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
