Murder With Puffins ml-2

by Donna Andrews

  Why does everyone look at me when people ask questions like that?

  "I suppose you can't call the police over from the mainland until the storm's over?"

  "The phones are down," Jeb said. "I could try radioing the Coast Guard, but even if I got through, I doubt they could come till after the storm. It's headed our way now."

  "No, it's not; it's going to miss us by at least fifty miles," another local put in.

  "Fifty miles is nothing to a hurricane," Jeb said. "Why, in ‘24--"

  "So aren't you going to do something about the body?" I interrupted. "To preserve it until the police get here?"

  They all stared at me.

  "Is there anyplace on the island with a working generator and a big refrigerator you can empty out?"

  They looked horrified.

  "One of the restaurants, maybe?" I suggested. "Most of them have closed for the season. And most of them have emergency generators, don't they? Because of the food?"

  "Yes, but--" a local began, and then stopped. They looked at one another. I could read their thoughts. Having its refrigerator serve as a temporary morgue wouldn't enhance a restaurant's ambiance if it got out--and it would certainly get out in a community as small as Monhegan.

  "I hear the Anchor Inn's probably going out of business unless the Mayfields get an extension on their loan," one said finally.

  "Mayfields went back to the mainland, though," another said.

  "They're having the Dickermans look after the place," Jeb Barnes said, looking relieved. "Fred, you've got a key, right? You take care of it."

  Fred was tucked away behind the stove, nursing a mug with a protective air, which made me suspect it contained more than just coffee. He looked up, nodded, chugged the remaining contents of his mug, and slouched over to the coatrack beside the door.

  "And someone official should take charge of the scene," I said, looking at Jeb. "Supervise bringing the body down."

  Jeb sighed and began struggling into his raincoat and hat, as well.

  "Sam, you see if you can raise the Coast Guard," he said. "I'll fetch the mayor and we'll go up to the crime scene."

  "And can you have someone start a search for my dad and Aunt Phoebe?" I asked. "With a killer running loose on the island, I'm getting very worried about them."

  "There's no way we can send anybody out right now," Jeb said. "If they have a lick of sense, they'll find someplace and stay put till morning. Can't have search parties risking their necks out on those rocks. Where did you say you left the body?"

  "We'll show you," I said. Michael and I climbed in the back of the truck, which rattled over the gravel road and finally pulled up in front of a small gray saltbox house whose windows were tightly boarded against the storm.

  "Why are we stopping here?" I asked nervously. "Doesn't the idiot even know where Resnick's house is?"

  Jeb Barnes got out and began knocking on the door of the house.

  "Mamie!" he yelled. "It's Jeb; we've got a problem."

  The door opened, and the owner of the puffin-infested gift shop peered out.

  "Problem?" she repeated. "What sort of a problem?"

  "That damn fool Resnick's gone and gotten himself killed."

  "Murdered, most likely," I called from my place in the truck.

  "How awful!" Mamie said, her voice implying she didn't really think it was particularly awful at all.

  "Those two found him," Jeb Barnes said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at Michael and me. "We'd better secure the body until the mainland authorities can get here."

  "Right," Mamie said. "Hang on a minute while I put on my rain gear."

  Jeb climbed in the back of the truck with Michael and me.

  "Why are we bringing Mamie?" I asked.

  "Well, like you said, we need the local authorities to take charge of the body. She's the mayor."

  Her Honor reappeared, dressed in a battered rain slicker, got into the cab of the truck with Fred, and we clattered off--this time, to my relief, in the direction of Resnick's house.

  Jeb didn't say much--not that we'd have heard him, given the rising wind and the rough ground the truck rattled over. I had nothing to distract me from my thoughts, which were pretty grim. If the police didn't quickly figure out who had bashed Victor Resnick's head in, suspicion could start falling on far too many of my nearest and dearest. On Aunt Phoebe, last seen dashing off to Resnick's house, announcing her intention of giving him a good thrashing. On Michael and me, since we'd made no secret of our anger over Resnick taking potshots at us. And since we had no proof yet that we'd only discovered the crime, instead of committing it. And, worst of all, on Dad. Even though I'd pocketed the telltale map, I doubted if Mrs. Fenniman was the only one on the island who knew Resnick was an old beau of Mother's. And now that I thought about it, Dad had seemed in a rather strange, quiet mood after he'd heard that Resnick had returned to the island. What if some detective who didn't really know Dad jumped to the wrong conclusion?

