The Puffin of Death

by Betty Webb

  “Wow,” was all I could say, awed by all that color.

  “Last year Ragnar had a one-man show at Harpa,” Bryndis said proudly, “and now he has been invited to present at the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, in Copenhagen. His work is well-respected.”

  “An artist who’s into birds, what are the chances of that?” Now I could identify the faint odor that had puzzled me upon entering to the apartment: the scent of fresh varnish.

  “You did not know? Ragnar is not only a birder, but a member of Fuglavernd, BirdLive Iceland, the conservation group. When we were on the phone he told me that is why he was at the Viking Tavern the other night. He was there with the president of BirdLive when…Oh.” Her eyes grew round. “That is when he had that run-in with Simon what’s-his-name.”

  “Simon Parr.” I tried and failed to keep the frown off my face.

  Bryndis noticed. “Do not worry, Teddy. Ragnar did not know the dead man, other than to take exception to the way he was treating that woman.”

  “But Ragnar got physical with him.”

  She shrugged. “Someone had to.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t think Inspector Haraldsson would…would…?”

  “Nah.”

  Not my business. Not my business.

  Refusing to think any more about the case, I wandered over to the drinks table, around which numerous partygoers had gathered. Above the ambient strains of Sigur Rós, I heard snatches of Icelandic, English, Italian, and Russian. Ragnar sure got around. After availing myself of a beer labeled Ölvisholt Lava, I toured the rest of the apartment.

  It was larger than Bryndis’, with two bedrooms, one of them acting as an artist’s studio, where more paintings of birds crowded the walls. Propped on an easel in the studio was an unfinished oil of a hoopoe, only instead of being yellow, black, and white, the Egyptian bird was well on its way to resembling a red, green, and amber traffic light. Instead of becoming outraged at Ragnar’s liberties with nature, the painting made me smile. I had plenty of company, mostly male, while I checked out the other paintings in the studio. Apparently my green “dress” was working, and several Viking types hit on me, albeit politely. In each case I flashed my engagement ring and told my admirer how much I missed my fiancé. To my chagrin, no hearts were broken. My admirers simply moved on to the next unattached female.

  The paintings in the back hallway weren’t quite as large as those in the studio, but there were twice as many. I sipped at my Ölvisholt Lava while studying another unlikely-colored puffin, this one lavender, scarlet, and pink.

  Back in the living room, someone switched the music of Sigur Rós to that of singer/songwriter Brostinn Strengur, and although she sang in Icelandic, the sadness in her voice made me suspect she sang about loneliness. It made me miss Joe. Then I had an inspiration. Why shouldn’t we come to Iceland on our honeymoon instead of Italy? I was already in love with the country, and I knew enough about Joe to bet that he’d love its wildness, too. During the day we could ride horses through glacial valleys, and at night we could…

  “Here, try some hákarl,” Bryndis asked, handing me a dish of something evil-smelling. Her sudden appearance, blended with that awful stench, pulled me right out of my X-rated fantasy.

  “Hákarl? What’s that?”

  “Rotten shark. Traditional dish. Very expensive, almost as much as the finest caviar. Ragnar bought two pounds!”

  “Purple puffins must sell well, then. But, no thanks, I’ll pass on the shark.”

  “You sure?” She looked disappointed. “I do not want to hog it all.”

  “Knock your socks off.”

  She appeared puzzled.

  “That’s American slang for ‘be my guest.’”

  A big smile. “Your loss.” With that, she took a big bite of dead and long-buried shark. “Yum!”

  “I don’t see how…”

  From the living room, a male’s voice rose above the usual party noise. Ragnar. Shouting in Icelandic. He sounded furious.

  Wondering if someone had been foolish enough to insult a woman in his presence, I turned a questioning face to Bryndis. “Who’s Ragnar mad at now?”

  The impish look on her face disappeared, replaced by one of alarm. Without answering, she rushed toward the living room. Curious, I followed.

  At first I couldn’t make sense of what I saw and heard. Bryndis’ ex-boyfriend was surrounded by a group of serious-looking men wearing black. Even more oddly, he was holding his arms behind him. But when I spotted Inspector Thorvaald Haraldsson standing among the black-clad men, I realized they were police officers, and the reason Ragnar’s arms were behind him was because he’d been handcuffed.

