Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  “Right there,” she said, pointing to a large flat rock. “It was lying right there.”

  “Lying how?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” she said, reaching for her knapsack. For a second, I thought she was about to shed her knapsack and arrange herself on the rock in the place of the dead puffin. But instead, she pulled out a camera.

  “I took pictures of the body,” she said.

  “The puffin’s body, you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, of course,” she said. “What other body could I mean?”

  “Victor Resnick’s?” Michael suggested.

  “Him,” she said, shrugging. “Why would I bother? Here, I’ll show you.”

  “Great,” I said as she held out her camera. “We can have the film developed.”

  “You don’t need to develop any film,” Mrs. Peabody said with a scornful look. “This is a digital camera. Here.”

  She pressed a switch on the camera, looked at it for a few seconds, then turned it so we could see. The back of the camera had a little display screen, on which I could see a picture of a small evergreen tree.

  “That’s fantastic!” Michael said, looking over my shoulder. “You can see the pictures as soon as you take them! Does it use film?”

  “No, it saves the pictures on a computer chip,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “The things they do with computers these days,” another birder said, shaking his head.

  “And if you don’t like what you’ve taken, you can erase them and try again,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “Amazing!” Michael said.

  “How much does a thing like that run anyway?” another birder asked.

  “Later, guys,” I said. “I thought you said you had a picture of a puffin. That’s not a puffin; it’s a cedar.”

  “No, it’s a wren,” she said. “See there, he’s roosting inside the cedar.

  “If you say so,” I said. “What about the puffin?”

  “Just press this button,” she said.

  I put down Spike so I would have my hands free. He galloped off to bark at the waves, which were creeping closer and closer; we’d have to adjourn to the top of the hill soon. I took the small camera, pressed the button Mrs. Peabody had indicated, and waited for several seconds as another picture of the cedar tree scrolled onto the screen.

  “Keep going,” she said. “It’s been an hour; I may have taken quite a few pictures.”

  I kept pressing the button and waited while several more pictures of the cedar loaded. These were followed by pictures of other shrubbery, presumably containing other wrens. Interspersed with the nature photos were occasional off-center shots of the sky or of Mrs. Peabody’s muddy hiking boots, which I assumed she’d taken by mistake. Michael and several male birders looked over my shoulder, exclaiming at the high quality of the pictures, and Mrs. Peabody explained how she took the electronic pictures and e-mailed them to her sister in California.

  Finally, a puffin appeared on the tiny screen. It lay on its back on the flat rock, with its toes pointing straight to the sky, its wings neatly folded by its side, and its feathers carefully groomed and reasonably clean. It looked a lot better in the photo than it did now that Mrs. Peabody had hauled it around for an hour. It looked as if it’d been laid out for viewing at a wake, and I didn’t for a minute believe it had landed in that position by accident.

  “There’s something odd about this,” I muttered, glancing from the puffin on the camera screen to the flat rock. I took off my knapsack, fished around in it, and pulled out a small pamphlet called The Pocket Guide to Monhegan.

  “Was the puffin there when you found the body?” Mrs. Peabody asked.

  “No,” I said, still leafing through the guide.

  “How can you be sure?” she insisted.

  “Well, in the first place,” I said, “that was the rock where we put Resnick’s body after we hauled him out of the water; if the puffin had been there, we’d have stepped on it.”

  Several birders who were leaning against the rock shuffled a few feet away from it.

  “And, in the second place, I took a good look around for clues, and I’d have noticed something as unusual as a dead puffin. In the third place, that rock’s underwater at high tide, so even if it had been there yesterday when we found the body, it’d have washed away by this morning. The tide came in after we found Resnick’s body, you know. This whole place was underwater between ten P.M. and two A.M.”

  I waved the pocket guide, held open to the page with this year’s tide tables on it.

  “That’s true,” a birder said.

  “Perhaps it washed out to sea after the murder and then washed back in again this morning,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “Does it look as if it was washed in?” I said, pointing at the little screen. “It looks as if someone posed it there. Deliberately. But why?”