  Then again, with both Dad and Aunt Phoebe missing, I also had ample reason for worrying about what might be happening to them. I couldn't help fretting that if Hurricane Gladys didn't get them, the unknown killer would. And occasionally, just by way of a change, I glanced over at Michael and worried a little about what he thought of all this. Bad enough I'd dragged him off for a so-called vacation under cold, wet, primitive conditions that offered even less privacy than we'd had in Yorktown. Now I'd dragged him into the middle of another homicide.

  Stop worrying, I told myself, though I might as well have told the wind to stop blowing. I come from a long line of Olympic-caliber worriers.

  When we got to the gravel path to Resnick's house, Fred Dickerman stopped his track and we all climbed out.

  "We'll have to send someone up to the power plant to fetch Jim," Mamie boomed at us. "Hate to take him away from his repair work, but the Mayfields have a small backup generator; I think he can get that going to run the cooler."

  "Can't Fred do that?" Jeb asked.

  Fred shrugged.

  "Jim's the one knows generators," he said.

  "We'll fetch him," I volunteered. "You'll have no trouble finding the body; it's in his woodshed."

  "You have to show us where you found the body," Mamie said.

  "We can't," I said. She looked up with a frown. "Not until low tide anyway. We found him facedown in a tidal pool at the foot of the cliffs."

  "Good thing you came along when you did, then," she said. "He'd have washed away by now if you hadn't brought him up."

  I wondered if she was sincere or if, like me, she'd realized how much less trouble we'd have if Michael and I hadn't found Resnick. If the storm had washed his body away, they might never have found him. Or if they had, they'd probably have assumed the gash on the back of his head happened in the storm. Nonsense, I told myself; you've prevented a murderer from getting away with his crime.

  "We'll show you tomorrow," I said. "After it's light. And after we find my dad and Aunt Phoebe."

  "Good Lord, don't tell me they're still out there," Mamie said.

  "Jeb says we can't send out search parties until the storm blows over," I said.

  "No, we can't," Mamie said. "Let's go get the body."

  As she headed down the path toward Resnick's house, I could have sworn I heard one of the three mutter, "Damn fool tourists." Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe not. And they needn't have muttered; I'd have agreed with them.

  Michael and I toiled up the road a little farther, heading for the power plant.

  "We should come back up here when the storm's over," I said as we rested before the final, nearly vertical stretch of road. "You get a beautiful view of this whole end of the island from up here. The village on this side, and the wild, unspoiled landscape on the other. At least you could the last time I came up here," I added with a frown. "Who knows--maybe between the power plant and Resnick's monstrosity, there isn't much unspoiled view left."

  With that cheerful thought, we
attacked the last hill. Up this high, we had little shelter from the wind, which blew the raindrops nearly horizontal at times. We could never have found the shed housing the power plant if not for the flickering lantern light in the windows. We felt our way around the side of the building until we came to a door, then began pounding as loudly as we could.

  "I don't suppose it would occur to anyone to build a front porch to this thing," Michael shouted as we pounded.

  "It's only a shed," I shouted back. Although I did think that even with a shed, any sane builder would have gone to the trouble of putting up gutters--so when it rained, you could get inside without walking through sheets of water running straight off the steeply slanted roof.

  The door finally opened and a bearded face peered out from considerably above my eye level. Could this be little Jimmy Dickennan?

  "I'm working on it," he said, and started to shut the door.

  "Wait," I said, inserting my foot in the frame. "What do you mean, 'I'm working on it'? You don't even know why we came up here."

  He looked at me as if I were crazy.

