"Don't you like the idea?" she asked.
She looked so fragile that I couldn't bring myself to confess how much I hated it, so I settled for saying, "Well, I'm having a hard time seeing myself as a puffin."
"So was I," Rhapsody confessed. "So I've decided to branch out. I'm going to make you an owl! A wise, clever owl!"
Well, marginally better than a puffin, I thought.
"And Michael will be a falcon!" she added, eyes shining.
I managed to keep a straight face, but I suddenly felt very sorry for Rhapsody's editor--she had an editor somewhere, didn't she, seeing that she never went beyond a certain level of inanity? I had a feeling the editor would have quite an eye-opening experience when Rhapsody's first owl and falcon adventure landed on his desktop, no doubt seething with barely repressed eroticism.
"Don't you think murder's a little much for a kid's audience?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she said. "So I'm going to start with having them find Patty Puffin's little lost kitten."
Did she have any idea what a real owl or falcon would probably do to a little lost kitten if they found it? Oh, well. Editor's problem, not mine.
I glanced down. Rhapsody was making a few tentative sketches of her owl detective. They were, alas, enough like me to be identifiable. In fact, if I crossed my eyes and pasted feathers all over my face, the likeness would be uncanny.
I made a solemn vow to evict the sculptor squatting in my studio within the next two weeks, even if I had to break the doors down and hire a forklift to move his fifteen-foot work in progress.
"Well, I guess we'll see you back for the trial," Jeb said, coming up to shake my hand.
"Assuming they ever find Jim," I said.
"He'll turn up sooner or later," Michael said, rejoining me.
"That's so," Jeb said. "Hard to hide that long on an island this small. Course, they'll probably have the trial over on the mainland. Don't want to inconvenience all the summer folk."
"I'm sure we summer folk will all be properly grateful," I said.
"Well," he said, clearing his throat. "Some of you aren't so bad. Time comes that you want to get away from the laziness over there, you call one of us up. Someone'll have a room free.'
With that, he nodded and stumped away up the hill.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that counts as an extravagant compliment," I said.
"Sounded that way to me," Michael said.
"A pity we couldn't just convince Mother to leave the painting here until the trial," I said. "When there won't be quite so many police swarming around."
I glanced back at Rob, who still crouched by the painting, looking so guilty that I wasn't surprised several Coast Guarders had already come up to check his ID. Spike was still barking obsessively at the seagull.
No, actually the seagull had flown. Several other seagulls perched nearby, but Spike ignored them. He was barking obsessively at the crate.
The crate. I strolled over, trying to look casual, and inspected it About six feet tall, four wide, and maybe a foot deep. I glanced from it to several of the Coast Guard officers and then back again. Tight quarters for a grown man, but if he was desperate enough… I glanced at the label. One of the New York galleries whose name I'd seen in Resnick's files. No return address. No official stickers or labels to indicate what shipping company would claim it on the mainland, though it did have one of the ubiquitous inspection stickers plastered rather haphazardly on one side.
I flagged down the officer in charge of the Coast Guard squad.
"Did your people really open this to inspect it?" I asked.
"Didn't need to," she said, frowning at me in irritation. "It was in the baggage shed over mere. Been locked up there all night. Can't you keep that thing quiet?" she added, gesturing at Spike.
"I'd check that one again," I said. "Guy you're looking for has a brother who does a lot of the local baggage hauling. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a key to that shed."
Her head snapped around. I could see her measuring the crate with her eyes. And then she barked orders at several of the enlisted men around her. They lowered the crate gently on its flat side and then, with a couple of police standing by, weapons drawn, two of the Coast Guarders began prying at the top with their chisels.
With a snap, the lid popped open and the Coast Guarders shoved it aside. Jim Dickerman lay sprawled in an X shape, like a giant squashed bug, blinking in the sudden light.
"Jim Dickerman?" asked one of the police.
"That's him," Jeb said.
"Miserable mutt," Jim growled. I almost opened my mouth to point out that I, not Spike, had finally convinced the Coast Guard to open the crate, then thought better of it. I'd made it my new policy never to annoy suspected murderers--at least not ones with whom I still shared a planet.
Jim had obviously hidden in the box for hours; he was so stiff that several of the police had to help him up.
"You have the right to remain silent," the policeman began as mingled cheers and catcalls from the crowd drowned out the rest of the Miranda warning. Several over-exuberant birders came to blows and fell into the water in the excitement, which gave the Coast Guard something to do while the police handcuffed Jim.
"A flighty bunch, these birders," Michael remarked. "A few minutes ago, they were all calling Jim an environmental martyr, and now some of them are happy to see him arrested."
"Well, they're not stupid," I said. "They may sympathize with what they think he's done, but they're not eager to have an armed fugitive running around the island."
"Look what I've got!" Dad said, trotting up, beaming.
"Puffins," I said, closing my eyes. He carried an assortment of plush stuffed puffins in all sizes.
"A souvenir of your latest adventure!" he said.
"Where do you want me to put the rest of them?" Mamie Benton said. I could see two local men behind her, both carrying boxes of stuffed puffins.
"What a splendid idea!" Mrs. Peabody trumpeted. "Do you have any left?"
"A few," Mamie said. "And of course I can always take your orders and have them shipped directly to your homes."
The birders, led by Mrs. Peabody, began swarming into the gift shop and trickling out with large parcels for the Coast Guard to inspect.