  “Maybe the murderer did it,” Michael said. “To confuse us.”

  “He’s wasting his time, then,” I said. “We’re already as confused as we’re ever going to get; he should save it for the mainland cops.”

  “Maybe someone’s trying to give us a subtle clue to the murder?” Michael said.

  “Well, they’re going to have to try a lot harder, and be a lot less subtle,” I said.

  “This is all very odd,” Mrs. Peabody announced, frowning at Michael and me as if the whole mess were our fault and we should do something about it.

  “And speaking of odd,” I said. “There’s something else rather odd about that puffin. Let me take a look at it.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mrs. Peabody said. She tried to hand me the small carcass. Spike growled and leapt up, trying to attack it. I backed away, happy to settle for a visual inspection. Yes, there was definitely something unusual about the puffin.

  “Strange,” I said. “I wonder why anyone would bother to keep a dead puffin around all this time.”

  “I beg your pardon! I’m not keeping it around, as you put it,” she said. “I only brought it along to show what that horrible man was doing.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” I said. “I meant whoever had it before you.”

  “No one had if before me. I found it today, not even an hour ago, right here on this rock.”

  She pounded the rock with one plump fist by way of emphasis.

  “Well, you may have found it there, but I doubt if it died there; and it didn’t die today, or yesterday, for that matter,” I said. “That is not a recently deceased puffin.”

  “Nonsense, it’s still quite fresh,” Mrs. Peabody said, thrusting it under my nose by way of proof.

  “Possibly,” I said, backing away. “I suppose whoever put it there could have had it in his freezer for the last couple of months.”

  “In the freezer?” she said. “Whatever makes you think someone had that poor puffin in a freezer?”

  The other birders were muttering, “The freezer?” and looking at me as if I’d announced my intention of serving them southern-fried puffin with a side of pickled puffins’ feet.

  “This puffin is wearing mating plumage, or whatever you call it,” I said. “I mean, that is what the white face and those bright orange-and-yellow plates on the beak mean, isn’t it? That when this puffin died, he was still looking for his soul mate? Unless I’ve completely misunderstood all the puffin lore everyone’s babbled at me, he would have shed the white feathers and the pretty little plates by the end of the spring, right? So he must have died before that.”

  The birders looked at each other and then at the puffin.

  “She’s right,” one of them murmured. “She’s absolutely right.”

  “Do you mind if we keep your camera for a while?” I asked Mrs. Peabody.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Or if you want to come by the Island Inn, I can have my husband transfer the pictures onto diskettes for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll probably do that.”

  “I’ve got some digital pictures, too,” another binoculars
-toting man said, bounding up holding his camera. “I’ve got pictures of that lunatic shooting at you!”

  “That has nothing to do with the murder!” Mrs. Peabody said, elbowing him aside.

  “Well, neither does your puffin,” said the second birder. I almost expected him to say, “So there!”

  Michael tried to defuse the confrontation by taking the man’s camera and exclaiming over the pictures, but the two birders were squaring off for a verbal donnybrook, when a voice rang out from above us.

  “What’s going on here?”

  I glanced up and saw Jeb Barnes, hands on hips, stumbling down the last few feet of the path.

  Inspired by the interest we had shown in the puffin, Mrs. Peabody strode over and, with a flourish, tried to present it to Jeb, who began backing up the path to escape her.

  I flipped through Mrs. Peabody’s pictures of the puffin again. The remaining birders, sensing that I wasn’t going to do anything else amusing, followed Jeb and Mrs. Peabody.

  “This puffin is evidence!” Mrs. Peabody shouted.

  “Nonsense!” Jeb shouted back.

  “Mind if I take a look at the puffin?” I asked, looking up at the two.

  “No,” Jeb said. “I mean yes. I’m impounding it. As … as … as a danger to public health.”

  With that, he snatched the puffin from Mrs. Peabody’s hands and, holding it at arm’s length, fled up the path.

