Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  “See, I knew we had a lot in common,” Michael said. “I promise I will never take up bird-watching.”

  “Here, take a look at this,” I said, flipping to another page and pointing to a bird. Michael glanced at it.

  “That’s not a seagull,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s our friend the Bohemian waxwing. Bombycilla garrulus. You know, the one those bird-watchers got so upset at us for scaring away this morning.”

  “If you say so,” Michael said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “It seems like days ago, not this morning, and anyway, my mind wasn’t on the damned bird at that point.”

  “I was just thinking about how fanatical some of those birders are,” I said. “Do you think one of them could have lost all sense of proportion and attacked Resnick because of what they all thought he’d done to the birds?”

  “It’s possible,” Michael said. “I think the lobstermen have a more down-to-earth reason.”

  “Oh, did you understand all that about the bill?” I asked.

  “Not one word in ten, but I got the idea that they thought he’d spent a lot of money supporting a cause that would put them all out of business.”

  “It’s a motive all right,” I said. “And anyone who cares about preserving the unspoiled charm of the island has a motive every time they look at that horrible house of his. Anyone he’s taken potshots at could have a motive. Somehow, I can’t see the Puffin Lady of Monhegan bashing anyone’s head in, but I wouldn’t put it past Mayor Mamie.”

  “Yes, she’s very protective of poor little Rhapsody,” Michael said.

  “I’m sure she sells a lot of her books.”

  “Is there anyone on the island who doesn’t have it in for the guy?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Maybe we’re looking at a real-life reenactment of Murder on the Orient Express.”

  “Well, let’s forget about it for now,” Michael said. He used his bare toe to nudge aside some of the plates on the coffee table and then propped both feet up on it. “We can’t do anything now, and we’ll have to get up early to search. Let’s unwind and get some rest.”

  It sounded like a good idea to me. I took a sip of my hot tea, leaned back into Michael’s arm, and sighed. As long as I kept my eyes closed, I could pretend that everything was just the way I’d imagined it when I planned our getaway. Michael and I sitting warm and cozy on a soft couch in front of the fireplace, listening to the crackling of the fire and the pounding of the surf outside the cottage.

  And my brother sneezing, and Mrs. Fenniman rattling plates in the kitchen, and, of course, the wind periodically slamming large objects into the side of the house. So much for cozy.

  “You haven’t had any coleslaw yet.”

  I opened one eye and saw a large, virtually untouched bowl of coleslaw floating just under my nose. I had given up telling Mrs. Fenniman that I hated coleslaw.

  “No thanks,” I said, closing my eye again.

  “It was great, really,” Michael said. “But I’m stuffed.”

  Mrs. Fenniman sighed and moved on to thrust the bowl under Rob’s nose. I heard a sudden crash.

  “What was that?” came a voice from above.

  We all looked up to where Mother was standing on the balcony above us.

  “I just knocked over another one of Phoebe’s damned flowerpots,” Mrs. Fenniman grumbled, picking her way through the shards of pottery toward the kitchen.

  Mother disappeared back into her room.

  I felt something cold and wet on my ankle. Spike, having investigated the remains of the flowerpot and found them inedible, had returned to my feet and now resumed licking me obsessively. I discouraged his attempts to climb into my lap. For one thing, he’d probably bite Michael, and for another, if he’d eaten even half of the food I’d stuck under the coffee table, he’d probably start throwing up later in the evening. Better on my ankle than in my lap.

  I looked around. The living room looked more like a consignment shop for used lawn and garden equipment than the cozy retreat of my vision. If I peeked over the forest of flowerpots and garden gnomes infesting the coffee table, I could see Rob reclining on the other sofa, reading a law book and adding to his thick sheaf of notes. Part of me wanted to shriek at him for being so lost in his role-playing game when we had no idea if Dad was even alive—and another part of me envied him.

