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

by B. B. Cantwell

  He sipped the merlot – good plummy notes developing, he noticed – and remembered the printing order he’d stuffed in a pocket.

  He pulled it out and mentally calculated the income it would bring. Thank God, maybe he’d keep the collection agencies at bay for another month. Child-support was killing him.

  Not only that, but Pomp Jr. was graduating from high school on Sunday back in Virginia and Dad had promised him a Trans Am for graduation. While Charbonneau tended to live for today and didn’t worry much about his children’s future, a Charbonneau promise meant something.

  Pushing himself out of the armchair, he stepped through another door, into his print shop.

  A look at his watch told him he had a few minutes before his dinner would be hot. Thinking ahead to the weekend when he’d tackle the art prints, he set his wineglass safely out of the way and busied himself cleaning up from his last job: the Flying Canoe first-day cover.

  A grin flashed across his face as he studied the extra copy he’d kept to frame for his wall. He and his ancestors had long resented the short shrift historians gave Toussaint. From the time he was knee-high to his grandfather, Pomp had heard the family’s belief that the Corps of Discovery should have been known as the Lewis, Clark and Charbonneau Expedition.

  So Pomp had exercised his wicked sense of humor and put Toussaint in the canoe, too, when he replicated the Flying Canoe first-day cover for Pieter van Dyke.

  Chapter 16

  Friday, June 14

  At 8 a.m., traffic into the city was all clogged up on the downhill bends of the Sunset Highway just before the tunnel, but it didn’t bother Nate Darrow. He took pleasure as he shifted into fourth gear and listened to the throaty roar of his classic silver Volvo 1800 coupe as it rocketed up the hill in the opposite direction, toward Portland’s western suburbs.

  Darrow’s old car was one of his few material possessions in which he invested real pride, one of the Seven Deadly Sins his Lutheran grandmother had warned him about.

  He’d worked the summer after high school on a crab boat out of the Oregon Coast town of Newport to buy the used car, a symbol of panache that had set him apart from school chums who drove hulking Impalas and old Beetles.

  He called his car “Sven,” in honor of its Swedish heritage, which it shared with Darrow’s mother’s family, the Boresons. He was reminded of that heritage every time he looked at the parts bill when his car needed a repair – more and more often, now that it was 30 years old.

  “They have to charge so much because some guy named Ole rows the parts across from Stockholm,” he grumbled jokingly to friends.

  A recent rebore meant this was one of those periods when his bank balance was low but he could step on Sven’s accelerator and not have to worry about sounds from under the hood like someone choking on lutefisk.

  And he always took pleasure in the car’s red leather bucket seats, wood-trimmed dashboard, and sleek profile.

  “It’s like Bond’s original Aston-Martin, just without the machine guns or the smoke-screen thing,” he had boasted to Harry Harrington.

  “That kind of depends on how much oil Sven is burning on any particular day, Nate,” Harry had replied.

  This sun-drenched morning was supposed to be his half-day off, but Darrow was pursuing a hunch on how to track down the elusive Pomp Charbonneau without having to wait for a stakeout outside The Oregonian that night. With Hester’s revelations about his apparent involvement in forgery, Charbonneau was definitely now a “person of interest.”

  Recalling that the printer also dabbled at winemaking, Darrow had phoned his brother, Bud, after saying goodnight to Hester the previous night.

  “If Charbonneau is part of the winemaking scene out in the West Valley, my brother will know him,” he’d assured Hester.

  Bud Darrow had chosen to carry on the “family business,” as he put it. The two boys had heard their father, an Oregon State viticulture professor, wax eloquently and endlessly about the Willamette Valley’s suitability for growing cooler-climate wine grapes such as pinot noir and pinot gris. While his father’s involvement in Oregon’s nascent wine industry in the 1970s had been limited to academics and bringing home bottles to sample around the family dinner table, from the early 1980s Bud had been one of the region’s rising winemaking stars. He had his winery in the little village of Carlton, north of McMinnville, where the town’s tall grain elevator now cast its shadow on a growing number of tony tasting rooms along the two blocks of “downtown.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met Charbonneau,” Bud Darrow responded on the phone to Nate’s inquiry. Bud’s voice was old cigar to Nate’s coffee and cream.

