Oh damn, I thought. If anyone else found this, and figured out it belonged to Dad--and anyone who'd ever seen his printing would figure it out in a heartbeat…
"Meg?" Michael called.
"Sorry. I'm going," I said, stuffing the map in my knapsack and reaching again for the cliff.
"Hang on a second. Do you think we should take this, too?"
I glanced back. Michael had laid Resnick's body on a flat rock and was pointing down at something floating in the pool. I scrambled back down to see what it was.
A no trespassing sign, minus its post, bobbed just below the surface.
"It was under the body," he said.
"We'd better take it, I suppose," I said. "It could be evidence."
I tried a couple of times to snag it, using the rope so as not to touch it and leave fingerprints. But in the end, the only way we could manage to reach it without wading into the icy water was for Michael to hold on to my waist while I reached out and grabbed it, and even then both of us got half-soaked by the waves.
"Definitely time to make tracks," Michael said as I secured the sign to my backpack and he turned back to deal with Resnick.
Hauling the body up the slope took forever, and then we decided to put Resnick someplace out of the rain, since we'd moved him so far already. We picked him up---I took the feet, which seemed less personal somehow--and lugged him down the path to his house.
I didn't like the glass and steel monstrosity, but I couldn't help thinking it looked a little forlorn already. The wind had plastered the glass with wet leaves and mud, and the way the windows rattled made me glad I wouldn't be inside the house when the storm really broke.
We found room in the woodshed, put the body out of the storm, pulled a canvas tarpaulin over it, and stashed the sign in a corner.
Now that we were out of the rain, we paused for a moment. I took my flashlight out of the knapsack and played it over Resnick's face. In the struggle to get his body up above the tide line and under cover, I hadn't had much chance to inspect him. Now, in the harsh illumination of the flashlight, I had much too good a view. The angry gash on the back of his head didn't show, of course, since he lay faceup, but he had a nasty-looking bruise on his forehead, just at the hairline. And he definitely looked very dead. And very unhappy. Was the look on his face anger? Pain? Fear? Surprise? Probably a combination of all of them.
"Let's get out of here," Michael said, echoing my thought. "I mean, we need to get back to the village and report this."
As we stepped out of the shed, I tripped over something and went sprawling.
"Are you all right?" Michael asked.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just tripped over something Resnick must have left lying around."
"Even dead, that man's dangerous," he said.
Before I got up, I felt around to find whatever had tripped me--I didn't want to repeat the experience again immediately. My hands finally touched something--a thick, slightly damp nine-by-twelve envelope, curled up into a half cylinder. Was that what I'd tripped over? Odd that it was only slightly damp if it had been lying around in the rain for any amount of time. Perhaps the overhanging roof of the shed had sheltered it until I'd tripped over it. Or perhaps Resnick had carried it rolled up and stuffed into one of his pockets and it had fallen out when we moved him.
I stowed it in my knapsack for later examination; then Michael and I hiked back to the village, looking over our shoulders about every third step.
Jeb Barnes wasn't happy to see us again.
Chapter 12
A Puffin Is Announced
"We haven't seen your father," Jeb said, hunching toward the woodstove and holding his coffee closer to his face.
"Neither have we," I said. "That's not why we're here."
"Phoebe's not here, either," one of the locals said.
"We've come to report a murder," Michael said in his most resonant stage voice.
The group around the stove froze, and one dropped a coffee mug, which shattered on the gray wooden floor.
"Who did that crazy fool shoot?" Jeb Barnes asked when he finally found his voice.
"Resnick? He didn't shoot anyone," I said. "Someone smashed his skull in first."
I didn't imagine the faint sighs of relief from several of the locals.
"Who did it?" Jeb demanded.
"How should we know?" Michael said. "We just found him facedown in the water."
"In the water?" Jeb echoed.
"In a tidal pool a little down the shore from his house," I said. "We had to move him; the tide was about to wash him away, so we carried him up and put him out of the rain."
"My God," Jeb said. "What are we supposed to do now?"