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

by B. B. Cantwell

  But what was that on his head? Some kind of animal skin? Cocking the magnifier at a new angle, she realized it was a raccoon. You could see the stripes. But not just a skin. A whole raccoon.

  A little bell rang in the back of Hester’s mind.

  “Hoo boy, it’s been a long day,” she groaned, leaving the magnifying glass to rest atop the first-day cover for a moment while she rubbed her weary eyes.

  Shaking her head to clear it, she looked back down and something at the edge of the magnifier caught her attention.

  She quickly picked up the glass and moved it over the engraved picture on the side of the envelope.

  “I’ll be dilly damned,” Hester breathed, unconsciously repeating an oath she’d heard her mother use from the time Hester was still in rompers.

  It wasn’t plain to the naked eye, but under the magnifier it was almost hard to miss. Interwoven with the reeds and cattails among which the explorers waded were thin, angled letters. In places an “h” looked like a stalk. A “C” formed the edge of a leaf.

  Together the tiny letters, like an artist’s signature, spelled “POMP CHARBONNEAU.”

  Chapter 13

  Hester was more than ready to decompress at day’s end.

  Happily, she had plans after work to meet her old friend, Karen White, for a beer at one of Portland’s coziest new southside watering holes.

  The Blue Heron brewpub was named for the city’s beautiful official bird. From the quiet Sellwood neighborhood bluff where the craft brewery nestled among the district’s renowned antique shops, herons could often be spied soaring over the nearby Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, at the edge of the Willamette River. The birds’ distinctive, gargled “gronk, gronk” call always sounded like someone being garroted, Hester thought. Perfect for Portland, she believed: elegance with an odd twist.

  Hester hadn’t seen Karen for more than a couple quick coffee breaks in the four months since her old school friend had revealed that she had been leading a secret life under the pen name of Teri June, author of a best-selling series of “tell it like it is” novels for preteen girls. The books had been at the core of a book-banning controversy that involved Sara Duffy, the murdered librarian. The attendant publicity had given a huge boost to Teri June’s flagging sales.

  “Well, look at you! Things must be going better!” Hester exclaimed as she spotted Karen at a corner table beneath raw oak beams, slowly whirling ceiling fans, and low-hanging light fixtures fashioned from … were those pony kegs?

  Karen was wearing a flamboyant linen sheath dress festooned with giant sunflowers that shouted “Provence.” The tight, shapeless garments were the kind of thing often seen on wealthy, overly tanned and whippet-thin older women. On short, well-padded Karen, it reminded Hester of one of her nana’s stuffed rigatonis.

  Karen jumped up and the two friends hugged, after which Karen carefully primped to stop her ample bosom from escaping her dress. Sitting back down in a thronelike wicker chair, she quickly fanned herself with the beer menu and ran a finger around her neck to loosen the slightly sweaty, persimmon-orange bandanna knotted at her throat.

  “Well, Teri June Inc. is back in business, I tell you!” exulted Karen, swinging the pounded-silver hoops dangling from her ears. “Hest, the whole Sara Duffy episode has been a gold mine for me. All that time I was afraid to come clean about my writing, and it turns out that my secret life has just been raw meat for the publicity agents. My confessional on ‘Oprah’ really put Teri June back on the best-seller list, I tell you! I have been book touring until my eyes bleed.”

  Hester smiled for her friend’s good fortune, and eyed the golden beer in a half-full glass on the table in front of Karen. “Well, it’s a warm day, what’s good here?”

  “I got the Portland Pilsener, and I think it’s just about as good as those German lagers they charge $4 for on the deck at the Harborside,” Karen said.

  “Well, that’s probably because it’s most like the light and watery Blitz of your college days, dear heart,” Hester said with a grin as she scanned the list.

  Hester often surprised dining companions with her taste for dark beer, nurtured by growing up as the daughter of a confirmed Guinness man.

  “I’m going to try the Sellwood Stout – it says it has ‘rich aromas of burnt caramel and sarsaparilla,’ ” Hester enthused, adding as an afterthought, “I wonder if they could serve it over ice cream?”

  When a hunky young barkeep with an Australian accent who called her “Luv” had taken Hester’s order, the two friends compared their weeks.

