Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  “Why are those people watching us through their binoculars?” he muttered.

  I followed the direction of his eye.

  “I think they’re looking at that bird at our feet,” I whispered back.

  “Why? Is that some kind of rare and exotic bird?”

  I glanced down. The bird was moderately large, light brown, with a black-and-white mask over its face. It had bits of red and yellow on its wings, and the end of its tail had been dipped in yellow.

  “How the devil should I know?” I said. “It looks like a paint-spattered female cardinal; cardinals certainly aren’t rare.”

  “Damn,” Michael said, a little more loudly this time.

  The bird, whatever it was, took flight.

  The three birders removed the binoculars from their eyes and stared at us accusingly.

  “That was a Bohemian waxwing,” one of them said.

  “Did you get any photos?” the second asked.

  “No,” said the third. “They frightened it off before I got the chance.”

  “Oh, you mean that bird with the yellow-tipped tail?” I asked.

  The birders nodded and frowned at us. Madame Defarge looked more kindly on her victims.

  “We’ve seen them around here a lot,” I said.

  “They’re quite rare in this part of the continent,” one of the birders replied.

  “Yes, that’s what I was telling Michael,” I said. “How rare to see so many Bohemian waxwings here. If you just stay quietly where you are, you’ll probably see dozens.”

  With that, Michael and I fled down the path, until we had rounded a corner and could collapse in gales of laughter.

  “Bohemian waxwings?” Michael spluttered. “That can’t possibly be a real bird.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said, peeping around the corner. The three birders had hunched down by the path and were on the alert, scanning the landscape through their binoculars, one looking left, one right, and the third straight out toward the ocean.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here, in case the Bohemian waxwing has flown the coop completely.”

  We giggled intermittently over the antics of the birders for the next hour or so. But the day got colder and damper, and every time we rounded a headland that I thought would bring us to the end of our journey, we’d encounter another stretch of path. And another flock of birders.

  In one place, I spotted the remains of a campsite back in the trees, some distance from the trail.

  “How odd,” I said. “Let’s go take a look at this.”

  “What’s so odd?” Michael asked. “Looks like someone camped here.”

  “Definitely,” I said, using my foot to rake leaves away from a charred spot. “You can see where they had a fire, right here, and they buried something over there. Garbage, I guess”

  “Beer cans, mostly,” Michael said, looking down at the trash-disposal area. “Someone had quite a party.”

  The unknown campers had buried their empties on the side of a hill, and the heavy rain had washed away a good deal of the covering dirt, exposing a vein of silver-and-blue aluminum cans.

  “Definitely odd,” I murmured.

  “Yes, I should think conditions back in the village are primitive enough to satisfy even the most discriminating masochist. What kind of nut would come all the way over to this side of the island for even more Spartan conditions?”

  “Well, I’m sure some people want to,” I said. “But it’s illegal. No camping permitted. To protect the fragile ecosystem on the undeveloped side of the island. And definitely no open fires. Normally, they’re very quick to chase off anyone who tries.”

  “Maybe they did,” Michael said. “Whoever did it is long gone.”

  Still, I couldn’t help fretting as we hiked, and looking for further signs of neglect or environmental damage. I thought of summers past when Dad, Aunt Phoebe, and the rest of their generation would denounce some new change to the island. I’d thought them tiresome, a little cracked on the subject of keeping Monhegan unspoiled. And yet, here I was, fretting about the same thing.

  At least until my energy began to flag again.

  “Maybe it’s my imagination,” I said, stopping to pant. “But the path around the island seems longer than it did when I was a little kid.”

  “Your father used to let you walk around this path?” Michael said, peering over the edge of a precipice to the surf crashing twenty feet below.

  “Let us? He’d insist on it. He thought it was good exercise. If we didn’t voluntarily hike around the island every few days, he’d drag us along on a nature walk.”

  “And he was never prosecuted for child abuse? Amazing. I hope he at least insisted that you learn to swim before turning you loose on these cliffs.”

