"It's ridiculous," I fumed.
Michael didn't say anything, and his eyes remained ostentatiously glued to the manuscript "Okay, it's not ridiculous; it sounds plausible enough. I certainly don't believe it, but people would if they heard it and as long as Victor Resnick was alive, or even if he died of natural causes, the odds are no one would ever publish this travesty. But with his murder, they're going to want to drag all the skeletons out of his closet."
"Including a few that just might belong to your family."
We sat there for a few minutes, with me staring at the wall, trying to absorb what I'd read, while Michael continued to read the manuscript.
"Oh, bloody hell," he said suddenly.
"What's wrong?"
"Here," he said, handing me the manuscript and indicating a paragraph with his finger. "Read this."
I tried, but between the biographer's tangled grammar and his overly florid style, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the passage. Something flowery about a token of love, lost many years ago, that Resnick had sought ever since.
"I don't get it," I said. "What's this token thing anyway? Some kind of locket or something?"
"Sorry," Michael said. "It's a little hard to follow out of context. Back up and start reading a couple of pages sooner."
"I'd rather not," I said. "Since you've already suffered through it, why don't you give me the gist?"
"Okay," Michael said. "The biographer thinks Resnick fathered a child with his underage girlfriend. And she went to Paris to conceal her pregnancy."
"Impossible," I said.
"Impossible how?" Michael asked.
I knew what he meant. Impossible for Resnick to have fathered a child with his girlfriend? No. These things happened, even circa 1950. But impossible for the girlfriend to be Mother? Yes, if you asked me. I remembered all the tales Mother told of her years in Paris--the art and music lessons, the exhibitions, the galleries, the fashion shows, the opera, the ballet, the midnight meals in bistros, the flirtations in cafes. How could even Mother talk so blithely of that time if she'd spent the first nine months of it waiting out an unwanted pregnancy?
"I still don't believe it," I said. "But if he publishes that damned book, someone will believe it. Think of the embarrassment."
"Oh, I don't know," Michael said, the corners of his mouth twitching. "I'm not sure your Mother wouldn't like a wild unsubstantiated rumor that in her youth she was the mistress of a famous artist."
"She'd eat it up," I agreed. "But Dad would be mortified. And the cops would have yet another reason for suspecting him of Resnick's murder."
"True," Michael said. "Look, it's freezing out here; can't we finish reading this inside?"
"What if someone sees it!" I protested.
"I'll pretend it's a master's thesis from one of my students," Michael said. "I won't let anybody else read it, and I'll hide it in my suitcase, under the dirty socks, where no one would want to touch it even if they found it."
"Oh, all right," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "I have to admit, I'm not sure I can take much more of this cold."
And is Dad out in this cold? I wondered as we walked back to the house. Or has he hung on to his knapsack, with the chemical hand warmer and the body heat-conserving blanket? Is he curled up warm and dry somewhere? Is he…
No, I'd worry about that tomorrow.
When we arrived back in the living room, Rob had disappeared. Michael settled down with the manuscript. I picked up the photo albums and leafed through them until I found the pages that showed Mother and the young Victor Resnick, and brooded over the smiling black-and-white images.
Mrs. Fenniman appeared occasionally with plates of food, sighed when she saw our third helpings of everything were untouched, and clomped back out into the kitchen without speaking.
Suddenly, a shower of plaster rained down on our heads. I looked up, to see a large muddy Reebok protruding from the ceiling.
"Oh damn," came Rob's voice from beyond the Reebok.
"Rob? Are you all right?"
The Reebok wiggled slightly, dislodging more plaster. I adjusted my plate to make sure my unwanted coleslaw got its fair share of debris.
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Do you need any help?" Michael called.
"No, I'm fine," Rob answered.
The Reebok gyrated wildly for a few seconds, then dropped down another six inches and was joined by its mate.
"Actually, I guess I could use a little help after all," Rob said.
Michael and I abandoned our plates, grabbed our flashlights, and climbed upstairs, where, at the end of the hallway, the trapdoor in the ceiling gaped open and a small rickety ladder led up into the attic.
