“You’d destroy the work of a great artist,” I said. Yes, definitely a path; now he took a can of turpentine and shook splashes of it along the path.
“Yeah, right,” Jim said. “They’ve got museums full of his art; they won’t miss what’s here. All looks alike anyway; the old bastard hasn’t painted anything new in forty years.”
Michael began laughing.
“Oh no?” he said. “Take a look at one of those canvases before you light the torch.”
The sight of his bound, helpless captive convulsed with laughter must have roused Jim’s curiosity. He glanced around at the canvases—all of which I’d turned to face the wall. He went over to one of the easels and turned the canvas around. It was the picture of Mother taking down her hair. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and I seized my chance.
I rolled over so my bound hands could reach the knapsack, scrabbled until I had the flare gun, and then rolled the other way and fired when I thought I had the gun pointed in his general direction. I missed—big surprise—but the flare passed close enough to his head to startle him.
Unfortunately, firing a flare gun in a room filled with spilled kerosene and paint-covered rags wasn’t exactly a move that would endear me to fire-safety experts. The flare hit one of the easels, then skittered into some of the spilled kerosene, setting it on fire and splashing Jim’s jeans, which also caught fire.
He yelped with pain and began beating at his pants with both hands. Not the best idea when you’re holding a loaded gun; the gun went off, though, to my disappointment, he didn’t actually shoot himself in the foot.
He turned and ran to the door. Michael and I were awkwardly struggling to our feet. Jim fired several wild shots in our direction—causing us to fling ourselves back on the floor—then yanked the key out of the lock, opened the door, and ran out while Michael and I were still struggling to our feet again.
“We’ve got to stop him, damn it!” Michael cried, and ran for the door like a charging bull.
Too late. I heard the key turn. Michael twisted at the last minute and threw himself at the door, trying to break it down with his shoulder.
“Oww!” he yelled as he fell over.
“Are you all right?” I called.
“I think I’ve broken my shoulder,” he said. “Please tell me that the door cracked or something.”
“It looks the same as before,” I said, jumping as something—an aerosol can, I think—exploded across the room.
“That always works in the movies,” he said, lurching to his feet again.
“They use wooden doors in the movies,” I said. “Not metal ones. Maybe we should tackle the glass.”
“And impale ourselves on glass shards?” Michael said. “Maybe we can kick the door in.”
He began trying, but I could tell from his expression that the effort hurt him a lot more than it did the door.
“Maybe we need a battering ram,” he muttered, looking around, without success, for something large enough to serve.
The fire was spreading rapidly. I had to dodge a few stray patches of flame to make my way to the largest canvas—the standing portrait of Mother. I backed up to it, got a grip on it, and began dragging it toward the nearest glass wall.
“Don’t worry about saving the damned art,” Michael said.
“We’re not saving it; we’re sacrificing it to save ourselves,” I said. “Here, help me wedge it up against this glass wall.
“What good will that do?” he asked.
“It may keep me from being impaled on shards when I try to break the glass,” I said.
“Brilliant,” he said. “But let me do it; I’m heavier.”
He backed up and ran again, this time at the painting. I noticed he led with his other shoulder. I heard a cracking noise.
“Let me take a turn,” I said.
Instead of running, I gave the painting a few swift karate kicks. I could hear glass shattering; after half a dozen kicks, we pulled the painting away and found a space large enough to climb through.
“After you,” Michael said.
“Keep your eye open,” I said. “Remember, Jim’s out here somewhere with the gun.”
We both managed to climb out, then crouched down and ran for some nearby bushes. Starting nervously at every stray noise, we sat back-to-back and I pulled the duct tape off Michael’s hands. He was just untaping mine when something exploded. The flames, which had grown steadily, suddenly shot ten feet into the sky at the back of the studio. We both leapt to our feet and backed up some more.
“Reached the kerosene stove, I guess,” Michael said.
“That or the generator,” I agreed.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m a mass of cuts, bruises, scrapes, and burns, and I think I singed off a few inches of hair on one side, but I’m alive.”
“We’re both alive, thanks to you,” Michael said.
I had hoped for a more enthusiastic demonstration of gratitude, but Michael stood there for a moment, looking at the fire, frowning. Then he reached in his back pocket and took out his wallet.
What on earth?
“With any luck, the fire will destroy all of those very interesting paintings,” he said. “But we still have a few loose ends to tie up.”
He took a piece of paper out of the wallet. I recognized it: the map, the one with Dad’s printing on it that I’d found at the murder scene.
“We don’t need this anymore,” he said, and he wadded it up and threw it at the fire.
“Michael!” I said, launching myself at him.
“Watch the shoulder,” he said.
Making allowances for his injuries, I found the demonstration of gratitude that followed quite satisfactory. At least the beginning of it; after a few minutes, the Monhegan volunteer fire department arrived and we postponed any further celebrations until their departure.
CHAPTER 32
Much Ado About Puffins
“I think the coast is clear,” Michael said as he shook me awake.
