B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery

by B. B. Cantwell

  Poking an index finger into his other ear in an effort to hear, Darrow listened silently, then said, “Really?” Muttering thanks he punched the button to hang up. As he pushed the antenna down he gave a low whistle.

  “Well, this case just gets weirder,” he said with a glance at Harrington.

  “What! Tell me.”

  “That was Jerry Lorente at the medical examiner’s, fresh from the autopsy, where he recovered the slug that killed van Dyke. It had apparently lodged against his spine.”

  “Yeah, and what’s so interesting that he had to call you on that dad-blamed high-tech gizmo?” Harrington wheedled, waggling his shaggy eyebrows like a shrimp Darrow had seen in a tank at Jake’s Famous Crawfish, one of his favorite Portland restaurants. Nate had quickly discovered the fun of keeping Harry in suspense.

  “Well, it wasn’t your garden variety .38 or .22,” Darrow added, pausing to chew on a thumbnail.

  “Yeah, AND?” Now Harry was turning the same red as that shrimp.

  “Well, according to Jerry, it looks a lot like – well, a lot like a musket ball.”

  Chapter 9

  Thursday, June 13

  Sniffing at the faint odor of disinfectant hanging in the assistant ME’s office at 8:30 the next morning, Darrow sat across a cluttered desk from a man in green scrubs who munched a toasted “everything” bagel, talking with his mouth half-full and spraying poppy seeds and fragments of garlic as he spoke.

  “First time I’ve seen anything like it,” said Jerry Lorente, a fair-skinned, dark-haired Hispanic who periodically reached up with thumb and forefinger to absently pluck at his mustache as he spoke. “But I did a little research and what we have is a lead ball such as was commonly used in firearms of the early to mid-19th century.”

  Lorente used a pair of tongs to pull the slightly misshapen ball from a zip-lock evidence bag and drop it with a loud “plunk” in a metal tray for Darrow’s inspection.

  Darrow tugged off his gray corduroy sport coat as the room’s fuggy atmosphere started to make his head swim.

  “So,” he shrugged, in bewilderment, “Who even has guns like that around Portland, Oregon, in 1996?”

  “Hey, I know who!” erupted a voice from the room’s open doorway.

  Both men’s heads swiveled. Against the doorjamb leaned Gavin Peacock, the office’s resident know-it-all, in scrubs flecked liberally with something brown and yellowish that Darrow didn’t want to analyze too closely.

  Nate had encountered him in the line of duty a couple times and couldn’t decide which was more off-putting: Peacock’s high-pitched, raspy voice or his waggling, skunk-striped beard, cut in the Lincoln style to frame his weak chin but with no mustache. It worked on Honest Abe, but smacked of pretension at the end of the 20th century, Nate thought privately.

  “OK, spill,” Darrow responded as Peacock smirked.

  “I have a cousin who’s into historical re-enactments, you know, of Civil War battles and all that sort of thing, and they have a whole group over at Fort Vancouver – the ‘First Oregon Volunteer Infantry’ – that does demonstrations with muskets and flintlocks and that sort of gun,” Peacock said. “I’ll bet you might find out exactly what fired that ball if you go talk to folks at the national historic site.”

  Darrow listened thoughtfully, realizing this was the first time Peacock had actually said something useful within his hearing.

  Slapping his thigh, Darrow flung his jacket over his sweat-stained shirt back and rose without delay. “That, my skunk-bearded friend, is a great idea.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later Darrow and Harry Harrington were sitting in stopped traffic on the Interstate Bridge at the north edge of Portland as they watched the tower of a Tidewater Barge Co. tug glide beneath the raised drawbridge.

  The tug was pushing a barge filled with frozen French fries downriver to Portland after making the 300-mile trip from Lewiston, Idaho. But all Nate and Harry knew was that it was holding them up.

  “I swear to God, they must have a special scanner set up that sees me coming, because this bridge goes up every darn time I try to cross over to Washington,” Harrington complained.

  Darrow, having grown numb to Harry’s protestations about traffic conspiracies, let his eyes wander to the car stopped in the lane next to them: a blue Civic hatchback with “WASH ME” written in the dust on its fender. Beyond, in the far distance, the perfectly conical snowy peak of Mount Hood rose over the river.