The attic didn't have a floor, just a rolling meadow of fluffy pink insulation crisscrossed by the two-by-fours that formed the rafters. Here and there, large flat pieces of plywood placed across the rafters formed storage spaces for boxes and trunks. None of them anywhere near the ladder, unfortunately. Evidently, Rob had stepped on a piece of plywood too light to hold his weight. Both feet disappeared into a rough-edged hole in the plywood, while he lay sprawled backward on the pink insulation.
"I see you found the jigsaw puzzles," I remarked. Several cardboard puzzle boxes lay nearby, and Rob lay half-covered by the brightly colored pieces of several enormous puzzles.
"I was looking for something to do," Rob said. "I saw the puzzles up here when I fetched the photo albums."
"You're lucky you didn't fall through," Michael said. "You're in the part of the attic over the living room. It'd be a long way down."
Rob shuddered.
"What's going on up there?" came Mrs. Fenniman's voice.
We extricated Rob from the plywood, helped him back to the trapdoor, and watched as he limped away to be patched up and cosseted by Mrs. Fenniman. Michael was about to follow him, but he turned to see why I wasn't coming.
"I'll be down in a little bit," I said.
"You've found something?" Michael asked eagerly.
"No, but it occurs to me that there's an awful lot of old junk in the attic besides the photo albums," I said. "I'm just going to poke around for a while and see what turns up."
"I'll go down and guard the manuscript," Michael said.
Nothing much turned up in the first dozen boxes I opened. Actually, I'd have found some of the stuff fascinating at another time. Vintage clothes, trinkets, and souvenirs of bygone eras. More photos, this time in boxes. Even letters and diaries. A collection of taxidermy, including a stuffed squirrel wearing a jeweled collar and a wolverine in a Groucho Marx nose and a neon Hawaiian-print shirt. Fascinating stuff, really. But most of it more than fifty years old and none of it relevant. At the bottom of the last box I found about a dozen faded brown manila file folders, tied in a packet with some string. I was struggling to untie the knot when I suddenly heard a commotion down in the main part of the house.
Now what? I thought, tucking the file folders under my arm and carefully walking along the rafters to the trapdoor. I heard Mother's voice wailing.
"I don't believe you; she's lost, too!"
I stuck my head down out of the trapdoor. Mother stood at the edge of the upper hallway, one hand clutching the railing, the other pressed to her forehead, and her eyes raised heavenward. Vintage Sarah Bernhardt.
"How could you let her do it, Michael?" she asked mournfully. "How can you sit there when Meg is out there in the storm, frantically searching for her father?"
"Because I'm not out there in the storm, Mother," I said. "I'm up here in the attic."
Mother turned, looked at me, and blinked.
"Well, what are you doing in the attic?" she asked in an aggravated tone. "Why aren't you doing something useful? Looking for your father, for example?"
I could see her working up to another dramatic scene, and I was tired of the game. I'd been calm, patient, and reassuring the last million times she'd popped out of her room. So by way of a change, while she continued to wail abou
t poor Dad out in the storm, I stuck the folders under my arm, climbed down the ladder, and went downstairs, where I stepped over a pile of croquet mallets, dodged around an upended picnic table, and jerked open the front door.
A gust of wind burst in, carrying with it a half-crushed lobster pot, sending Rob's papers flying like giant snow-flakes, knocking flowerpots and other breakable objects onto the floor, and spraying showers of rain halfway, across the room.
"Damn it, Meg, close that door!" Rob shouted, snatching at his notes. Mrs. Fenniman and Michael tried to grab as many breakable objects as they could and hold them down. Mother simply sighed and limped back into her room.
Having presumably made my point about the impossibility of searching for Dad in the middle of a hurricane, I stuck the folders under the umbrella stand, got a better grip on the door, and began forcing it closed. But suddenly, I suddenly noticed something outside.
There was a body on the porch.
Chapter 16
Travels with My Puffin
I let the door crash open again and staggered outside.
"What the hell are you doing out there?" Rob shouted.
"Michael, Rob, come here and help," I said, crouching over the still form on the porch. "It's Aunt Phoebe."
