Murder With Puffins (19 page)

The master suite rivaled the kitchen for pretentiousness. But the lush white carpet was already dingy from lack of cleaning. And strewn with wet leaves, which had probably blown in from one of the broken windows.

"Fancies himself quite the ladies' man," I said, frowning at the ornately canopied king-size bed. "I'm surprised he resisted the ceiling mirror."

"He ran out of mirrors after he finished in here," Michael's voice echoed from the bathroom.

I poked my head in.

"Ick," I said, stepping inside to gape at the interior. "It's like a fun house. Imagine having to look at yourself in all these mirrors first thing in the morning."

"The view doesn't look that bad to me," Michael said, coming up behind me and putting his arms around my waist.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I said, leaning back against him. "But now try imagining you're Victor Resnick."

"No thanks," he said, sighing. "I know it's stupid, but poking around in here actually makes me feel sorry for him."

"Me, too," I said.

Actually, until Michael said that, I'd been thinking what a pity the one place we'd managed to find five minutes alone together all weekend was the house of a murder victim. If Victor Resnick had been merely missing, I'd have suggested to Michael that we make ourselves at home and, if anyone ever caught us later, pretend that we'd taken refuge here during a bad part of the storm. But since an army of forensic experts would soon begin swarming all over the house, I knew we shouldn't do anything we couldn't explain away as part of our quest to minimize damage and secure the contents of the house.

Although I couldn't help noticing the extralarge sunken tub. More like a small wading pool, really, all lined with gold-flecked turquoise-colored tiles. There was even a small adjoining fireplace, though that showed little sign of use.

Like something out of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
. Which Resnick was, of course. No sensible person would use a tub like that for ordinary daily bathing, especially on an island with a chronic water shortage. But fill it up, add lots of bath oil, set several dozen candles around the periphery, light the fire, and send Michael to the wine cellar to pick out a bottle or two of Resnick's undoubtedly expensive wine… I shook myself. This was not the time for erotic fantasies.

"Depressing," I said, reluctantly pulling away from Michael.

"Gee, thanks," he said.

"I mean this place," I said. I stepped over to the wide vanity counter and, using the corner of my shirt to avoid smearing--or leaving--fingerprints, popped open the medicine cabinet.

"Why the medicine cabinet?" Michael said. "He wasn't poisoned."

"You can learn a lot about someone from his medicine cabinet," I said as I poked through the bottles, jars, and tubes in the cabinet.

"Remind me to clean my medicine cabinet before you get another chance to rummage through it," Michael said, peering over my shoulder. "Anything suspicious?"

"No," I replied. "Apart from having an ulcer or some other serious stomach problems for a couple of decades, he was pretty healthy for someone his age."

"A couple of decades? How can you tell?"

"Fifteen-year-old leftover Tagamet pills; Zantac prescriptions from four and seven years ago--obviously he was one of those suicidal idiots who never threw out old medicine."

"On second thought, remind me to put a padlock on my medicine cabinet," Michael said. "Is this significant?"

"Probably not," I said. "The rest of the drugs are normal over-the-counter stuff. He wasn't on medication for anything like epilepsy or heart problems, anything that would account for his falling down into the tidal pool from natural causes."

"Well, we knew that from the gash on the back of his head."

"True," I said. "Well, one good thing: If he was this much of a pack rat about medicine, maybe there's a desk somewhere crammed with interesting papers."

"I think it's out in the living room," Michael said. "I noticed it while we were hauling the wet paintings down."

"Well, why didn't you say something?" I said, going back out into the bedroom. "Let's go and--"

"What now?" Michael asked, seeing that I'd stopped in the middle of the room.

I indicated the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace.

"Yes, the man liked bearskin rugs," Michael said. "They have their charms."

"He must have liked this one anyway," I said. "It must be older than God. Look how ratty it is."

"He probably had it for years."

"But he didn't have it lying here very long."

"The house hasn't existed very long," Michael said.

