"Meg," Michael said, gently taking my hand. "I don't believe he did it any more than you do. But you have to see that we can't help him by concealing evidence. I mean, for all we know, that map could be what the police need to find and convict the real killer."
I sighed. I didn't like it. I didn't know the local police, wasn't sure I trusted them to find the real killer. But much as I hated the idea, I had to admit he was right.
"Okay," I said. "We'll turn in the map. But to the police, when they get here. Not to Constable Jeb or Mayor Mamie or anyone else on the island when Resnick was killed."
"That's sensible enough," he said.
"Which gives us a day or two to find the real killer," I said.
"You know, you're more like your dad than you want to admit," he said, grinning. "Never pass up a chance to play detective, right?"
"Michael, this is serious," I said. "We've all heard about cases where the police find a likely suspect and don't look any further. We can't let that happen to Dad."
"Of course not," he said. "Though I'm curious how we're going to find the killer in the middle of a hurricane. Not to mention--well, never mind."
I suspected I knew what he hadn't said: that right now, finding Dad--alive--was more important than proving his innocence.
"I'll keep this safe for now," Michael said, folding the map and taking out his wallet.
"Don't trust me not to destroy it?" I said.
"I wasn't thinking that at all," he said. "But you can't keep carrying it around in your pocket; it'll turn to mush. And we can't just leave it lying around where someone could get hold of it prematurely, and, unlike your purse, my wallet almost never leaves my body."
"Well, that makes sense," I said, slightly mollified by his tone.
"Shall we go back in?" Michael asked. "Much as I'd enjoy being alone with you under other circumstances, this shed's getting colder by the minute. And damper," he added as a large drop of water splattered his nose.
"Hang on a second," I said, opening up my knapsack. "As long as I'm confessing to my crimes against humanity, I may as well make a clean breast of it. I found an envelope in Resnick's yard after we put his body in the shed--tripped over it, actually. It didn't seem wet enough to have been there long, and I wondered if it fell out of his jacket while we were moving him."
"Let's have a look at it, then," Michael said.
I pulled out the envelope and we both pointed our flashlights at it. It was an ordinary nine-by-twelve brown clasp envelope, with no markings on the outside. Inside we found an inch-thick sheaf of papers held together with a giant binder clip as well as a smaller Tyvek envelope.
The top sheet of the papers held a title, centered, in all caps: VICTOR S. RESNICK: UNHERALDED GENIUS OF THE DOWN EAST COAST. A BIOGRAPHY. By James Jackson.
"Wonder who James Jackson is," Michael said, flipping to the next page.
"I don't know, but the Tyvek envelope is addressed to him," I said. "In care of General Delivery at the Rockport Post Office."
"My God, listen to this," Michael said. " 'In this tome will be related the story of a great man whose genius has gone largely unappreciated in our century, a century in which the degradation of artistic taste has led to the exaltation of lesser artistic talents and those whose talents lie less in art than in publicity and the pursuit of notoriety, while alone, at the head of a small contingent of artists who still adhere to the tradition of representational art and the tenets of artistic quality that have prevailed, until now, since the Renaissance, Victor Resnick holds back the bulwark against the barbarians of popular culture and the deliberate obfuscations of an outworn academic community; unsung, unheralded, unappreciated, in recent years largely neglected, Victor Resnick nevertheless--' Arg!"
"Was that really all one sentence?" I asked.
"No, only about a third of one," Michael said. "I'm not sure which is worse, James's writing or his blatant toadying."
"I'll give you odds this is the authorized biography," I said.
"Definitely authorized," Michael said. "Our friend Victor has begun making some rather pungent comments on the first couple of pages. 'Small contingent of artists' used to be 'small contingent of artists, such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.' Jamie boy might have crossed out the names himself, but only Resnick would scrawl 'Stupid! Don't mention those clowns!' Speaking of odds, I'll give you odds no one ever publishes it unless Jamie boy does a lot of rewrites."
"Looks like he already has," I said. "We've got draft seven, according to the footer. Oh my God!"