Murder With Puffins

Chapter 14

A Long Day's Journey into Puffins

"Why on earth is she out in this weather?" I asked. Normally, we could barely coax Mother out on the deck on a perfect summer day, and even then she'd be well nigh invisible beneath the sunblock, the giant sunglasses, the parasol, and the mosquito hat. But for her to go out in the hurricane…

"She must be in a panic about your dad," Michael said, echoing my thought. "We'd better go rescue her."

We crawled down the breakwater toward her. She clung to a rock with one hand, but when she saw us coming, she waved at us with--What the devil did she have in her other hand?

An umbrella. Or what remained of one after the wind had turned the frame inside out and ripped away all but a few shreds of fabric.

"Hello, dears," she said when we reached her side. "I'm very glad to see you. I've hurt my ankle and I was beginning to wonder how I'd get home."

"What on earth are you doing out here?" Michael asked.

"Looking for James. Have you found him yet?" she asked. Beneath her usual calm tone was an edge of panic. Or was it pain? Either way, I'd have given anything to have some good news to tell her.

"Not yet, and there's no way we can keep looking at night, not in this weather," I said as calmly as I could manage. "I'm sure he's holed up somewhere and we'll find him in the morning."

She looked at me for a few seconds, and I tried to project calm, reassurance, and confidence. But after thirty-odd years, I should have known better than to try fooling her. She nodded slightly, and I could see her jaw clench.

"Let's continue this back at the house," Michael said. "Can you walk?"

"No, dear," she said. "I think I must have done something unfortunate to my ankle."

I twitched up the hem of her skirt and took a look. Yes, unfortunate was a good word; the ankle had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. I also noticed that she wore the battered remains of a pair of high-heeled leopard-print sandals.

"Good grief," I said. "It's no wonder you hurt yourself, wearing these things. Why didn't you put on a pair of sneakers or something? Something practical you could walk in."

"I walked all over Paris in these," she said. "They're the most practical ones I have with me."

"You should have borrowed a pair of mine."

"At least these fit," she retorted. She had a point; her feet were three sizes smaller than mine. But still…

"We'll have to carry her," I said, turning to Michael.

Just then a wave, slightly larger than the rest, lapped over Mother's foot.

"I think I'm ready to leave now," she said, clutching Michael's hand.

I couldn't help thinking, as we half-pulled, half-carried Mother home, how much easier it had been with Resnick--even though he'd been a deadweight and Mother helped as much as she could. But the storm had gotten so much worse in the last couple of hours. And then again, we didn't have to worry about hurting Resnick; Mother was fighting back tears of pain by the time we finally staggered up the front steps of Aunt Phoebe's cottage.

Mrs. Fenniman leapt up from the couch when we sloshed into the living room.

"Good heavens, Margaret," she exclaimed. "I thought you were upstairs napping!"

"Napping?" Mother snapped back. "Napping, with James out there in the storm, and for all we know--" She stopped, and settled for frowning at Mrs. Fenniman.

"Well, what do you two have to say for yourselves?" Mrs. Fenniman said, turning on us. "Have you managed to find anyone?"

"We haven't found Dad, we haven't found Aunt Phoebe, and someone knocked off Victor Resnick," I said.

"Knocked off?" Mrs. Fenniman exclaimed. "As in murdered?"

"Oh my God," Mother murmured. "You should be out looking for your father."

"That's what we've been doing," I said. "But we can't possibly do any good right now; we'll go out again in the morning, assuming the storm has let up and there's a ghost of a chance of finding him without killing ourselves in the process."

"But we can't just leave him out there in the storm!" she protested, blinking back tears.

"Mother, he has his knapsack," I said. "Which means he's got supplies--food, water, Gatorade, flares, a flashlight, a first-aid kit, and even that silver blanket that's supposed to help you retain ninety-five percent of your body heat. He's got everything he needs to survive."

Except, of course, for the common sense that would have kept him from venturing out into the storm in the first place, but I wasn't going to bring that up.

Just then, the front door burst open and Rob stumbled in, bringing a gust of wind and spray with him. He had to struggle to close the door, then leaned against it, panting.

"It's impossible out there," he said finally. I glanced at Mother's face and had to look away.

"Come on, let's get you patched up," Mrs. Fenniman said, helping Mother toward the stairs. Mother stopped at the bottom step and fixed me with her sternest glance. She looked at me for a full minute, as if it were my fault Dad had gone off on another crazy expedition.

"First thing in the morning," she said. And then she shook off Mrs. Fenniman and limped up the stairs by herself, leaning heavily on the banister all the way.

Michael, Rob, and I fetched dry clothes and they chivalrously insisted I take first turn in the shower. I would have loved to stand under the spray for an hour, until I felt really warm again, but I knew the meager hotwater supply would barely let all three of us wash off our coatings of mud.

"I suppose I should fix something for us to eat," I said, slumping on the couch as I dried my hair.

"I'll do it after my shower," Michael said.

"Leave the cooking to me," Mrs. Fenniman said. "You come and tell me about the murder."

"Dinner sounds like a good idea," Rob said, disappearing into the bathroom. "I'll be out in half an hour."

"Don't you dare use all the hot water, Rob," I called. "Leave some for Michael."

"Don't worry about it," Michael said. "I'll manage."

"Rob's like Mother," I said. "You have to be firm with him."

"Like you are with your mother," he said with a smile, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Good point.

