Murder With Puffins

the living room along the other.

The dining room would have seated a dozen people easily, although all the chairs except the one closest to the kitchen had a thin film of dust on them. The guest room was expensively furnished but rather cheerless. And long unused. Despite the shortage of rooms on the island, obviously Resnick hadn't offered his spare bed to anyone, and I doubted anyone had even asked. I suspected the birders we'd heard singing in the church the night before were happier there than they would have been here anyway.

The master suite rivaled the kitchen for pretentiousness. But the lush white carpet was already dingy from lack of cleaning. And strewn with wet leaves, which had probably blown in from one of the broken windows.

'Fancies himself quite the ladies' man,' I said, frowning at the ornately canopied king-size bed. 'I'm surprised he resisted the ceiling mirror.'

'He ran out of mirrors after he finished in here,' Michael's voice echoed from the bathroom.

I poked my head in.

'Ick,' I said, stepping inside to gape at the interior. 'It's like a fun house. Imagine having to look at yourself in all these mirrors first thing in the morning.'

'The view doesn't look that bad to me,' Michael said, coming up behind me and putting his arms around my waist.

'Thanks for the vote of confidence,' I said, leaning back against him. 'But now try imagining you're Victor Resnick.'

'No thanks,' he said, sighing. 'I know it's stupid, but poking around in here actually makes me feel sorry for him.'

'Me, too,' I said.

Actually, until Michael said that, I'd been thinking what a pity the one place we'd managed to find five minutes alone together all weekend was the house of a murder victim. If Victor Resnick had been merely missing, I'd have suggested to Michael that we make ourselves at home and, if anyone ever caught us later, pretend that we'd taken refuge here during a bad part of the storm. But since an army of forensic experts would soon begin swarming all over the house, I knew we shouldn't do anything we couldn't explain away as part of our quest to minimize damage and secure the contents of the house.

Although I couldn't help noticing the extralarge sunken tub. More like a small wading pool, really, all lined with gold-flecked turquoise-colored tiles. There was even a small adjoining fireplace, though that showed little sign of use.

Like something out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Which Resnick was, of course. No sensible person would use a tub like that for ordinary daily bathing, especially on an island with a chronic water shortage. But fill it up, add lots of bath oil, set several dozen candles around the periphery, light the fire, and send Michael to the wine cellar to pick out a bottle or two of Resnick's undoubtedly expensive wine… I shook myself. This was not the time for erotic fantasies.

'Depressing,' I said, reluctantly pulling away from Michael.

'Gee, thanks,' he said.

'I mean this place,' I said. I stepped over to the wide vanity counter and, using the corner of my shirt to avoid smearing--or leaving--fingerprints, popped open the medicine cabinet.

'Why the medicine cabinet?' Michael said. 'He wasn't poisoned.'

'You can learn a lot about someone from his medicine cabinet,' I said as I poked through the bottles, jars, and tubes in the cabinet.

'Remind me to clean my medicine cabinet before you get another chance to rummage through it,' Michael said, peering over my shoulder. 'Anything suspicious?'

'No,' I replied. 'Apart from having an ulcer or some other serious stomach problems for a couple of decades, he was pretty healthy for someone his age.'

'A couple of decades? How can you tell?'

'Fifteen-year-old leftover Tagamet pills; Zantac prescriptions from four and seven years ago--obviously he was one of those suicidal idiots who never threw out old medicine.'

'On second thought, remind me to put a padlock on my medicine cabinet,' Michael said. 'Is this significant?'

'Probably not,' I said. 'The rest of the drugs are normal over-the-counter stuff. He wasn't on medication for anything like epilepsy or heart problems, anything that would account for his falling down into the tidal pool from natural causes.'

'Well, we knew that from the gash on the back of his head.'

'True,' I said. 'Well, one good thing: If he was this much of a pack rat about medicine, maybe there's a desk somewhere crammed with interesting papers.'

'I think it's out in the living room,' Michael said. 'I noticed it while we were hauling the wet paintings down.'

'Well, why didn't you say something?' I said, going back out into the bedroom. 'Let's go and--'

'What now?' Michael asked, seeing that I'd stopped in the middle of the room.

I indicated the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace.

'Yes, the man liked bearskin rugs,' Michael said. 'They have their charms.'

'He must have liked this one anyway,' I said. 'It must be older than God. Look how ratty it is.'

'He probably had it for years.'

'But he didn't have it lying here very long.'

'The house hasn't existed very long,' Michael said.

'Yes, but look at those paler areas of the carpet,' I said. 'Here, you can see it better if we move the bearskin.'

I peeled back the bearskin rug and pointed to a rectangular area of white carpet still more or less the original snow white.

'I see,' Michael said. 'From the shape of the clean spot, he had another rug, a rectangular one, lying here up until very recently. And then he replaced it with the bearskin rug.'

'After the storm began, most probably,' I said. 'See, a couple of wet leaves stuck to the underside of the bearskin.'

'Which brings up the question of whether he did it or someone else?'

'Why on earth would someone sneak in here and unroll a ratty old bearskin in front of Resnick's bedroom fireplace?'

'Bloodstains on the other rug?' Michael suggested. 'Maybe he wasn't killed outside; perhaps he was killed here and then the murderer replaced the bloodstained rug with the bearskin.'

'It's possible,' I said. 'But I think it's more likely that Resnick did it himself. Shortly before he died, which would account for the wet leaves under it.'

'And why would he do that?' Michael asked.

'To make Dad jealous,' I said. 'We know the bearskin rug hasn't been here all that long. How long has that picture been in the entryway?'

'Possibly as long as the house has been here. How many people brave the shotgun blasts to visit him?'

'Yes, but he had to have workmen, delivery people. I'm sure if it had been there any time at all, someone in the village would have seen it, and they would have said something about it by now. Mrs. Fenniman practically broadcast the news that Resnick was Mother's beau before Dad came along, and I'm sure other people know about it.'

'But would they recognize who it was?' Michael said. 'No offense; your mother's in wonderful shape for a woman her age, but would anyone really recognize her in the picture?'

'A stranger wouldn't, but at least a dozen people on the island right now knew her then. Maybe more. And that's not counting anyone who's leafed through Aunt Phoebe's photo albums; she's always dragging them out at parties.'

'Well, that's true,' Michael admitted. 'They'd know it was a Hollingworth, at any rate.'

'I bet he put it there deliberately, to make sure someone saw it and spread the word,' I said. 'Heck, maybe he planned to invite Mother and Dad for dinner and hope the sparks flew.'

'There's another possibility,' Michael said. 'Maybe he wanted to stir up another kind of spark.'