  His side of the coffee table was covered with plates and bowls containing samples of all the various foods Mrs. Fenniman had dished out. Mrs. Fenniman seemed to work on the theory that the hurricane wasn’t going away until we’d emptied out the larder, but even Rob was long past the point where he could help her out.

  She reappeared with a broom and dustpan, and a plastic ice-cream tub. She plopped the orphaned plant and some of its dirt into the tub and began sweeping up the rest of the dirt and the bits of broken pot. I jumped to move a birdbath out of the way before she knocked it over with the broom handle. Mrs. Fenniman continued flailing away with the broom, and I stood by, ready to rescue anything else that got in her way.

  But she lost energy; with a final flourish, she swept a few more specks of dirt into the dustpan, then marched off into the kitchen, leaving a trail of potting soil behind her. I sighed and slumped down, shoving my hands into my pockets.

  And my fingers encountered a piece of damp paper: the map.

  I pulled it out and studied it. Traveling in my pocket had made it even more damp and wrinkled than when I’d found it, but you could still recognize Dad’s distinctive printing.

  “Meg? Is something wrong?”

  Michael looked up at me with an anxious expression on his face.

  “I need to talk to you for a moment,” I said.

  We both glanced upstairs, saw Mother limping dramatically past the railing, looked at each other, and shook our heads in unison. We could hear Mrs. Fenniman singing sea chanties out in the kitchen, so that was out.

  “The garden shed?” Michael suggested.

  “We’re going to check how the shutters are holding up,” I told Rob. He barely looked up as Michael and I donned our slickers. On the way out, I grabbed my flashlight and, remembering the envelope I’d picked up outside Resnick’s shed, my knapsack. We trooped out the door and over to the garden shed and managed to clear enough space to squeeze inside and close the door.

  “Alone at last!” Michael said, putting his arms around me.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Agony and the Puffin

  Okay, we allowed ourselves a brief distraction from the original purpose of our visit to the garden shed. But—call me unromantic if you like—there are limits to how successfully I can be overcome with passion when I’m sopping wet and shivering in an unheated shed that I’m half-convinced won’t survive the next strong wind.

  “I hate to spoil the moment,” I said, “but could you move a little to the left? There’s a croquet mallet digging into my kidney.”

  “If I move to the left, I’ll probably drown; the leaks are much worse over there.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “So much for my hopes that we’d found a hideaway suitable for romantic trysts,” Michael said, shoving aside several life jackets and a lobster pot to clear a space for us to sit on a stack of old magazines in the driest part of the shed. “You wanted to talk about something? Or was that just an excuse to get me alone?”

  “No, there was something. Here,” I said, handing him the map as I perched beside him. He turned on his flashlight and peered down at the paper.

  “Your dad’s map of the island,” he said. “Does this mean you’ve got some idea where he is?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Then what’s the big deal?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I found it down on the shore. Near where we found Resnick’s body.”

  “Damn,” Michael said. He closed his eyes and leaned against the side of the shed. “The police will find this very suspicious.”

  “The poli
ce!” I said, startled. “We can’t give this to the police!”

  “Meg, we can’t not give it to them,” Michael said, sitting up again. “That would be concealing evidence.”

  “Evidence that would make my dad the primary suspect in Resnick’s murder. You saw how Jeb and Mamie reacted when they heard Dad had disappeared. For some stupid reason, everyone thinks Dad has some kind of grudge against Resnick because he used to date Mother fifty years ago, before she even met Dad. You heard them. The map will clinch it.”

  “That doesn’t give us the right to conceal evidence. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  I sat staring at him. I felt betrayed. I’d trusted Michael with something that could hurt Dad, and here he was threatening to squeal to the authorities.

  “Meg,” Michael said, gently taking my hand. “I don’t believe he did it any more than you do. But you have to see that we can’t help him by concealing evidence. I mean, for all we know, that map could be what the police need to find and convict the real killer.”

  I sighed. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know the local police, wasn’t sure I trusted them to find the real killer. But much as I hated the idea, I had to admit he was right.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll turn in the map. But to the police, when they get here. Not to Constable Jeb or Mayor Mamie or anyone else on the island when Resnick was killed.”