I slumped on the sofa and listened to the increasing wind, the rattle of pans, the rise and fall of Michael's voice as he narrated our day's adventures, and the occasional exclamation from Mrs. Fenniman. I couldn't actually make out Michael's words, thanks to the wind, which suited me just fine. I wanted to think about something other than lost relatives and dead bodies for a while. Not that I had the slightest chance of doing so. My brain was running like a hamster in a wire wheel, wondering where Dad and Aunt Phoebe were, and what they were doing, and whether they were all right, and occasionally, just by way of a change, wondering who had done in Victor Resnick.

Every few minutes, Mrs. Fenniman would pop out of the kitchen and bring me the next course of what was rapidly turning into an epicurean feast. I managed to put away a ham and cheese sandwich, a bowl of chili, a bowl of soup, a plate of mixed fruit, and a baked potato before I called a halt. Mrs. Fenniman didn't. She kept bringing out more food and insisting I needed to eat to keep my strength up. I got tired of arguing with her and started shoving the new arrivals under the coffee table. Spike was in ecstasy, alternating between devouring the food and licking my ankles. After an hour, Rob finally ceded the bathroom to poor Michael and settled onto the other sofa to be fed.

At one point, Mrs. Fenniman bustled upstairs. I could hear her and Mother squabbling about something, and then she stormed down again.

"Finally got her to take one of my Valium," she said. "Calm her down a little. Only way she's going to make it though tonight without going crazy."

As the night wore on, I became convinced that whoever had prescribed Mrs. Fenniman's Valium had actually slipped her a placebo. Mother didn't calm down in the slightest. Periodically, she would limp out of her room and lean over the balcony. She would stand motionless until she had attracted everyone's attention. Then she would look pointedly at the door and even more pointedly at me.

I should have just ignored her, but every time, I patiently explained that we had spent several hours searching all over the island before the storm made it too dangerous. That if Dad had any sense, he'd found someplace to hole up for the night. That as soon as it was light enough to see six feet in front of our faces, we'd go out and start hunting all over again.

She would look reproachfully at me, heave an enormous sigh, mutter something like "Your poor father!" and disappear. For about fifteen minutes. Then we'd go through the whole thing all over again.

Dad always says a person's true character comes through in a crisis. Judged by his own standard, Dad didn't come off too badly. Unless the crisis was a medical one, he was generally of no practical use and had a tendency to run around getting underfoot and making implausible suggestions. But he remained so cheerful and optimistic that no one really minded having him around. In fact, they almost invariably spoke of him afterward as a tower of strength and a real inspiration.

Mother ignored crises as long as possible, on the assumption that of course someone else would take care of them. Usually me. On those rare occasions when Mother felt a situation needed her attention, she would go into what Rob and I called the "off with her head" mode--making decisions and issuing orders with a ruthlessness that made Robespierre look benign. Once Mother took charge, crises tended to work themselves out quite satisfactorily--at least if you agreed with Mother's definition of a satisfactory outcome. That Mother could think of nothing to do except pace the floor and lay a guilt trip on me disturbed me almost as much as Dad's absence.

So far, Michael had shown a great deal of grace under pressure. He'd kept his sense of humor when the trip hadn't turned out to be the private, romantic getaway we'd planned, and if he was grumbling about the primitive conditions here on the island, he'd kept it to himself. Since Dad had gone AWOL, Michael had run himself ragged helping me search, all the while remaining supportive and upbeat, without displaying the sort of mindless, cheerful optimism that would have sent me over the edge. Over the last few weeks, Mrs. Fenniman had decided that Michael was, as she put it, "a keeper." Her habit of telling me this loudly, repeatedly, and in front of Michael had grown irritating, but I couldn't exactly argue with her.

I only hoped he felt the same way about me. I Like to think that in a crisis I'm the cool, collected one who really gets things done with calm efficiency. I'm afraid that I'm really a lot more like Dad, with occasional touches of Mother at her worst. Well, I'd worry about that when the crisis was over; all I could do now was wait the storm out. For lack of something better to distract my mind, I picked up one of the bird books that perched on every available horizontal surface and began thumbing through it, trying to concentrate on the contents. Despite my agitated state, I couldn't help marveling at both the incredible variety of birds in the world and the incredible subtlety of some of the variations. I leafed through page after page of birds largely indistinguishable from one another unless you happened to have memorized minute differences in the amount of white on the head or red on the wing. And the way they were arranged--all the birds on the same page in the very same pose, like some avian chorus line--was particularly daunting.

"What's that?" Michael asked, sitting down beside me and handing me a cup of hot tea. He had a towel draped around his neck and smelled faintly of soap. He seemed in fairly good spirits for someone who had probably just taken a cold shower. I held up the bird book so he could see the cover.

"Thinking of taking up bird-watching?" he asked. "Not on your life," I said. "I'd go crazy. Look at this!" I pointed to a page entitled "Small Hooded Gulls."

"Seagulls," he said. "Lots of seagulls. So?"

"Yes, but that's only one page of seagulls. There are five or six more, not to mention the terns. And look at these: the laughing gull and the Franklin's gull? Can you tell them apart? What if one of them gets a spot of tar on the red beak? You'd probably think he was a Bonaparte's gull, the one with the all-black beak."

"Does it really matter?" Michael asked, giving me an odd look.

"That's my point," I said. "I just don't get it. They're gulls; they eat garbage and scream at the ferry. Does it really matter that much which particular kind of gull they are? I can't figure out why the birders get so obsessive."

"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 birdwatchers 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.