  “I have to say, Karen, I really didn’t need to be involved in another murder case!” Hester moaned. “I don’t want to be the ‘Miss Marple librarian,’ I just want my cozy old Portland back, with the dopey mayor on his clunky red Huffy, and the corny Rose Festival, and people getting all excited about Packy the elephant’s birthday party at the zoo.”

  “Oh, Hester, I heard about Pieter van Dyke, and I’m so sorry,” Karen responded, reaching out to hold her friend’s hand. “I know how nice it is to come home to plain old Portland. I tell you, after doing book signings in New York, Atlanta and Philly all in one weekend, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the old hometown.”

  Karen sipped her beer and took off on another tangent.

  “Do you know how much it costs to take a cab from the airport to midtown Manhattan? It was like 75 bucks – and I’m sure the Punjabi driver or whatever he was circled around the same block five times on the way to my hotel, unless there really is a Starbucks on every corner there now!”

  Hester found herself tuning out her friend’s monologue. She briefly considered taking Karen into her confidence about the weird discovery she’d made with the first-day cover. But Hester realized with some regret that her friend’s long deception about her writing career had expended some of the basic currency of any friendship: trust. She bit back her urge to say something.

  “And I swear, if the publisher wasn’t picking up the tab, I couldn’t afford chicken-fried steak in some of those East Coast cities,” Karen went on.

  As this statement sank in, Hester suddenly realized she was famished. Glancing at her wristwatch, she interrupted Karen.

  “Say, Happy Hour ends in 20 minutes, do you want to get some Buffalo wings or something?”

  Karen didn’t miss a beat, waving to the barkeep, who seemed like her new best friend.

  “Oh, Simon, could we get another round, and two orders of those Fusion Wings?” Turning back to Hester, she enthused, “Girl, Buffalo wings are as outdated as the bison of the Great Plains. These guys do ’em up with a combination of Thai peanut sauce, Korean kimchi and Fijian chili lime.”

  When their order had come and the barkeep started to rush back to the bar with a tray bearing their empty glasses, Hester had a sudden thought. She grabbed at his elbow as he started to skip away.

  Unfortunately she caused him to stumble as he whirled back her direction. Grasping from her chair to steady him so he wouldn’t drop the tray, she pulled him this way and that as the heavy pint glasses slid on his tray, until he came to a stop with his sinewy calves, bristling with curly, sun-bleached hair, straddling Hester’s bare thighs just beneath the indigo-blue batik skirt she’d changed into before leaving the library.

  Looking straight ahead at the waist of his day-glo orange and chartreuse board shorts four inches from her eyes she could read the label, “Quiksilver/Australia.”

  “Whoa, luv, we’ve only just met!” he chortled, peering down at her through the wraparound sunglasses he wore even indoors. “But I get off at 7, darlin’.”

  Hester, who knew her face was as red as the cayenne peppering the chicken wings sending up blissful aromas from her plate, quickly pushed her chair back three scoots.

  “Ahem, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean to grab – Are you OK?” She dabbed at her temple with a napkin.

  “Never better, luv, what can I do you for?” he leered.

  Taking a quick gulp at her new beer �
�� Willamette wheat ale this time – Hester pointed at a large television over the bar. “I just wanted to ask, before – before I – ”

  She shook her fiery locks. “Might it be possible to watch something other than wrestling?” she asked meekly. “I was thinking, maybe local news?”

  Turning to Karen as the barkeep fiddled with a remote control from behind the counter, Hester shook her head. “I don’t know about this new idea of having big TVs at bars. I can’t believe it will catch on. Wouldn’t it be more peaceful to just have some Pachelbel playing on the stereo?”

  Karen rolled her eyes and was about to speak, but a newscast on the TV suddenly caught Hester’s attention.

  “…and from Forest Park, veteran reporter Misty Day has this latest update on the shocking Pieter van Dyke murder.”

  The spa-tanned face of KSNZ’s former co-anchor filled the screen. With the unfortunate oversaturated color setting on the Blue Heron’s cheap set, she resembled a tangerine wearing mascara.