  “He’s kind of a survivalist nut. Has it in his head he can do a great Bordeaux blend here, but he just can’t get his Cab to ripen in the little gulch he’s farming. Frost comes too soon.”

  “Can you tell me where he lives?” Nate pressed.

  “Oh, golly, he’s out below Ribbon Ridge. Makes wine in a barn he bought from old Billy Brickhouse, and lives in an Airstream trailer next to Billy’s chardonnay vineyard. But the roads out there are like a rabbit warren, you’ll never find it on your own.”

  “What if I talked to this Billy fellow? Could he show me? It’s kind of urgent.”

  “Naw, don’t bother old Billy. He’s got phylloxera in his best pinot patch and the man’s a basket case right now. Tell you what, come out for breakfast tomorrow and afterward I’ll run you out there. I’ve got to pick up a load of cow dung up in Yamhill anyway. Solstice is coming, you know.”

  As Nate turned Sven past the Beaverton malls to weave his way toward the rural valley, he pondered the phenomenon that was his big brother. Two years earlier, Bud Darrow, who had earned a double major in philosophy and viticulture at U.C. Davis, had converted his winery to biodynamics, an agricultural protocol posited in the 1920s by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. It combined organic sciences with mysticism, which in practical purposes meant that, among other things, Bud planted his vines by the light of the full moon and buried manure in old cow horns to ferment for six months before being dug up every solstice and used as fertilizer.

  Skeptical colleagues tongue-in-cheekily referred to his brother’s Wahoo Vineyards as “Woo Woo Winery.” Nate tried to reserve judgment.

  “If nothing else, all the rules about pruning on the Feast of St. Stephen and spraying fertilizer on Epiphany mean your brother’s out in his vineyard paying a whole lot more attention to the plants than those absentee owners who fly in twice a year from California,” Nate had heard from the proprietor at his favorite Portland wine shop. “And healthy vines make good wine.”

  Sometimes, though, Bud seemed to be leading the parade of Oregon’s growing cadre of crystal healers and Maypole dancers, Nate thought. He’d gobbled a piece of cold pizza before leaving home, since Bud had promised a “tofu-kale free-range scramble” for breakfast.

  A half-hour later, Nate was surreptitiously picking the green and gray bits out of his eggs as Bud and his wife, Betty, regaled him with the latest lacrosse-field achievements of Nate’s 13-year-old nephew, Dylan. Their 10-year-old daughter, still in her nightie, sat uncommunicatively nearby with a morose look on her face as she munched through a bowl of granola.

  “Sophy’s not really a morning person,” her mother explained.

  As Nate tried to smile appreciatively, a green-and-white sheriff’s cruiser pulled slowly into the old yellow farmhouse’s gravel drive just behind the silver Volvo.

  “Well, hey, it’s Wayne Jordan,” said Bud, a two-inches shorter, 20-pounds heavier, crew-cut version of his brother. This morning Bud was outfitted in Lee jeans and an L.L. Bean flannel shirt in contrast to Nate’s collegiate wardrobe of checked Oxford shirt, corduroy trousers and argyle socks.

  Nate stood to shake hands as the uniformed deputy from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office climbed the creaky steps to the screened sun porch where they were breakfasting.

  “I was just passing and saw the old Finnish flivver,�
�� smiled the blond, freckled deputy, a former colleague of Nate’s from his early days on the force in Ashland, near Oregon’s southern border. Jordan could never seem to keep straight which Scandinavian country built Volvos.

  “Wayne, what a nice surprise,” Nate responded as Betty, a farm wife whose milky complexion and calm demeanor seemed to draw nourishment from the nature around her, sprang to the kitchen for an extra coffee cup.

  As the two old friends caught up over shade-grown, fair-trade Costa Rican dark roast – Bud had long ago spoiled his brother for the instant coffee he’d consumed in college – Nate got around to telling a little about his interest in Pomp Charbonneau.

  “I know where that wacko lives,” Jordan responded. “I had to assist once with a health-department enforcement when he staged an unlicensed possum roast during our big Memorial Day wine tour. He claimed it was the perfect pairing with his new red blend. But people were throwing up.”

