Gone Gull

by Donna Andrews

  “So what survival advantage do you think the weasel’s varied diet gives him?” he asked.

  But the boys had picked up the sheets of paper.

  “Seagull,” they exclaimed, nearly in unison. Dad and Great-great, as they called Grandfather, frequently organized little competitions with bird identification flash cards—a game the boys might not have enjoyed nearly as much if their successes weren’t so often rewarded with chocolate.

  “Weasels!” Grandfather repeated. “Do you know what animals are closely related to the weasel?”

  Since this sounded like the sort of question that might eventually lead to the consumption of chocolate, the boys abandoned Prine’s papers and returned to competing for Grandfather’s attention.

  “Fine. See if I care.” Prine stomped over to the cafeteria line and grabbed a tray. I kept an eye on him, and was relieved to see that he was having the servers put his food into a couple of carryout boxes. I wasn’t the only person to breathe a sigh of relief when he picked up his boxes and stormed out.

  Grandfather studiously ignored Prine’s papers during the rest of the meal, but I noticed that when he got up from the table, he casually picked up the papers, folded them, and stuffed them into one of the pockets in his khaki sportsman’s vest, being careful not even to glance at them. Though he did glare briefly in the direction of Mrs. Venable. Who appeared to be paying absolutely no attention to him. A little odd, since years of appearing before TV cameras on various nature shows had made Grandfather a first-class ham. People tended to watch him, in no small part because even when he was doing something utterly mundane, like delivering his tray to the service hatch, he managed to give the impression that he was about to pull off a stunt that would make Moses and the Red Sea look small time. I suspected that Mrs. Venable was merely pretending to be oblivious to him, and I wondered why.

  Ah, well. She was on the list of people Kevin was checking out. And if he didn’t find much about her, I’d send him back to take a closer look.

  But later. I was ready to stop thinking about the vandal for a while. I’d spent the meal listening to weasel lore with one ear while studying my fellow instructors—I was trying not to think of them as suspects. Five of the nine who had some association with Jazz Hands were here this week. Of course one of the five was Amanda, who was such an old friend that I didn’t really consider her a suspect. And while it was easy to suspect Prine of any kind of unpleasantness, the vandal had displayed a certain degree of ingenuity and inventiveness that I wasn’t sure Prine possessed.

  But I had an even harder time imagining any of the other teachers doing anything so nasty.

  Peggy Tanaka, our jewelry maker, a slender, bubbly Japanese American woman in her twenties, was sitting with Rose Noire, and from the look of it they were discovering all kinds of common interests and becoming each other’s newest best friends. While I wasn’t sure I believed in Rose Noire’s talk of auras, premonitions, and flashes of intuition—and sometimes winced at the mystical or New Age phrases in which she cloaked her pronouncements—I knew her to be a fairly keen judge of character. Peggy was low on my personal suspect list.

  Dante Marino, our woodworker, was the center of a lively group that, from the words I could overhear, was having an intense discussion of dadoes, miters, and rabbets, whatever they were. If I watched Dante’s gestures long enough I might actually figure it out. Although it was only the first day of this week’s class, the woodworking students had already grasped the importance of moving breakable or spillable things far away from Dante’s elegant and ever-active hands. Hard to imagine him as our sneak vandal, either. If Dante didn’t like something, he told you about it. Maybe even took a swing at you, if you were a guy. But sneaking around—distinctly out of character.

  And then there was Gillian, our potter, always so cool and self-contained. I suddenly realized that if it were merely a case of figuring out who had the brains, boldness, and subtlety to carry out the vandalism campaign, Gillian would be top of my list. But I’d seen her expression of disapproval and distaste when we’d found the damage in the papermaking studio, not to mention her quiet anger when her students’ pots were ruined. Both had seemed quite genuine. So either Gillian wasn’t the culprit or she should be helping Michael teach the acting class. And since Rose Noire seemed to have taken to her almost as much as Peggy, my money was on her innocence.

