Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  “Go look at Resnick’s wounds if you like,” I offered. “I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.”

  “No, no,” Mamie said. “I think you’re right. We’ll pass that along to the police.”

  “And another thing. Jeb, remember we told you Aunt Phoebe was going up to Resnick’s. And you went dashing up in Fred Dickerman’s truck, right?”

  He nodded warily.

  “So why didn’t you see this supposed murder? You couldn’t have gotten there before she did, or you’d have seen her come storming up a few minutes later. And if she really left him lying dead in the middle of the yard, you’d have found him there. But you found him alive, remember? And madder than a wet hen; I believe that was the expression you used. And according to Aunt Phoebe, she left him lying dead in his yard. So how did he end up floating in the tidal pool?”

  “That’s right,” Jeb said. “Guess it’s not her after all.”

  “No problem,” one of the locals said. “Not as if they have to look far for a suspect.”

  Murmurs of agreement followed this statement, and I could see my worst fears coming true. By the time the police arrived, the locals would have Dad tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

  Of course, at the moment, they were doing it in absentia, which reminded me of my real mission, now that we’d defused Aunt Phoebe’s confession.

  “By the way,” I began, but before I could get much further, the door burst open, letting in another blast of wind and water. We all turned to see who was coming in.

  “Dad!” I cried, and ran over to hug the wet, bedraggled figure staggering into the store. I felt as if someone had just lifted an enormous weight from my shoulders, and I heard Michael sigh with relief.

  Dad was covered with mud and had bits of leaves and twigs stuck in his eyebrows and clinging all over his clothes. The bandage was half off his head, and the gash had opened up again.

  “Meg!” he said. “And Michael! I thought I saw you two in here. What are you doing out in the storm?”

  “Never mind that; where have you been?” I asked.

  “I got lost and had to spend the night under a bush on the far side of the island,” he announced, as if he’d managed to pull off something clever. “Did you miss me?”

  “You have no idea,” I muttered.

  “Meg, you should have seen what it was like, watching the hurricane hit!” he cried, waving his arms as if trying to imitate a gale-force wind. “It was awe-inspiring! Invigorating! Absolutely breathtaking! I feel reborn!”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Now come down to earth for a while; a lot of things have happened while you were out being reborn.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Dad asked, no doubt sensing my serious mood.

  “Victor Resnick’s dead,” I said.

  “Oh dear,” Dad said. “I suppose I should take that as a lesson. I’ve been so busy enjoying the hurricane, I haven’t stopped to think that it can be deadly as well as beautiful.”

  “Well, actually—” Jeb began.

  “And now I shall always regret having parted on unfriendly terms with him,” Dad went on.

  “Parted on unfriendly terms?” I said while the rest goggled.

  “Yes, I ran into him on my way to Green Point,” Dad said. “I couldn’t understand why he kept trying to invite me in for a drink. I’m afraid I treated him rather rudely. Never liked him much, actually; and I was in no mood to waste time on him when I could be watching the hurricane. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Well, at one point when I was stumbling around, trying to find my way back, I began to regret how uncivil I’d been to him. I promised myself that when I got safely back to the village, I’d go and have that drink with him and apologize for the way I’d acted. And now I’ll never have the chance, with him taken by the very storm that spared me.”

  “Actually, he wasn’t,” I said. “Taken by the storm, that is. He was murdered.”

  “Murdered!” Dad exclaimed. “How dreadful!”

  He didn’t sound as if he thought it dreadful. In fact, he sounded suspiciously enthusiastic. I hoped Jeb and the rest wouldn’t take his tone the wrong way. I made a mental note to explain to the police about Dad’s obsession with murder mysteries.

  Then again, maybe I should wait until the police caught the real murderer. They might not realize I was talking about fictional murder mysteries. No sense letting them jump to any more false conclusions.

  “How was he killed?” Dad asked.

  Several of the locals around the store guffawed.

