Murder With Puffins

by Donna Andrews

  Spike wagged his tail.

  “Here, you ornery little mutt,” I said, smiling harder and beckoning. “Come to Aunt Meg. Don’t make me wring your wretched little neck.”

  Spike wagged harder, then staggered over to me, dragging the stick behind him.

  “That’s a good little monster,” I said, patting him. Spike had to drop the stick to begin his usual pastime of licking me obsessively, which gave me the chance I needed to grab the walking stick with the handkerchief and hand it over to Jeb Barnes. I reattached Spike’s leash while Jeb juggled the puffin and the stick.

  “Yes, that’s Phoebe’s cane,” Jeb said.

  “Stick, not cane,” I corrected. “Don’t let Aunt Phoebe hear you calling it a cane; she’d kill you. Not literally,” I added, seeing the startled expression on Jeb’s face. “That was a figure of speech.”

  “Right,” he said. I wasn’t sure he believed me. “I thought she said she’d lost the … stick when she fell.”

  “No,” I said, starting down the trail toward the village. “She told us she lost it before she fell.”

  “It could be evidence,” Jeb said, falling into step beside me. “After all, she did confess to the murder this morning.”

  “She did?” Mrs. Peabody said with a gasp. “Well, I never!”

  “Yes, but you’ll remember I pointed out exactly why her confession didn’t hold water.”

  “Good,” Mrs. Peabody said. “I can hardly imagine a dedicated environmentalist like Phoebe committing murder.”

  “Not even of someone like Victor Resnick?” Michael asked.

  Mrs. Peabody didn’t answer. I glanced back. She had paused at a fork in the trail and seemed to be seriously thinking over the question. Much too seriously.

  “That dark stuff on the stick really looks like mud to me,” Michael said.

  “We’ll let the police decide that,” Jeb said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Let’s just get the stick safely locked up until the police can do a forensic examination.”

  “Locked up where?” Jeb asked.

  “In the locker with the body, I suppose,” I said. “Bodies, if you include the puffin. After all, the damned stick’s survived a hurricane; a little cold won’t hurt it.”

  “Yes, that would work,” Jeb said.

  We watched as Jeb trudged off toward the Anchor Inn with the puffin and the walking stick in hand. Mrs. Peabody trailed after him, presumably to keep her eye on the puffin.

  “Let’s go get a rope and do our burgling,” I said. Michael nodded and fell into step beside me as we headed back to Aunt Phoebe’s cottage.

  “Aunt Phoebe did say she lost her stick before she fell into the gully,” I said. “She just didn’t say how long before.”

  “Still, it doesn’t look good, her walking stick turning up so near the scene of the crime. And with blood on it.”

  “You’re the one who keeps saying it’s mud.”

  “Could be mud,” he said. “Could be blood, too.”

  “True,” I agreed. “And that makes two possible murder weapons that have some association with Aunt Phoebe.”

  I brooded on that a while longer.

  “Of course,” Michael put in, “The sheer improbability of the story she told goes in her favor.”

  “Yes, except that if she were guilty and knew all the details of the crime, she could make up an improbable story better than anyone.”

  “Is she that devious?”

  I had to think about that one.

  “I don’t think so,” I said finally. “Normally, I tend to think of Aunt Phoebe as abrupt and straightforward. But if she’d brooded a lot about the crimes she thought Resnick had committed against the birds … who knows?”

  “Or if she’s particularly good at thinking on her feet.”

  “Exactly. And then again, there’s the question of why she would tell such a howler in the first place.”

  “Because she’s covering up for someone else?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And people would naturally assume that someone is Dad. Which isn’t an idea we want to encourage.”

  Just then, I saw Jim Dickerman shambling along the path toward us.

  “Afternoon,” I said as he drew near.

  “Yeah, I know,” he snapped. “Give me a break.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Look, I’ll get it running as soon as I can, damn it. I stayed up all night trying to fix the damned thing. I’m going back up now, but I had to get a couple hours of sleep.”

