Murder With Puffins (24 page)

"He knows every inch of the island; I think we'd be slightly conspicuous?"

"So we stir things up and then just sit around and wait to see if something happens?"

"No. Like I said, we get the rope and burgle Resnick's studio."

But before we got to the cottage, Winnie and Binkie came hiking briskly up behind us. Predictably, after we exchanged greetings, they asked if we'd heard any more news about the murder.

About ten seconds after we told them about Mrs. Peabody and the puffin, Michael and Winnie were deep in conversation about digital cameras. Binkie and I fell in step a little behind them.

"I have the awful feeling I'm going to hear a great deal about digital cameras over the next few months," I said with a sigh.

"Dear me, yes," Binkie murmured. "And, if your young man is anything like Winnie, spending a great deal of time saying, 'Yes, dear, that's a lovely picture.'"

I shuddered. I had no doubt she was right.

"Speaking of pictures," I said, "what do you think of Resnick's painting ability?"

Instead of answering, Binkie looked over her glasses at me and frowned. Was I just imagining things, or had I touched a nerve?

"Resnick's painting ability?" Binkie asked warily. "Why, what's that got to do with his death?"

"I don't know that it has anything to do with it," I said. "Unless you know of a reason."

"No, of course not," Binkie said. A little too quickly perhaps? "Well, anyone on Monhegan can tell you about Victor Resnick. He's probably the most distinguished local landscape artist--"

"The real scoop, not the Monhegan Chamber of Commerce spiel."

She looked over her glasses at me. I tried to look innocent, earnest, and discreet. Apparently, I pulled it off.

"Second rate, at best," she said. "A shame, really. He showed such early promise, but then he never developed."

"I'm no art critic," I said. "His paintings seem pretty good to me."

"Oh, they're good, of course," she said. "But they're no better today than they were fifty years ago. In fact, they're not the slightest bit different. Not the style, not the technical skill, not even the subject matter."

"Always landscapes, yes," I said.

"Always Monhegan landscapes," Binkie corrected.

"I thought he'd spent most of the last twenty years in the south of France," I said.

"Yes, and did nothing the whole time but paint pictures of Monhegan. What kind of artist could live for twenty years on the Cote d'Azur and never once paint the Mediterranean?"

She frowned and shook her head. I followed suit, while privately thinking that it might take more strength of character than I possessed to pick up a brush at all if I were living on the Cote d'Azur.

"Maybe he was homesick," I suggested.

"If he was homesick, why didn't he come home a little more often, then?" Binkie said. "Lazy, more like. Did it from snapshots, of course. Only came home when he wanted more snapshots. If he were still alive, you'd see him running around with that Polaroid of his right now, taking pictures of the storm."

I had a sudden vision of Victor Resnick standing in his expensive greenhouselike studio, ignoring the glorious view as he peered at a curling Polaroid clipped to his easel.

"And honestly," Binkie went on, "if I have to look at one more painting of those eerie, foreboding, calm-before-the-storm skies… well, I suppose now I won't have to."

"You'll probably think I'm a total philistine for saying this," I said, "but I bought a book of his paintings down at Mamie's store largely because of those skies. I thought he did them rather well."

"Oh, he did do them well. Superlatively. It's just that he did them all the time. He figured out the technique early on, dazzled everybody, and couldn't let it go. Flip through that book of yours and see. Every other painting's got that same gray-green sky. That or the gnarled tree."

"Gnarled tree?"

"He used to have this charmingly gnarled tree on a rock near where his house is now," Binkie said. "I've lost count how many of his paintings I've seen it in, from one angle or another. The poor thing blew over in a nor'easter eighteen or twenty years ago, and I remember thinking, What a relief--no more gnarled tree; or at least he'll have to find another gnarled tree."

"Let me guess: He had photos of it."

"Hundreds, I imagine; from every conceivable angle. I don't think he even noticed it was gone for a year or two; and then only because he went out to take more snapshots. That's one reason why his sales are in such a slump. In his early days, when he was hot, every museum and major collector had to have a Resnick or two. But that's all you need, really. A seascape with the gnarled tree and the gray-green sky, and maybe a weathered saltbox with waves crashing on the beach behind it, and you've pretty much got Resnick covered."