  As his eyes idly wandered over the next car the driver suddenly turned and looked straight into his eyes. Darrow glanced away in embarrassment.

  Then he turned back.

  He and the blue-eyed driver of the next car simultaneously rolled down their windows.

  “Hester!”

  “Nate!”

  “We run into each other in the weirdest places,” Darrow said to his favorite librarian. “Hey, where you heading?”

  “Oh, Pim had a thing in Vancouver this morning and we’re meeting for lunch – it’s her birthday!” Hester called across the traffic line.

  At that moment the bridge deck finished lowering and the gates went up, so Harry pulled forward and Darrow waved to Hester and closed his window.

  The Caprice zoomed ahead the last 500 feet to Washington soil, and Harry took the signed exit toward Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.

  Founded in 1824, Fort Vancouver was one of the first outposts of European settlers in this corner of the continent. Originally it was a Hudson’s Bay Co. fur-trading post. Later it doubled as a military installation for the U.S. Army, with early officers including Ulysses S. Grant and other famous names. Now it was run by the National Park Service, with an authentic replica of the original wooden fort, complete with blacksmith shop, fur warehouse and a chief factor’s house with cannons out front.

  Harry steered the Caprice around a traffic circle and along Officers Row, a stately line of restored, maple-shaded officer homes – now subdivided into ritzy rental townhouses – and hung a right on a winding drive to cross grassy parade grounds to the fort.

  Darrow and Harrington were conferring at the log-built gatehouse with a park ranger, whose long gray braids hung down on both sides of her Smokey Bear hat, when who should walk up the gravel path from the parking lot but Hester McGarrigle.

  Today, Hester was outfitted for the weather in olive-colored slacks and a cream-colored cotton blouse emblazoned with a bamboo print. She carried a broad-brimmed straw hat, part of a large hat collection that she loved in concept but could rarely stand to wear on the grounds that hats were too claustrophobic.

  The ranger continued to talk as Darrow pantomimed his surprise and waved hello to Hester, who stopped and hovered within hearing distance.

  “The guy you really need to talk to is our head curator, John Vouri, he’s the historical firearms expert here,” the ranger said in a gravelly voice, taking off her hat to fan herself on the hot day. “But I’m afraid he’s on family leave in Ohio and won’t be back for a few more days. I don’t really have anyone else on staff who can talk much about that sort of thing, but John’s a wizard on that stuff.”

  “Oh, dear, that’s who I’d hoped to see as well,” Hester spoke up, drawing the others’ attention. “But Detective Darrow, why are you here?”

  Darrow caught a warning glance and a throat-clearing from Harrington, to whom he gave a perfunctory, slightly annoyed nod of reassurance before responding. “Uh, it’s part of an investigation.” The obvious message-left-unsaid: “I can’t talk to you about it.”

  Darrow and Hester had a personal history that was a poorly kept secret among a few of his colleagues. That it had happened when she was a primary witness in a case he was working, potentially risking his job had the brass found out, had created some awkwardness between them. The fling had been short-lived, though the attraction still smoldered.

  Hester caught the implication. She looked at him quizzically for a moment.

  “Well, you might not be able to talk
about it, but I can talk about why I’m here, and frankly it doesn’t hurt for the police to hear,” she forged on.

  Now she had their full attention. Hester peered at the nameplate on the ranger’s breast pocket.

  “Ranger McPhee, I work for the Portland City Library and today I represent the McLoughlin Collection, our collection of art and artifacts named, as you probably know, for your fort’s original chief factor, John McLoughlin.”

  Ranger McPhee’s braids danced as she nodded.

  “And at Memorial Day, for one of your re-enactments, we loaned you folks a valuable replica of a historical French flintlock pistol, what we call the Charbonneau pistol,” Hester continued. “It was to be returned within a few days, but we discovered yesterday that it’s not where it should be, so we’re wondering if there was some delay in getting it back from you folks, perhaps?”

  As she spoke, Darrow and Harrington exchanged meaningful glances and Nate saw that Harry’s eyebrows were starting to do the shrimp thing again.