“Or as clear as it’s going to get,” I said, peering out the door of Resnick’s garden shed, where we’d taken refuge until the crowds died down. Jeb Barnes had drafted most of the spectators into the search parties that were, even now, combing the island for the missing Jim. Only two people stood guard by the studio, and both of them were swathed in wraps, huddled against a tree, and, most important, facing in the other direction. We slunk across the lawn and paused in the shadows outside the entry to make sure no one had seen us. The guards hadn’t moved.
“Some guards,” Michael muttered. “Probably asleep. And why did they have to leave guards at all; do they really think Jim’s likely to come back here?”
“No, but given the way everyone feels about Resnick’s house, I think they want to make sure it doesn’t go up in smoke, too.”
“And this would be a bad thing?”
“No, as long as we get one more chance to snoop around before it happens. After all, Jim proving himself the murderer only solves one of our problems. There’s still the biographer to deal with. Before he or she tries to capitalize on the notoriety of Resnick’s death. Maybe if we can get into Resnick’s computer, we can find a clue to the biographer’s identity.”
“Actually, I think I know his identity,” Michael said, giving me a hand through the broken glass into Resnick’s front hallway.
“You do!” I exclaimed. “Who?”
“I’ll tell you in a second. Stay here while I check out something.”
“But—”
“Humor me, just this once,” he said.
So I stood in the hallway while Michael padded softly into the living room.
“Aha!” he called back. “I thought so.”
“Thought so what?”
“Resnick’s biographer is no longer in any condition to reveal anything,” Michael called back.
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes,” Michael said. “Come and see who is—or rat
her, was—writing the biography.”
I took a deep breath and walked into the living room, expecting to see a bloody corpse lying on the floor. Instead, I saw Michael. He held up an eight-by-ten print of a photo—the photo of Resnick that had appeared on the back of the book of paintings.
“You mean Resnick?” I said. “He’s the biographer?”
“Bingo,” Michael said, setting down the photo.
“How do you know?”
“Well, right at the moment, it’s sort of a hunch, but now that the power’s on, I bet we can find the drafts of the thing in his computer.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for the switch to turn on the computer. “So you think it was an autobiography?”
“No, I think he wanted it published under a pseudonym, so it would look like a genuine critical biography.”
“Fat chance,” I said. “Only one person in the world has that high an opinion of Victor Resnick. That should have given us a clue right there.”
“Too true.”
“Yeah, and I guess if he planned to reveal the scandals of his youth, it was a lot easier to pretend that someone else had dug it up, instead of having to face the criticism if anyone like Mother objected. It makes sense, but I still don’t understand what gave you the idea that Resnick was the biographer.”
“The paintings,” Michael said
“The paintings? What about them?”
He held up his hand to show me a smear of blue paint on the palm.
“He did those paintings recently,” Michael said. “Recently enough that the one we used to help escape from the studio was still wet—I got this on my hand helping you carry it.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just melting from the fire?”
“No, the painting wasn’t hot when we picked it up, and it wasn’t wet on the surface—I put my finger on a blob and paint squished out. That’s what happens when you put on a thick layer of oil paint; it dries from the outside in.”
“But how does that explain the headless paintings?” I asked. “He was getting them ready, but he couldn’t do the heads until Mother showed up? It’s not as if he could use the present-day Mother as a model, you know.”
“I also found this,” Michael said, plucking something out of his shirt pocket.
A faded photograph of Mother as a teenager. Clothed. In fact, she wore the same bathing suit we’d seen in Aunt Phoebe’s photo album.
“I suspect we’ve just solved the mystery of the missing photos,” he said. “And maybe he only recently managed to get into your aunt Phoebe’s cottage to filch these.”
“Everyone kept telling us he painted from photos,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yes, and that his style hadn’t changed appreciably during his whole career,” Michael said. “So if he just waited until they dried, who would have any doubt that they were older paintings?”
“I think they have ways of figuring out the age of a painting,” I said. “For example, do you really think they’re still manufacturing the same oil paint, canvas, and varnish he used forty or fifty years ago, with no modern improvements that would show up in an analysis?”
“But why would they even bother if they got it from the artist and it was clearly in his style?”
“Yes, and why would anyone bother to forge a Resnick when for the same amount of effort they could forge the work of someone a lot more famous? And for that matter, does it really count as forgery if the only thing false is the date he painted it?”
“I don’t understand why he painted them in the first place,” Michael said. “Was writing about his youth making him nostalgic? Or did he think he had to have some paintings of the people involved to prove the truth of his biography?”
“More likely, he just wanted to stir up trouble,” I said. “That’s perfectly in character. In fact—my God, that’s it!”
“What’s it?” Michael said.
“Consider the detective’s report.”
“You’re right,” Michael said, his shoulders slumping. “That doesn’t add up. I can see why he would have the detective’s report on your mother, maybe to try to find out what she’d done with her life after they’d parted. But why those other women—unless maybe it was camouflage,” he added, looking up with a hopeful expression.