  Mrs. Peabody frowned.

  “I think he’s going to lock it up for the police,” I said.

  “Well, that’s all right, then,” Mrs. Peabody said.

  “And you people stay away from the crime scene,” Jeb called from the top of the cliff.

  “Yes, we’d better get off the beach before the tide gets any higher,” Michael suggested.

  We stowed our two borrowed digital cameras safely in my knapsack and headed for the path.

  “So, what has the defrosted puffin told you?” Michael said as we picked our way up the side of the cliff.

  “Not a thing; he’s keeping his beak shut,” I said in a passable imitation of a thirties movie gangster. “But give me a few minutes alone with our feathered friend and I’ll make him sing like a canary.”

  Well, Michael thought it was funny. Mrs. Peabody said, “Humph!” and strode off ahead of us.

  “Seriously, I don’t know if the puffin tells us anything useful,” I said in a more normal tone. “So far, it’s just another puzzle: Why would someone keep a dead puffin around for months, then leave it at the scene of a murder the day after the body was discovered? It makes no sense.”

  “Maybe it’s symbolic,” Michael suggested. “That he was killed to revenge his crimes against puffinkind?”

  “Possibly, but it doesn’t narrow down our suspect list,” I complained.

  “Maybe it does,” Michael said. “Whoever left the puffin here has to be a local with a freezer to keep it in, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “One of the birders could have brought it over on the ferry. Can you swear there wasn’t a cooler containing a dead puffin somewhere in that mountain of luggage on the dock when we arrived?”

  “True,” he said.

  “And even if a local put the puffin there, we don’t know for sure that the puffin has anything directly to do with the murder.”

  “What other reason could anyone have for putting it there?” Michael asked. “To throw us off the scent?”

  “When we find whoever put it there, we’ll ask,” I said.

  “When you find whoever put it there?” Jeb echoed from above. “I thought I told you to keep your nose out of this.”

  “Well, I assume when the police find out who put the puffin there, they’ll let all of us know,” I said as I reached the top of the path. “Surely there’s no harm in being curious.”

  Michael chuckled.

  “Well, at least Jeb’s taken custody of the puffin,” Michael said in an undertone.

  “Even if he’s only doing it because he thinks we want it,” I answered. “Whereas the only one who really wants the damned thing is Spike.”

  “Speaking of Spike, where is he?”

  “Oh damn,” I said, turning around. “Still down by the rock, chasing the waves, I suppose. I’d better get him before the tide carries him away.”

  “I don’t see him down there,” Michael said, frowning.

  “Oh bloody hell,” I said. “Your mother will kill us if anything happens to him.”

  “Well, with any luck, she’ll only kill Rob,” Michael said. “But it would break her heart. Let’s go down and look for him.”

  We called back Jeb Barnes and Mrs. Peabody, and the four of us scrambled around the area by the tidal pool, frantically calling Spike’s name and looking in every crevice. The waves started to wash over the rocky, flat area, drenching us and narrowing our search with every passing minute.

  “We’ll have to give it up,” Jeb said finally. “The tide’ll cover the path in a minute.”

  “No, we have to find him!” I said.

  “Meg, he’s right,” Michael said.

  He half-dragged me up the path behind Jeb and Mrs. Peabody. We had to wait for a moment between waves to cross one spot, but we made it up to the top of the hill and stood looking down at the churning mass of water occupying the spot where we’d been standing—well, wading anyway—only a few minutes before.

  “I’m so sorry about the poor little dog,” Mrs. Peabody said. She sounded genuinely sympathetic, probably because she hadn’t known Spike very well. And probably never would now.

  “Oh damn,” I said. I was astonished and embarrassed to find tears welling up in my eyes.

  CHAPTER 23

  Puffin, Come Home

  Of all the stupid things, I told myself as I scrubbed at my eyes with the back of a sleeve that was already sopping wet. I take everything in stride—dead body, a murder, my own aunt confessing to the crime, both parents nearly managing to get themselves killed in a storm. And now I break down over Spike, of all things.