  Now concern clouded Ranger McPhee’s age-crinkled face.

  “Boy, I wish I could help you there. I can take a look around John’s office but I don’t have keys to his gun lockup. I’m afraid he left in rather a hurry right after the Memorial Day events – his father had a heart attack. And sadly the old man died a week later, so John stayed on for the funeral and is attending to some estate matters before he returns.”

  Hester’s hand flew up to cover her mouth.

  “I could maybe get him on the phone if you need,” Ranger McPhee concluded.

  “Oh, no, no – I’m sorry to hear of his circumstances, let’s not bother the poor man,” Hester said. “I expect it’s probably in a safe place and we’ll get it back when he returns. I think I can placate our curator with that.”

  “Ahem,” Darrow interjected. “This, uh, pistol you’re talking about…Would it by any chance shoot something that looks like a musket ball?”

  Hester appeared dumbfounded by the question. “I really have no idea, but why on earth are you asking?”

  But Ranger McPhee spoke up in response to Nate’s question.

  “If it’s something we were using in our re-enactments, then, yes, it would most likely shoot a standard lead ball like you’d see used in muskets from the early 19th century, I can tell you that much,” she said. “In fact, they were just using firearms like that in a re-enactment rehearsal here earlier this morning. Unfortunately, I saw the volunteer in charge of that part of the program drive out of here about 20 minutes ago or you could have picked his brain.”

  Darrow pinched his lip in thought. As he looked out across the fort, he saw Ethel Pimala approaching from the direction of the fort’s vegetable garden. She wore one of her garish Hawaiian shirts and directed a beaming smile toward Hester.

  “Hester, did you say you were going to have lunch with Pim?” Darrow asked. “I wonder if I could crash your party and join you?”

  “Why – sure,” Hester stammered.

  Harrington cast a stern eye at Darrow. “Nate, we really need to get back – ”

  “It’s OK, I’ll get a ride back to town with Hester,” he consoled Harry, then cocking a questioning eyebrow at the intrepid librarian. “That OK with you?”

  Hester shrugged in confusion. “I don’t see why not. The more the merrier.”

  Chapter 10

  The Wiener Dog Restaurant was something of an institution along Interstate 5 at Jantzen Beach, the first bit of land after southbound motorists crossed the Columbia River bridge from Washington to Oregon. The restaurant’s giant freeway-side sign with a smiling neon dachshund was a delightful bit of 1960s kitsch, Hester thought. She considered it a good omen whenever the sign was switched on so that the tail wagged madly as she drove past.

  It was the perfect place for a birthday lunch for Pim, whose mustard-spotted collection of Aloha shirts offered mute testimony of her appreciation for anything hot-dog-like.

  “This place grinds their own meats and bakes the poppy-seed kaiser rolls fresh every morning, and that seedy German mustard in the crockery pot on every table is flown in straight from the old country,” Pim told Hester and Nate as they were seated in a red vinyl corner banquette by a bustling little man in brown jodhpurs, an immaculate white shirt and skinny black tie.

  “Thank you, Herr Commandant,” Darrow muttered under his breath, feeling for a moment that the man looked familiar but dismissing it with the thought that he’d watched too much “Hogan’s Heroes” as a kid.

  “So, Pim how did your practice go?” Hester asked after the host had poured a round of Pim’s favorite German wine, Blue Nun, and they had toasted her birthday.

  Turning to Darrow, Hester interjected, “Pim is going to lead one of the fort’s Fourth of July re-enactments. It’s the first time they’re staging something that gives recognition to the large workforce of Hawaiians who did much of the farming and hard labor that kept this frontier outpost running back when the only Portland anybody around here had heard of was in Maine. The old square-rigger supply ships coming around the Horn tended to swing out as far as Hawaii before catching a favorable wind to the Pacific Northwest.”

  Darrow listened attentively. He sometimes teased Hester when she got “all school marm-ish,” but he also found it charming.

  In answer to Hester’s query, Pim puffed out her coffee-colored cheeks like a squirrel with a mouthful of walnuts.