  “That’s sensible enough,” he said.

  “Which gives us a day or two to find the real killer,” said.

  “You know, you’re more like your dad than you want to admit,” he said, grinning. “Never pass up a chance to play detective, right?”

  “Michael, this is serious,” I said. “We’ve all heard about cases where the police find a likely suspect and don’t look any further. We can’t let that happen to Dad.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Though I’m curious how we’re going to find the killer in the middle of a hurricane. Not to mention—well, never mind.”

  I suspected I knew what he hadn’t said: that right now, finding Dad—alive—was more important than proving his innocence.

  “I’ll keep this safe for now,” Michael said, folding the map and taking out his wallet.

  “Don’t trust me not to destroy it?” I said.

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all,” he said. “But you can’t keep carrying it around in your pocket; it’ll turn to mush. And we can’t just leave it lying around where someone could get hold of it prematurely, and, unlike your purse, my wallet almost never leaves my body.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” I said, slightly mollified by his tone.

  “Shall we go back in?” Michael asked. “Much as I’d enjoy being alone with you under other circumstances, this shed’s getting colder by the minute. And damper,” he added as a large drop of water splattered his nose.

  “Hang on a second,” I said, opening up my knapsack. “As long as I’m confessing to my crimes against humanity, I may as well make a clean breast of it. I found an envelope in Resnick’s yard after we put his body in the shed—tripped over it, actually. It didn’t seem wet enough to have been there long, and I wondered if it fell out of his jacket while we were moving him.”

  “Let’s have a look at it, then,” Michael said.

  I pulled out the envelope and we both pointed our flashlights at it. It was an ordinary nine-by-twelve brown clasp envelope, with no markings on the outside. Inside we found an inch-thick sheaf of papers held together with a giant binder clip as well as a smaller Tyvek envelope.

  The top sheet of the papers held a title, centered, in all caps: VICTOR S. RESNICK: UNHERALDED GENIUS OF THE DOWN EAST COAST. A BIOGRAPHY. By James Jackson.

  “Wonder who James Jackson is,” Michael said, flipping to the next page.

  “I don’t know, but the Tyvek envelope is addressed to him,” I said. “In care of General Delivery at the Rockport Post Office.”

  “My God, listen to this,” Michael said. “‘In this tome will be related the story of a great man whose genius has gone largely unappreciated in our century, a century in which the degradation of artistic taste has led to the exaltation of lesser artistic talents and those whose talents lie less in art than in publicity and the pursuit of notoriety, while alone, at the head of a small contingent of artists who still adhere to the tradition of representational art and the tenets of artistic quality that have prevailed, until now, since the Renaissance, Victor Resnick holds back the bulwark against the barbarians of popular culture and the deliberate obfuscations of an outworn academic community; unsung, unheralded, unappreciated, in recent years largely neglected, Victor Resnick nevertheless—’ Arg!”

  “Was that really all one sentence?” I asked.

  “No, only about a third of one,” Michael said. “I’m not sure which is worse, James’s writing or his blatant toadying.”

  “I’ll give you odds this is the authorized biography,” I said.

  “Definitely authorized,” Michael said. “Our friend Victor has begun making some rather pungent comments on the first couple of pages. ‘Small contingent of artists’ used to be ‘small contingent of artists, such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.’ Jamie boy might have crossed out the names himself, but only Resnick would scrawl ‘Stupid! Don’t mention those clowns!’ Speaking of odds, I’ll give you odds no one ever publishes it unless Jamie boy does a lot of rewrites.”

  “Looks like he already has,” I said. “We’ve got draft seven, according to the footer. Oh my God!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Jackson’s got a time/date stamp in the footer—he printed this yesterday at six P.M. The ferry had stopped running by that time. He’s on the island!”

  “Lucky him, then; not every biographer gets a ringside seat at his subject’s murder.”

