Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  “I didn’t realize she intended to be accurate,” I said, flipping the page again and holding up a scene of the Happy Puffin Family sledding. “I mean, I’m sure she realizes that puffins don’t actually wear little red mufflers and woolly caps.”

  “I’m not talking about the anthropomorphizing,” the birder said. “That’s silly, but not actually harmful, considering the age group. But look at their bills! And their plumage!”

  A plump beringed finger, quivering with indignation, planted itself just below the picture of little Petey Puffin. I had to admit, I didn’t like the look of him, but I had no idea what she thought was wrong with him. I noticed that, like bird guidebooks, the Puffin Lady never showed her subjects head-on. The Puffin Family invariably stood in profile. She must copy them from bird books, I realized. That would account for the strangely mechanical and puppetlike quality. But no; if she copied them from bird books, then they’d be accurate, wouldn’t they? And then the birders wouldn’t complain.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not awfully knowledgeable about puffins. What’s wrong with it?”

  “This is not the picture of an immature puffin,” the birder said. “An immature puffin looks like this.” She plopped one of the ubiquitous blue bird guides open atop Hark the Herald Puffins Sing and pointed out a black-and-white shape. “And he’s in breeding plumage. By Christmas, adult puffins have long since shed their colorful bill plates and their faces darken. Like this,” she added, indicating yet another black-and-white shape.

  I studied the page before me. Yes, the puffin in winter was a drab bird indeed compared to what he would look like in mating season. I’d almost have taken him for a different species. And all the Puffin Family were in breeding plumage, right down to diaper-clad baby Patty.

  “I see what you mean,” I said. I didn’t add that I didn’t see what was so important about the distinction. Perhaps they planned to haul Rhapsody before the Audubon Society on morals charges for turning an infant puffin into some kind of avian Lolita.

  I was relieved when Michael joined us. Probably not an accident; we’d both become a little wary of the more rabid birders.

  “Found something interesting,” he said, holding up the back cover of another book. “Look familiar?”

  He held out an oversized art book—a collection of Victor Resnick’s paintings. On the back of the book was a picture of our gun-toting lunatic. Only in the picture, he wore a clean fisherman’s sweater, his hair and beard were combed, and he looked quite distinguished. The picture was in three-quarters profile. Resnick’s chin was lifted, and he gazed into the distance with a lofty, otherworldly look. He really appeared every bit the distinguished artist, already planning his next brilliant work.

  “Yes, that’s the jerk,” I said. “Almost wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  I turned the book over and began leafing through it. I sighed. The man might be a jerk, but he was definitely a talented jerk.

  “Someone should do something about that horrible man,” the birder said.

  “Well, Mrs. Peabody, that’s very difficult,” Mamie said. “He’s quite an important person … .”

  “That’s irrelevant,” I said, glad to find a conversational topic other than puffins. “I don’t care how important they are, people can’t run around shooting off rifles or shotguns or whatever he’s using.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Mrs. Peabody. “He’s not shooting them, is he? I’d heard about the electric shocks; we’ve gotten up a petition about it. But this is beyond all belief! Shooting the birds!”

  She whirled and ran for the door, knocking down a stack of stuffed puffins on her way.

  “We can’t let him get away with this,” she shouted. “There’s not a moment to lose!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Twelve Angry Puffins

  “Wait,” I called, starting after her. “I didn’t say he was shooting the birds; I just said he was shooting at us!”

  But Mrs. Peabody didn’t hear me. And the electric lights chose that moment to flicker and die. In the sudden near darkness, I tripped over the fallen puffins and sent the rack of Rhapsody’s books sprawling. Mamie scurried over to pick them up while Michael leapt to my side and spent rather more time than strictly necessary making sure I’d suffered no damage in the fall. By the time he finally relented and helped me to my feet, the birder had vanished.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Michael said as we pitched in to put the book display back together again.

  “She’ll tell everyone Resnick is shooting birds,” I said. “They’ll probably all go hiking up to confront him.”

  “And either they’ll lynch him or he’ll shoot one of them, and either way, maybe you won’t have to file charges against him.”

  “Are you going to file charges against him?” Mamie asked, wide-eyed.

  “Yes, at least if Constable Barnes ever takes me seriously.”

  “Good,” she said, patting my shoulder with approval. “Someone needs to do something about that man. He’s absolutely beastly to poor Rhapsody. She had a one-woman show here last summer of some of her paintings from the books. You should have heard some of the things he said to her. Absolutely savage. Someone really ought to do something. Do you have any matches?”

  I thought for a moment she was enlisting us to help burn Resnick at the stake, but apparently she’d decided the power wasn’t coming back anytime soon. She pottered through her drawers until she found some matches, then began lighting oil lamps.

  I glanced back at the book of Resnick’s paintings. I’d paused at a painting of the Black Head. He’d precisely captured the way the sky had looked all day; only slightly cloudy, but somehow full of vague future menace. I could imagine what he would have to say about poor Rhapsody’s puffins.

  “She went into quite a slump and almost missed her deadline for Puffin in the Rye!” Mamie said. “I really thought for a while she’d give up painting entirely.”

