled Barrymore’s, and his silver hair was always cut in the latest style. He was very good at many things, but in particular, he was good at talking people into doing what they didn’t want to do.

“What case? Nobody said a word about what the case is or wanting me to take it.”

“We’re trying to keep as much of a lid on it as we can. They wanted Sue there for publicity, but that did complicate things.”

“That’s Sue.”