  "Same reason everybody else comes up here when the phones are out," he said. "To ask when the generator's going on-line again. And the answer's the same I'd give anybody: I don't know yet, and I'm working on it."

  "Fine," I said. "Except that's not why we're here. Mamie sent us. Can we come in? It's pouring out here."

  Jim looked at us for a minute, then nodded and turned to walk back into the shed. Michael and I followed.

  "Good Lord!" Michael exclaimed, looking around. The shed contained a jungle of odd-shaped metal tools, parts, and machines. I remembered Jim, as a child, filling the Dickerman house with odd bits of half-assembled machinery that he was tinkering with or saving for some inscrutable purpose. He'd expanded the scope of his operations considerably since then. I once saw a picture of an elephant graveyard, littered with the skeletons and tusks of elephants who'd gone there to die. Jim had created the mechanical equivalent. No wonder Mrs. Dickennan had sounded so happy when she talked about her Jimmy up here tinkering with his machines. At least she had her living room back.

  Jim had returned to pottering with one large machine. It looked old, but less abandoned than most of the objects in the room.

  "That the generator?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  "What's wrong with it?"

  Jim looked up.

  "You really want to know?"

  I had a feeling if I said yes, I'd regret it for at least the several hours he'd take to explain.

  "Not really," I confessed. "Aunt Phoebe's not even hooked up to your power company yet, so it's academic to me how long it'll take to fix it."

  "Good for you, then, 'cause it's going to take awhile," Jim said. "Specially if the mayor keeps sending people up here to pester me. What is it this time?"

  His surliness irritated me.

  "Murder," I said.

  Chapter 13

  Zen and the Art of Puffin Maintenance

  Okay, it was a cheap trick, but Jim Dickerman got on my nerves. I enjoyed the way his head snapped around when I said that, and how he stared at me, openmouthed.

  "Murder," he repeated finally. "Who?"

  "Victor Resnick."

  "Least it's nobody anyone's going to miss," he said, recovering his poise. "What's that got to do with me anyway?"

  "The mayor wants you to go down and get the generator at the Anchor Inn going," I said. "They're storing the body there in the meat locker until the police can get here."

  Jim chuckled.

  "Mayfields know about this?" he asked.

  "The Mayfields aren't here to object," I said. "The mayor's exercising her authority and commandeering it."

  "Should have exercised her authority when the old bastard started putting up that eyesore of his," Jim commented. "Well, now he's gone, maybe the town can get it condemned, tear it down."

  Not a very eloquent eulogy, but typical, I suspected, of what the townspeople would say when news of Resnick's death got around.

  Jim poked around the shed for a while, gathering tools. I didn't mind the delay. I wasn't looking forward to going back out into the storm. And Jim's workroom was rather interesting.

  The more I stared around, the more I could identify the bits and pieces. Over in one corner were the parts to an old lawn mower. Did anyone on Monhegan actually mow lawns? Another large pile would probably turn into a golf cart when reassembled. I saw two pair of binoculars, one more or less intact and the other in pieces. Or maybe it was the disassembled pieces of several sets of binoculars; I doubted all the parts would fit into one. The pile of radio parts also contained enough components to assemble two or three objects, as did the piles of fragments from televisions, VCRs, cameras, and outboard motors. He had a few intact things, too: propane tanks, Coleman lanterns, and, in one corner, a large glistening-wet coil of the familiar industrial-weight orange power cords Monheganites used when they wanted to borrow some electricity from a more wired neighbor.

  "Your dad would love this place," Michael said.

  Yes, he would. I shuddered at the thought of the havoc he could wreak.

  "Don't want anyone barging in here right now when I'm working on the generator," Jim said, looking up from his tool bench.

  "Don't worry," Michael said. "At the moment, Dr. Langslow's lost somewhere on the island. By the time he's found, you'll probably have the generator running again."

  "Dr. Langslow?" Jim repeated, looking at me. "You're Meg, then?"