  “Don’t worry; he’ll probably turn up,” Michael said, putting his arms around me. “And if he doesn’t, we’ll figure out some cover story to tell Mom.”

  “No, we’ll tell her the truth,” I said, standing up straight and bracing my shoulders. “That I carelessly took him out in a hurricane and callously ignored him while the surf carried him away and it’s all my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Michael began.

  “No, it’s all my fault, and I’ll never forgive myself,” I said. “Please, let him turn up somewhere. If we could just find him safe and sound, I promise I’ll—”

  Just then, a familiar yapping broke out somewhere behind us.

  “Spike!”

  We all whirled, and I was relieved to see Spike running toward us.

  “What was it you were about to promise if Spike turned up safe and sound?” Michael asked.

  “Not to feed him to the sharks on the trip home,” I said.

  Michael chuckled.

  “Good dog!” I added, rather pointlessly, as Spike arrived at my feet, panting and still yapping.

  His normally sleek black-and-white fur was now a uniform muddy grayish brown, and I didn’t envy whoever had to wash him before Michael’s mother saw him again. Not me, I vowed, no matter how glad I was to see him un-drowned.

  I quickly noticed that he wasn’t just barking. He was running back and forth between my feet and a pile of rocks at the edge of the cliff, yapping all the way.

  “Are you trying to tell us something?” Michael asked, leaning down toward Spike the next time he arrived at my feet. Spike growled at him and turned back to me.

  “You’re both watching far too many Lassie reruns,” I said as Spike ran off again. “The bit where Lassie finds the lost child is an overdone cliché; and besides, we’ve already found all our lost relatives.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun,” Michael said, pretending to sulk. “Can’t we just go see what he’s found?”
r />   “Dead fish washed up from the storm, I expect,” Jeb put in.

  “Never mind, then,” Michael said.

  “Let’s head down and see how Dad’s doing,” I said. “And then—”

  I heard a low rumble down by my ankles.

  “Cool it, Spike,” I said.

  Spike growled again, then butted my ankle with his head. I glanced down and started.

  “What the hell has that fool dog got there?” Jeb asked.

  “Aunt Phoebe’s walking stick,” I said.

  Noticing we were paying attention to him, Spike began wagging his tail and trying to bark, his efforts a little muffled by the walking stick in his mouth. He held it at one end—the lower, narrower end. The stick had been pretty battered and gnarled to begin with, but I could see several obviously new chips and scratches. And was I imagining the telltale dark stain on the top third?

  “Is that blood on one end of it?” Jeb Barnes asked.

  “Could just as easily be mud,” Michael said.

  “Careful!” I said as Jeb reached down toward the stick. “He bites!”

  “Well, not with that stick in his mouth,” Michael said. “But he could choke himself trying.”

  “We don’t want him to run off with it,” Jeb said.

  “How fast can he run?” Michael said. “The thing’s so heavy, he can barely drag it.”

  “Someone give me a handkerchief,” I said. “I’ll try to get it away from him.”

  Holding Michael’s handkerchief behind my back with my right hand—fluttering cloth sometimes spooked Spike—I knelt in the mud and extended my left hand.

  “Here, Spike,” I called, fixing an insincere smile on my face. “Here, boy. Come here, boy.”

  Spike paused six feet away and looked at me, then at the others.

  “Back away some more,” I said, not taking my eyes off Spike.

  “If we back any farther away, we’ll fall off the cliff,” Jeb said.

  “Here boy,” I called to Spike. “Come and give me the stick, you miserable little fur ball.”

  “You’re not going to get him to come to you, calling him names like that,” Jeb said.

  “He doesn’t care what names I call him,” I said in my most coaxing voice, eyes still locked on Spike’s. “It’s the tone he’s listening for. I could call him a mangy little cur, and as long as I smile when I say it, he won’t care. Will you, Spike?”