The Puffin of Death

by Betty Webb

  Several yards away, I recognized the woman Simon Parr verbally abused at the Viking Tavern, and who in what had to be happier times, posed naked for his camera. She was snapping pictures of a guillemot perched on a large outcropping while the other birders concentrated on an eagle preening its feathers on a metal rail crowning the lighthouse. A member of the auk family, the guillemot was fairly large, at least sixteen inches, with striking black and white coloration. But rare? The island was covered with the things, whereas I only saw the one eagle. Why was the woman so intrigued by a more common bird?

  Grasping my own camera, I approached her slowly, not wanting to startle the guillemot. For form’s sake, I snapped some pictures. In between frames I snuck a glance at Simon’s nude model. Her face was pale, and her eyes were swollen. It could have been in reaction to the wind, but I didn’t think so. She’d separated herself from the others so she could mourn alone.

  A couple of minutes later, the guillemot headed back out to sea. The woman watched until it was a mere dot on the horizon.

  “Don’t you love watching them?” I said, hoping to start a conversation.

  “They’re lovely birds,” she answered, a polite smile on her face. More prepared for the weather than I, a thick purple turtleneck sweater peeked out of her red windbreaker. Both clashed with her burgundy-colored hair.

  “Say, you sound American! I’m Teddy. Theodora, actually, but all my friends call me Teddy. I’m from Gunn Landing, California, in the Monterey Bay area. And you?”

  “Adele Cobb, Apache Crossing, Arizona.” Her eyes drifted toward the other birders, still enraptured by the eagle.

  All except one. Dawn Talley, wearing an Icelandic-patterned wool sweater instead of the official club gear, had drifted away from the lighthouse to the cliff edge, and was staring across the harbor toward Stykkishólmur. A slight frown marred her beautiful face, but other than that, she appeared to have recovered from her concern for her husband. I wondered how genuine that concern had actually been. Maybe she was merely one of those people who enjoyed drama and wasn’t averse to creating her own whenever the opportunity arose.

  Adele’s voice interrupted my uncharitable suspicions. “…and when a friend ponies up for an all-expense paid trip to Iceland, you can hardly say no, can you?”

  I returned my attention to her. “No, you can’t. But gosh, what a wonderful gift!”

  “Yes, it was. Except…” She trailed off, then looked me hard in the face. “Wait a minute. I’ve seen you before. You were at Vik, weren’t you?”

  No point in lying. “Yes, I was down there horseback riding with a friend.” After a slight pause, I cut to the chase. “We were up on the cliff where, you know…” I let the sentence trail off.

  “Oh.” The polite smile vanished and her pale face grew even paler. “Are you the woman who discovered his body?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Was he…was he still alive? Did he…did say anything, anything at all?”

  “He was dead, Adele, and had been for a while.”

  “Oh.” She took a deep breath. “Then did he…did he…?”

  Her words were snatched away by the rising wind, but it didn’t take a mind reader to guess what she wanted to know. I crossed my fingers behind my back and told a whopper. “He didn’t suffer. In fact, he looked quite peaceful.” Other than the hole in his head. And his chewed-up nose.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, whispered, “Thank you.”

  Adele had loved him. Remembering the ugly scene in the Viking Tavern and Parr’s ill-treatment of her, I marveled at the myriad forms love can take. Maybe that had been the first time in their relationship he’d behaved abusively toward her, but I doubted it. I was about to ask her how long she’d known him when a familiar voice rose above the wind.

  “Why, it’s Teddy! How lovely to see you here!” Dawn Talley. The stiff breeze had brought roses to her cheeks and a sparkle to those dazzling eyes.

  I arranged a smile on my face. “Nice seeing you, too, Dawn.”

  She hooked an arm around mine and drew me away from Adele. Together we walked over to a guillemot-free area, leaving Adele alone with her grief.

  “Thank God you’ve decided to help us,” Dawn said, in a voice so hushed I could barely hear it above the wind. “That awful policeman, Inspector Svensson or Olafsson or whatever, those Icelandic names are so confusing, he’s been asking Ben some really scary questions, like, where was he earlier the morning of the murder and why didn’t he eat breakfast with the rest of us. Worst of all, he actually asked Ben if he knew the hotelier’s rifle was missing! And between us, Teddy, I don’t like the way Ben’s been behaving.”

  After making a mental note of that missing rifle, I asked, “Haven’t you read the morning newspaper?”

  She threw me a look of disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I can’t read Icelandic.”

  “There’s an English language edition, and it announced an arrest in the case.”

  “Really?” Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought her surprise was tinged with disappointment.

  “Whatever’s going on with your husband, he didn’t murder Simon Parr, and the police know it.”

  “Then why was Inspector what’s-his-name at our hotel this morning, asking questions?”

  Now it was my turn to look surprised. “Haraldsson was here? In Stykkishólmur?”