  “He was hit over the head,” Jeb said. “But we don’t know whether the blow actually killed him or just knocked him unconscious into a tidal pool, causing him to drown.”

  “Well, we’d better examine him to see if we can find out,” Dad said.

  “Examine him?” Jeb exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “Of course, you’ll need the coroner for the actual autopsy, but—”

  He suddenly yawned prodigiously and blinked slightly.

  “Sorry, where was I?” he went on. “Oh, yes: Examining the body early on could be very important. Have you done anything to preserve it?”

  “You don’t expect us to let a suspect just mess around with the body,” Jeb said.

  “A suspect?” Dad repeated. His face lit up. I should have known. For a mystery buff like Dad, being a suspect in a real, live mystery was probably the next best thing to playing detective.

  “Everyone on the island’s a suspect,” I said.

  “Why so they are!” Dad exclaimed. “It’s like a classic locked-room mystery! How exciting! Still, it could be important for someone with medical knowledge to observe the body early on. There might be another doctor or two among the bird-watchers. Perhaps we could get together a panel and do a noninvasive examination, under close supervision, before the body deteriorates. Take pictures. And—”

  He yawned again, even more broadly.

  “Dad, the body’s in a refrigerator, and it isn’t going anywhere. You need some rest—why don’t you take a nap while Jeb considers your suggestion?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And Mrs. Langslow’s worried sick about you,” Michael put in. “Have you seen her yet? Does she know you’re all right?”

  “Oh, goodness!” Dad exclaimed. “I never realized. I’ll go right up there. Meg, do explain to them how important the examination could be. I’ll—” He yawned again, and made no protest as Michael and I hustled him out the door. Michael stood, watching him trot up the street while I turned back to Jeb.

  “You know, he does have a point. You could do worse than have some doctors examine the body.”

  “Like I said, we can’t have a suspect messing with the body,” Jeb replied.

  “Why not?” I said. “We did last night, when you and Mamie and Fred fetched it down to the Anchor Inn. Are you trying to tell me that none of you had any possible reason for disliking Resnick?”

  Jeb looked taken aback, and chuckles from the locals confirmed that I’d hit the mark.

  “Yeah, Jeb,” one of them said. “Bet you killed him just to get him off your back.”

  “Off your back?” I repeated.

  “Bastard wanted to buy my store,” Jeb said. “I told him to take a hike, of course. Been in the family since my grandfather’s day; not likely I’d want to sell it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have sold it to him. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, always hanging around here, waving his damned checkbook.”

  “You see,” I said. “You need to protect yourself from suspicion, as well. Of course, it’s your jurisdiction, but if I were you, I’d think very carefully about seeing if you can’t find another doctor or two among the bird-watchers, as Dad suggested, and letting them all examine the body to verify its condition.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Jeb said. I wasn’t sure if this really meant he’d think about it or if, like beleaguered parents, he used “I’ll think about it” as a g
entle way of saying “Hell no!”

  “And you may want to stop making such a big deal about any person in particular being a suspect,” I said. “Of course, I’m not a lawyer, like my brother, but I imagine people do get sued for that type of thing. Especially since you have so many possible suspects.”

  “You ask me, Fu Manchu there did it,” one elderly local piped up from his place by the stove. “They were having a big set-to just before he died.”

  “Fu Manchu?” Jeb repeated.

  “Ayah,” the old man said, and buried his nose back in his coffee.

  “Ayah,” Michael murmured to me. “They really do say that, then?”

  “Only to amuse the tourists,” I whispered back. “Fu Manchu?”

  Michael shrugged. Jeb didn’t seem very impressed with the revelation that Sax Rohmer’s sinister pulp villain was alive and well and plotting on Monhegan. Could dacoits and Thugs be far behind? And then I saw someone passing outside the store windows, and enlightenment struck.

  “Well, if I were you, I’d think about finding those doctors,” I said. “Meanwhile, we’d better run along,” I added, tugging at Michael’s sleeve. After one plaintive glance at his coffee mug, he sighed and followed me outside.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We’re going to interrogate Fu Manchu,” I said.