  As Jordan finished off a second helping of scrambled eggs, with kale bits stuck in his teeth to show for it, he added, “Hey, Nate, I’m heading out past Ribbon Ridge to do a welfare check on someone’s grandmother – I could lead you to Charbonneau’s place.”

  Bud Darrow happily consented to pass off that duty, quipping, “A truckload of steaming cow shit waits for no man.”

  Ten minutes later Nate was downshifting the Volvo for the umpteenth turn along the narrow country roads, weaving among hazelnut orchards, patches of Douglas-fir forest and sunny hillsides of wine grapes.

  A cloud of dust raised by the sheriff’s cruiser signaled that the road turned to gravel ahead. In another 500 feet, Nate followed as the cruiser turned into a grassy drive and slowly rocked and rolled for five minutes along the edge of a vineyard thick with emerald green, heart-shaped leaves and corkscrewing tendrils climbing wires toward the sky.

  At a clearing, red taillights flashed through dust as Jordan pulled up alongside a gleaming silver travel trailer, its front end supported by cinder blocks, with small red-white-and-blue flags – one American, one French – fluttering from staffs above the door.

  “My brother was right, I’d never have found this place,” Nate said as the two men climbed out of their cars. “Wayne, thanks for the help, but you really don’t need to stop. I just need to talk to this guy.”

  “Not a problem, it’s my neighborhood. Let’s see if ol’ Pomp is home,” replied the deputy, reverting to his “line of duty” protocol, fingering the baton on his belt and unsnapping his sidearm holster as he stepped to the door of the trailer and gave a polite rap.

  The only sound was the trilling “chirree” of a red-winged blackbird from a cattail marsh across the road.

  Jordan rapped harder. “Sheriff’s deputy, Mr. Charbonneau!” he called, his voice echoing away into the vineyard.

  Across the clearing, an unseen rusty door hinge slowly creaked from a small barn that was once cherry red but was now faded to match the wild pink roses edging a nearby ditch.

  The two men exchanged glances, then nodded and walked toward the barn. Darrow reached under his sport coat and put his hand on his service revolver, trying to remember if he’d loaded it that morning.

  They were halfway across the clearing when a diesel engine chugged to life from the far side of the building. In another instant, an ancient flatbed truck with rounded, rusting green fenders careened into sight, speeding away down a narrow, grassy lane between vineyard rows.

  Darrow threw up his arms and vainly shouted, “Stop! Police!”

  He ran to look down the gap between grapevines, hoping to be able to identify the truck. It looked like an old Chevy, probably built about the same time Darrow was born. Its knobby tires threw bits of sod high into the air as it sped away.

  His eyes widened at what else he saw: Just turning into the lane from the opposite direction was a small tractor pulling a trailer full of vineyard clippings. On the side of the trailer’s wooden box was stenciled in large letters, “Brickhouse Vineyards.”

  Old Billy Brickhouse barely had time to react to the oncoming flatbed. He spun the tractor’s wheel and plowed sideways into the ditch. His trailer turned on its side.

  The speeding truck caromed to the right and flattened the tall, crossed poles supporting the end of a vineyard row. It continued along the row, taking down two more sets of stout poles, each with a loud pop, before lurching to a stop with tangled ribbons of wire and shredded grapevines protruding from every wheel well.

  Now Darrow could make out the hand-painted sign on the truck’s door: “Charbonneau Cellars: For the amour of the grape.”

  Turning to Deputy Jordan, he said, “I think we’re going to do more than just ask a few questions of Mr. Charbonneau.”

  Chapter 17

  “Woo hoo, did you see this?!” Pim asked excitedly, waving at a large photo on the front page of The Oregonian as she sat in the bookmobile’s brown vinyl driver seat that morning at the edge of Alberta Park.

  Sunshine, filtered by the Northeast Portland park’s lovely grove of tall firs, streamed in the open window next to her, adding an extra glow to her canary-yellow Aloha shirt decorated with fire-breathing tiki gods.

  The air was still refreshingly cool at 10 a.m., but the sun’s intensity promised a warm June day to come, with a forecast in the mid-70s.

  “Look, it’s Schnitzel, the Wiener Dog restaurant’s mascot, on the front page!” Peering owlishly at the photo caption, she added, “And oh my golly, Hester – he found the Rose Medallion!”

