Murder With Puffins(92)

"So?"

"So remember the whole Helga thing? When Andrew Wyeth revealed that for fifteen years he'd been painting this beautiful redheaded model without his wife knowing it? And suddenly, he's on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Of course, I don't know if it did Wyeth's career good or harm in the long run, and I don't suppose it would ever have occurred to Resnick that Wyeth might be a better painter. All Resnick saw was that after the Helga paintings came out, Wyeth got more media attention than he could handle. And Resnick wanted some."

"And what better way to get it man to rake up an old scandal and suddenly reveal that he's got a collection of highly erotic paintings featuring a beautiful underage model," Michael said, shaking his head. "It's tailor-made for the tabloids."

"And I bet mere's not a word of truth in it anywhere. Look, there're also books about van Gogh, Picasso, Franz Liszt, and even Byron, for heaven's sake. He was going for notoriety."

"So let's search his computer and see what we find," Michael said, hitching a chair up to the desk.

What we found was six earlier drafts of the book, stretching back over a period of two years.

"Obviously practice doesn't always make perfect," I said. "I don't think his drafts were getting any better."

"Oh, I don't know," Michael said. "I don't recall seeing this bit about her turquoise eyes rolling on the floor in the draft we found. Sounds more tike a game of marbles than a love scene."

"Sounds painful, if you ask me. Yes, and some instinct for self-preservation made him take out all the bits about him nurturing other artists' careers. I somehow doubt that he even met Keith Haring and Basquiat, much less nurtured them."

"I think we've pretty well established who the biographer is," Michael said. "Now we have to decide what to do about it."

I sighed. For my part, I wanted to reformat the hard drive and burn every scrap of evidence that the biography had ever existed. But I had a dreadful feeling Michael wouldn't consider this ethical.

"What do you think we should do?" I asked, and braced myself for an answer I wasn't going to like.

"Reformat the computer and burn every scrap of paper," Michael said readily. "Don't you agree?" he asked, seeing my jaw drop. "I mean, we have to reformat it; you can recover deleted files with a good utility program. We can back up the nonbiography stuff to diskettes before we do it."

"Sounds great to me," I said. "But I wasn't sure you'd see it that way."

"We know Jim Dickerman killed Resnick," Michael said. "At best, all this stuff will only embarrass your family. At worst, Jim's lawyer could use it to cast doubt on his guilt."

"What about the painting?" I asked.

"We'll take it with us."

"Take it with us?"

"The old coot owes us something," Michael said. "After all, we solved his murder, at considerable personal risk."

"And if someone catches us with it?"

"We've got the bill of sale from your grandfather's files, remember?"

"I like the way you think," I said, grabbing an armload of papers and heading for the fireplace. "Let's do it."

"No, no!" Michael said. "Not that fireplace; do you want everyone on the island to see? We'll use the one in the bathroom--there's no window in there. You work on the computer; I'll take care of the fire."

I sat and watched the computer grinding away, first backing up Resnick's other files--there weren't many--then reformatting. Michael ferried armload after armload of papers back to the bathroom fireplace.

"How's it going?" he asked, coming up behind my chair and putting his hands on my shoulders.

"Nearly there," I said. "How's the fire?"

"It'll take a while," he said. "But I figure we'll have to hang out here until all the firemen go home or fall asleep, so that's no problem." He straightened up and went out into the kitchen.

Checking for papers there, I assumed. Probably not a bad idea.

I heard a sudden loud pop from the kitchen.

"Michael?" I called. "Is something wrong?"

"Everything's fine," he said, reappearing with two filled champagne flutes. "Absolutely fine."

"Isn't that Resnick's champagne?" I asked.

"Yes, and a very fine one at that," he said, handing me one flute. "Like I said, the old coot owes us one. To our host!"

"To our host!" I echoed, and sipped the champagne.

"Why don't you take these in and keep an eye on the fire?" Michael said, handing me his flute. "I'll see what we have in the pantry. Oh, and I found a jar of bath salts; goodness knows what Resnick wanted with that."