Page 28 of Death at the Deep Dive

Chapter Nine

Let’s start at the very beginning

A very good place to start

Somehow, he’d got that earworm fromThe Sound of Musiccoiled in his brain.

Not that it was bad advice. Actually, it was pretty good advice.

Ellery began his hunt for Josephine and Douglas Franklin with a search of Pirate Cove’s online directory.

There was no listing for Josephine Franklin and no listing for Douglas Franklin. Therewasa listing for a James Franklin.

Not a lot of Franklins on Buck Island, so maybe James was a relative of Josephine and Douglas? Maybe not. Just in case he was, Ellery decided it would be wise to find out a bit more about the Franklins before he started asking awkward questions. Especially since at this stage he had no idea what to ask.

Hey, did you or anyone in your family kill Vernon Shandy back in 1963?was probably not going to get the best results.

Online directories were often incomplete, so maybe he could go old-school and look in the physical phone directory for Buck Island.

Ellery dug the phone directory out from beneath a stack of oldAlfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazinesand flipped to theFs.

Again, the only Franklin on Buck Island seemed to be James Franklin living on New Harbor Lane. Those homes were of relatively recent construction, so it was possible James was a newcomer to the island.

On impulse, he rose and went to the storage cupboard which, come to think of it, he’d never finished clearing out, and began digging around for an older version of the phone directory. He had a vague memory…

Ah.Yes. There it was. Actually, there were several, including 1985, 1986, 1990, and 2000.

Ellery dragged the directories out, dropped them on his desk with athump, and began scanning listings underF.

In 2000, James had been living (still on his own, it seemed) in the house on New Harbor Lane. There was no record of any other Franklins on the island.

But in the 1990 directory… Bingo.

Back in the early nineties, Mrs. D. Franklin had been living on High Street. There was no listing at all for James Franklin. So, either James Franklin had not yet arrived on the island, or he had been living with his mom.

Was there another explanation? Ellery couldn’t think of one off-hand.

Mrs. D. Franklin…

If the Franklins had divorced, surely the former missus would not still be listing herself as Mrs. D. Franklin? Besides, there ought to be a separate listing somewhere for Douglas. Unless he’d left the island?

He’d left the island all right. Ellery’s guess was that by 1990, Josephine was a widow. A widow living with her son.

He turned to 1986. Same story. The widowed Mrs. Franklin was living with her son on High Street. Those houses on High Street were expensive, but back in the day, they’d been medium-priced homes well within the reach of a working-class family with an average income, let alone two incomes, assuming that Josephine continued to work through 1990. He was drawing a lot of conclusions based on a couple of lines in an out-of-date phone book.

Ellery moved on to the phone book for 1985.

Aha!

There was only one change, but it was significant: in 1985, Mr.andMrs. D. Franklin had been living in the house on High Street. So Douglas had died either late 1985 or early 1986. Josephine had passed sometime in the 1990s.

Long after Vernon had mysteriously disappeared, the Franklins had continued to reside and work in Pirate’s Cove, living perfectly ordinary-seeming lives.

Would they do that if they had any involvement in Vernon’s disappearance?

Not that Ellery had any firsthand experience, but if it were him, he’d try to get as far away from the scene of the crime as he soon as he safely could.

He left his office and returned to the book floor. Kingston had not yet returned from lunch, but he found Nora muttering to herself in the Thriller section.

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