pack on my back, and headed toward the cliff.
As I reached for the first rock in my climb, I saw a piece of paper fluttering on the ground at my feet. I stooped to pick it up. Force of habit--growing up with Dad, you tended to think the eleventh and twelfth commandments were 'Thou shalt not litter' and 'I don't care if you didn't put it there; pick it up anyway; it won't kill you to bend over.'
I found myself staring at a familiar piece of paper; the map on which Dad had scoped out the best place on the island to watch the hurricane. It was soggy and some of the ink had smeared, but I recognized Dad's printing instantly. His handwriting achieved a degree of artistic illegibility that made him the envy of less accomplished physicians, but his printing was precise, elegant, more readable than most typefaces--and absolutely distinctive. I'd figured out the real scoop on Santa Claus one year when I realized that the note thanking me for the milk and cookies was in Dad's inimitable printing.
Oh damn, I thought. If anyone else found this, and figured out it belonged to Dad--and anyone who'd ever seen his printing would figure it out in a heartbeat…
'Meg?' Michael called.
'Sorry. I'm going,' I said, stuffing the map in my knapsack and reaching again for the cliff.
'Hang on a second. Do you think we should take this, too?'
I glanced back. Michael had laid Resnick's body on a flat rock and was pointing down at something floating in the pool. I scrambled back down to see what it was.
A no trespassing sign, minus its post, bobbed just below the surface.
'It was under the body,' he said.
'We'd better take it, I suppose,' I said. 'It could be evidence.'
I tried a couple of times to snag it, using the rope so as not to touch it and leave fingerprints. But in the end, the only way we could manage to reach it without wading into the icy water was for Michael to hold on to my waist while I reached out and grabbed it, and even then both of us got half-soaked by the waves.
'Definitely time to make tracks,' Michael said as I secured the sign to my backpack and he turned back to deal with Resnick.
Hauling the body up the slope took forever, and then we decided to put Resnick someplace out of the rain, since we'd moved him so far already. We picked him up---I took the feet, which seemed less personal somehow-- and lugged him down the path to his house.
I didn't like the glass and steel monstrosity, but I couldn't help thinking it looked a little forlorn already. The wind had plastered the glass with wet leaves and mud, and the way the windows rattled made me glad I wouldn't be inside the house when the storm really broke.
We found room in the woodshed, put the body out of the storm, pulled a canvas tarpaulin over it, and stashed the sign in a corner.
Now that we were out of the rain, we paused for a moment. I took my flashlight out of the knapsack and played it over Resnick's face. In the struggle to get his body up above the tide line and under cover, I hadn't had much chance to inspect him. Now, in the harsh illumination of the flashlight, I had much too good a view. The angry gash on the back of his head didn't show, of course, since he lay faceup, but he had a nasty-looking bruise on his forehead, just at the hairline. And he definitely looked very dead. And very unhappy. Was the look on his face anger? Pain? Fear? Surprise? Probably a combination of all of them.
'Let's get out of here,' Michael said, echoing my thought. 'I mean, we need to get back to the village and report this.'
As we stepped out of the shed, I tripped over something and went sprawling.
'Are you all right?' Michael asked.
'I'm fine,' I said. 'Just tripped over something Resnick must have left lying around.'
'Even dead, that man's dangerous,' he said.
Before I got up, I felt around to find whatever had tripped me--I didn't want to repeat the experience again immediately. My hands finally touched something--a thick, slightly damp nine-by-twelve envelope, curled up into a half cylinder. Was that what I'd tripped over? Odd that it was only slightly damp if it had been lying around in the rain for any amount of time. Perhaps the overhanging roof of the shed had sheltered it until I'd tripped over it. Or perhaps Resnick had carried it rolled up and stuffed into one of his pockets and it had fallen out when we moved him.
I stowed it in my knapsack for later examination; then Michael and I hiked back to the village, looking over our shoulders about every third step.
Jeb Barnes wasn't happy to see us again.
Chapter 12
'We haven't seen your father,' Jeb said, hunching toward the woodstove and holding his coffee closer to his face.
'Neither have we,' I said. 'That's not why we're here.'
'Phoebe's not here, either,' one of the locals said.
'We've come to report a murder,' Michael said in his most resonant stage voice.
The group around the stove froze, and one dropped a coffee mug, which shattered on the gray wooden floor.
'Who did that crazy fool shoot?' Jeb Barnes asked when he finally found his voice.
'Resnick? He didn't shoot anyone,' I said. 'Someone smashed his skull in first.'
I didn't imagine the faint sighs of relief from several of the locals.
'Who did it?' Jeb demanded.
'How should we know?' Michael said. 'We just found him facedown in the water.'
'In the water?' Jeb echoed.
'In a tidal pool a little down the shore from his house,' I said. 'We had to move him; the tide was about to wash him away, so we carried him up and put him out of the rain.'
'My God,' Jeb said. 'What are we supposed to do now?'
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
