Murder With Puffins(79)

"Yes," she said, sniffing. "And when the hurricane came along, I thought I could just leave it there, and people would think it had washed up in the storm, and even if they figured out it had been electrocuted, they'd think he was at it again. I didn't even know he was dead until after I did it."

"That must have been quite a shock," I said.

"I was so terrified someone had seen me and would think I'd done it," Rhapsody said.

"Well, you should never keep quiet about something like that," I said in my sternest tone. "These things always come out in a murder investigation, and you're always better off if you tell the truth from the start."

Michael quirked one eyebrow. I rolled my eyes to show I realized how stupid and pretentious that sounded. But Rhapsody, Dad, and Mamie all nodded with great enthusiasm.

"So," I said. "Tell us more about the puffin."





Chapter 28





Anatomy of a Puffin




And so for the next half hour, Rhapsody told us about the sad fate of the puffin. Now that she'd confessed her dread secret, she was pathetically eager to spill everything. I waited patiently and let Michael respond to her description of how she'd found the puffin and what had occurred while she'd had it in her custody. I cared more about her two most recent visits to Resnick's house.

"So anyway," she said finally. "I hid the puffin under a cloth in the bottom of my wicker basket and went up the path toward that horrible man's house."

"Weren't you afraid of meeting him?" I asked.

"Oh yes!" she said. "So I found a place to sketch where I could overlook the path and see when he went down to the village. I think I ruined my sketchbook, sitting out in the rain all that time."

She gestured toward the fireplace, where a book bound in lavender velvet stood on end, its pages fanned open toward the thin warmth of her fire.

"I was just looking around the house, trying to decide where to put the puffin, when I heard a noise down on the shore. I thought at first it was Mr. Resnick, coming back from another direction, but when I ran back down the path, I almost knocked him over. So he hadn't been down on the shore after all."

"Probably the murderer," Dad said with obvious relish.

Rhapsody looked stricken, and her hands flew to her mouth, stifling a shriek.

"Nonsense," I said. "Probably only a birder, taking advantage of Resnick's absence to look for that rare whatsit that's nesting by his house."

"Yes, I'm sure that's all it was," Michael said, patting Rhapsody's shoulder again. I braced myself for more hysterics, but our reassurances--well, Michael's anyway--did the trick.

"Do you really think so?" she said, gazing up at him with an expression of frail, helpless innocence that would have looked perfect on the face of a Victorian maiden. For that matter, it had probably served Rhapsody rather well in her twenties.

"After all that, I'm amazed that you managed to go back the next day," I said. "That took a lot of courage."

"Well, I had nightmares all night," she said. "I knew I just had to return the poor little puffin so he could rest in peace. I decided that even if that dreadful man tried to stop me, I was going to march right down there and put the poor little thing somewhere near Puffin Point, where he belonged. And I did. Not near the house, of course; but I thought he belonged by the shore."

A pity she hadn't chickened out again; if she had, we wouldn't have wasted so much time on a red herring.

Rhapsody had no other useful information to offer, at least none we could extract during another twenty minutes of questioning, so I decided to call it quits.

"Well, we'd better run along," I said, standing up. Surely Winnie and Binkie would have found Dr. Peabody by this time. My head felt far too near the ceiling--doubtless an optical illusion created by the busy lavender-and-white-patterned wallpaper overhead.

"Oh, can't you stay a little longer?" Rhapsody said. To her credit, she was looking at me, with barely a sidelong glance toward Michael. "I could make more tea."

"No," I said. "But if you like, come down to the cottage if the rain lets up a little. We can talk more, and Mother would enjoy the company. She gets out so little in this kind of weather."

As we all milled about in the tiny front hall, poking one another in the noses with our elbows as we struggled into our rain gear in the confined space, a thought hit me.

"Oh, by the way," I said. "May I borrow your sketchbook?"

"My sketchbook?"

"Yes, the one you had the day you staked out Resnick's house. Who knows, perhaps something you sketched may give us a clue."

"Staked out Resnick's house," Rhapsody repeated. "Oh, yes, of course! Let me find something to wrap it in!"