"Isn't it cute?" Mamie said.
"Very cute," I said. Mamie smiled and Michael looked puzzled. Only Dad had known me long enough to realize that I'd just uttered my ultimate insult, but even Dad wasn't tactless enough to say so.
"Look, we'll catch up to you in a bit," I said. "I want to talk to Rhapsody."
"What about?" Mamie snapped.
Damn. I'd forgotten how protective Mamie was of her pet artist.
"Mother's interested in a painting," I said. Well, it wasn't a complete lie; if Mamie chose to think I meant one of Rhapsody's paintings, that was her problem.
"I'll come with you, then," Mamie said. "She's very shy, you know."
"I'd like to meet her," Dad said, falling into step beside Mamie.
We slipped and slid up the cobblestone path--nature never intended cobblestones for use in hurricanes--and Mamie knocked very gently on the front door.
After half a minute, I saw motion out of the corner of my eye. The curtain in the window to the left of the door fluttered slightly. I deliberately avoided looking at it, and pasted what I hoped was a friendly, harmless smile on my face.
Mamie had raised her hand to knock again when the door opened slightly, with the sort of creak they use in movies to suggest that maybe this is a door you'd be better off not entering. But there wasn't a monster or a wicked witch hiding behind the door. Just poor Rhapsody, who peeked through the narrow opening as if she were the one expecting monsters.
"Rhapsody, we're so sorry to intrude, but Meg's parents want to buy a painting," Mamie said.
Rhapsody didn't seem reassured by Mamie's words, but after staring at us blankly for a few seconds, she opened the door a little wider and scuttled back to let us pass.
"I'll make tea," she murmured, and fled down the tiny hallway while Mamie led us into the living room. I instantly wished I'd suggested inviting Rhapsody down to the general store or to Mamie's house. Her decor gave me galloping claustrophobia. Not so much the furniture, although she had too much of it--fussy little chairs that would collapse instantly under anyone over a hundred pounds; rickety-looking tables about to overturn under their loads of knick-knacks; spindly cabinets whose glass fronts bulged outward from the further hoard of knickknacks within. You could have sewed all the frayed antimacassars and antique doilies together to make several bedsheets, and from the number of puffin-related items among the knickknacks, I gathered that Rhapsody was Mamie's best customer.
And apart from the black and white of the puffins and the various wood tones, everything in the room was colored some shade of lavender, purple, or lilac.
Everything also carried a visible coating of dust. I sneezed four times while poking around the room to find a chair I would feel safe sitting on.
Mamie beamed with pride at the decor. Dad gazed at me, clearly awaiting brilliant deductions. I could tell Michael wanted to make a break for the wide-open spaces. I tried to stifle my sneezes by concentrating on the pictures on the wall. She had about thirty of them, all book covers or illustrations from the Puffin Family series. At the lower left-hand corner of every painting was Rhapsody's signature--a fussy, overelaborate design, barely recognizable as the letter R, in luminous purple paint.
Rhapsody emerged from the kitchen, wearing a frilly lavender dress that served very well as camouflage, considering her decor. She carried a tray, from which she handed out tea in eggshell-thin antique china. The idea of actually grasping the delicate gold-and-lavender handle of the cup was more than I could manage; I was sure to break it. Besides, I could tell from the smell that she'd made some kind of odd-tasting herbal muck. So I cleared a space among the fragile-looking knickknacks on the doily-covered end table, set down my cup, and tried not to watch what Dad was doing with his.
"By the way, before we talk about the painting, I have a question about puffins," I said.
"I don't really know that much about them," Rhapsody said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. "I just paint them."
"Yes," I said. "That's what I wanted to ask you about."
She smiled nervously. I got the idea that four people were almost more of an audience than she could handle. I felt a sudden surge of impatience and claustrophobia and decided not to waste time beating around the bush.
"You had a dead puffin you used as a model, right?" I asked. "You kept it in your freezer."
She stiffened but said nothing.
"Oh, come on, Rhapsody," I said. "We saw you down by Victor Resnick's house on the day of the murder and--"
Rhapsody shrieked, burst into tears, and threw herself on the sofa. Mamie Benton hurried over and began patting her back.
"There, there," she said, glaring at me. "That wasn't a very funny joke, but I'm sure Meg didn't mean anything by it."