“Stingy to the end,” murmured Mr. Sebastian.
Pete went on. “Navarro came upstairs when no one was looking, and he snuck up on Pilcher just as the old man was going to let me out of the bathroom. Navarro put a pillow over Pilcher’s face — maybe he just wanted to scare him. The first pillow split so he grabbed a second one. Pilcher passed out. We think Navarro got scared he’d killed the old man and decided to take Pilcher away with him and hope it would look as if Pilcher had disappeared on his own.”
“How did he get Pilcher out of the house?” asked Mr. Sebastian.
“In the laundry cart,” said Jupe, “under the dirty linens.”
“Where else!” said Mr. Sebastian with a laugh.
Jupe continued, “After the party was over, Navarro had the job of taking the linens to the laundry. Before he got there he found that it wasn’t just a body he was toting around. Pilcher was still alive.”
“So it looked like this was Navarro’s big chance to make his fortune,” said Bob. “The vacant house near the freeway was a great place to keep a prisoner. No one could hear if he yelled. The police think Navarro must have camped out at that house a time or two before Burnside hired him. The guy who once lived there had some heavy machinery that had to be fastened down, and so there was that ring in the floor.
“Navarro didn’t want Pilcher to die on him, so he saw that Pilcher always had food and water. Pilcher pretended to drift in and out of a coma so he wouldn’t have to answer Navarro’s questions. Navarro suspected he was faking, but he was afraid to put too much pressure on Pilcher. If Pilcher had a fatal heart attack, the mine would be lost forever.”
“How is the old collector now?” Mr. Sebastian asked.
“He’s recovering,” Pete said. “It’s a miracle, but he wasn’t hurt when the roof came down.”
“I can’t believe that that house collapsed,” said the mystery writer. “It couldn’t have been such a severe earthquake. I was in New York last week. The papers hardly mentioned a quake out here.”
“The epicenter was right off the coast, and we were in a really tumbledown old house,” Bob told him. “It was severe enough, let me tell you!”
Pete wrinkled his nose. A strange smell was coming from the kitchen, and the voices of the Chumash “Indians” were subdued. Grateful that he didn’t have to be an Indian, too, Pete continued tying up loose ends of the case.
“Pilcher was in the hospital for a few days,” Pete said, “but he’s a tough old bird and he’s home now. Marilyn isn’t going to marry that guy from Boston. But as soon as her dad’s stronger, she’s going to move back in with her mom full time. She figures he’ll never change, and if she hangs around him too much she might turn out to be as mean as he is. She says things like, ‘Money isn’t everything.’ That drives the old grouch nuts.”
“And all that secret stuff about the emeralds was a waste of time.” Bob’s eyes were dancing. “It turns out that somebody else found the mine a few years ago. It’s being worked today. It’s about as secret as the Rocky Beach branch of the Bank of America.
Mr. Sebastian chuckled. “Serves those two crooks right!”
“Ray Estava got a new job at a downtown bank,” said Bob, “and Ariago is lying low at the Becket store, maybe hoping Pilcher will forget about him. He was trying to date Mrs. Pilcher, and he didn’t want Pilcher to know, so he hid when he saw Jupe arriving at Mrs. Pilcher’s. Mrs. Pilcher was so embarrassed by the whole thing she didn’t know what to do. She says she doesn’t even like the guy, but she can’t seem to discourage him.”
“Some people won’t take no for an answer,” joked Mr. Sebastian. “Now, what about the ghost in Mr. Pilcher’s attic? Have you any explanation for the footsteps you heard?”
“I don’t,” said Jupe, “but Mrs. McCarthy, the housekeeper, does. She says the ghost belongs to the little girl who used to live there with her rich aunt — the girl who was sent home in disgrace when a pin of the aunt’s disappeared.
“The girl had a hard time after that because her family believed she might be a thief. Mrs. McCarthy went up to the attic after we left and did some searching on her own. She found this stuck in the folds of an old quilt in one of the trunks.”
Jupe put a brooch on the coffee table — a gold brooch with red stones set in it. “Mrs. McCarthy thinks this is the pin the girl was accused of stealing. She thinks the aunt must have lost it while she was putting things away in the trunk. After she died, the trunk went to Mr. Pilcher along with most of the things in the house.
“We think the first intruder in the attic was Navarro. He was frustrated because Marilyn couldn’t find the bishop’s book, and he came looking — and wound up tackling me. But after that? Well, Mrs. McCarthy learned that the girl — woman now — died in an auto crash the day of Marilyn’s engagement party. The housekeeper claims that the woman’s spirit came back to find the brooch and show it so that people would know she didn’t take it.”
“Came back to clear her name,” said Mr. Sebastian.
Jupe nodded. “But there must be another explanation. Nobody comes back. There are no ghosts.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Sebastian.
Suddenly voices in the kitchen were raised in protest. A moment later Don appeared to announce that Mr. Sebastian’s lunch was almost ready. The strange aroma that had seeped into the living room now assaulted everyone’s nose. It reminded Pete of baked sawdust.
“Children do not eat acorn cakes,” said Don sadly. “Do not want to be Chumash Indians.”
“Oh?” said Mr. Sebastian.
“Not to worry.” Don smiled. “I take children to Pizza Shack on highway. Pizza is great all-American food. Even better than acorns!”
Mr. Sebastian laughed. Between Don’s cooking and the Investigators’ cases, he never knew what to expect. What would they all come up with next?