“No, I think the detective’s reports were just what they looked like—he wanted to find out more about those women to see who could be his long-lost sweetheart.”
“But surely he knew who she was.”
“Not if he invented the whole love affair,” I said. “And wanted to find out which woman had a gap in her life that would match the story he’d made up.”
“Made up? But why? That’s an absolutely crazy idea!”
“Crazy like a fox,” I said. “I know exactly why he did it. Just look at that stack of books on his desk.”
“Books?” Michael said, glancing over. “They’re art books; wouldn’t you expect a painter to have them?”
“Yes, but these aren’t books with pictures of paintings. They’re biographies. The one on top’s a dead giveaway: a biography of Andrew Wyeth.”
“So?”
“So remember the whole Helga thing? When Andrew Wyeth revealed that for fifteen years he’d been painting this beautiful redheaded model without his wife knowing it? And suddenly, he’s on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Of course, I don’t know if it did Wyeth’s career good or harm in the long run, and I don’t suppose it would ever have occurred to Resnick that Wyeth might be a better painter. All Resnick saw was that after the Helga paintings came out, Wyeth got more media attention than he could handle. And Resnick wanted some.”
“And what better way to get it than to rake up an old scandal and suddenly reveal that he’s got a collection of highly erotic paintings featuring a beautiful underage model,” Michael said, shaking his head. “It’s tailor-made for the tabloids.”
“And I bet there’s not a word of truth in it anywhere. Look, there’re also books about van Gogh, Picasso, Franz Liszt, and even Byron, for heaven’s sake. He was going for notoriety.”
“So let’s search his computer and see what we find,” Michael said, hitching a chair up to the desk.
What we found was six earlier drafts of the book, stretching back over a period of two years.
“Obviously practice doesn’t always make perfect,” I said. “I don’t think his drafts were getting any better.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Michael said. “I don’t recall seeing this bit about her turquoise eyes rolling on the floor in the draft we found. Sounds more like a game of marbles than a love scene.”
“Sounds painful, if you ask me. Yes, and some instinct for self-preservation made him take out all the bits about him nurturing other artists’ careers. I somehow doubt that he even met Keith Haring and Basquiat, much less nurtured them.”
“I think we’ve pretty well established who the biographer is,” Michael said. “Now we have to decide what to do about it.”
I sighed. For my part, I wanted to reformat the hard drive and burn every scrap of evidence that the biography had ever existed. But I had a dreadful feeling Michael wouldn’t consider this ethical.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked, and braced myself for an answer I wasn’t going to like.
“Reformat the computer and burn every scrap of paper,” Michael said readily. “Don’t you agree?” he asked, seeing my jaw drop. “I mean, we have to reformat it; you can recover deleted files with a good utility program. We can back up the nonbiography stuff to diskettes before we do it.
“Sounds great to me,” I said. “But I wasn’t sure you’d see it that way.”
“We know Jim Dickerman killed Resnick,” Michael said. “At best, all this stuff will only embarrass your family. At worst, Jim’s lawyer could use it to cast doubt on his guilt.”
“What about the painting?” I asked.
“We’ll take it with us.”
“Take it with us?”
“The o
ld coot owes us something,” Michael said. “After all, we solved his murder, at considerable personal risk.”
“And if someone catches us with it?”
“We’ve got the bill of sale from your grandfather’s files, remember?”
“I like the way you think,” I said, grabbing an armload of papers and heading for the fireplace. “Let’s do it.”
“No, no!” Michael said. “Not that fireplace; do you want everyone on the island to see? We’ll use the one in the bathroom—there’s no window in there. You work on the computer; I’ll take care of the fire.”
I sat and watched the computer grinding away, first backing up Resnick’s other files—there weren’t many—then reformatting. Michael ferried armload after armload of papers back to the bathroom fireplace.
“How’s it going?” he asked, coming up behind my chair and putting his hands on my shoulders.
“Nearly there,” I said. “How’s the fire?”
“It’ll take a while,” he said. “But I figure we’ll have to hang out here until all the firemen go home or fall asleep, so that’s no problem.” He straightened up and went out into the kitchen.
Checking for papers there, I assumed. Probably not a bad idea.
I heard a sudden loud pop from the kitchen.
“Michael?” I called. “Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said, reappearing with two filled champagne flutes. “Absolutely fine.”
“Isn’t that Resnick’s champagne?” I asked.
“Yes, and a very fine one at that,” he said, handing me one flute. “Like I said, the old coot owes us one. To our host!”
“To our host!” I echoed, and sipped the champagne.
“Why don’t you take these in and keep an eye on the fire?” Michael said, handing me his flute. “I’ll see what we have in the pantry. Oh, and I found a jar of bath salts; goodness knows what Resnick wanted with that.”
The bathroom was warm and wonderfully scented. Steam rose from the tub, and the fire blazed away merrily. From the size of the paper mound, I knew we’d need quite a few hours to burn them all. And who knows how many glasses of champagne.
Murder With Puffins Page 25