  Her frown accentuated the lines at the corner of her eyes and mouth. In the harsh sunlight, she almost looked Adele’s age, without any of Adele’s voluptuousness. “I’m telling you, Teddy, he took us all, one by one, into a room and asked us where we were at what time and how well did we get along with Simon, which in my husband’s case, wasn’t very well. Those two never liked each other, not after…” She paused, then clutched at my arm in a gesture of panic too flagrant to be sincere. “That rude man even questioned me!”

  Not knowing anything about Icelandic law, I wondered why Inspector Haraldsson had felt it necessary to drive all the way up to Stykkishólmur when he already had a suspect in custody. At the same time, I wondered about Dawn’s supposed concern. There was something about it that didn’t ring true.

  She wasn’t finished. “The worst thing was when that cop demanded I tell him where I was between four and five in the morning the day of…uh, the day it happened.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Her glare erased all remnants of beauty from her face. “I told him I was in bed, of course. Not that it was any of his business.”

  “Then there should be no problem.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Teddy? Since Ben wasn’t in bed beside me, I don’t have an alibi.”

  Confused, I asked, “Why in the world would you need one?”

  She gave a quick glance toward the other birders, then leaned toward me. “Well, I don’t exactly want to broadcast it, but Simon and me, we’d been having a thing.”

  “A thing? You mean, like an affair?”

  She bit her lip and looked down. I followed her glance and saw two different kinds of lava, some red, some black. The entire island was the result of a massive volcanic eruption. Fascinating, yes, but not half as fascinating as what Dawn said next.

  “Yeah, Simon and me, we had an affair, a short one, you understand, but then the creep dumped me.”

  “Simon Parr dumped you?” A man dumping a beauty doesn’t happen every day.

  Dawn flushed so deeply I knew she was telling the truth. “Oh, yeah, he told me it’d been swell and all but adios, and don’t let the door hit my ass on the way out.”

  That made no sense. A beauty kicked to the curb by a birder? From the pictures the newspaper had run of Simon Parr, the murder victim hadn’t been a handsome man, even if his Elvis sideburns lent him a certain rakish appeal. But then I remembered that Powerball win. Six hundred million could be a str
ong aphrodisiac. “When did this happen?”

  “Just before we left for Iceland.”

  “Did your husband suspect? About the affair, I mean.”

  “Well, duh.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t understand?”

  There is nothing more exasperating than talking to a person who thinks you’re a mind reader. “Did you husband know about the affair?”

  An exasperated sigh. “Of course he did.”

  “Well, then what did he do?”

  “Nothing, of course.”

  “Look, Dawn, I’m not getting any of this. Help me out here.”

  She briefly resumed her perusal of the island’s volcanic history, then took a big breath, and in the petulant voice of a bratty three-year-old, spit out, “Well, okay, since you can’t seem to figure it out for yourself, Miss Mensa, Ben didn’t do anything, ’cause the affair was his idea in the first place. So there!”

  Somehow I kept my jaw from dropping. “Why in the world would your husband want you to have an affair?”

  She said something else I couldn’t quite hear over the wind.

  “Louder, please. That is, if you want me to help you.”

  “He wanted me to do it because we were broke.”

  “But isn’t your husband one of the Talleys, of the nationwide Talley Restaurant chain?”

  Her petulance vanished and she looked distinctly uncomfortable. “The restaurants have been having financial problems for years, closing locations all over the place. Ben said that if I, um, started sleeping with Simon I might be able to hit him up for a loan, enough to keep the company afloat until the economy turned around.”

  Suddenly everything made sense, especially Dawn’s odd behavior at Vik, a performance which had seemed more designed to draw attention to her husband’s guilt than away from it. She resented Ben, and I didn’t blame her. There’s a word for men who provide women to other men for sexual purposes, and it isn’t a nice one.

  Still, she could have refused. The fact that she went along with her husband’s scheme said a lot about her character, or lack thereof. Out of curiosity, I asked, “Why’d you agree to do it?”

  Her pretty mouth twisted into an unpretty shape. “Why not? We were going to get a divorce anyway, and according to the terms of our pre-nupt, the more money Ben had when the papers were filed, the better, because…” She didn’t finish, but it wasn’t hard to see where she’d been headed. Because divorcing a rich husband was more profitable than divorcing a poor one.

  Judge not lest ye be judged, and all that. “I take it your husband’s plans were scuttled when Simon dumped you. May I ask why?”

  “Why Simon dumped me?

  “If you don’t mind.”

  At first I thought she wouldn’t answer, then she muttered, “He said my breasts were starting to sag.”

  I winced. Given the insecurity most women felt about their bodies, it was a cruel thing to say. Added to Simon’s performance at the Viking Tavern, it suggested that, despite Simon’s generous treat of the Iceland birding adventure, he had harbored a mean streak.

  “Did Ben know Simon broke off the relationship?”

  “He walked in on me the day before we left for Iceland, so I had to explain why. He was furious! He blamed me for not knowing how to please a man, and said that, yeah, my breasts were sagging, along with my ass.” The look Dawn turned on me now was devoid of all spite and artifice. “Please help me, Teddy!”

  I almost turned her down, but at the last second realized that Dawn could provide me with the perfect reason to stay close to the Geronimos. Maybe Dawn needed my help, but Bryndis and Ragnar needed it more.