  I continued to leaf through the book of Resnick’s work while Michael bought a puffin sweatshirt for his mom. I was torn. The more I looked at the paintings, the more I wanted to buy the book; Resnick had really captured the beauty of the island in a way that photographs couldn’t quite manage. But I didn’t want to risk the shopkeeper’s disapproval. And for that matter, I had mixed feelings about giving any support, financial or otherwise, to the wild-eyed lunatic who’d fired a gun at me and built that horrible eyesore on one of my favorite parts of the island. Ironically, the book even included several paintings of the picturesque shack he’d demolished.

  “Aha!” I cried, snapping the book shut. “I’ll take this, please,” I said to Mamie, handing over the book and fishing my Visa card out of my purse.

  She looked at me as if I’d just declared myself a vivisectionist.

  “Take a look here, on page one hundred and ten,” I said. “See the caption—‘View of Puffin Point from the Public Path.’ That proves it.”

  “Well, of course,” she said. “Everyone knows it’s a public path.”

  “Yes, but this proves that he knows it. He said so in the title of one of his very own pictures. I can use this in the court case; if Jeb Barnes won’t take my assault charges, I’ll file a civil suit.”

  “Oh, I see,” Mamie said. “Your father was right; you have become quite the detective.”

  She rang up the book with enthusiasm, then waved cheerfully to Michael and me as we stepped outside again.

  “Now where?” Michael asked.

  “Back to the cottage, I think,” I said. “Aunt Phoebe will try to put us to work, but we can get her to feed us first.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

  But when we neared the top of the hill, we saw Aunt Phoebe in heated conversation with several birders, including Mrs. Peabody.

  “Oh damn,” I said. “She’s probably telling Aunt Phoebe a lot of inaccurate information about Resnick.”

  “You’re probably right,” Michael said. “And your aunt doesn’t look too
happy.”

  In fact, while we struggled up the last few feet of the hill, Aunt Phoebe broke away from the birders and began storming up the path toward Resnick’s cottage.

  “The man deserves a good thrashing,” she called over her shoulder, brandishing her blackthorn walking stick.

  “Aunt Phoebe! Wait!” I wheezed. She probably couldn’t hear me.

  “I’ll show him a thing or two,” she shouted as she disappeared around a bend in the road.

  “Shouldn’t we go after her?” Michael asked, puffing.

  “Yes, but I don’t think we could possibly catch her.” I, too, was panting.

  “True. She hasn’t been hiking around the island all morning.”

  “Actually, she probably has, but never mind,” I said. “Let’s go tell the constable. It’s downhill from here to the general store.”

  “And we can get those groceries your aunt wanted,” Michael said.

  While Michael gathered the items on Aunt Phoebe’s list, I tried to convince Jeb Barnes to go after Aunt Phoebe. I wasn’t having much luck.

  “I’m sure there’s no reason to worry,” he said.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I demanded. “She’s going up there to confront Victor Resnick! She thinks he’s been shooting birds.”

  “Probably has,” one of the locals commented.

  “I’m sure Phoebe can take care of herself,” Jeb said.

  “She probably can, but what about Resnick?” I said. “What if she carries out her threat to give him a good thrashing?”

  “Call up and warn him,” someone suggested.

  “Phones are out,” someone else said.

  “Serve him right if she did,” commented a third.

  The lights flickered on at that moment, and everyone looked up with a hopeful expression. Then the lights winked out again and the locals sighed and huddled a little closer to the stove.

  Just then, we heard the sound of a truck engine outside.

  “That must be Fred,” Jeb Barnes said. “I’ll get him to take me up to Resnick’s. We’ll head her off.”

  He darted out of the store, flagged down Fred Dickerman, and the two of them roared off up the gravel road.

  Michael and I watched as the truck careened off, scattering birders on both sides.

  “Should we follow?” Michael asked.

  “Let’s go back and find Dad,” I said. “Maybe he can figure out a way to calm her down.”

  We made rather slow progress, though. We had our arms full of grocery bags, and we had to push through throngs of birders, all of whom wanted to know if Victor Resnick was really slaughtering birds with his shotgun. At first, they seemed curiously unalarmed by the fact that Resnick had been shooting at Michael and me.

  “We didn’t actually see him shoot any birds,” I said finally. “But he certainly shot at us. Probably thought we were birders trespassing on his land.”

  This tactic generated a satisfactory level of sympathy and outrage. Especially after one of the birders informed the rest that Resnick’s land was the only place on the island where some rare bird had been sighted a day or two earlier.

  Leaving the assembled birders debating whether the once-in-a-decade chance to add the bay-breasted warbler to their life lists was worth the risk that it might become the last bird they ever saw, Michael and I escaped and headed back to Aunt Phoebe’s cottage.

  We ran into Winnie and Binkie on the way.

  “Meg, dear,” Binkie called. “How are you enjoying your stay?”

  “Well, it’s not quite what we expected,” I said. “We didn’t expect to run into the whole family here.”

  “No, and I’m sure your mother and father weren’t expecting that dreadful Resnick person to be here,” Binkie said. “Terribly awkward, under the circumstances.”