  A phone call from the bookmobile barn early that morning had informed Hester that the police were done with their forensic work and that the magenta bus could return to service. In a quick call to Pim, they’d decided to go ahead and do the usual Friday rounds. To Hester, a bit of normal routine sounded good at the end of the discombobulating week.

  “Goodness, how did a dachshund find the Rose Medallion?” Hester marveled, happy for the conversation while she tidied the shelves as they waited for the first patrons to arrive. Pim continued reading, mumbling quietly to herself in a manner Hester had come to find endearing over the years.

  “Whoa, what a story! The Rajneeshees even got involved!”

  “Oh, dear, don’t tell me the police chief and the dreadful TV news people were right all along?”

  “No, no, it says here the cymbal clinkers showed up in their peacemobile VW bus yesterday afternoon at Forest Park for their annual squirrel feed…”

  “They eat squirrels?” Hester interjected, disgust twisting her features.

  “No, no, no – they bring a big bag of dried corn they’ve raised on their organic farm and feed it to the squirrels in the park! How about that? Every once in a while those folks don’t sound so bad.”

  “Oh. So what did that have to do with Schnitzel the wiener dog?”

  “Well, that’s where the story gets good,” Pim said, twisting around in her seat like an excited child to face Hester. “While the peacemobile crowd is getting mobbed by squirrels under the Thurman Bridge, you have to remember that the park is still crawling with medallion hunters, thanks to that Zeus Shoes guy. In fact, I was out there for an hour yesterday myself with Lilly Pilly, because that little dog has dug up the most amazing things over the years, but we didn’t have any luck,” Pim said, using her pet name for her own canine housemate, Queen Liliuokalani.

  “And?” Hester cocked an eyebrow.

  “So I guess the cook from the Wiener Dog had the same idea, and he’s there with Schnitzel, who’s actually the latest in a long line of Schnitzel dogs, the first of which was the actual model for the Wiener Dog signs. There’s something to know about the next time you play Portland Trivia!” Pim added, quelled from continuing the line of thought only by Hester’s momentary glower of impatience.

  “Anyway, I guess when Schnitzel saw all the squirrels, he went crackers and chased one into the brush. And when he comes back out, guess what’s in his mouth? The Rose Medallion, hanging on a ribbon!”

  A lilting “Hellooo?” in
terrupted Pim’s triumphant conclusion to the story as a head popped in through the open rear door and the day’s first bookmobile patron climbed aboard.

  Maybelle Adams ran a soul-food café over on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and earned a top spot in the “Bookmobile Patron Hall of Fame” because she never showed up empty-handed.

  “I have a couple slices of sweet potato pie for you ladies, just because I know you’ve had a difficult week and you need to keep your strength up!” she said, handing over a paper plate wrapped in foil as she squeezed into the bus, her full figure wrapped in a colorful African caftan. Her voice always rang like the Liberty bell through the small space.

  “Ah, Maybelle, I have a new Ann Rule for you!” Hester responded to her most fervent True Crime reader. “It’s about that grisly quadruple-murder cannibalism case in Cleveland. I couldn’t stand to read more than a chapter, but I think it’s right up your alley.”

  “Just call me Grisly Adams!” the grandmother of six chortled with a Cheshire-cat grin.

  The morning went quickly, with two more stops, first at the Albina housing projects, then a quick stop at a St. Johns old-folks’ home where Hester delivered a big bag of what she called “bodice buster” paperbacks to the lobby and picked up another bag of returns. Like many senior-living facilities, this one was 90 percent women, many of whom still enjoyed a titillating tale.

  “Oh, and I was glad to see Mrs. O’Donnell so I could clue her in to that rooty-tooty new Nora Roberts – another of her Ireland romances – before the rotten desk clerk could snitch it,” Hester reported happily as Pim guided the diesel-belching bus toward their lunch stop.

  The Motormouth Drive-in on Interstate Avenue was another of Pim’s Portland favorites, a vintage relic of the 1950s that still had carhop service and tinny-sounding speakers on which you could place your order. They also had a fish sandwich and tangy coleslaw that kept Hester happy while Pim gobbled her usual Megaburger.