  “Thank you, Thaddeus. The roller-coaster ride continues in this breaking news story as word came today from Phil Bishop, founder of Oregon’s Zeus sport-shoe empire, that although The Oregonian has called off its part of the contest, he is continuing to offer the $50,000 he had promised to the finder of the Rose Festival medallion. But instead of it being a prize, it will be a reward for return of what is now considered a potentially vital clue in the murder of one of Portland’s leading citizens, philanthropist and civic leader Pieter van Dyke,” the reporter said, biting off her words as the camera panned out to show her standing beneath the arch of the Thurman Street Bridge. Around her, people roved every which direction.

  “And as you can see all around me, that news has brought out hundreds of civic-minded citizen sleuths who are combing this park in the belief that the medallion might not have wandered far from the ill-fated horseshoe pit that remains cordoned off behind me. Here’s one hopeful searcher, Mr. Vernon Kayzer, a retired sanitation worker who drove 3 1/2 hours from Pendleton to search with his metal detector. Mr. Kayzer, what are your hopes?”

  A man with a military crew cut, a nasal voice and a turquoise track suit loomed into the picture.

  “Well, Misty, with my trusty machine here I’ve found everything from Indian Head nickels on the beach at Yachats to a jarful of pennies buried in a schoolyard in Hermiston, so I figure I might just be the one to help crack this murder case – and if I get the $50,000 reward, I personally pledge 1 percent of it to the Future Numismatists of America.”

  The camera cut back to a bored-looking Misty Day, caught rolling her eyes before she snapped back to her on-air persona.

  “That’s a noble idea, Mr. Kayzer. Now, Thaddeus, I have my own discovery to reveal about this corner of Forest Park. It’s not the first time it has figured in an infamous Portland murder.”

  She paused to arch a heavily penciled eyebrow before continuing.

  “Today I came across a small historical marker, hidden among the bushes here, documenting how this was the 1850 land claim of one Danford Balch. He settled here with his wife and nine children, not far from the claim of a family named Stump, with whom the Balches did not get along. In true Shakespearean fashion, the Stumps’ eldest son, Mortimer, eloped with Balch’s 16-year-old daughter, after which Balch shot and killed him. As a result, Danford Balch was the first person to be legally hanged in Portland. True story.”

  The camera zoomed in on Day’s stern face.

  “So, Thaddeus,” she concluded, almost managing to furrow her overtucked brow, “this isn’t the first time this quiet nook of Forest Park has figured in a macabre story of murder. And if the Zeus Corporation’s reward leads to conviction of another killer, it might once again lead to a public hanging for a murder linked to the old Balch Place. For KSNZ, I’m Misty Day.”

  Dumbfounded, Hester stared at the TV. Then, as if in a trance, she stood, pointed to the continuing newscast and spoke loudly to the two other tables of Happy Hour revelers.

  “I want to say for the record that, first, anybody who went to middle school in Portland was taught all about Danford Balch and his son-in-law – though maybe Misty skipped class that day – and, two, Oregon hasn’t had hanging as a method of execution since 1931!”

  Karen White sat with her hand splayed across her downcast eyes. The other bar patrons stared silently at Hester.

  Finally looking up, Karen rose, scooped the chicken wings on to one platter, grabbed their beers and toe-walked Hester quickly across the pub and through an open French door to an outdoor balcony.

  Pushing Hester into a seat beneath a burnt-orange canvas umbrella at a table with a downhill view toward the river, Karen handed Hester her beer.

  “Some people might say you’ve had too much, but I think you haven’t had enough,” Karen told her old friend. “Chugalug, dear heart.”

  Hester took a gulp of beer as Karen gestured with a wing bone at the weary librarian.

  “In fact, I think all this murder business has you taking life so seriously you haven’t had much fun on several fronts for too long,” Karen said, finally tugging at the knot and tossing her bandanna on the table in a gesture of liberation. “For one thing, your little fling – or I might say, ‘flingus interrupttus’ – with Clarence Darrow has you all uptight.”

  “Clarence was his great, great uncle or something, and you know his name is Nate,” Hester rejoined with a minor pout.