  Whatever he’d done to bring the ire of the police down on him, Ragnar wasn’t going quietly. As he struggled against the cuffs, he aimed what sounded like Old Norse curses at the inspector. That made everyone else begin to shout in their native tongue, creating a cacophony of babble.

  One clear voice rose against them all.

  After reeling off a formal-sounding declaration in Icelandic, Inspector Haraldsson added in English, “Ragnar Eriksson, I am arresting you for the murder of Mr. Simon Parr, a citizen of the United States of America. I am also arresting you for the theft of Ulfur Johansson’s Finnish Sako, the rifle with which you shot Mr. Parr to death.”

  ***

  So much for Nordic stoicism.

  Bryndis’ steely reserve crumbled the minute we exited Ragnar’s apartment. She didn’t quite burst into tears, but her lower lip trembled enough I could tell she was on the verge.

  Trying to be helpful, I said, “Maybe I should drive.”

  She turned her head away for a moment. When she faced me again, her lip had stopped trembling. “Do not be ridiculous.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  Sniff. “Not needed.” Sniff.

  It being after eleven, the summer sun had finally set, and we drove in silence through the dark streets of Reykjavik. Bryndis didn’t speak again until she unlocked the door to her apartment.

  “I do not love him anymore.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I never did.”

  “Emotions can be confusing, can’t they?”

  Sniff. “We Icelanders are not like you Americans.”

  “Oh?”

  “We are not run by our emotions.” Sniff.

  “Commendable, I’m sure.”

  Once inside the apartment, Bryndis flicked on the kitchen light. “How about some coffee?”

  “Sounds good.”

  As I sat down at the table, she busied herself at the Mr. Coffee, imported, like almost everything else in Iceland, from the U.S., Denmark, or China.

  “Strong or weak?” she asked.

  “Weak. I don’t want to lie awake all night. We have a full day at the zoo tomorrow.”

  “I have a full day at the zoo,” she said. “Not you.”

  Mr. Coffee gurgled and a thin brew trickled out.

  “What do you mean, not me? I thought I was going to the zoo with you, and working some more with Magnus.”

  She handed me a half-filled cup of coffee. “Sugar? Cream?”

  “Neither. You didn’t answer my question. Am I or am I not going with you to the zoo tomorrow?”

  “You are not.” She poured herself a cup then joined me at the table, her formerly vulnerable face set in hard lines. “You go wherever you need to go, but call me every now and then and tell me of your progress.”

  I frowned in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”

  Her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed, making her look like one of her ruthless Viking ancestors ready to lay waste to some sleepy English village. Even her tone scared me.

  “Here is how this will work, Teddy. Tomorrow morning you will drop me off at the zoo, then you will take my Volvo.
Oh, and be sure and take your laptop along, too. I can catch a ride home from one of the other keepers. A couple of them live nearby.”

  “You want me to take your car? Where? And why?”

  “Because you are going to find out who really killed Simon Parr, that is why!”

  Chapter Nine

  You can’t argue with an Icelander.

  Bryndis refused to listen to my refusals and little by little she wore me down. Against my earlier resolve, I agreed to look into the case. Mission accomplished, she tottered off to bed, leaving me alone in the kitchen, drinking more coffee than was good for me.

  I knew I was unequipped for the task, being in a foreign country and having already been warned by Inspector Haraldsson to mind my own business, but as the silence of the apartment closed in, I began to wonder. What had led the inspector to arrest Ragnar in the first place? Despite my ignorance of the parties involved, I could already see three possible explanations.

  One: Ragnar’s slap-fest with Simon Parr at the Viking Tavern proved he had a temper and wasn’t loath to act on it. Two: judging from his paintings, he had more than a passing interest in birds, and the unfinished oil of a hoopoe made me suspect he might have traveled to Vik on the day of the murder in hopes of seeing one of the birds in the flesh. Three: most damning of all—Simon Parr might conceivably have photographed Ragnar on the cliff top.