  “Hey, calm down,” I said. “Aunt Phoebe isn’t even hooked up to your generator, remember? I wasn’t asking when you’ll have the thing fixed or giving you a hard time; I just said good afternoon.”

  “Sorry,” he said, fighting a yawn. “Bad night.”

  His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved, combed his hair, or changed his clothes in several days.

  “You look as if you could use a lot more sleep,” I said. “Let the generator wait a few more hours.”

  “Too many people complaining,” he said, stifling another yawn.

  “One less than there used to be at least,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said with a startled laugh. “I guess so. And the bastard was the biggest complainer of all. Course, he was our biggest customer, too. Pity.”

  “I don’t suppose you saw anything useful,” I asked. “Any possible clues or anything?”

  “I wasn’t down by Resnick’s yesterday,” Jim said, shrugging. “Too busy with the generator.”

  “What about your windows?” I asked. “I should think you have a pretty good view from there.”

  “When they’re not shuttered up,” he said. “Got ’em nailed shut for the storm right now.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “When did you do that?”

  He thought for a few seconds.

  “Day before they stopped the ferry,” he said. “That’d be Thursday afternoon.”

  “So I don’t suppose you saw much of what went on around the island yesterday and today, then?”

  He shrugged.

  “Only when I went outside,” he said. “Damn birders all over everywhere.”

  “You don’t like the birders?”

  “Can’t see what the big deal is, but I’ve got nothing against them. Mess up the island less than most damn tourists.”

  What a relief to see that Resnick’s death wouldn’t completely deprive the island of curmudgeons. I wondered if Jim and Victor Resnick had actually gotten along in their own gruff way. And then a thought hit me … . Jim … James—what if Jim Dickerman was the phantom biographer?

  “Tell me,” I said. “Do you know anything about the Unheralded Genius of the Down East Coast?”

  “The what?” Jim asked.

  “‘Who could have predicted this event, at once so joyous and so tragic?’” I quoted.

  “‘Who can calculate the import this occurrence would present upon his life and art?’” Michael added.

  “If that’s one of those word games, I don’t get it,” Jim said in a voice that suggested he didn’t much care, either. If he wasn’t the biographer, he was a phenomenal actor. Ah, well. I tried another angle.

  “Before the storm. You could see what went on at Resnick’s, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Was he really electrocuting birds?”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t killing them.”

  “Then what was he doing?”

  “Running a low-voltage current through some of the metal struts in his roof. Give ‘em a hotfoot, scare ’em away so they’d stop crapping on his glass. Town made him stop, though.”

  “You mean he actually did what they asked?”

  Jim snorted.

  “Yeah. Well, he wouldn’t have, except that it didn’t really work anyway. Gulls just sat on the glass. Funniest thing you ever saw, watching him jump up and down in his yard, yelling at the gulls. Couldn’t throw anything without breaking the glass.”

 
“When did he stop?”

  “May, maybe June. Before the tourist season anyway.”

  That made sense; the puffin could have still been in breeding plumage in May or June, as far as I could tell from the bird books. Maybe puffins were more sensitive to a hotfoot than gulls. Or maybe Resnick had experimented with higher voltages before the town pulled the plug on his bird-control program.

  “Have you seen your brother recently?” I asked finally.

  “Fred? Yeah, he’s down in the village somewhere, I guess.”

  From the tone of voice, I got the feeling there was no love lost between the brothers.

  “No, I actually meant Will.”

  Jim frowned but said nothing.

  “Monhegan’s own candidate for America’s most wanted,” I went on. “You haven’t seen him around recently, have you?”

  “No, not since—” Jim began, then stopped.

  “Not since when?” I asked.

  “Not since before they got arrested,” he said slowly. “What does he have to do with anything? Will wasn’t even on the island when …”

  His voiced trailed off, as if something had just occurred to him.

  “Well, if you find out he’s on the island, tell him to see his lawyer,” I said.