  CHAPTER 18

  East of Puffins

  “Interrogate Fu Manchu?” Michael said. “You’re not serious.”

  “I think the old guy meant the Asian man we saw quarreling with Resnick yesterday,” I said.

  “The one too well dressed for a birder?”

  “Exactly. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s him right now.”

  I pointed across the street to the front porch of the Island Inn, where the Asian man was stamping his feet and shaking himself. He had a brightly colored bag with the name of the other, upscale grocery on it. With a bottle of wine inside, from the shape of it.

  “You could be right,” Michael said.

  “I’m positive,” I said. “If we had to find a middle-aged Caucasian woman with binoculars, we wouldn’t have a chance in the world of figuring out which birder it was. But Monhegan in flyover season isn’t exactly a hotbed of ethnic diversity.”

  The Asian man had disappeared by the time we entered the hotel lobby, but the desk clerk looked up.

  “Good grief, he’s fast,” I said. “Sorry, but you know the man who just came back into the lobby?”

  “Mr. Takahashi?” the owner said.

  “Yes,” I said. “He forgot to mention which room he’s in, and we need to give him back something.”

  I pointed vaguely back at my knapsack.

  “He’s in room twenty-three,” the clerk said. “You want me to call him?”

  “We can just take it up, if that’s all right,” I said. “Won’t be a minute.”

  Mr. Takahashi looked surprised when he opened his room door and saw Michael and me.

  “Yes?” he said. I had to look up to see his face. He was young—thirty-five at most—and taller than I expected—he nearly matched Michael’s six four.

  “Mr. Takahashi, I hate to bother you, but it’s very important,” I said. “Yesterday, you were overheard in … well, in a rather heated discussion with—

  “Oh, good God,” Takahashi said. “Just tell the bastard to lay off, will you? I won’t harass him, I’ll do my damnedest not to even see him, but I can’t very well leave the island until this damned hurricane blows over.”

  I was surprised to notice that he had a faint southern accent. And obviously he had mistaken us for someone official. I decided not to enlighten him.

  “I assume you’re talking about Victor Resnick?” I asked.

  “Well, who else?” Takahashi said. “You don’t mean someone else has filed a complaint about me? If they have, I guarantee you Resnick’s behind it.”

  “Just what is the nature of the relationship between you and Mr. Resnick?” I said.

  “Relationship? We don’t have a relationship; I came to see him on business.”

  “What’s the nature of your business relationship, then?” I persisted.

  Takahashi looked at me with exasperation. He glanced behind me at Michael, who tried to look stern and official while dripping audibly on the floor. Michael seemed to rattle him a little. Men Takahashi’s size don’t often run into people taller than they are.

  Takahashi sighed and turned to pick up something from the bedside table. A card case. He handed each of us a business card. Very nice cards, engraved on heavy off-white textured paper so thick, it was almost cardboard.

  “Kenneth N. Takahashi,” I read. “Vice President, Coastal Resorts, Ltd.”

  Takahashi nodded as if that explained everything. About the only thing it explained for me was his accent, since the firm was headquartered in Atlanta.

  “What is Coastal Resorts, Ltd.?” I asked.

  “What is it?” Takahashi’s drawl got a little thicker when he got excited. “It’s only the country’s second-largest developer of luxury resort properties. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the hotel project?”

  “Hotel project?”

  “I came all the way up here from Atlanta in good faith to negotiate with Mr. Resnick about the purchase of some land that my company had planned to develop as a luxury resort,” Takahashi said.

  “A luxury resort? Here on Monhegan?” Michael asked, glancing at the window, which Gladys was pelting with sheets of cold, icy rain.

  “I’m told it’s very pleasant in the summer,” Takahashi said, following Michael’s gaze.

  “Not much room here on the island for another hotel,” I said.

  Takahashi shrugged.