  In addition to the three Jazz Hands veterans, there was also Valerian, our leather worker—who hadn’t come up in Kevin’s research on Jazz Hands, but the Virginia craft scene was a small world. He could have known them. Valerian was, in Cordelia’s words, an odd duck—a brilliant craftsman, an excellent if low-key teacher, but with so bland and colorless a personality that he tended to disappear altogether in social situations. In Dad’s eyes, of course, this would make him the prime suspect. But Dad had read hundreds—possibly thousands—of mystery books whose authors were constantly trying to make their bloodthirsty killers blend into the woodwork until the next-to-last page. In real life, I doubted that Valerian’s passive and phlegmatic exterior hid anything but more of the same. I’d keep my eyes on him anyway, if only so I could reassure Dad that, yes, I wasn’t overlooking the quiet one.

  Perhaps my problem was that I was reluctant to suspect any of my fellow craftspeople of wrongdoing. I found myself hoping that it was one of the students instead. I studied them, particularly the familiar faces who had also taken classes last week. A couple of them saw me looking and waved. I put on my most cheerful face and waved back. Perhaps the dining hall wasn’t the best place to ruminate over my suspicions.

  One student did stand out in my mind—the Slacker. Whose actual name was Joe something. He was sitting at the same table as Valerian. Probably a good move if he was looking for peace and quiet. Valerian not only didn’t talk much, he tended to dampen conversation around him. Not in a negative way—the one time I could remember sitting at the same table as Valerian I’d found it curiously easy to fall into a comfortable silence, concentrating on Marty’s food, even pointing rather than speaking when I’d wanted the salt and pepper. From the mellow look on the Slacker’s face, he felt the same way. Though, unlike Valerian, who ate with his eyes half closed, the Slacker was constantly studying everyone around him, waiting expectantly for his fellow beings to entertain him. Maybe I should be calling him the Voyeur instead of the Slacker.

  And why was he here, anyway? After the way he’d hopped from pottery to papermaking to watercolors last week, I’d fully expected him to cancel for this week, and yet here he was, back again, drifting around the center with a vague smile on his face, seemingly perfectly content no matter what was going on. He answered genially when anyone addressed him but seemed equally happy if everyone left him alone. According to his teachers from last week he occupied the first third of each session by slowly and methodically setting up his work space, filled the last third with cleaning up after himself, and in between spent more time appreciating his fellow students’ work than performing any of his own. Did all that make him suspicious? Or was I only suspicious of him because I couldn’t imagine spending more than a week with busy, creative people while doing next to nothing myself.

  “Maybe he just likes hanging out with creative people,” I reminded myself as I watched him saunter out of the dining room onto the terrace with a wineglass in his hand and park himself in one of the Adirondack chairs as if planning to spend the rest of the evening there, people-watching.

  Although my suspicion of him rose when someone else came and took the chair next to him—Mrs. Venable, the bird-watcher whose presence had so irked Grandfather.

  I glanced around, spotted Caroline, and beckoned to her. She strolled over.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I gestured unobtrusively toward Mrs. Venable. “What’s her story?”

  “Irma Venable.” Caroline sighed and shook her head. “Not your grandfather’s favorite birder.”

  “Well, I gathered that
. What’s he got against her—did she fail to genuflect when he entered the latest Audubon Society meeting?”

  “She’s not a responsible bird-watcher.” Caroline frowned as she said it.

  “Let me guess—she inflates her life list with birds she hasn’t really seen?”

  “I’m sure she does.” Caroline waved dismissively. “Your grandfather would only laugh at that. But she’s also careless of the welfare of the birds. Indifferent to it. That maddens him.”

  “Doesn’t keep her feeders filled and her birdbath free of ice?” I asked. “Because I have a confession to make—I’m pretty bad at stuff like that myself.”

  “I’m sure your grandfather will be delighted to hear that you actually have feeders and a birdbath nowadays. No, the problem with Irma is that she’s in it for the glory. Having the longest life list. Being the first to report a rare bird or an interesting vagrant.”

  That sounded to me like just about every hardcore birder I’d ever met. I didn’t say it aloud, but Caroline could read my face.

