Murder With Puffins

Chapter 19

Nude Puffin Descending a Staircase

"It certainly looks like your mother," Michael said, tipping his head to scrutinize the painting. "Or at least looks like what I gather she would have looked like at that age, from the photo albums we looked at last night. The face anyway; I wouldn't know about the rest of it."

"Well, yes, that's what she looked like at that age," I said. "As far as one can tell from pictures of her in swim-suits. But surely you don't think Mother would actually have posed for something like that?"

"It's definitely got her attitude."

He was right. The woman in the picture lay full length on the rug, facing the viewer, her head and shoulders propped up by a couple of pillows covered with Oriental fabric. One hand was behind her head and the other held the champagne. One leg was bent slightly at the knee and the other outstretched fully, with a high-heeled fur mule dangling from the toes. Her face showed no sign of awkwardness or embarrassment, only an expression of pride and absolute confidence. I couldn't imagine Mother posing nude for a painting, but if she had decided to, I'm sure she would have stared out at the artist with just that air of arrogant self-assurance.

"She'd never wear a tacky fur slipper like that," I said defensively. "And the bearskin's pretty cliched, too."

"He could have done it from photos," Michael said.

"Of course he did it from photos," I snapped. "Clothed photos. But why? And when?"

"Let's make sure it's out of the rain," Michael said. "We can worry about the rest later."

We took the nude down and carried it with us into the living room.

Michael gasped. "What a view!"

I frowned at him. My mind was still on the picture we carried, and it took me a second to realize he was talking about the room we'd entered.

A giant wall of glass gave a sweeping view of the shore and the sea--a very gray and turbulent view, at the moment. The inside was a mess, too. The panes of glass forming the wall were slightly smaller than the ones beside the door--perhaps because this was the ocean side of the house. Even so, something had bashed one of them in, and mud and leaves littered the room. Several paintings on the wall were getting a bit damp. Only landscapes, I noted with a sigh of relief.

We hauled the paintings to the driest corner of the living room and continued our explorations.

"Impressive kitchen," Michael said. "You could run a small restaurant out of this place."

"Pretentious," I said. "I bet he hasn't cooked a dozen meals here since he moved in. Look how spotless everything is."

"Maybe he's just a good housekeeper."

"No," I said. "There's a difference between spotless from regular cleaning and spotless from disuse. This is disuse. Trust me--I know what disuse looks like from the occasional flying visit to my own kitchen."

"Well, pretentiousness has its advantages," Michael said. "Take a look at this wine cellar."

"Pretentious is right," I said. His wine cellar was probably larger than all my closets combined. "But what use is it? Unless you're suggesting that we take advantage of Resnick's wine collection, since he's not around to complain?"

"It's a tempting thought," Michael said, examining the labels of a few bottles with obvious interest. "Actually, I thought we could stash the paintings in here. No windows, and the walls are designed to protect the contents."

"Good idea," I said. We stowed the nude safely along one wall, then put the slightly damp landscapes from the living room along the other.

The dining room would have seated a dozen people easily, although all the chairs except the one closest to the kitchen had a thin film of dust on them. The guest room was expensively furnished but rather cheerless. And long unused. Despite the shortage of rooms on the island, obviously Resnick hadn't offered his spare bed to anyone, and I doubted anyone had even asked. I suspected the birders we'd heard singing in the church the night before were happier there than they would have been here anyway.

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."