"Oh, Phoebe, no!" Mother cried.
"No help for it," Aunt Phoebe said. "I can't keep quiet any longer and run the risk that someone innocent will suffer for my crime."
"Ought to give you a medal, considering who you bumped off," Mrs. Fenniman remarked.
"It doesn't matter," Aunt Phoebe said, striking a noble pose. "I must pay the consequences of my actions."
"Ingrid Bergman," I said.
Everyone looked at me as if I were crazy. Except for Michael.
"In Joan of Arc?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I can see that," he said. "Although actually I thought more of a Katharine Hepburn."
"In what movie?" I asked.
"I hadn't quite figured out yet. It'll come to me."
"Sylvia Scarlett, maybe," I said. "Or, better yet, Mary of Scotland."
"Oh, that's the ticket. Definitely Mary of Scotland."
"You're both crazy," Mrs. Fenniman announced. "Rob, come help your aunt and your mother with the stairs; they both need their rest."
Michael leapt up to help as well, and after they'd hauled Aunt Phoebe and Mother upstairs, everyone drifted off to bed. Just as well. I was exhausted, too. I retrieved the folders I'd left by the umbrella stand, but then I stuffed them in my suitcase to look at in the morning and took myself to bed. I wasn't sure I could manage dawn, but I knew I'd have to get up pretty early to resume the hunt for Dad. And I wanted to tag along when Aunt Phoebe turned herself in. I didn't for a minute believe she'd murdered Resnick. I couldn't exactly say why, but her story sounded phony to me. Maybe I'd figure out why in the morning, after a good night's sleep.
Of course, a good night's sleep was exactly what I didn't get. The first couple of times I woke up, the storm had definitely gotten worse, as if the cottage were in a wind tunnel, with a herd of elephants pounding on the walls and tap-dancing on the roof. And Michael either had the world's worst case of insomnia or thought he could avert some danger by patrolling the cottage half the night, checking doors and peering out of windows. After about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. either the hurricane started moving again or I got used to the noise, and I finally got a few hours of sleep.
Mother woke me up at dawn.
"Time to get up and start looking for your father again," she said, leaning over me.
Spike, sleeping on my chest again, growled at her. For once, I agreed with him.
"I don't dare get up till he does," I said, and closed my eyes again.
A few minutes later, I heard the refrigerator door opening and closing several times, followed by pots and pans rattling, and then the crinkling noise of a cellophane wrapper.
Spike lifted his head.
Mother appeared in the doorway, massaging a half-empty potato chip bag.
Spike jumped off my chest and ran over to her, wagging his tail. He followed her back into the kitchen and then out again. She no longer held the potato chip bag, and from the look on Spike's face, I doubted he'd gotten any of the contents.
"You could at least feed him, if you're going to torture him like that."
"I'll feed him after you're gone," she said.
"Don't leave without me," came Aunt Phoebe's voice from above. She stumped down the stairs with her flagpole. Michael and Rob, both half-dressed, trailed after her, trying to help and being firmly shooed away.
"I'm going down to see the constable now," she announced when she reached the ground floor.
"It's only six a.m.; does the store open this early?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter; Jeb Barnes lives behind it," she said. "I don't want to put it off any longer."
"And what about the hurricane?" I asked.
"Moving out to sea," Mrs. Fenniman said. "We're just seeing the tail end of it now."
She could be right, I thought; I hadn't actually heard the wind slam anything into the side of the house for the whole ten or fifteen minutes I'd been awake. Probably a good sign.
"I can't let a little rain stop me," Aunt Phoebe said.
"I think you should have a good last meal first," Mrs. Fenniman announced, knocking over a clump of pink plastic flamingos on her way to the kitchen.
"No, I can't think of food right now," Aunt Phoebe said. "I just want to look around one last time. Who knows when I'll see my own hearth again?"
I wasn't sure she could see the hearth now, considering the amount of junk in the room, but I suppose she was speaking metaphorically.
"Hang on a minute while I throw some clothes on," I growled. "I won't let you go into the lion's den alone."
I suppose that struck the right melodramatic note; at any rate, she waited, tapping her foot, until I had dressed, gulped down a few ounces of coffee, and grabbed my knapsack. Then she, Michael, and I set off for the village.