  “Even. if he didn’t do it,” Michael said.

  “Especially if he didn’t do it,” I added. “Do you think the police will look far for another suspect if they find someone right under their noses with a prior history of whacking people over the head?”

  At least I hoped that’s what the police would do. I must have sounded pretty convincing. Jim frowned.

  “I have to get back to the generator,” he said, and strode off.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Michael said. “What was last bit all about?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m hoping if Will Dickerman is on the island, Jim will go and see him.”

  “To warn him, or to give him hell for jumping bail and jeopardizing the power plant?”

  “Either one will do,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t we do something? Like maybe follow him?”

  “He knows every inch of the island; I think we’d be slightly conspicuous?”

  “So we stir things up and then just sit around and wait to see if something happens?”

  “No. Like I said, we get the rope and burgle Resnick’s studio.”

  But before we got to the cottage, Winnie and Binkie came hiking briskly up behind us. Predictably, after we exchanged greetings, they asked if we’d heard any more news about the murder.

  About ten seconds after we told them about Mrs. Peabody and the puffin, Michael and Winnie were deep in conversation about digital cameras. Binkie and I fell in step a little behind them.

  “I have the awful feeling I’m going to hear a great deal about digital cameras over the next few months,” I said with a sigh.

  “Dear me, yes,” Binkie murmured. “And, if your young man is anything like Winnie, spending a great deal of time saying, ‘Yes, dear, that’s a lovely picture.’”

  I shuddered. I had no doubt she was right.

  “Speaking of pictures,” I said, “what do you think of Resnick’s painting ability?”

  Instead of answering, Binkie looked over her glasses at me and frowned. Was I just imagining things, or had I touched a nerve?

  CHAPTER 24

  The Puffin Who Knew Too Much

  “Resnick’s painting ability?” Binkie asked warily. “Why, what’s that got to do with his death?”

  “I don’t know that it has anything to do with it,” I said. “Unless you know of a reason.”

  “No, of course not,” Binkie said. A little too quickly perhaps? “Well, anyone on Monhegan can tell you about Victor Resnick. He’s probably the most distinguished local landscape artist—”

  “The real scoop, not the Monhegan Chamber of Commerce spiel.”

  She looked over her glasses at me. I tried to look innocent, earnest, and discreet. Apparently, I pulled it off.

  “Second rate, at best,” she said. “A shame, really. He showed such early promise, but then he never developed.”

  “I’m no art critic,” I said. “His paintings seem pretty good to me.”

  “Oh, they’re good, of course,” she said. “But they’re no better today than they were fifty years ago. In fact, they’re not the slightest bit different. Not the style, not the technical skill, not even the subject matter.”

  “Always landscapes, yes,” I said.

  “Always Monhegan landscapes,” Binkie corrected.

  “I thought he’d spent most of the last twenty years in the south of France,” I said.

  “Yes, and did nothing the whole time but paint pictures of Monhegan. What kind of artist could live for twenty years on the Côte d’Azur and never once paint the Mediterranean?”

  She frowned and shook her head. I followed suit, while privately thinking that it might take more strength of character than I possessed to pick up a brush at all if I were living on the Côte d’Azur.

  “Maybe he was homesick,” I suggested.

  “If he was homesick, why didn’t he come home a little more often, then?” Binkie said. “Lazy, more like. Did it from snapshots, of course. Only came home when he wanted more snapshots. If he were still alive, you’d see him running around with that Polaroid of his right now, taking pictures of the storm.”

  I had a sudden vision of Victor Resnick standing in his expensive greenhouselike studio, ignoring the glorious view as he peered at a curling Polaroid clipped to his easel.

  “And honestly,” Binkie went on, “if I have to look at one more painting of those eerie, foreboding, calm-before-the-storm skies … well, I suppose now I won’t have to.”

  “You’ll probably think I’m a total philistine for saying this,” I said, “but I bought a book of his paintings down at Mamie’s store largely because of those skies. I thought he did them rather well.”