  “Technically, yes; though I don’t see what good swimming would do anyone who fell off the cliffs. The undertow could drag away a small submarine, and if the undertow didn’t get you, the waves would pound you to death against the rocks.”

  “What a vacation paradise,” Michael said, chuckling as we resumed our hike. “I see why he brought you here; the place is as escapeproof as Alcatraz. He wouldn’t have to worry about you sneaking over to the mainland and getting into any trouble.”

  “We managed anyway,” I said. “The sneaking over to the mainland part anyway; we never could find much trouble when we got there. But you can reach the mainland quite easily if you know someone with a small boat. Not in weather like this, of course.”

  “Oh, the weather’s not that bad,” Michael said. “Great weather for sitting around by the fire.”

  “Sorry. Hiking wasn’t that good an idea, was it?”

  “Nonsense. It was a great idea,” Michael said, smiling over his shoulder at me before turning and beginning to climb the next hill. “The scenery’s fantastic, and when we get back to the cottage, I’ll appreciate the fire all the more.”

  If only we could appreciate it by ourselves, I thought, pausing for a moment to enjoy the view of Michael’s long legs as he jumped over a small gully that interrupted the path. Perhaps if all the rest of the family went hiking. But no, the weather would soon be too foul for hiking. And anyway, Mother never hiked. Turn her loose in a mall, or, better yet, on a street lined with quaint boutiques and expensive shops, and she could walk combat-trained marines into the ground, but here on Monhegan, there wasn’t much shopping, even in the summer. How could we possibly get Mother out of the house? I sighed.

  “Tired?” Michael asked, looking down at me. I shook my head.

  “Just figuring where we are,” I said. “It can’t be too much farther. I’m sure we’re getting close to the village.”

  “You said that an hour ago,” he said, chuckling.

  “That was wishful thinking,” I said. “Now that I’ve gotten my bearings back, not to mention my second wind, I know exactly where we are. Just over the next hill we’re going to see a quaint little shack that’s been converted to an artist’s studio. It’s on a headland with one of the most spectacular views of the island.”

  “Over this hill?” Michael said. He had reached the top and paused to catch his breath.

  “Yes. Look a little to your right. You should be able to see it peeping through the trees.”

  “Yes, that’s quite a quaint little shack.”

  I reached his side and looked down, expecting to see one of my favorite rustic Monhegan landscapes. Instead, I saw a glittering, spiky forest of steel beams and glass plates.

  “Wrong hill again?” Michael said.

  “No, it’s the right hill. I recognize the view, at least what little we can see of it behind that monstrosity. What the hell is it anyway? Some horrible new piece of weather equipment from the Coast Guard?”

  “A rather large and very modern house,” Michael said.

  He was right, of course; when I’d stared at it a few minutes, the jumble resolved itself into something resembling doors, walls, and windows.

  “I wonder how in
the world they got permission to build it,” I said. “The town council is very conservative about new development. It took Aunt Phoebe two years to get permission to expand her deck.”

  “We did hear the Dickermans saying that someone’s new house was an eyesore.”

  “Yes, but around here, that just means someone painted the house the wrong shade of blue,” I said. “Or painted it at all, instead of just allowing it to fade to the usual, tasteful weather-beaten gray. This is more than an eyesore; it’s an abomination.”

  “I don’t think the house itself is all that bad,” Michael said, squinting at it. “Not my cup of tea, but you have to admit it’s striking.”

  “True,” I said, sighing. “Anywhere else I might actually find it interesting, although I can’t imagine living in something that bare and modern. But here on Monhegan, it’s completely out of place.”

  “No argument from me,” Michael said.

  “I was going to suggest stopping to enjoy the view, but I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “Let’s hurry up and get past that eyesore.”

  “Fine by me,” Michael said.

