Murder With Puffins by Donna Andrews Read Free Book Online

no room at the inn. Any inn."
    So by 9:00 a.m.--an hour when I normally prefer to be fast asleep--we had already given up on our search. We sat for a few minutes on a soggy wooden swing on the front porch of the Island Inn and watched the pedestrians hiking up and down the streets. The rain had temporarily slacked off to a mere icy mist, and both birds and birders made the most of it. I only caught fleeting glimpses of the birds, but I was getting to know the plumage and feeding habits of the common New England bird-watcher pretty well.
    Actually, at first glance, it was hard to tell the locals from the bird-watchers. Everyone had some kind of waterproof footgear, with the unfortunate exception of Michael and me. Rain ponchos and down vests were commonplace.
    I wondered if it had occurred to any of them how many birds had given their all to fill those vests.
    But while most of the locals scurried about with canvas tote bags full of supplies and bits of lumber for boarding things up, the birders carried enough waterproof surveillance hardware to equip a squad of Navy SEALS. Binoculars, telescopes, cameras, tape recorders, video cameras--you name it, they had it.
    Every couple of minutes, a troop of birders would swarm up the steps of the inn and ask us where we'd been and what we'd seen and whether we'd spotted the kestrels up on Black Head yet. When we explained that we hadn't been anywhere or seen any birds and thought the kestrels up on Black Head had enough company already, they would look at us oddly and slip inside to refill their thermoses with hot coffee.
    "Apart from going back to the cottage and listening to more Wagner, what else is there to do on the island?" Michael asked.
    "We could stroll through the village and see the sights," I said.
    Just then, Fred Dickerman rattled by in his pickup truck, leaning on the horn, while a quartet of birders sprinted just ahead of his bumper. Monhegan has no sidewalks; any pedestrian walking in the road when a truck approached was expected to step aside to let the vehicle pass. Or jump aside, if the driver was Fred. Most truck drivers took it slowly when they went through the village, but Fred evidently enjoyed chivvying tourists into puddles and brier patches.
    "Reminds me of running before the bulls at Pamplona," Michael remarked as the birders finally reached a wide spot in the road and hurled themselves to safety.
    "Oh, have you actually done that?"
    "No, and I'm not about to start now," he said. "Doesn't look too restful, strolling through the village. Anything else?"
    "Mostly healthy, outdoorsy things like hiking around the circumference of the island."
    "All right, let's hike," Michael said, standing up and holding out his hand.
    "You've got to be kidding. In this weather?"
    "It's not actually raining now, and the weather's going to be a lot worse in a few hours," he said. "Let's go and see the sights before it gets bad."
    "You're serious, aren't you?"
    "Why not? At least once we've done it, when the birders ask us if we want to go to the South Pole with them to see the penguins, we can say, 'No thanks, we've already circumnavigated the island.' "
    "Okay," I said. "You're on."
    I could tell after the first fifteen minutes that circumnavigating the island was a lot less fun to do than to brag about afterward. But I wasn't about to confess that I couldn't handle it, so for the next hour or two, we squelched and slopped up and down the muddy parts of the trail and inched our way gingerly over the rain-slick rocky parts.
    And invariably, every time we paused, panting, to catch our breath, a covey of middle-aged or elderly birders would breeze past us.
    "I always thought bird-watching was a sedate pastime," Michael said as we took temporary refuge beneath a rocky outcropping that sheltered us from the worst of the drizzle. "These people could probably ace an Iron Man competition."
    "Yes. Stirs up all my deep-seated feelings of inadequacy," I said, panting slightly.
    "Oh, I