"And that's not the case with most artists, right?"

"Oh, no," Binkie exclaimed. "Take someone like, oh, Picasso. There's no way you could mistake a painting from his twenties for one done in his fifties. With Resnick, you couldn't tell if he didn't date them. Of course, the critics took awhile to realize he wasn't going any further, but he'd fallen pretty well out of the mainstream by the eighties, which means he missed out on all the real money, back when the Japanese started buying."

"So he wasn't all that wealthy, then?"

"Well, he hadn't made as much money as people like Wyeth, for example, but I shouldn't think he was broke, if that's what you mean," Binkie said. "I suspect he invested well enough to live quite nicely. No reason why he shouldn't have; apart from that eyesore of a house, he never spent much money on anything that I can see."

"And he never married or… um…" I said, bogging down with embarrassment in the middle of my attempt to pry into Resnick's love life.

"He never married, no; and as for uming--well, if he bedded any woman around here, she had the good sense to keep quiet about her bad taste. Of course, I have no idea what he might have gotten up to in France," she added with a slight frown.

"Mrs. Fenniman said he was an old beau of Mother's, before she met Dad," I said.

"Well, I don't know that you'd call him a beau," Binkie said, her frown deepening. "He was quite smitten with her, of course; all the young men were. But I don't think she took him seriously. Or any of them back then. She'd pretend to, of course, if she thought it would shock your grandparents. I think that's why she took up with Resnick, really. He was the most unsuitable young man she could find. Any of the older girls, I think your grandfather would have stuck them in a convent school after that, but your mother managed to wangle that trip to Paris she'd always wanted."

Binkie shook her head, as if in admiration of Mother's cleverness.

"Well, this is your turnoff," she said, stepping up to take Winnie's arm as we arrived at the foot of Aunt Phoebe's lane. "We'll see you later, dear. Don't worry. I'm sure it will all work out much better than you think."

With that cryptic encouragement, the Bumhams strode up the hill toward the Dickermans' house.

"So," Michael asked when they were out of earshot. "Did you learn anything useful?"

I sighed.

"Not really," I said. "Nothing we didn't already know. Damn, I'm getting tired of this. We come here for a little peace and quiet, to get away from it all, and we land right in the middle of another murder. This whole thing has been a disaster from start to finish."

"I'm crushed," Michael said, reeling back in mock dismay. "You don't think it's romantic, us trapped together on a remote island, like the Swiss Family Robinson?"

"More like a remake of
Ten LittleIndians"
I said, and then instantly wondered if my answer had been a little too honest. Michael didn't seem insulted, though. "What a pity Mother and Dad didn't just stay in Europe for a few more weeks," I added, trying to change the subject.

"Yes, I think you might rather enjoy all this if you weren't worried that the police will suspect your family."

"Exactly," I said. "Besides, I always enjoy it anytime Mother's off traveling."

"That's rather a rotten thing to say about your own mother," Michael said.

"I don't see what's so rotten about it," I said a little defensively. He was kidding, wasn't he?

"Saying you don't want her around? That's not rotten?"

"I didn't say I don't want her around; I said I enjoy it when she's traveling," I corrected. He smiled, and I relaxed. Okay, he didn't think me an ungrateful daughter after all. "She sends home such interesting stuff," I added.

"What kind of stuff?"

"You never know with Mother," I said. "She thinks of traveling largely in terms of shopping, so of course she always sends home lots of loot. Though you never know when you open a package whether you're going to find a present for you, something she bought for herself, or some laundry she decided was easier to send home than get washed."

"Not much shopping on Monhegan," Michael said. "Unless you're into puffin-related tchotchkes."

"True. I wonder why on earth she agreed to come here."

"Your dad wanted to come," Michael said. "Isn't that reason enough?"

I glanced up. Michael was looking casually out to our right, apparently enjoying the view of the churning surf and dripping rain. But I had this sneaky feeling that was some kind of test question, as in "Wouldn't you do something like that for me?"

