Murder With Puffins(53)

"That can't possibly be Mother," I said finally.





Chapter 19





Nude Puffin Descending a Staircase




"It certainly looks like your mother," Michael said, tipping his head to scrutinize the painting. "Or at least looks like what I gather she would have looked like at that age, from the photo albums we looked at last night. The face anyway; I wouldn't know about the rest of it."

"Well, yes, that's what she looked like at that age," I said. "As far as one can tell from pictures of her in swim-suits. But surely you don't think Mother would actually have posed for something like that?"

"It's definitely got her attitude."

He was right. The woman in the picture lay full length on the rug, facing the viewer, her head and shoulders propped up by a couple of pillows covered with Oriental fabric. One hand was behind her head and the other held the champagne. One leg was bent slightly at the knee and the other outstretched fully, with a high-heeled fur mule dangling from the toes. Her face showed no sign of awkwardness or embarrassment, only an expression of pride and absolute confidence. I couldn't imagine Mother posing nude for a painting, but if she had decided to, I'm sure she would have stared out at the artist with just that air of arrogant self-assurance.

"She'd never wear a tacky fur slipper like that," I said defensively. "And the bearskin's pretty cliched, too."

"He could have done it from photos," Michael said.

"Of course he did it from photos," I snapped. "Clothed photos. But why? And when?"

"Let's make sure it's out of the rain," Michael said. "We can worry about the rest later."

We took the nude down and carried it with us into the living room.

Michael gasped. "What a view!"

I frowned at him. My mind was still on the picture we carried, and it took me a second to realize he was talking about the room we'd entered.

A giant wall of glass gave a sweeping view of the shore and the sea--a very gray and turbulent view, at the moment. The inside was a mess, too. The panes of glass forming the wall were slightly smaller than the ones beside the door--perhaps because this was the ocean side of the house. Even so, something had bashed one of them in, and mud and leaves littered the room. Several paintings on the wall were getting a bit damp. Only landscapes, I noted with a sigh of relief.

We hauled the paintings to the driest corner of the living room and continued our explorations.

"Impressive kitchen," Michael said. "You could run a small restaurant out of this place."

"Pretentious," I said. "I bet he hasn't cooked a dozen meals here since he moved in. Look how spotless everything is."

"Maybe he's just a good housekeeper."

"No," I said. "There's a difference between spotless from regular cleaning and spotless from disuse. This is disuse. Trust me--I know what disuse looks like from the occasional flying visit to my own kitchen."

"Well, pretentiousness has its advantages," Michael said. "Take a look at this wine cellar."

"Pretentious is right," I said. His wine cellar was probably larger than all my closets combined. "But what use is it? Unless you're suggesting that we take advantage of Resnick's wine collection, since he's not around to complain?"

"It's a tempting thought," Michael said, examining the labels of a few bottles with obvious interest. "Actually, I thought we could stash the paintings in here. No windows, and the walls are designed to protect the contents."

"Good idea," I said. We stowed the nude safely along one wall, then put the slightly damp landscapes from the living room along the other.

The dining room would have seated a dozen people easily, although all the chairs except the one closest to the kitchen had a thin film of dust on them. The guest room was expensively furnished but rather cheerless. And long unused. Despite the shortage of rooms on the island, obviously Resnick hadn't offered his spare bed to anyone, and I doubted anyone had even asked. I suspected the birders we'd heard singing in the church the night before were happier there than they would have been here anyway.

The master suite rivaled the kitchen for pretentiousness. But the lush white carpet was already dingy from lack of cleaning. And strewn with wet leaves, which had probably blown in from one of the broken windows.

"Fancies himself quite the ladies' man," I said, frowning at the ornately canopied king-size bed. "I'm surprised he resisted the ceiling mirror."

"He ran out of mirrors after he finished in here," Michael's voice echoed from the bathroom.

I poked my head in.

"Ick," I said, stepping inside to gape at the interior. "It's like a fun house. Imagine having to look at yourself in all these mirrors first thing in the morning."