Aunt Phoebe moaned slightly at the sound of my voice.
"Meg?" she whispered.
"It's all right," I said. "You're home."
Rob, Michael, and I carried her in and laid her on the sofa. She was soaking wet, her clothes were ripped and filthy, and after the first dozen I gave up counting the cuts and bruises on her face and arms.
"I'll get her some clean, dry clothes," Mrs. Fenniman said, knocking over a stack of plastic lawn chairs on her way to the stairs.
"Phoebe!" Mother cried, looking down from the balcony. "What's wrong? Where have you been? Have you seen James?"
"James? Why, isn't he here?"
Mother limped down the stairway and over to the sofa. She sat there patting Aunt Phoebe's hand and giving the rest of us orders to go and do what we'd already started doing--fetching blankets, clothes, hot tea, the first-aid kit.
"You boys come out in the kitchen while she changes," Mrs. Fenniman said.
"A nip of brandy in this wouldn't hurt," Aunt Phoebe said, inhaling the steam from her tea.
"Good idea," Mrs. Fenniman said, crashing her way toward the kitchen.
"And some of that leek and potato soup, while you're there," Aunt Phoebe added.
"And some toast?" Mrs. Fenniman asked.
"Is there jam left?"
I relaxed a little. Aunt Phoebe's injuries couldn't be that bad if she showed such an interest in food. Rob, Michael, and Mrs. Fenniman clattered about in the kitchen and Mother supervised while I helped Aunt Phoebe change, cleaned her wounds, and wrapped an elastic bandage around her hugely swollen knee. I hoped she hadn't dislocated it or done something else serious, since we couldn't possibly get her to the hospital for a day or two.
"So where have you been all this time?" I asked when Michael and Rob had returned and Aunt Phoebe, under Mrs. Fenniman's approving eye, was making serious inroads into a six-course banquet "Damn fool thing to have happen," Aunt Phoebe said, plopping a generous dollop of homemade jam on her toast "Slipped on the path up above the Dickermans' and fell into a gully. Took me forever to crawl out."
"Why didn't you call for help?"
"I did, but who can hear a thing in all this wind? Finally got myself back on the path, then had to half-crawl home. Lost my walking stick."
"Well, why didn't you stop and ask for help at the Dickermans'?" I asked. "Or those people next door, whoever they are?"
"Didn't want to impose on strangers," she said. "My own damn fault, falling in that gully; didn't want to cause them any bother."
"The Dickermans are hardly strangers," I said in exasperation. "You've only known them thirty or forty years."
"Now, Meg," Mother said.
"What were you doing gallivanting up that way anyway?" I asked. "The last time we saw you, you were running up to Victor Resnick's to give him a piece of your mind."
Everyone else in the room froze and looked anxiously back and forth between me and Aunt Phoebe. She paused in the middle of helping herself to another pint of potato salad and cackled.
"I gave him a bit more than a piece of my mind," she said. "Scoundrel had the nerve to wave that blunderbuss of his in my face. Had to take it away from him."
"You did what?" Rob said.
"Oh lord," Michael muttered.
"Took away that fool gun of his," Aunt Phoebe said through a mouthful of potato salad. "Threw it off the cliff."
"I'm not sure she should say any more," Rob said.
"Cool it, Rob," I said. "Now's not the time to play lawyer."
"I'm not playing; she may need a lawyer."
"Why, has that fool complained about me?" Aunt Phoebe said. "That rap on the noggin I gave him when he tried to take the gun back is nothing. Look at this bruise where he grabbed my arm! And this cut here--I got this when he tripped me."
"Self-defense," Rob said. "She has a very good case for self-defense."
"Aunt Phoebe," I said, "exactly what happened when you went up to Resnick's house?"
"Why, what does he say happened?" she asked.
"Just tell us."
Aunt Phoebe thought for a moment.