"Yes, but look at those paler areas of the carpet," I said. "Here, you can see it better if we move the bearskin."

I peeled back the bearskin rug and pointed to a rectangular area of white carpet still more or less the original snow white.

"I see," Michael said. "From the shape of the clean spot, he had another rug, a rectangular one, lying here up until very recently. And then he replaced it with the bearskin rug."

"After the storm began, most probably," I said. "See, a couple of wet leaves stuck to the underside of the bearskin."

"Which brings up the question of whether he did it or someone else?"

"Why on earth would someone sneak in here and unroll a ratty old bearskin in front of Resnick's bedroom fireplace?"

"Bloodstains on the other rug?" Michael suggested. "Maybe he wasn't killed outside; perhaps he was killed here and then the murderer replaced the bloodstained rug with the bearskin."

"It's possible," I said. "But I think it's more likely that Resnick did it himself. Shortly before he died, which would account for the wet leaves under it."

"And why would he do that?" Michael asked.

"To make Dad jealous," I said. "We know the bearskin rug hasn't been here all that long. How long has that picture been in the entryway?"

"Possibly as long as the house has been here. How many people brave the shotgun blasts to visit him?"

"Yes, but he had to have workmen, delivery people. I'm sure if it had been there any time at all, someone in the village would have seen it, and they would have said something about it by now. Mrs. Fenniman practically broadcast the news that Resnick was Mother's beau before Dad came along, and I'm sure other people know about it."

"But would they recognize who it was?" Michael said. "No offense; your mother's in wonderful shape for a woman her age, but would anyone really recognize her in the picture?"

"A stranger wouldn't, but at least a dozen people on the island right now knew her then. Maybe more. And that's not counting anyone who's leafed through Aunt Phoebe's photo albums; she's always dragging them out at parties."

"Well, that's true," Michael admitted. "They'd know it was a Hollingworth, at any rate."

"I bet he put it there deliberately, to make sure someone saw it and spread the word," I said. "Heck, maybe he planned to invite Mother and Dad for dinner and hope the sparks flew."

"There's another possibility," Michael said. "Maybe he wanted to stir up another kind of spark."

"What do you mean?"

"What if he planned to invite just your mother over? Show her the picture, claim he'd kept that ratty old bearskin all these years as a souvenir, and try to rekindle their romance?"

"I'm sure Mother has more sense," I said.

"Yes, but did Resnick?"

I pondered it for a while and sighed.

"I wish we wouldn't keep finding evidence that points at members of my family."

"Cheer up," Michael said. "Let's go through Resnick's desk. We're probably already on the hook for trespassing and interfering with a murder investigation; let's not stop before we find something useful."

"We're just making sure nothing's getting damaged," I repeated.

"Or we could always pretend we were taking advantage of the empty house to get a little privacy in which to… misbehave."

"You think they'd believe that?"

"They will if we show them that sunken tub," Michael said, quirking one eyebrow. "If the town decides to raze the house, do you suppose they'd give us the tub?"

"I'm not sure it would survive the move," I said.

"True. In fact, it may not have survived the hurricane," he said. "Perhaps we should check it out."

"Maybe later," I said, "when we've finished burgling."

"And when you're feeling less frantic about clearing your father," Michael said with a sigh. "Just a thought."

"Well, hold the thought, but let's worry about the desk for now."

Michael led the way back to the living room and pointed at Resnick's desk.

"Good work," I said. "I'd overlooked it somehow."

"Overlooked it?" Michael said, staring at the huge antique rolltop desk. "How could you overlook that thing? It's over five feet tall."

"I'm afraid my idea of a desk is a mound of papers with legs sticking out from under it," I said. "I never imagined that anything that tidy could be a working desk."

"You're describing your own desk, aren't you?" Michael said.

" 'Fraid so."

"And yet I'll bet you're going to say that, despite its messy appearance, you can find any piece of paper you need in five minutes."