I hate that kind of test question. I always assume I've flunked them--even when it turns out later that I didn't, or that it wasn't a test question after all.

"Reason enough?" I said. "I guess it would be for most normal people. For Dad, certainly, or Rob, or just about anyone I can think of. But Mother?" I shrugged.

"You don't give your mother enough credit; I think she's very devoted to your dad."

She was certainly very intent on letting him get his rest.

Before we even got in the door, she sent Mrs. Fenniman running out to shush us.

"Your dad's asleep," Mrs. Fenniman hissed. "And your aunt Phoebe's resting up for her ordeal."

"Ordeal?" I asked.

"When the mainland police come to haul her away," Mrs. Fenniman said.

I decided not to spoil Aunt Phoebe's grand drama just yet. Her idea of resting involved sitting in the kitchen with her injured knee propped up under an ice pack, helping empty the larder. Perhaps she thought they wouldn't feed her in jail. I inquired after the knee, dodged her questions about what we'd been up to, and settled down in the living room with two heaping plates of food--one for myself and one for Michael, who had gone upstairs to change.

As I sat there with my eyes closed, munching a ham sandwich, I felt a sudden, surprisingly intense surge of relief and pleasure. I hadn't felt this happy about things since arriving on the island--since shortly after setting foot on the ferry, for that matter. Illogical, I thought. The storm still rattled the windows. We might still see Dad or Mother or Aunt Phoebe arrested on suspicion of murder. And even if we escaped the forces of nature and the long arm of the law, we still had the ferry ride back to the mainland to dread.

"You look very cheerful," Michael said, plunking down beside me.

"Things are looking up," I said.

"You've solved the mystery?" he asked eagerly.

"No, but for the moment, we're all safe and sound under the same roof, the whole family. And we're warm and dry and fed."

"Some of us are fed," he said, frowning.

"Here, I brought you a plate, too."

"Thanks," he said. "So warm, dry, and fed is enough to make you happy?"

"For now," I said. "Later, we'll work on warm, dry, fed, and free of all suspicion in the death of Victor Resnick. Speaking of which…"

I rummaged through my suitcase until I found the files I'd dragged down from the attic.

"You're not going to slog away at that while we're eating?" Michael asked.

"There're only a few of them," I said. "I just want to get to them before something else interrupts us."

Michael rolled his eyes and returned to his sandwich.

Most of the files were pretty boring. My grandfather Hollingworth's correspondence with a contractor about renovations to the cottage. Bills from someone named Barnes--Jeb's father or grandfather, presumably--for groceries and supplies.

I came close to giving up on the files and sticking them back in the attic, when I ran across a file marked "Resnick."

I was relieved at first to see that it contained only a series of increasingly angry letters from Grandfather to Resnick. Apparently, Grandfather had bought a painting, which Resnick had procrastinated about delivering. How odd; as far as I knew, my grandfather had a reputation as a canny businessman, but he wasn't exactly a patron of the arts. Perhaps he'd been canny enough to recognize Victor Resnick as a young artist on the rise and had bought a painting as an investment. Then again, having seen the painting in Resnick's house I could think of another reason for the transaction. Especially when I found the last documents in the files: a canceled check for ten thousand dollars, made out to Victor Resnick, and two copies of a bill of sale.

"Michael," I said. "Where's that book of Resnick's paintings?"

"Good question," he said, looking around the living room.

"Help me find it, will you?"

After a prolonged search, we finally found the book behind a stack of flowerpots, sitting on a coiled garden hose. I flipped through the first chapter, searching for dates.

"What's up?" Michael said, leaning over my shoulder. I lost track, just for a moment, of why I was looking through the book. Oh, right, Resnick's paintings.

"Aha!" I said, when I found the right page. "Victor Resnick made his first major sale in 1956. For the princely sum of five thousand."

"Think what a bargain that would be today," he said. "Now that he's selling for a hundred times that much."

"More like twenty times, maybe, but yes, it's a bargain. But up till 1956, his sales were for peanuts. Where's that sales log of his anyway?" I asked, fishing through my knapsack. "Aha. See. Nothing over a thousand until 1956."