  We started down the hill, Michael again in the lead. I was craning my neck, trying to see something of sea and sky beyond the abomination, and mentally composing scathing letters to the town council, when—

  “Look out!” Michael yelled. He ran back up the path a few feet, knocked me to the ground, and threw himself on top of me. I heard a sharp noise somewhere, and then a lot of sand and pebbles sifted down on us from higher up the hill.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Some lunatic is shooting at us!” Michael said.

  CHAPTER 6

  They Shoot Puffins, Don’t They?

  Another shot rang out. Wonderful, I thought; now I know what getting shot at sounds like. Michael flinched, and I thought for an awful moment he’d been hit.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine as soon as I know we’re out of gunshot range.”

  “Excellent idea,” I said. “Let me up; I can’t get out of gunshot range with you on top of me.”

  “Right,” he said. He jumped up, pulled me to my feet, and began dragging me up the path.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, looking back over my shoulder when we got to the top of the hill. “He’s not shooting now. Let’s see what’s going on.”

  “Keep your head down, then.”

  We both crouched on the path, peeking over the top of the rise at the lunatic below: a tall, gaunt man, all angles and elbows, with a bushy beard and long gray-streaked hair that looked as if he’d attempted, with limited success, to cultivate dreadlocks. He wore a baggy, shapeless, partially unraveled fisherman’s sweater over paint-splattered olive corduroys. He stood with his left hand on his hip while his right held a long gun—a rifle or a shotgun, I supposed. He wasn’t aiming it at anything, but he looked ready to. He stared up the path as if waiting for us to emerge again. If he planned on standing there with the gun, he’d have a long wait.

  “He looks familiar,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me he’s one of your relatives?”

  “Good heavens, no!” I said. “Do you really think my relatives would do something like that?”

  Michael didn’t answer.

  “Okay, some of them might be crazy enough to shoot at the tourists, but none of them would have the bad taste to build that house.”

  “You have a point there,” Michael said, chuckling. “So what do we do now?”

  “Good question,” I said. “We could turn around and go back the way we came.”

  “God no,” Michael muttered. Perversely, it made me feel a little better that he hadn’t enjoyed the last few rain-soaked, mud-infested hours of hiking quite as much as he’d pretended to.

  “Let’s try to talk to him, then.”

  “Talk to him?”

  Just then, the man started up the path toward us.

  “Damn,” Michael said, “We’d better turn back after all.”

  “Don’t come any closer!” I shouted.

  The man with the gun ignored me.

  “Stay where you are! I mean it!” I shouted, and lobbed a baseball-sized rock down at him. Well, not directly at him—I could have hit him if I’d wanted to—but in his general direction. Close enough to get his attention.

  The rock bounced and tumbled down, taking quite a collection of pebbles and sticks with it. The man stopped and then backed up a few paces. I grabbed another rock and held it at the ready.

  “Why the hell are you shooting at us?” I yelled.

  “This is private property,” he yelled back. “You’re trespassing!”

  “Trespassing?” I shouted. I stood up, ignoring Michael’s frantic gestures. Foolish, perhaps, but somehow I didn’t think that the man was going to shoot us. Not in front of witnesses. I could see a flock of birders peeking out of the woods at the other edge of his property, snapping away with their cameras.

  “Trespassing?” I repeated. “Excuse me, quite apart from the fact that this trail has been a public right-of-way for generations, and assuming you do have some legal claim to keep people out, which I very much doubt—and I assure you that I intend to investigate very thoroughly—quite apart from that, were you planning to post any signs, or were you just going to kill off anyone not psychic enough to guess that you don’t want them hiking here?”

  “Meg,” Michael said. He tugged on the leg of my jeans. I shook him off.

  “There’s a sign right there—” the man began, raising his hand to point and then stopping when he saw there wasn’t a sign after all. “What the hell have you done with my sign?”

  “Don’t look at us,” I said. “We just got here.”

  The man snorted in exasperation. He walked forward a few paces, then leaned his gun against a tree and reached down. He pried a battered sign out of the mud beside the path, picked up a large rock—possibly the one I’d thrown at him—and began hammering the sign back into the ground.