  “I didn’t put the deal together,” he said, frowning. “I’m just here to try to keep it from falling apart.”

  I got the feeling he would have a few interesting things to say to someone back in Atlanta.

  “No offense,” I said, “but the whole thing sounds a little far-fetched to me. I mean, does this look like the kind of place that could support a big hotel?”

  “We weren’t planning a big hotel,” Takahashi said. “A very small one, in fact; very luxurious, very secluded. The sort of place where high-profile people could come with absolute assurance of their privacy.”

  “You mean over-the-hill movie queens recuperating from plastic surgery, reclusive, paranoid billionaires, people like that?” Michael asked.

  “Exactly,” Takahashi said. “People who appreciate the kind of tight security you can maintain in a place this isolated.”

  We must have still looked dubious. He walked over to the small rustic table under the room’s one window and unrolled a large sheet of paper.

  “Look, here are some of the project plans.”

  We gathered around and looked down at a three-foot-by-five-foot map of Monhegan. Only this wasn’t the Monhegan we knew. A giant, sprawling building occupied the top of the hill where the lighthouse now stood. Labels indicated where the restaurant and the indoor pool would be located. A nine-hole golf course had been carved out of the undeveloped ocean side of the island. The meadow where the Central Monhegan Power Company’s modest generator now chugged housed a sprawling complex of equipment and support buildings. I wondered if the owner of the Island Inn knew that one of his guests was plotting to raze his hotel and replace it with a heliport? Or if Aunt Phoebe had any intention of having her cottage torn down to make room for a set of indoor tennis courts?

  “A lot of people would be pretty ticked with Resnick if they knew about this,” Michael said, looking at me with one eyebrow raised significantly.

  He was right. And one of them might have gotten mad enough to murder him. I couldn’t decide whether to rejoice that we’d already discovered another plausible motive for Resnick’s murder or feel depressed at the incredible number of possible suspects Takahashi had just revealed. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration, managing to shower Takahashi’s map with drops o
f water in the process.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot I was still wet.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be dry again,” Takahashi muttered. “Don’t worry, you can wave the damned thing out the window, for all I care; it’s useless now.”

  Michael nodded, but my radar went on the alert. Useless? How could Takahashi know his maps were useless unless he already knew about Victor Resnick’s death?

  “What do you mean, ‘useless’?” I asked.

  “The bastard backed out of the deal,” Takahashi said, rolling up the map. “Going with the competition. So the whole thing’s completely useless. Would you like a souvenir of what Coastal Resorts could have done to bring this place into the twenty-first century?”

  “I wouldn’t give up yet,” I said. “If he hasn’t actually signed the deal, who knows, maybe you can win over Resnick’s heirs, whoever they are. Of course, the whole thing could get caught up in probate for years.”

  “Heirs?” Takahashi said. “What do you mean, ‘heirs’? The bastard was perfectly healthy yesterday.”

  “Yes, but someone bashed his skull in late yesterday,” I said.

  “Oh, damn,” Takahashi said. He sat down heavily on the bed and buried his face in his hands. “Damnation. That’s all I need.”

  “You sound awfully upset for someone who claims he hardly knew Victor Resnick,” I said.

  “Why shouldn’t I be upset?” Takahashi said, looking up. “My boss will probably make me stay here to negotiate with the heirs. Do you know who they are?”

  I winced, thinking about the damned biography. It didn’t sound as if Resnick had much family left, apart from the long-lost illegitimate child. What if his death led to a massive, well-publicized search for the missing offspring? I fervently hoped he’d made a will leaving his estate to some second cousin. Or maybe his favorite charity. The Society for the Relief of Indigent Curmudgeons, perhaps.

  “I don’t imagine we’ll find out until they probate his will,” I said. “Guess you’ll have to stick around for a while to find out.”

  “Not when the storm lets up,” Takahashi said, glancing at the window. “As soon as that damned ferry starts running, I’m out of here. They can send someone else to clean up the deal.”