  “Fine, but you can’t tell me that little Marx Brothers physical comedy act in there with our Australian buddy didn’t have some Freudian element,” Karen retorted. “You, girlfriend, need someone in your bed other than that shedding cat of yours.”

  Hester stared silently at Portland’s West Hills, where the glare of the lowering sun through shimmering waves of heat rising off downtown created the optical illusion of flames racing along the ridgeline.

  As she brooded on Karen’s goading, something else niggled at Hester’s consciousness. A tinny sound came and went from down toward the river, and then got louder, finally transforming into music with a heavy Latin beat.

  Karen, too, was peering toward the Willamette when finally the source of the music appeared through a break in the bigleaf maples. At first, it was like a mirage: an old riverboat, like something from a Mark Twain story.

  Then it came to them both in a flash.

  “It’s the Rose! The old stern-wheeler that gives river tours,” Karen exclaimed. “Oh, I’ve heard about this, they’re doing Sunset Macarena Cruises.”

  The Latin song and dance craze, the Macarena, had been sweeping the world in recent months. Suddenly, Karen’s eyes narrowed.

  “That’s it! It’s exactly what you need! I’m brilliant!”

  Hester shot a veiled look at her friend. “Oh, Karen, I couldn’t – ”

  “Of course you could!” Karen shot back. “And in this summery weather, that boat is going to be crawling with hot men! Hester, sweetie, I’m booking us a cruise!”

  Chapter 14

  An hour later, Hester had lucked into an easy parking space on maple-lined Everett Street and was trying to remember if she had any food in her fridge as she trudged up the front steps of the Luxor, her Egyptian-themed apartment house in the Northwest neighborhood.

  “Good evening, Ramses,” she called out, a habit she had picked up from watching too many old movies in which New York socialites greeted their uniformed doormen as they came and went. But in Hester’s case, her greeting was to the cement Egyptian pharaoh figure over the doorway.

  As she ducked through the front door and past the potted palm in the elephant-foot planter, the elevator’s door was just swinging closed.

  “Hold the elevator!” Hester called, knowing she was taking a chance that there was only one occupant. The Luxor’s tiny, elderly elevator, with its manually operated accordion-cage safety gate and outer door that swung out instead of sliding together in the middle, could hold only two passengers. “And even those had better be of compatible body-mass ratio,” she oft
en warned friends.

  The inner door ratcheted open – there must be room! – and the outer door swung out toward her. Hester ducked in.

  The signature aroma of bay rum and hot pepperoni told her who it was before she’d even looked up to meet the eyes of Nate Darrow.

  “Gosh! We meet again,” Hester grinned self-consciously, twisting her body sideways so Darrow could hold his big pizza box close to horizontal while she punched the button for “three.”

  Pizza was his all-too-usual dinner from Escape From New York, the counterculture pizza joint up on 23rd named for a bad Kurt Russell movie from the ’80s. The pizza joint’s neon Statue of Liberty sign was a neighborhood icon.

  “Hester! How was your afternoon?” Darrow inquired.

  She opened her mouth but realized she had to stop to think about her answer. Finally, she spoke.

  “Well, actually, it was kind of weird, if you want to know the truth.” She paused and looked into his hazel eyes. As usual, she felt a little extra flip-flop as their eyes locked. Was this what the French called a frisson? Hester shook herself out of overanalyzing.

  “As a matter of fact, something came up that I probably need to talk to you about,” she said in a rush, as the old lift clinked and clanked slowly upward. “Something – ” she hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Something to do with that Charbonneau character.”

  A jolt like a painful memory crossed Darrow’s face. When it became apparent Hester wasn’t ready to say more, he crinkled his forehead. “So, have you eaten?” Bobbing the box up and down in his hands and nodding at it, he added, “Why don’t you come on up?”

  Hester hesitated.

  “Oh, you know I like to watch my girlish figure.” A facetious tone, then a note of seriousness as she added, “And Bingle T. is probably ready to eat his foot.”

  She referred to the 28-pound Maine Coon cat with whom she shared an apartment, whose constant crooning as a kitten got him named after Bing Crosby. The initial “T,” for “Troublemaker,” came later, because of his tendency to escape from her apartment and show up in the most unlikely of places.