  “I’m not kidding,” he said, looking up from his work. “I’m fed up with people trespassing. And people knocking down my signs. I’ve served notice that this is private property, and I intend to enforce it.”

  “Well, serve notice a little more visibly from now on,” I said, dodging Michael, who had despaired of making me crouch down again and was trying to put himself between me and the lunatic. “And speaking of serving notice, exactly who are you anyway? I’d like to know whom I’m going to ask the police to charge with attempted murder.”

  “You know perfectly well who I am!” the man shouted. He threw the rock in my direction, then reached for his gun. I quickly followed Michael’s advice and we ducked behind the crest of the path, but instead of firing, the man stormed back toward the house. I suppressed a giggle; he was getting himself even grimier than before, stomping through the mud like that. And when he slammed the door, I burst out laughing: the huge, pretentious—and, no doubt, expensive—front door didn’t fit quite right. Perhaps all the dampness had warped it. He had to spend several minutes wrestling it closed, his struggles clearly visible through the sweeping glass wall and slanted glass roof of the entrance hall.

  “I’ll refrain from saying anything about people who live in glass houses,” Michael said. “But they shouldn’t shoot rifles at people, either.”

  “And they definitely shouldn’t live this close to the ocean,” I said, giggling. A seagull had just flown in from the ocean, banked gracefully over the house, and landed, with a clumsy thud, on the glass roof of the entranceway, which was somewhat sheltered by the rest of the house from the full brunt of the wind. Several other gulls followed, and enough bird droppings coated the glass to show that this wasn’t the first time the birds had discovered this refuge. The lunatic suddenly appeared behind the glass of the entranceway, causing both Michael and me to jump. The gulls, however, stared down unmoved as he thumped with a broom handle on the heavy plate glass beneath their feet.

  “Serves him
right,” I said. “I hope that creep has to wash all those windows every day.”

  And he certainly had a lot of windows. In addition to the main house, we saw a smaller glass building nearby. A studio, apparently; while off-white curtains screened the lower six feet or so of its glass walls, from our place on the hill we could see the tips of several easels peeking over the top of the fabric. Even the nearby woodshed, while not made of glass, looked considerably newer, not to mention more expensive and stylish, than most of the actual houses on the island.

  “Who on earth could possibly afford to build a place like this on Monhegan?” I wondered aloud. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to bring supplies and workmen over here?”

  “Well, whoever he is, I’m sure he can afford to pay for a lawyer,” Michael said. “Let’s go back to the village and file charges against him.”

  “No sense tempting fate, though,” I said. “Let’s retrace our steps a bit; I think I can find a shortcut through the interior of the island.”

  As we retreated along the trail, I saw a flash of lavender disappear around a rock ahead of us. Somebody else watching our encounter with the mad hermit, no doubt. I nodded with satisfaction; it looked as if we’d have plenty of witnesses.

  My shortcut didn’t seem much shorter than going all the way back around the island, but at last we arrived at the village.

  “I don’t recall seeing a police station,” Michael said. “Where are we going to report that lunatic?”

  “There isn’t a police station,” I said. “They call the police over from the mainland when they need them. But a local resident acts as constable until the police arrive. Let’s go into the general store and ask who it is.”

  We squished down the main drag until we reached the general store, then squelched up the front steps.

  “I remember him,” I said, pointing to a sign in the window that said JEBEDIAH BARNES, PROPRIETOR. “His family’s run this place for two or three generations now.”

  “That’s good,” Michael said. “Maybe he’ll remember you; otherwise, we may have a hard time making him believe what just happened.”

  The store was blissfully warm inside; an old-fashioned potbellied stove burned full blast, and a small crowd of local residents sat or stood around the stove, drinking coffee and listening to what sounded like an all-weather radio station. Hurricane Gladys still hovered offshore, according to the announcer.