  “We’ve got to find him.”

  “Why?” Michael asked. “To give him our editorial comments?”

  “He’s Resnick’s biographer; he must know everything about his life,” I said. “He’ll know better than anyone who might have it in for Resnick.”

  “We’ve already decided that’s a long list.”

  “Well, Jamie boy can tell us who’s at the head of it. For that matter, we can probably get some ideas from the biography.”

  “Of course to do that, we’ll have to read it,” Michael said.

  We both stared down at the manuscript in Michael’s lap. I flipped over a page. Someone—Resnick, I suspected—had crossed out a paragraph with such violence that his red pen had torn the paper, and he had scrawled, “No, no, no!!!” in the margin.

  “My sentiments precisely,” Michael said.

  “You know, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that James Jackson is a suspect, too,” I said.

  “He’s lucky he wasn’t the victim,” Michael grumbled. “Writing this badly ought to be a capital offense.”

  “Maybe Resnick finally realized that the guy can’t write and so decided to fire him, or unauthorize him, or whatever you’d call it when you stop cooperating with a biographer. And Jackson saw his years of hard work go down the drain, and he lashed out and killed Resnick.”

  “We’ll keep it in mind,” Michael said. “Meanwhile, I guess we should start reading. I’m sure it’s no worse than some of my students’ papers.”

  I read over Michael’s shoulder for the first twenty or thirty pages. Okay, I confess, I skimmed a lot. When you chucked out the excess verbiage—was the man paid by the word, or only by the adverb?—and untangled the convoluted sentences, Resnick’s story was really pretty simple. He’d grown up in a small midwestern town, a sensitive, misunderstood child, the butt of every bully and jester in town, until the day he first picked up a pencil and began to draw. At which point, to judge from James Jackson’s account, the earth trembled, comets were seen in the skies, three-headed calves were born, and wise men came from the east bearing gifts in the form of a scholarship to study art at the Boston Conservatory. By the time we reached the detailed description of t
he physical ailments that had kept him, despite his intense patriotism, from serving in World War II, my head was spinning.

  “I need a break,” I said. “I think I’ll see what’s in Jamie boy’s mail.”

  “It’s a federal offense to open mail!” Michael protested.

  “Well, I know that,” I said, in exasperation. “It’s already opened, and I’ve never heard it was a federal offense to read stuff that people leave lying around in their yards. So there.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Must be the demoralizing effect of Jamie boy’s prose. Carry on.”

  I opened the envelope, to find another sheaf of papers—slimmer, fortunately, and not written by James Jackson. The first sheet was a cover letter to Jackson from a Boston private investigation firm, dated a few weeks earlier, stating that the information he had requested was enclosed and that if he required any other assistance, he should contact them.

  I turned to the next sheet. A list of names, all with birth dates and some with dates of death. Some of them were people I knew—Mary Ann (“Mamie”) Dawes (Benton). Elspeth (“Binkie”) Grayson (Burnham). Lucinda Hart Dickerman. Others sounded vaguely familiar. Old island names, many of them. All women, born between 1925 and 1940. Some were crossed out in bright red ink. Others had question marks or checks beside their names. No clue what the list was for.

  I finished scanning the first page and flipped to the second, shorter page. Along with the crossed-out, checked, and question-marked names, one was circled heavily in bright red pen: Margaret Hollingworth (Langslow).

  What the devil was this list, and why was Mother on it, so prominently singled out?

  I went on to the rest of the papers. A series of reports from the detective agency on the whereabouts of the women on the list during their teenage years.

  How odd.

  I scanned the reports, fascinated. Binkie had gone from a posh boarding school to an equally posh women’s college, and from there to Harvard Law School. Not what James Jackson wanted, apparently; he’d crossed her name out on the main list. Several other names had similar histories—summer people, I noticed; their lives contrasted starkly with those of the year-round island residents, many of whom were married and had had several children by the time their wealthier counterparts graduated from whichever of the Seven Sisters they’d chosen.