  “Okay, here’s an example. A few years ago we went up to New England to film a segment on the piping plover. It’s threatened or endangered—I can’t remember which—though conservation efforts are helping bring it back. One of your grandfather’s contacts told him that a small colony of them, just a few pairs, had begun nesting in an area where they hadn’t been seen for decades. Your grandfather scoped the site out and decided it wasn’t safe to film just yet—there was a danger that all the lights and noise and human traffic would upset the parent birds and distract them from sitting on their nests and then caring for the young as they hatched. We decided to wait a few days, maybe a week or two—however long it took till all the eggs had hatched and the chicks were a few days old. And if you think it’s fun, hanging around with your grandfather when he’s bored and waiting for something, think again.”

  “You deserve a medal,” I said. “A whole bunch of medals. What does this have to do with Mrs. Venable?”

  “She found out about the plovers. She was probably keeping track of your grandfather’s whereabouts in the hopes that he’d lead her to something interesting. Next thing we know, she’s posted a selfie of herself with her head right up against one of the plovers’ nests—you just don’t do that with wild birds! And then she shared the location with a whole bunch of so-called birders as clueless as she is. By the time we got out there again the next day, the whole area was trampled, and something had eaten most of the eggs. Could have been a raccoon, attracted by all the activity. Or a dog that came with one of the gawkers. Either way, a promising new breeding ground was destroyed. Completely irresponsible. And you know the most maddening thing of all?”

  I shook my head and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

  “She convinced everyone that she’d found the plovers first, all by herself. Faked evidence to prove it.”

  “Faked it how?”

  “She pushed back the date on her digital camera so it looked as if she’d taken her pictures the day before your grandfather and I got there. Started bragging all over the birding lists about how she’d succeeded in finding the plovers before the great Dr. Blake.”

  “I’m starting to see why Grandfather dislikes her.”

  “Baptiste was able to disprove her claims—he took one of her pictures of the shoreline and blew it up big enough that you could read the hull number on a Navy ship that was still hundreds of miles away in Norfolk on the day she claimed to have taken her pictures. But that didn’t settle things—some people claimed Baptiste had faked the ship to make her look bad, and others that Mrs. Venable probably didn’t realize her camera was set wrong and made an honest mistake. There are still people sniping back and forth at each other in some of the forums.”

  “Who knew the birding world was such a contentious place?” I said. “Remind me not to let those two bird feeders of mine escalate into a full-scale addiction.”

  “Indeed.” Caroline stared at Ms. Venable for a few more moments. Then she shook her head. “Don’t turn your back on her. She may look like a mild-mannered, slightly ditsy granny, but she’s really a snake in the grass.”

  She strolled off. I studied Ms. Venable and the Slacker for a little while longer. I couldn’t hear them, but based on the body language and facial expressions, Mrs. Venable was trying to get some information from the Slacker—information he either didn’t know or had no intention of sharing. He was starting to look a little harassed. She was starting to look a little irritated. Good.

  I planned to keep my eye on her. I couldn’t figure out how engineering our vandalism wave could possibly advance her quest for birding glory, but she was a known liar and an enemy to Grandfather. What if she thought she could annoy him back attacking the center? Of course, that would mean she’d have had to lurk around here last week, before the start of the class she was taking. I made a mental note to warn Cordelia about her, and find out when she’d registered. If she’d done so right after Grandfather’s class was announced, more proof of Caroline’s theory. Then again, if she’d registered at the last minute, it could mean that she’d lurked last week and decided that this week it would be easier to spy on him at closer range. Suspicious either way.

  As the dinner period ended, students and faculty went off in various directions. Cordelia had laid in a large supply of kid-friendly movies, so Michael and Eric took the boys and the rest of their classmates to the theater for a showing of that 1960 Disney classic, Swiss Family Robinson. Two bridge tables formed on the terrace, with light provided by large strings of white paper lanterns overhead and the Slacker standing by as kibitzer-in-chief. Grandfather and Baptiste, his photographer, set off on their usual evening nature walk, accompanied by the entire photography class plus anyone else whose idea of fun included stumbling along in the dark in Grandfather’s wake. Rose Noire’s two-hour class on relaxation and meditation was popular, though I suspected more relaxation than meditation was happening—whenever I passed the open archway that led to the library turned yoga room, I could hear several gentle snores rising over the soothing bell and flute music.

