"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.