  “Awkward?” I repeated. Awkward didn’t even begin to describe the sensation of having a gun fired over one’s head.

  “Oh, leave it alone, Binkie,” Winnie said. “It’s all over and done with.”

  I felt a little miffed at their quick dismissal of our ordeal. Unless by “awkward” they meant some past conflict—perhaps this wasn’t the first time Victor Resnick had taken violent measures against trespassers. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time Aunt Phoebe had attempted to thrash him.

  “And do be careful,” Binkie added. “I’ve heard reports of an imposter running around the island.”

  “An imposter?” I echoed.

  “Yes, someone carrying binoculars and a bird book and pretending to be one of us, when he doesn’t know a tern from a seagull,” Winnie said, frowning. “Up to no good, whoever he is, if you ask me.”

  But before I could ask what possible harm the so-called imposter could do, Winnie and Binkie spotted another party of birders down the road and tripped off to compare notes.

  I shrugged. The fake birder wasn’t my problem; my family, on the other hand …

  “I wonder if it was wise, letting Aunt Phoebe run off like that,” I said, fretting.

  “She’s a grown woman,” Michael said as we turned into the lane to the cottage. “She can take care of herself, and besides, the constable will referee. Let him take care of her.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to,” I said.

  “Look, there’s Rob,” Michael said. “What’s he doing there on the beach?”

  “Posing,” I said. “He probably saw us coming.”

  Rob stood on the narrow strip of beach, hunched against the cold, one hand jammed in his pocket, staring out to sea. Trying, no doubt, to achieve an air of picturesque, Byronic melancholy. Someone should break the news to Rob that blondes can’t do Byronic. Michael, on the other hand, managed it without even trying; I particularly liked the way the breeze ruffled the lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes.

  Then again, Michael wasn’t handicapped by Spike. Rob held one end of a very long leash; on the other end, Spike was chasing the waves. When a wave fell back toward the ocean, Spike would pursue it, barking bravely, convinced he had terrified the water into flight. When the water turned and thundered back toward the beach, Spike would turn and run away, tail between his legs, howling in terror. Rob was pretending to be oblivious to the whole spectacle.

  “Well, at least Spike’s having fun,” I said as I drew up beside Rob.

  “Miserable little mutt,” Rob muttered. “Sorry, Michael.”

  Michael shrugged.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said. “The miserable little mutt belongs to my mom.”

  “You think he’d get tired of it,” Rob said, frowning, as Spike chased the water back and forth again.

  “I’m sure he will after a while,” I said.

  “I’ve been here two hours,” Rob said. “He’s not getting tired. Just hoarse.”

  “Well, hoarse might be an improvement,” I said. “Why on earth have you been standing here for two hours? Is something going on?”

  “Not much,” Rob said. “Everyone’s getting hysterical about some guy who’s running around shooting the puffins. That’s about it.”

  “He’s not shooting the puffins; he’s shooting us. At us anyway,” I said.

  “Us? You mean you and Michael?” Rob asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, are you going to file charges?”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “And when you’ve passed the bar, you can handle the civil suit, if you like.”

  “Cool,” Rob said. “So what’s going on with the puffins?”

  “Nothing. They’ve left the island,” I said.

  “Lucky them,” Rob muttered. “Here, take him for a while, will you?”

  “No thanks,” I said, backing away. “We’ve got our hands full of groceries.”

  Which was true, but Rob still glowered at me as he strode off down the beach, Spike skittering along at his heels. Michael and I headed back to the cottage.

  “I wish Aunt Phoebe would come back,” I said, glancing down the lane.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said. “
Everything will be fine.”

  I always get nervous when people say that.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Puffin Before the Storm

  “There you are!” Mrs. Fenniman said, pouncing on us the second we entered the cottage. “It’s about time someone showed up to do some work around here!”

  Before we knew it, Mrs. Fenniman had drafted us into hurricane preparations. Apparently, Dad had vanished shortly after Michael and I left, leaving her with only Rob to order around.

  Fortunately, Aunt Phoebe’s house was built along sensible lines, with working shutters. All you had to do was close them and make sure the latch was secure, thus sparing us the nightmare of boarding and taping that some residents had to do. Rob and Dad had apparently managed to deal with the shutters before they debunked. Probably took them all of half an hour.

  Michael and I weren’t so lucky with the lawn and deck furniture. Before dashing off to deal with Victor Resnick, Aunt Phoebe had left orders for us to bring every movable object inside. Mrs. Fenniman took her quite literally. The deck alone housed a dozen plastic chairs, three tables, a gas grill, half a dozen sets of wind chimes, and several dozen wooden planters or clay pots, with or without vegetation. The yard contained two picnic tables, three birdbaths, a rain gauge, a sundial, a second grill, a badminton net, a croquet set, a set of horseshoes, a pair of flagpoles, several dozen more flower boxes, an awesome assortment of lawn ornaments, and a never-ending supply of bird feeders and birdhouses. We finally convinced Mrs. Fenniman that the slate flagstones and the bricks bordering the flower beds could probably cope by themselves. And since the garden shed was already overflowing with junk not actively in use, we had to drag everything into the house and shove the furniture around until we could fit it all in somehow.