Murder With Puffins by Donna Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

don't know," Michael said, putting an arm around my waist. "You look pretty adequate to me."
    It wasn't exactly the tropical beach of my dreams, but this was the closest I'd gotten to being alone with Michael since we'd arrived on the island. I snuggled closer, and he bent his head down toward mine. Then he froze.
    "Why are those people watching us through their binoculars?" he muttered.
    I followed the direction of his eye.
    "I think they're looking at that bird at our feet," I whispered back.
    "Why? Is that some kind of rare and exotic bird?"
    I glanced down. The bird was moderately large, light brown, with a black-and-white mask over its face. It had bits of red and yellow on its wings, and the end of its tail had been dipped in yellow.
    "How the devil should I know?" I said. "It looks like a paint-spattered female cardinal; cardinals certainly aren't rare."
    "Damn," Michael said, a little more loudly this time.
    The bird, whatever it was, took flight The three birders removed the binoculars from their eyes and stared at us accusingly.
    "That was a Bohemian waxwing," one of them said.
    "Did you get any photos?" the second asked.
    "No," said the third. "They frightened it off before I got the chance."
    "Oh, you mean that bird with the yellow-tipped tail?" I asked.
    The birders nodded and frowned at us. Madame Defarge looked more kindly on her victims.
    "We've seen them around here a lot," I said.
    "They're quite rare in this part of the continent," one of the birders replied.
    "Yes, that's what I was telling Michael," I said. "How rare to see so many Bohemian waxwings here. If you just stay quietly where you are, you'll probably see dozens."
    With that, Michael and I fled down the path, until we had rounded a corner and could collapse in gales of laughter.
    "Bohemian waxwings?" Michael spluttered. "That can't possibly be a real bird."
    "I'm sure it is," I said, peeping around the comer. The three birders had hunched down by the path and were on the alert, scanning the landscape through their binoculars, one looking left, one right, and the third straight out toward the ocean.
    "Come on," I said. "Let's get out of here, in case the Bohemian waxwing has flown the coop completely."
    We giggled intermittently over the antics of the birders for the next hour or so. But the day got colder and damper, and every time we rounded a headland that I thought would bring us to the end of our journey, we'd encounter another stretch of path. And another flock of birders.
    In one place, I spotted the remains of a campsite back in the trees, some distance from the trail.
    "How odd," I said. "Let's go take a look at this."
    "What's so odd?" Michael asked. "Looks like someone camped here."
    "Definitely," I said, using my foot to rake leaves away from a charred spot. "You can see where they had a fire, right here, and they buried something over there. Garbage, I guess"
    "Beer cans, mostly," Michael said, looking down at the trash-disposal area. "Someone had quite a party."
    The unknown campers had buried their empties on the side of a hill, and the heavy rain had washed away a good deal of the covering dirt, exposing a vein of silver-and-blue aluminum cans.
    "Definitely odd," I murmured.
    "Yes, I should think conditions back in the village are primitive enough to satisfy even the most discriminating masochist. What kind of nut would come all the way over to this side of the island for even more Spartan conditions?"
    "Well, I'm sure some people want to," I said. "But it's illegal. No camping permitted. To protect the fragile ecosystem on the undeveloped side of the island. And definitely no open fires. Normally, they're very quick to chase off anyone who tries."
    "Maybe they did," Michael said. "Whoever did it is long gone."
    Still, I couldn't help fretting as we hiked, and looking for further signs of neglect or environmental damage. I thought of summers past when Dad, Aunt Phoebe, and the rest of their generation would denounce some new change