Adding half the contents of Mamie Benton's store to the already-substantial load destined for the ferry made it doubly difficult for the captain and his crew to embark. We took off a full hour later man planned, close behind the Coast Guard cutter carrying Jim, and even then, one woman came running up the gangplank at the last minute, clutching an armload of puffin coasters and tea towels.
I spent the intervening hour, and most of the crossing, being congratulated by the birders, having my picture taken with them, and autographing their stuffed puffins. I think I had liked it better when they avoided me. Spike took a violent dislike to the entire puffin tribe, and he barked whenever he saw one. I could see his point of view. The birders finally gave me some peace and quiet when I managed to drop a rather large stuffed puffin down where Spike could get hold of it He immediately pounced on it, buried his teeth in its neck, and spent the rest of the trip noisily trying to dismember it. The birders all found this either so shocking or so entertaining that they finally left me alone.
"Good Lord," I said as we approached the Port Clyde docks, where the Coast Guard cutter had just landed. "It's a media circus over there."
We could see three or four television sound trucks and a police tine holding back several dozen people laden with cameras and notebooks.
"Well, the man wasn't completely unknown," Michael said.
"Unheralded Genius of the Down East Coast," I muttered, shaking my head.
Luckily for the rest of us, the press latched onto the police, their prisoner, and Binkie Burnham. The older cop said about two sentences, and then Binkie took the floor, making a folksy but no-nonsense statement. The reporters scribbled and filmed madly. Most of the birders stood around watching, some of them
hoping, no doubt, to use their proximity to a notorious murder to capture their allotted fifteen minutes of fame.
Michael and I collected our baggage and crept round the edge of the crowd, hoping to make it to his convertible before anyone spotted us.
"Oh, there you are," Dad said, appearing at our side with a double armload of stuffed puffins. "Can you find some space for a few of these?"
We piled our luggage in the trunk, then filled the remaining space, as well as the space behind the seats, with puffins.
"I might have a few smaller ones that could fit in the crevices," Dad said, and headed back for the docks.
"There you are," Rob said, appearing on the driver's side of the car just as Michael opened the door. "Why don't you take him back with you?"
"Well," Michael began.
Spike, spotting the pile of puffins behind the seat, began barking and straining at the leash.
"With all these stuffed puffins?" I said. "You've got to be kidding. Besides, we're not going directly back to York-town. Michael has to get back for his classes, and I have to evict that damned sculptor."
Rob tried on his patented pitiful look. Impressionable coeds eat it up, but Michael and I were immune.
"See you," Michael said, getting into the driver's seat.
"Later," I added, taking the passenger's side.
Rob slouched off, dragging Spike behind him.
"Good thinking," Michael said. "By the way, what do you say to a small detour on the way home?"
"What kind of a detour?"
"Well, did you know that Coastal Resorts owns a small but very exclusive hotel outside Rockport? About an hour south of here."
"Oh, is that what you and Kenneth Takahashi were talking about?"
"Yes, and Ken feels very grateful to us," Michael added as he started the engine. "So he gave me a voucher for three nights' stay. I think we should drop by on the way home and check the place out. See if we want to come back and stay there sometime."
"Not tonight, of course," I said. "Because you have to get back to teach your classes."
"Oh, no; we'll just cruise by and check it out, and then head straight on home. Assuming we don't have car trouble again, of course. I really don't like the sound of that knocking in the engine."
"What knocking?" I said, cocking an ear. I heard only the usual smooth purr of a well-maintained engine.
"You're not getting into the spirit of the thing," Michael complained as he guided the car through the rut-infested gravel parking lot, heading toward the exit. "I'm sure if you try, you can hear it."
"Now that you mention it, I do hear a funny noise," I said with a chuckle. "Although I would have called it more of a ping than a knock."
"You're right," Michael said. "It's pinging and knocking. Do you think it's safe to drive?"
"Well, let's try it on the road for a while," I said.
"Maybe an hour," Michael said. "I think if it's going to break down, it won't do it before we get to Rockport at least. Why don't we--Oh my God!" he said suddenly, jamming on the brakes.
"What?"
"Look at that!"
He pointed out toward the harbor, beyond the crowded, noisy dock. I followed his finger and saw… a puffin. Even a bird-watching amateur like me could recognize it. It flew so clumsily, I was sure it would fall at any second. In fact, I thought it had when the stocky black-and-white figure plummeted toward the choppy water just beyond the end of the dock. But instead of falling in, it skimmed along the top of the waves and then rose again with a wriggling fish in its beak.
"Shall we go tell the bird-watchers?" Michael asked. We both glanced at the docks. The cluster of reporters had broken up and spread out in search of new camera fodder. Birders happily offered themselves up to the cause. Mother and Aunt Phoebe, sitting on a pile of luggage with their injured legs elevated, had already collected a quorum. Aunt Phoebe gestured wildly with her makeshift walking stick while Mother smiled and looked elegantly enigmatic.
"They're bird-watchers," I said. "If they did their jobs, they'd spot it."
The puffin headed toward the open ocean, wings flapping madly, looking as if at any moment it might lose the battle with gravity and plunge into the water. None of the birders noticed.
Except for Dad, who stood a little apart from the pandemonium. He glanced around, saw us, smiled, pointed at the puffin, and turned back to the harbor. The three of us watched until the puffin disappeared.
And as Michael eased out of the parking lot, I could see Dad in the rearview mirror, still standing at the edge of the crowd, waving cheerfully at us with a toy puffin in each hand.
-- The End --
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Murder With Puffins ml-2 Page 26