'That's right,' Michael said, hefting the knapsack back onto his shoulders. 'Not that I especially want those particular ropes back. We'd need the rope to get up into the tree, too. Not to mention a really good story in case we get caught.'
'We have to,' I said as my stubborn streak kicked in. I glanced over at Michael. He was looking down at the ground, and from the expression on his face, I suddenly feared that we were on the brink of an argument. That he would refuse to do any more unauthorized snooping, and try to stop me from doing it, too. And I couldn't exactly blame him; it wasn't his family.
Then he looked up, caught my eye, and sighed.
'Okay, let's go back to the house and get some ropes, then,' he said.
Chapter 21
When we came to the intersection where Resnick's private path joined the main gravel road, I insisted that we lurk in the bushes for a few moments to make sure no one was around.
'I told you we wouldn't run into anyone else,' Michael said as we finally stepped out into the road.
'We have to be careful,' I said. 'After all--'
'Hello!' called several voices from behind us. We whirled, to see half a dozen birders striding energetically down the path.
'Did you hear about the murder?' one of them asked eagerly.
'Yes, we found--' Michael began.
'Yes, but what's the latest word?' I asked, interrupting him before he could reveal our close connection to the case.
The birders swept us into their midst and, as we panted to keep up with them, talked nonstop and simultaneously all the way down to the village. Other birders joined us in progress, and by the time we reached the main square of the village, we formed part of a milling, chattering crowd that must have included half the birders on the island.
When the police arrived, they'd have a lot of fun interrogating all the birders. Not surprisingly, since they'd wandered all over the island since their arrival, their ranks contained possible witnesses to nearly everything that had happened over the past several days.
The police would find witnesses to Resnick shooting at Michael and me, and several witnesses who would testify, truthfully or not, that he'd shot at them. Witnesses to the fight with Ken Takahashi, several of whom had taken photographs. Witnesses to Aunt Phoebe's straggle with Resnick. I was relieved to hear confirmation that he had still been standing--actually jumping up and down, yelling his head off, according to the witnesses--when Aunt Phoebe stormed off. Of course, that didn't prove that he hadn't collapsed later on as a result of the rap on the head, but it was encouraging. Eyewitnesses to Aunt Phoebe pulling up at least one of Resnick's no trespassing signs and throwing it violently over the cliff, which could answer the question of how the sign ended up floating in the tidal pool. Though not, of course, the question of whether the murderer had used the missing signpost as a weapon. And from what we heard, the sign couldn't have landed on Resnick's head by accident when Aunt Phoebe had thrown it; too many witnesses had seen him alive and well afterward. Witnesses who saw Jeb Barnes's subsequent arrival and summary dismissal. Witnesses who saw Dad have some kind of altercation with Resnick a short time later, which terrified me, until I managed to extract the information that though they'd exchanged harsh words, Resnick had been very much alive when they parted. Witnesses who saw Resnick afterward, patrolling his borders in search of trespassers. Witnesses who saw him pottering about by the shore, throwing a few stones at the gulls. Even witnesses who'd seen Michael and me when we'd found the body. I'd have felt better if some of the witnesses were a little more reliable on the matter of time. They tended to think less in hours and minutes and more in terms of 'before we saw the bay-breasted warbler, and just after I got that snapshot of the crested grebe feeding.' But just by circulating through the crowd and listening, we could more or less put together a time line of exactly what Resnick had done up until shortly before Michael and I found him.
We also encountered potential witnesses who claimed they had actually seen Resnick shooting down puffins, which I took with a grain of salt under the circumstances, since we had it on good authority that the puffins had all long since departed for the Arctic Circle. And then there were the witnesses who claimed they'd seen a sinister stranger skulking about the island, pretending to be a birder, despite an almost complete lack of birding knowledge. I made a note to ask Rob what kind of pranks he'd been playing over the past day or so.
The one thing we didn't find was a witness who could explain Resnick's transformation from a live misanthrope strolling along the seashore with a small bump on his forehead to a dead body with a bloody gash on the back of his head. During the critical period, which, depending on the feeding schedule of the crested grebe, ranged anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary.
'Well, our killer certainly picked his time well,' I said to Michael in an undertone.
'Yes,' Michael said. 'Almost every birder on the island passed by his house sometime yesterday, and not a single one of them saw the murder.'
'Where's your father?' someone asked. I turned, to see Jeb Barnes and Mamie Benton looking very stern.
'Up at Aunt Phoebe's cottage, recovering from his ordeal,' I said.
'I got through to the police briefly,' Jeb said. 'They're going to want to talk to him.'
'Talk to Dad?' I said, feigning innocence. 'Why?'
'I'd say he's their prime suspect,' Mamie said, sounding rather smug. 'No alibi for the time of the murder, and everyone knows there was no love lost between him and the deceased.'
'Oh, and everyone else on the island adored the old curmudgeon and has an ironclad alibi?' I said. 'I can think of a few other possibilities. You might tell them to keep their eyes out for the missing Will, for example.'
'What, Resnick's will?' Jeb asked.
'How do you know it's missing?' Mamie asked. 'And what's the problem if it is? Far as I know, he used a mainland law firm; they'll have a copy on file.'
'Not Resnick's will,' I said. 'Will Dickerman.'
'Haven't seen him on the island in months,' Mamie said.
'No, not since he skipped bail on those grand theft auto and assault charges, I expect,' I said.
'What the devil--,' Jeb began.
'How on earth did you find out about that?' Mamie asked.
Not wanting to admit that we'd rummaged through Victor Resnick's files, I settled for looking inscrutable.
'Well, he's not on the island anyway,' Mamie said. 'I'd have seen him get off the ferry.'
'How do you know he didn't come over on a private boat before the hurricane hit?' I said.
Mamie blinked. Jeb chuckled.
'Yeah, normal weather, he could have come over most anytime,' he said. 'But even if he had, what does that have to do with the murder? I mean, you're not thinking that just because he's had a few brushes with the law, he's got to be the killer, are you?'
'No,' I said. 'But he's definitely someone we want to keep an eye on, considering that he's a fugitive from justice with a reason to hate Victor Resnick and a history of whacking people with blunt objects.'
'Reason to hate Resnick?' Jeb echoed. 'I'm sure he didn't like Resnick any more than the rest of us, but what reason does he have to hate him? With all those steam baths and cattle prods and such Resnick has up at that house, he's the Dickermans' best customer.
'Because Resnick had bought up Mr. Dickerman's loans and was about to foreclose on them,' I said. 'About to take away the power plant. So if you see Will Dickerman, he's a suspect all right. For that matter, I'm sure the police will take a very close look at everyone who has had adverse financial dealings with Victor Resnick.'
I looked at Mamie Benton when I said it, and felt a guilty satisfaction at seeing her turn pale.
'Take a damn long time to do that,' Jeb Barnes said. 'Not a person on the island the bastard didn't try to