  This led me back to Inspector Haraldsson’s odd visit to the Reykjavik City Zoo, where he’d shown me the printouts of Parr’s pictures of birds and one naked woman. Yet he’d shown me no photograph of Ragnar at Vik. Because no such photograph existed? Or had he withheld the photo because Bryndis was standing next to me? But then why show me any pictures at all, especially given the fact that he’d already warned me not to get involved in the case? Could he have been checking out Bryndis’ reaction, and not mine? Surely he didn’t suspect the zookeeper of also being involved in Parr’s death!

  The more I thought about it, the more troubled I felt. To give the devil his due, Haraldsson probably had good reason to arrest Ragnar, but to me, it didn’t feel right. Given Icelanders’ lack of enthusiasm for murder-by-firearm, touring members of the Geronimo County Birding Association could more rightly top the suspect list, not him. The snag was that other than the tearful Dawn, I didn’t know them.

  A glance at the kitchen clock showed that it was nearing one, but I wasn’t at all sleepy, so instead of turning in, I went into the small living room and sat down at the desk. Upon firing up my laptop, I Googled the Geronimo County Birding Association. It took me a while to land on the right website because I spent the first few minutes stumbling through several Native American sites devoted to the old Apache warrior. I finally landed on the Geronimo County Birding Association website, illustrated by dozens of pictures of birds. When you clicked one, you could even hear its call. After listening to a few tweets and warbles, I moved onto the MEMBERS link, where I found a list of the organization’s twenty-seven members. By themselves, the names would have meant nothing to me, but fortunately, the site also featured a MEDIA link. I clicked on that, and found several articles from various Arizona newspapers about the club. The article that interested me most appeared on July 10 in the Geronimo County Ledger-Dispatch.

  POWERBALL WINNER TREATS

  BIRDERS TO ICELAND

  by Max Avery

  Bird-watcher Simon Parr’s motto must be “My luck is your luck” because the winner of the largest Powerball payout in history—$610.3 million—is treating eight of his bird-watching friends to an all-expense-paid trip to Iceland.

  “The coastal towns in Iceland see large groupings of varietals every August,” said Parr, in an interview at his Apache Crossing home. “There are the native birds, of course, like the whooping swan, razorbills, and puffins, but because the summer weather is so balmy and the winds so warm, birds from all over Europe and even the Middle East have been known to drop by.”

  When asked how he chose the lucky people who would be traveling to Iceland with him to see the varietals, Parr answered, “That was easy! I’ve been a member of the Geronimo County Birding Association for twenty-two years, and these are the members I’ve traveled with before to various birding sites—Cape May, New Jersey, the Florida Everglades, and once even to Patagonia, which is all the way down at the farthest tip of South America. Everyone paid their own way then, of course, but now that I have the money, why not treat my friends?”

  Those lucky people are Geronimo County residents Adele Cobb, Perry and Enid Walsh (Perry Walsh is the newly elected president of the Geronimos, as they are known), Benjamin and Dawn Talley, Lucinda Greaves, Judy Malone, and actor Tab Cooper. All, with the exception of Mrs. Talley, who only recently began accompanying the group on their bird-watching adventures, are longtime members of the Geronimos.

  Also accompanying the group to Iceland is Parr’s wife, the famed romantic suspense novelist, Elizabeth St. John. She and Parr have been married for 26 years, but because of her career demands, she hasn’t always been able to join her husband on his birding adventures.

  Both Parrs have already displayed a strong bent toward charity. In addition to treating his friends to the trip of a lifetime, Parr has donated $500,000 to the Apache Crossing Girls & Boys Club and a battered women’s shelter. Ms. St. John, whose books feature an archaeologist likened to “a female Indiana Jones,” long ago set up an archaeology scholarship at Arizona State University, but with her 50% share of the Powerball payout, is she has begun funding a sanctuary for abused circus animals.

  Included with the article was a group shot of the club. Although their faces were too small to be of much use for identification purposes, they all wore bright red windbreakers and matching baseball caps emblazoned with the initials “GCBA.” That wasn’t all. A sidebar listed the group’s touring itinerary—if indeed they decided to continue on their adventure. In light of the tragedy, they might return to Arizona, but given the fact that this was a paid-for trip of a lifetime, I didn’t see that happening, murder or no murder.