  I nodded. Jim looked at me with a frown. I suppose he was trying to connect my thirty-something self with the teenager I'd been when he'd last seen me. He shrugged as he threw on several layers of wraps and rain gear. Then he picked up a tool box and stepped out into the storm.

  Jim set off briskly, head down against the rain, ignoring us trailing behind him. When we got to the edge of the hill, I paused briefly to look around. Apart from my desire not to spend any more time than necessary with the mortal remains of the late Victor Resnick, I'd wanted to come up to the power plant because I knew it had a view of half the island. From this vantage point, I'd hoped I could spot Dad or Aunt Phoebe. But I could see only the occasional flickering lights of candles and oil lamps, and not many of those. I sighed and began scrambling down the slope after Michael and Jim.

  When we got to the Anchor Inn, Jim disappeared into the back shed to tinker with the generator while Michael and I stepped into the front room to take a break before the rest of our hike back to the cottage.

  A nice place, the Anchor Inn. Of course, the heat and power were off. But it was solidly built, and insulated well enough to keep out not only the wind but also a good deal of its noise. We stumbled past a number of tables with the chairs stacked upside down on their tops and peered into the shadowy kitchen.

  Mamie had gone, but Jeb Barnes and Fred Dickerman still stood guard. Jeb stood beside the cooler door, looking around as if he expected body snatchers to leap out from behind the cabinets. Fred sat as far from the cooler as possible, smoking a cigarette. I wouldn't have pegged him for the squeamish or superstitious type, but I noticed that his hand shook a bit.

  "You find Jim?" Jeb asked.

  "He's out back," Michael said.

  "Are the police coming over?" I asked.

  Jeb snorted.

  "In this weather? Hell no. Maybe tomorrow, but probably not till Monday."

  A sudden rumbling noise filled the building. A light over in the far end of the kitchen came on, and the meat locker began humming.

  "Well, that's taken care of anyway," Jeb said. He stood up and began donning bis rain slicker. "You and Jim keep an eye on the place, make sure the generator's running."

  "Right," Fred said. He still had all his rain gear on, and from the haste with which he buttoned his slicker on his way to the door, I had a feeling he'd keep an eye on the place from a distance.

  "Shall we go?" Michael asked.

  I started. I'd been lost in thought. If th
e police couldn't come out for a day or so, all the better, as far as I could see. I wanted time to find out some things before the authorities showed up. Like how Dad had managed to drop his map of the island at the murder scene. And where he and Aunt Phoebe were, and what really had happened when she confronted Resnick. After all, we were longtime summer people, but we were only summer people. Which in the local hierarchy put us only one step above day tourists, and considerably below lobsters and puffins. And I had a feeling that even the mainland police would rather have their internationally famous corpse bumped off by tourists or summer people instead of by some good, solid, salt-of-the-earth Monheganite.

  The weather outside had gone beyond frightful. The wind drove the rain into our skin like cold needles, and at times we had to clutch fences and buildings to keep from being knocked down.

  We seriously contemplated taking refuge for a while in the village church. Candlelight flickered invitingly in the windows, and the birders camping inside were having a splendid time, despite the lack of creature comforts. We could hear a spirited rendition of "Kumbayah" in three-part harmony.

  "I'm not looking forward to going back to the cottage without Dad," I shouted over the wind as we struggled down the lane. Is the wind really that much worse, I wondered, or does it just seem that way this close to the water?

  "Your mother will be frantic," Michael shouted back as we paused for a moment to steady ourselves.

  "I'm already frantic," I bellowed back. "But there's no way we can keep looking when the storm's like this. We'll just have to hope that he's got the sense to--my God, what was that?"

  Michael raised his arm instinctively to shield me as a gust of wind slammed a large metal object down the road a few inches in front of our feet and then swept it over the side of the road and down toward the beach. I could hear a metal clanging noise as it hit the rocks of the breakwater below.

  "An aluminum lawn chair, I think," Michael answered, staggering over to the edge of the road. "It almost--oh no!"

  I straggled to his side and peered over the edge of the road. I could see someone crouching on the rocks, perilously close to the edge of the water.