Murder With Puffins

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.'