"Are you kidding? Five days, working full-time, and that's if I'm lucky. Now that's more like it," I said as we rolled up the top, revealing a desktop computer and a reasonably promising quantity of paper. "A little too tidy for my taste, but at least there are signs of life here."

"Luckily, the desk is awfully close to that cracked window," Michael said. "See, it's getting wet already."

"I don't suppose we could possibly hit the desk," I said.

"I don't even want to try," Michael said. "We'll have to move the contents to safety. The wine cellar, I should think."

Most of the contents weren't all that interesting. We studied his bills and bankbooks as we transported them, but we didn't find any dirt. Victor Resnick was a rich man who spent a great deal of money on his own pleasures, but then, he had a great deal of it to spend.

Or did he? He didn't have a very large balance in any of his accounts. Maybe he had a broker somewhere managing the bulk of his money. Then again, we found an awful lot of dunning* letters from creditors. Was he simply, like so many wealthy people, careless about paying on time, or was he going broke?

We found an entire drawerful of papers related to the publication of the book of his paintings I'd bought--contracts, proofs of the photographs, and about fifteen drafts of the text, each annotated lavishly in a bold, angular handwriting. Along with corrections, we saw a great many scathing remarks about the intelligence and ancestry of the writer. If by chance we found the writer on Monhegan, I'd add him to the top of the list of suspects.

"The handwriting on these matches the edits on the biography," I pointed out. "Resnick was definitely cooperating with James Jackson."

"Did Jackson write this, too?" Michael asked as he perused one of the drafts.

"No, someone named Edwards. Who can actually write. I don't know where Jamie boy came from, but he can't write for beans."

"Resnick didn't realize that," Michael said, flipping through a fat sheaf of papers from another drawer. "And Jackson's definitely a pseudonym. Here's another copy of the biography--dated a couple of weeks ago, with the author listed as James Jones; and Resnick crossed the name out, with these orders: Sounds too phony--pick another alias!'"

"And the biographer thought James Jackson sounded more plausible?"

"I suppose; tell that to the publishers of
From Here to Eternity
. Resnick edited this version with just as heavy a hand; the whole manuscript looks as if it has the measles.

But he's not as hard on Mr. Jones/Jackson as on poor Edwards."

"Another draft or two and I bet he'd have started ripping Jamie boy's liver out, too," I said.

"He didn't like the galleries that handled his work, either," Michael remarked.

We found several files of letters to and from various galleries. Resnick evidently considered the owners of several of the most prestigious New York and Boston galleries either fools who had no idea how to sell his work or scoundrels trying to take him for a ride. More suspects, if they were on the island, which I doubted, but I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down their names anyway.

"You suspect the gallery owners?" Michael asked.

"I suspect everybody," I said. "Besides, haven't you heard that the value of an artist's work triples when he dies?"

"I don't suppose we could buy a few before word gets out on the mainland," Michael suggested.

"Probably not," I said. "And anyway, I don't know about you, but it's not as if I have fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to do it with."

Michael whistled.

"They sell for that much?"

"Well, that's nothing compared with what you'd have to pay for a painting by someone really famous. A major Wyeth, for example. I think they go for a million or two."

"But still, it's a motive. I wonder how we could find out who owns his paintings."

"Ask and ye shall receive," I said. "See, he keeps a list of everything he sells. Most artists do."

"That's great! Although I suppose they won't all still belong to the original buyers anymore."

"On the contrary, artists usually keep pretty close track of where all their paintings are. See, here's a painting he sold to someone in 1962, and a note that it was resold in 1970, with the selling price and the new owner's name. And here's one that was sold about the same time, then donated to the Cleveland Art Museum in 1981."

"Want me to help you copy the names down?" Michael asked.

"No," I said. "He printed out three copies; we can take one and still leave two for the cops."

Michael studied the list, looking over my shoulder.

"Notice anything odd?" he asked after awhile.

"Only that he wasn't selling very many paintings these days," I said, frowning. "And other people haven't been selling them much, either. Look at all these entries for the fifties and sixties. And in the eighties and nineties--practically zip."