  “Well, we might just have to can the whole pandanus weaving demo – I told Nancy Mitchell rhododendron leaves would be a crappy substitute!” the little woman groaned. “But the dancing is coming along,” she said, turning to Darrow. “We got the pep squad gals from Hudson’s Bay High across the river there to come up with sort of an Indian hula, combining Hawaiian dance with some of the native dances from the local Chinook tribes, who provided most of the wives for the men at the fort – even the ones who had other wives back East somewhere.” She chortled and gave the detective a bawdy wink.

  Hester chimed in with a prim smile. “It’s true, I was reading about it in one of the McLoughlin Collection histories. The soldiers called them their ‘country wives.’ ”

  Darrow took a sip of the wine and winced. “Oh, that’s good and sweet. I’ve got this molar that’s reacting badly to sugary things.”

  After a moment with his face screwed up, Darrow blinked his eyes three times fast, then straightened out and directed a question to Pim.

  “So – Ranger McPhee said there was a musket demonstration as part of your gig this morning?”

  Pim’s brown eyes lit up.

  “Yeah, I think that will be one of the more popular things, they’re doing a target practice with papayas on top of fence posts. Some of the Kanaka folk – that’s what they called them – actually had brought along seeds and tried to grow them, though I don’t know how much success they had,” Pim enthused, casually pushing her empty wineglass toward Darrow. He obliged by refilling it from a carafe. After hoisting the glass and slurping another mouthful, she continued.

  “And what is really cool is that the guy who’s leading the shooting demonstration is my friend Pomp Charbonneau. He says he’s something like the great, great, great, great grandson of one of the guides on the Lewis and Clark expedition! The one who was married to Sacajawea!”

  She sat back with a triumphant grin. Hester smiled in appreciation, and privately appreciated watching Darrow arch his luxuriant eyebrows. Pim was obviously enjoying her day in the spotlight. The bookmobile driver didn’t pause long.

  “Pomp is such a practical joker. You know what he did today? Hester, you remember that awful raccoon hat he wore in the parade?”

  Hester shuddered and nodded.

  “Well he shows up today for our practice and we all see that he’s wearing that awful hat again. So we just try to ignore it, until halfway into the shooting practice, see, he suddenly reaches into the pocket of his buckskin coat, pulls out a tin of sardines, cracks it open and starts feeding them to his hat!”

&nbs
p; Quizzical looks from Hester and Nate brought a huge laugh from Pim, who eagerly continued.

  “It turns out that not only does he have that awful hat, he also has a real, live pet raccoon that he’s trained to sit on his head! He calls it Meriwether, just as a poke in the eye to old Lewis, who apparently never liked the original Charbonneau!”

  Satisfied that her anecdote had properly mystified them, she returned to the subject of the shooting demonstration.

  “Oh, and what visitors are really going to love – it’s not just with muskets. Pomp has this classic French flintlock pistol that actually was used by his great-great-granddaddy-whatever when he was with the Corps of Discovery,” Pim added, mispronouncing “Corps” like “corpse,” as if talking about a dead body.

  Darrow, whose earlier eyebrow arching was mostly polite pretense, had been absently eyeing the jodhpur-clad maitre d’, whose lack of customers had led him to fuss over table settings. The fussing had now evolved into maniacal glass polishing two tables away from them, his back turned.

  But at Pim’s latest statement Darrow sat up straight and tuned into what she’d said.

  “What? You say he has an old flintlock pistol? That shoots lead balls?”

  Pim reveled in the interest, taking a long sip of the tooth-curlingly sweet riesling before responding.

  “Sure, it’s pretty much the same kind of ammo they use in the muskets. Why are you so interested, Inspector?”

  Darrow hesitated just a moment before his intuition told him this was a time to share a confidence.

  “It turns out that some kind of musket-ball gun might have been involved in Pieter van Dyke’s murder,” he said, “and it would make sense that it was a pistol, in the circumstances.”

  As a look of consternation crossed Pim’s face, Darrow quickly continued.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting your friend had anything to do with it, but if he knows a lot about guns like that I’m thinking he might help me learn more about what we’re looking for. Does he live nearby?”