Murder With Puffins

'What do you mean?'

'What if he planned to invite just your mother over? Show her the picture, claim he'd kept that ratty old bearskin all these years as a souvenir, and try to rekindle their romance?'

'I'm sure Mother has more sense,' I said.

'Yes, but did Resnick?'

I pondered it for a while and sighed.

'I wish we wouldn't keep finding evidence that points at members of my family.'

'Cheer up,' Michael said. 'Let's go through Resnick's desk. We're probably already on the hook for trespassing and interfering with a murder investigation; let's not stop before we find something useful.'

'We're just making sure nothing's getting damaged,' I repeated.

'Or we could always pretend we were taking advantage of the empty house to get a little privacy in which to… misbehave.'

'You think they'd believe that?'

'They will if we show them that sunken tub,' Michael said, quirking one eyebrow. 'If the town decides to raze the house, do you suppose they'd give us the tub?'

'I'm not sure it would survive the move,' I said.

'True. In fact, it may not have survived the hurricane,' he said. 'Perhaps we should check it out.'

'Maybe later,' I said, 'when we've finished burgling.'

'And when you're feeling less frantic about clearing your father,' Michael said with a sigh. 'Just a thought.'

'Well, hold the thought, but let's worry about the desk for now.'

Chapter 20

The Puffin Who Liked to Quote Kipling

Michael led the way back to the living room and pointed at Resnick's desk.

'Good work,' I said. 'I'd overlooked it somehow.'

'Overlooked it?' Michael said, staring at the huge antique rolltop desk. 'How could you overlook that thing? It's over five feet tall.'

'I'm afraid my idea of a desk is a mound of papers with legs sticking out from under it,' I said. 'I never imagined that anything that tidy could be a working desk.'

'You're describing your own desk, aren't you?' Michael said.

' 'Fraid so.'

'And yet I'll bet you're going to say that, despite its messy appearance, you can find any piece of paper you need in five minutes.'

'Are you kidding? Five days, working full-time, and that's if I'm lucky. Now that's more like it,' I said as we rolled up the top, revealing a desktop computer and a reasonably promising quantity of paper. 'A little too tidy for my taste, but at least there are signs of life here.'

'Luckily, the desk is awfully close to that cracked window,' Michael said. 'See, it's getting wet already.'

'I don't suppose we could possibly hit the desk,' I said.

'I don't even want to try,' Michael said. 'We'll have to move the contents to safety. The wine cellar, I should think.'

Most of the contents weren't all that interesting. We studied his bills and bankbooks as we transported them, but we didn't find any dirt. Victor Resnick was a rich man who spent a great deal of money on his own pleasures, but then, he had a great deal of it to spend.

Or did he? He didn't have a very large balance in any of his accounts. Maybe he had a broker somewhere managing the bulk of his money. Then again, we found an awful lot of dunning* letters from creditors. Was he simply, like so many wealthy people, careless about paying on time, or was he going broke?

We found an entire drawerful of papers related to the publication of the book of his paintings I'd bought-- contracts, proofs of the photographs, and about fifteen drafts of the text, each annotated lavishly in a bold, angular handwriting. Along with corrections, we saw a great many scathing remarks about the intelligence and ancestry of the writer. If by chance we found the writer on Monhegan, I'd add him to the top of the list of suspects.

'The handwriting on these matches the edits on the biography,' I pointed out. 'Resnick was definitely cooperating with James Jackson.'

'Did Jackson write this, too?' Michael asked as he perused one of the drafts.

'No, someone named Edwards. Who can actually write. I don't know where Jamie boy came from, but he can't write for beans.'

'Resnick didn't realize that,' Michael said, flipping through a fat sheaf of papers from another drawer. 'And Jackson's definitely a pseudonym. Here's another copy of the biography--dated a couple of weeks ago, with the author listed as James Jones; and Resnick crossed the name out, with these orders: Sounds too phony--pick another alias!''

'And the biographer thought James Jackson sounded more plausible?'

'I suppose; tell that to the publishers of From Here to Eternity. Resnick edited this version with just as heavy a hand; the whole manuscript looks as if it has the measles.

But he's not as hard on Mr. Jones/Jackson as on poor Edwards.'

'Another draft or two and I bet he'd have started ripping Jamie boy's liver out, too,' I said.

'He didn't like the galleries that handled his work, either,' Michael remarked.

We found several files of letters to and from various galleries. Resnick evidently considered the owners of several of the most prestigious New York and Boston galleries either fools who had no idea how to sell his work or scoundrels trying to take him for a ride. More suspects, if they were on the island, which I doubted, but I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down their names anyway.

'You suspect the gallery owners?' Michael asked.

'I suspect everybody,' I said. 'Besides, haven't you heard that the value of an artist's work triples when he dies?'

'I don't suppose we could buy a few before word gets out on the mainland,' Michael suggested.

'Probably not,' I said. 'And anyway, I don't know about you, but it's not as if I have fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to do it with.'

Michael whistled.

'They sell for that much?'

'Well, that's nothing compared with what you'd have to pay for a painting by someone really famous. A major Wyeth, for example. I think they go for a million or two.'

'But still, it's a motive. I wonder how we could find out who owns his paintings.'

'Ask and ye shall receive,' I said. 'See, he keeps a list of everything he sells. Most artists do.'

'That's great! Although I suppose they won't all still belong to the original buyers anymore.'

'On the contrary, artists usually keep pretty close track of where all their paintings are. See, here's a painting he sold to someone in 1962, and a note that it was resold in 1970, with the selling price and the new owner's name. And here's one that was sold about the same time, then donated to the Cleveland Art Museum in 1981.'

'Want me to help you copy the names down?' Michael asked.

'No,' I said. 'He printed out three copies; we can take one and still leave two for the cops.'

Michael studied the list, looking over my shoulder.

'Notice anything odd?' he asked after awhile.

'Only that he wasn't selling very many paintings these days,' I said, frowning. 'And other people haven't been selling them much, either. Look at all these entries for the fifties and sixties. And in the eighties and nineties--practically zip.'

'Maybe he stopped keeping track of sales and resales?'

'No,' I said. 'See, here's a sale from two years ago. And a resale from three months ago. He's keeping track, but there's not much to keep track of.'