  Aware that I would regret it later, I made a snap decision. “Okay, but you need to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Tell the other birders we’re old friends, say, from school, and that we met here by coincidence. Say you’ve invited me along on some of your outings because I enjoy birds so they won’t be shocked when they keep running into me.”

  She was so desperate she agreed. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes. They might even have been genuine.

  Eager to begin building a fake history, I asked, “Where did you go to college, Dawn?”

  “I didn’t. I had a modeling career, remember? And why does it matter?”

  “Because I’m trying to find a believable explanation for us being old chums.” Silly me, asking that question about college. These days models started out in high school, sometimes even earlier, another reason they seldom became rocket scientists at retirement, which in many cases, came in their late twenties. No wonder Dawn was so panicked. She possessed no career skills, just a husband who no longer loved her and a rapidly dwindling beauty.

  “Scratch the college question. Have you ever been to California, say, around the Monterey Bay area? Or San Francisco?” I’d lived in San Francisco when I’d been married to Michael. Before he left me for another woman.

  Dawn stared at me. “Everybody’s been to San Francisco. I even lived there.”

  “And left their hearts there, I know. But when did you live there and for how long?”

  She wrinkled her brow. That’s when I noticed a tiny scar above the bridge of her nose. “Hmm. My dad was transferred there from Cleveland when I was in middle school, so, let’s see, we lived in San Fran for about three years. That’s where the model scout saw me at the beach and recommended me to the Ford Agency. Soon after that, we moved down to L.A. where my career really took off, and we moved to New York, where I wound up on the covers of Elle and Cosmopolitan.”

  Fat lot of good those covers did her: only marriage to a man who pawned her off to another man for financial reasons. “Here’s the way we’ll play it, then. When you rejoin the group, tell everyone you’ve run into an old classmate, that we used to hang out together after school, like at Fisherman’s Wharf, Gump’s, whatever. It’s important you make everyone believe that our running into each other up here is only a coincidence.”

  “You mean you want me to lie?”

  Working with animals has taught me patience, so instead of pulling out my hair, I said, “Yes, Dawn, I want you to lie. What was the name of the school we went to? And what neighborhood did we two BFFs live in?”

  “James Lick Middle School. It’s in Noe Valley. You know the area?”

  I nodded. Since I was familiar with Noe Valley, faking our middle-school friendship shouldn’t be too hard. “Okay, so I’ll leave it up to you to let the others know about our old connection. In the meantime, what else did Inspector Haraldsson ask when he interviewed you?”

  “Not much. I kept telling him that I didn’t kill Simon and neither did Ben, and I made up a few whoppers, saying that Ben wouldn’t hurt a fly, which is a laugh riot, considering the fact that he’s gotten physical with me a few times. But what the hell, all men are like that, aren’t they?”

  My fiancé wasn’t like that at all. He carried a gun, sure, but so did every peace officer in the U.S. And Joe’s gentle hands…Shocked by where my mind was headed, I shook myself back into the present, where the behavior of Benjamin Talley of the failing Talley Restaurant chain was sounding considerably less handsome than his looks. “Speaking of getting physical, Dawn, did you tell the inspector that your husband got into a shoving match with Simon Parr at the airport?”

  “There was a shoving match?”

  “You mentioned it when you were talking to me at the ladies’ room in Vik, remember?”

  She shrugged. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking well that morning because of the murder and stuff. But, yeah, come to think of it, there might have been a shoving match. Or maybe they just shouted at each other. I can’t remember the details.”

  The woman was truth-challenged. If it hadn’t been for Bryndis’ distress over Ragnar’s arrest, I’d walk away ri
ght now, but I’d made a promise and intended to keep it.

  I decided to leave the subject of the airport altercation for later. “Out of curiosity, what explanation did your husband give for being out so early in the morning at Vik?”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, he told me he was walking around outside enjoying the fresh air, but I’m pretty sure he was lying. Ben hates the cold. I mean, really hates the cold. That’s why we live near Phoenix. Frankly, I was surprised when he agreed to come on this trip, although it isn’t all that cold, is it? But it was over a hundred and fifteen when we left Sky Harbor, and Ben was loving it. Me, when this mess is over and I get my divorce settlement, I’m moving to La Jolla.”

  “Nice town, I hear.”

  She gave me a wicked smile. “And plenty of handsome men, some of them even millionaires.” Then, as if regretting that last comment, she erased her smile and pasted on a mournful expression. “But I don’t want anything bad to happen to Ben. He’s still my husband.”

  As if she cared. I heard a noise—something other than the wind—and turned toward the sound. The eagle had finally flapped away from the lighthouse. With a great rush of wings, it flew straight over our heads, then wheeled around to the west and flew toward an island in the distance. Their camera subject flown, the other Geronimos started walking toward us. Time to wrap up this conversation.

  “Okay, so we’re best buds from school. Now tell me, and quick, before your friends get here. Do you think it’s possible that your husband really did kill Simon Parr?”

  She watched the eagle as it dwindled into a black speck against the blue sky. “Well, you know what they say.”