"All right," she said. "I walked up and knocked on his door a couple of times, and nobody answered. I was about to leave when he came charging around the corner of the house, waving his gun. Wasn't aiming it at me, but the way he was waving it around, who knows what could have happened. So I grabbed it, and we played tug-of-war for a bit, until he lost his grip. He tried to twist my arm to make me give it back, so I whacked him sharply on the noggin, and he let go, and I ejected all the shells and threw the thing off the cliff. After that, he yelled for a while, and I yelled back, and then he stomped back into his house and tried to slam the door."
She shrugged and bit into a large ham and cheese sandwich.
"And that was the last you saw of him?" I asked.
She nodded as she chewed and swallowed, then chuckled.
"Fool hadn't put up a single board or a scrap of tape, as far as I could see when I was up there. Wonder if he's still up there trying to ride the storm out in that fishbowl."
"No," I said. "Actually, he's down in the meat locker of the Anchor Inn."
Aunt Phoebe stopped chewing.
"What's he doing there?" she asked through a mouthful of sandwich.
"Waiting to be autopsied," I said. "Michael and I found him floating facedown in a tidal pool earlier today."
Aunt Phoebe swallowed hard and then coughed a few times.
"Are you saying he's dead?" she asked when she could finally speak.
"That's generally a prerequisite for autopsying someone."
"Good Lord! You think that rap on the head killed him?"
"We won't know what killed him until the autopsy," I said.
"He was fine when I left him," Aunt Phoebe said. "Just as loud and obnoxious as ever."
"Maybe he had a delayed reaction," I said. "Or maybe you had nothing to do with it. Was he bleeding very badly when you left him?"
"Didn't see that he was bleeding at all," she said. "I didn't smash his skull in, just rapped him sharplike to let him know I wasn't going to stand for him trying to lay hands on me."
"Rapped him with what?" Michael said.
"My walking stick, of course."
"Well, they can examine the walking stick and compare that to the wound," Michael said. "Maybe someone else hit him later. It's not as if the guy didn't have other enemies."
"If I still had the stick," Aunt Phoebe said. "I told you--I lost it."
"In the gully?" I asked. "We could go look for it in the gully."
"No, somewhere between Resnick's house and the gully," she said.
"That only covers half the island," I said. "I don't suppose you could widen the search area
a little?"
"I wasn't thinking about my stick," she said. "I was hopping mad, and I took the long way around to blow off steam. I know I'd lost my stick by the time I got to the gully, because I remember thinking I wouldn't have fallen in if I'd had it. Careless damn fool thing to do."
Or incredibly clever, if the walking stick was the murder weapon. She had only to toss it off the cliff and no one would ever see it again. Except that I couldn't quite picture Aunt Phoebe as a murderer.
We were all silent for a few minutes.
"There's no way they could prove first-degree murder," Rob said, finally.
"Not now, Rob," I said.
"I mean, manslaughter's probably the most they could even hope to--"
"Shut up, Rob!"
"You didn't see James on your way home, did you?" Mother asked.
"Haven't seen him since he took off for Green Point to watch the hurricane hit the island," Aunt Phoebe said. "Have you looked there?"
"Yes, that's how we came to find Resnick's body," I said.
"I'm sure something has happened to him," Mother said.
"He'll be fine, Mother," I said. "He'll turn up in the morning, full of enthusiasm about what an exciting adventure he's had."
I tried to sound as if I really believed it. I wasn't sure I'd fooled anyone. Probably not, since Michael chose that moment to take my hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. Aunt Phoebe had fallen very silent, and, worse yet, she'd stopped eating. Definitely a bad sign.
"Well, I'd better get myself off to bed," Aunt Phoebe said, startling us by thumping the floor with her makeshift walking stick--a flagpole we'd dragged in from the porch--as she struggled to her feet. "I want to look my best when I turn myself in tomorrow."
"Oh, Phoebe, no!" Mother cried.
"No help for it," Aunt Phoebe said. "I can't keep quiet any longer and run the risk that someone innocent will suffer for my crime."
"Ought to give you a medal, considering who you bumped off," Mrs. Fenniman remarked.
"It doesn't matter," Aunt Phoebe said, striking a noble pose. "I must pay the consequences of my actions."
"Ingrid Bergman," I said.
Everyone looked at me as if I were crazy. Except for Michael.
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