  In reading the birders’ itinerary, I saw nothing but Old Norse town names. They were unpronounceable—mainly consonants with only few vowels—but a quick scan of the map in my tour book gave me their locations. The Geronimos were based at Hótel Keldur, in downtown Reykjavik, but for the most part, stayed within the southwestern side of the country, along what was known as the Golden Circle. None were in the Icelandic interior, an impenetrable wilderness of glaciers and volcanoes. Tomorrow the birders would visit something called the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, where they would spend the night in a small fishing village named—Heaven help my poor twisting tongue—Stykkishólmur. I checked the map in the tour book again and discovered that the unpronounceable village was less than two hours away from Reykjavik, all on what appeared to be decent roads. Maybe after I dropped Bryndis off at the zoo, I’d take a little drive.

  ***

  The next day I arrived in Stykkishólmur—pronounced STICH-ish-HOL-meh, Bryndis had explained—shortly before nine. With a population of less than fifteen hundred, it should have been easy to find eight people wearing red blazers and matching baseball caps, but that wasn’t the case. The village was made up of one main street leading to a picturesque harbor, and a few side streets winding to the top of a bluff that overlooked the North Atlantic. The bluff appeared to be perfect bird-watching territory, so I headed straight there, only to be disappointed. Ten minutes later, having driven every one of its narrow lanes, I gave up. After checking my guidebook, I learned that birding was also popular on the rocky island further out in the bay.

  Rather than waste more time driving around aimlessly, I pulled into the parking lot of Hótel Egilsen, where they would spend the night. That’s when I spotted a large blue van with ODDI’S ICELANDIC TOURS emblazoned on its side.

  The hotel, painted bright red with sparkling white shutters, was as charming inside as out. Its small lobby was furnished with c
omfortable seating, desks, and bookshelves loaded with magazines and books in both English and Icelandic.

  The counterman, another tall, blond Viking type who’d been reading a book, looked up with a smile. His name tag said, LEIFUR.

  “Hvad segerōú?” Leifur asked.

  Noticing the panic on my face, he switched to English. “That is Icelandic for ‘How are you?’”

  “Fine, thanks.” I don’t like lying, but sometimes it’s necessary. “I’m looking for some friends from the Geronimo County…” I trailed off, not knowing under which name the reservations may have been made. “Ah, the friends of Mr. Simon Parr.”

  Leifur’s smile broadened. “The birding group from Arizona! I plan to go there someday to see the cowboys and ride the broncs. Yes, your friends, such nice people, arrived a couple of hours ago, but after leaving luggage in their rooms, they left with their binoculars and cameras.”

  “Oh.”

  I was either transparent or Leifur was good at face-reading, because he added, “Do not feel sad. They may have gone to Helgafell, which is popular with birding groups because many birds nest in the ruins of the old church. Or they might be up by the lighthouse on Súgandisey, that little island across the bay. I am no birder myself, but I hear you can see many puffins, guillemots, and eagles near the lighthouse. So perhaps you should try that first, since it’s closest. You can climb to the top in a few minutes.”

  I could see the island’s sheer cliff wall from the hotel’s lobby window. It looked like a climb fit only for a mountaineer or nerveless Icelandic horse.

  “There is a nice, safe staircase up the side of the mountain,” he said, reading me again. “You will be fine.”

  “Takk fyrir,” I said, using my only two words of Icelandic. Thank you.

  With that, I headed out the door.

  Leifur was right. A wide causeway led across the scenic harbor to the bottom of the looming cliff. The staircase was steep but, except for sneak attacks by a flock of shrieking Arctic terns determined to knock me off the stairs, I felt safe. Upon reaching the top, I followed the path toward the reddish-orange lighthouse. There I found the Geronimo County Birding Association. Those who weren’t taking pictures were listening to a talk being given by a tall, burly man whom I took to be Oddi, their tour guide. Most of the birders dressed in the club’s bright red windbreakers, which provided some defense from the brisk wind that blew in from the North Atlantic. It may have been July, but up here it felt more like November.