  “Oh, he did do them well. Superlatively. It’s just that he did them all the time. He figured out the technique early on, dazzled everybody, and couldn’t let it go. Flip through that book of yours and see. Every other painting’s got that same gray-green sky. That or the gnarled tree.”

  “Gnarled tree?”

  “He used to have this charmingly gnarled tree on a rock near where his house is now,” Binkie said. “I’ve lost count how many of his paintings I’ve seen it in, from one angle or another. The poor thing blew over in a nor’easter eighteen or twenty years ago, and I remember thinking, What a relief—no more gnarled tree; or at least he’ll have to find another gnarled tree.”

  “Let me guess: He had photos of it.”

  “Hundreds, I imagine; from every conceivable angle. I don’t think he even noticed it was gone for a year or two; and then only because he went out to take more snapshots. That’s one reason why his sales are in such a slump. In his early days, when he was hot, every museum and major collector had to have a Resnick or two. But that’s all you need, really. A seascape with the gnarled tree and the gray-green sky, and maybe a weathered saltbox with waves crashing on the beach behind it, and you’ve pretty much got Resnick covered.”

  “And that’s not the case with most artists, right?”

  “Oh, no,” Binkie exclaimed. “Take someone like, oh, Picasso. There’s no way you could mistake a painting from his twenties for one done in his fifties. With Resnick, you couldn’t tell if he didn’t date them. Of course, the critics took awhile to realize he wasn’t going any further, but he’d fallen pretty well out of the mainstream by the eighties, which means he missed out on all the real money, back when the Japanese started buying.”

  “So he wasn’t all that wealthy, then?”

  “Well, he hadn’t made as much money as people like Wyeth, for example, but I shouldn’t think he was broke, if that’s what you mean,” Binkie said. “I suspect he invested well enough to live quite nicely. No reason why he shouldn’t have; apart from that eyesore of a house, h
e never spent much money on anything that I can see.”

  “And he never married or … um …” I said, bogging down with embarrassment in the middle of my attempt to pry into Resnick’s love life.

  “He never married, no; and as for uming—well, if he bedded any woman around here, she had the good sense to keep quiet about her bad taste. Of course, I have no idea what he might have gotten up to in France,” she added with a slight frown.

  “Mrs. Fenniman said he was an old beau of Mother’s, before she met Dad,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know that you’d call him a beau,” Binkie said, her frown deepening. “He was quite smitten with her, of course; all the young men were. But I don’t think she took him seriously. Or any of them back then. She’d pretend to, of course, if she thought it would shock your grandparents. I think that’s why she took up with Resnick, really. He was the most unsuitable young man she could find. Any of the older girls, I think your grandfather would have stuck them in a convent school after that, but your mother managed to wangle that trip to Paris she’d always wanted.”

  Binkie shook her head, as if in admiration of Mother’s cleverness.

  “Well, this is your turnoff,” she said, stepping up to take Winnie’s arm as we arrived at the foot of Aunt Phoebe’s lane. “We’ll see you later, dear. Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all work out much better than you think.”

  With that cryptic encouragement, the Burnhams strode up the hill toward the Dickermans’ house.

  “So,” Michael asked when they were out of earshot. “Did you learn anything useful?”

  I sighed.

  “Not really,” I said. “Nothing we didn’t already know. Damn, I’m getting tired of this. We come here for a little peace and quiet, to get away from it all, and we land right in the middle of another murder. This whole thing has been a disaster from start to finish.”

  “I’m crushed,” Michael said, reeling back in mock dismay. “You don’t think it’s romantic, us trapped together on a remote island, like the Swiss Family Robinson?”

  “More like a remake of Ten Little Indians,” I said, and then instantly wondered if my answer had been a little too honest. Michael didn’t seem insulted, though. “What a pity Mother and Dad didn’t just stay in Europe for a few more weeks,” I added, trying to change the subject.