  I didn’t join in any of the organized—or disorganized—fun. Instead, I indulged in something I knew would make me feel better—tackling many of the smaller or more urgent to-do items in my notebook. Though I didn’t plan to tell anyone what I was up to—except, perhaps, for Cordelia, whom I suspected was doing the same thing. And I carried around one of Dad’s Agatha Christie paperbacks in my pocket, so if anyone took me to task for not relaxing, I could pull it out and explain that I was just doing this one little thing before getting back to my reading.

  I thoroughly inspected the theater and the drama and dance studios, not just checking for undiscovered vandalism but getting a feeling for what they were supposed to look like this week, the better to spot anything that might be amiss later. I even took a few photos of each room with my phone.

  When Dad arrived back, I made much of poor Victor, who was sporting a rather large cast, and reassured him that Grandfather and Baptiste were delighted that he’d be joining the nature photography class. And then I ordered him and Dad both to their rooms with a promise that I’d send up a tray with dinner. Dad looked as done in as his patient, possibly as a result of spending the entire afternoon with Victor. Although apparently Victor shared Dad’s passion for crime fiction—at least I hoped he did, since by the sound of it, they had spent most of their wait in the ER discussing Agatha Christie.

  About the time I finished with them, Horace arrived, and I got him settled in the last vacant staff room.

  “Are any of the crime scenes intact?” he asked.

  “Sorry, no,” I said. “We’ve basically been trying to clean them up before anyone knew there was a problem. But Cordelia has some of the evidence. And we took pictures. You can tackle it first thing in the morning. Have you eaten? I can send up a tray.”

  I went down to the kitchen to arrange for all the trays I’d offered. Marty had already gone to bed, which was
a relief—he always seemed to glare at anyone invading his kitchen as if he suspected them of contaminating his spotless counters. But his two assistants jumped to assemble the trays and assured me they’d deliver them right away. I suspect they were glad to take a break from peeling potatoes for the morning’s hash browns. While I was there—and since Marty wasn’t—I inspected the ravine behind the main building, to make sure he hadn’t reverted to flinging garbage back there. I went back to my studio and checked my e-mail to find that Kevin had sent a preliminary rundown of the students who had some connection with Jazz Hands—only a dozen of them, thank goodness. I annotated the list to show what class they were in, forwarded it to Cordelia, and tucked a printed copy in my notebook beside the list of faculty with Jazz Hands connections.

  And finally I made my rounds of all the studios. Most of the doors were locked—at least my nagging was having some effect. I inspected them all, even the locked ones. For one thing, we had no way of telling if the vandal had a key, and for another, I wanted to check the windows. Sure enough, several carefully locked studios had open windows. And no one but me was making effective use of the lockable storage cabinets we’d installed along one wall of each studio for supplies. Of course we’d also installed lots of display spaces. Shelves for pottery and iron. Hooks and hanging wires for art. Rods for quilts. Our vision was that when not actually in class, the students would wander through each other’s studios. We imagined potters and fiber artists inspiring each other … art class students sketching Rose Noire’s herbs … multimedia collaborations … students becoming inspired to stay on another week to try a new medium. If—no, when—we caught the vandal, I’d be hard pressed not to strangle him for the damage he’d done to that vision.

  Edward Prine, of course, had left both doors and windows wide open. He hadn’t bothered locking up last week, either, and then had made an enormous fuss when he found his studio splashed with the red paint. I slammed his windows closed and muttered a few words that I usually tried not to use when the boys were around. As usual, his studio looked as if it had been ransacked by particularly thorough and vindictive burglars, but that was the way it always looked. Next year I hoped we could find a tidier painter. I locked up and left him a stern note, reminding him to lock up in the future. Not that he’d pay any attention.