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

by B. B. Cantwell

  “Oh drat, we can’t do the carhop service today, we won’t fit under the carport awning with these doggone canoes on the roof,” Pim scowled.

  Hester had momentarily forgotten that the bookmobile still carried the dugout canoes from the Rose Festival parade.

  “We might as well leave them on there for the team-building canoe trip downriver next week,” Bob Newall, the maintenance man, had told her that morning.

  “So – I still don’t get what this canoe trip is all about,” Pim sighed between chews of her burger after they’d received their order at one of the indoor tables. Even inside, they’d had to pick up a telephone to talk to the kitchen, which Pim called “a marvel of 20th century efficiency.”

  Hester was only slightly taken aback when their food arrived on a model railroad car that followed tracks all over the restaurant.

  “I think the canoe trip is another horrible idea from Candy Carmichael in Human Resources,” Hester responded, using her napkin to wipe creamy mayonnaise from her mouth. “Candy was the one who led the whole ‘Seven Habits’ movement in the library a few years back, when we all had to come up with five ‘win-win’ ideas a week in each department. Remember when Reg Doolittle brought a chainsaw in to work and cut down Candy’s office door after he’d been told to ‘sharpen his saw’ one too many times? I’ve seen a few flameouts over the years, but he was a class act. For a while, people all over Portland talked about ‘going librarian’ instead of ‘going postal.’ ”

  Pim, chuckling with the remembrance, paused to dab at her shirt where mustard from her burger had dripped on a tiki god.

  “So we’re supposed to learn how to be team players by doing some sort of Outward Bounder exercise with canoes? Has anybody told cute Candy that we’re not a football team?”

  Hester shook her head as she poked a fork at her coleslaw.

  “I agree, Pim, it sounds stupid, but I guess it’s supposed to tie into the whole Rose Festival theme, following Lewis and Clark’s path and all that. I’m just going to pretend it’s a fun day off work and try to enjoy myself. And if Candy tries to make us sing ‘Kumbaya,’ we throw her in the river. Is it a pact?”

  Pim gave a thumbs up as she gobbled the last of her fries and they rose to return to the bookmobile.

  “Let’s see if there’s any more news about the Rose Medallion,” Pim said as she climbed into her seat and pulled out her transistor radio, just like one Hester had used to listen to Beatles songs when she was 7.

  A patron who ran an antique store had offered Pim good money for the old radio, pointing out that she could use the cash to get a nice new Walkman. “Naw, that would have too many twiddly knobs and things, and this good old radio still works fine,” responded Pim, whom Hester often called “a loyal Luddite of the first order.”

  Pim also vowed to drive her 1977 Gremlin until it qualified for classic plates.

  Pim thumbed the tiny tuning wheel and the sound of KSNZ news radio squawked from the little speaker just in time for a news report.

  “This is Misty Day, with a dramatic development in the Pieter van Dyke murder investigation. Portland Police Bureau, in cooperation with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, is holding what they call a ‘person of interest’ for questioning in the ritualistic killing of one of Portland’s most prominent civic leaders. Jean Baptiste ‘Pomp’ Charbonneau VI, a printer for The Oregonian and reportedly a direct descendant of a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, is being held so far only on a charge of reckless endangerment following an incident when he fled police from his trailer home in rural Washington County this morning. More details as they are available.”

  Pim, her jaw hanging open, clicked off the radio.

  “Hester, they’ve arrested my friend Pomp. How screwed up can they get things? Pomp wouldn’t hurt anybody!”

  Her eyes shifted back and forth, then widened in realization. She turned to her colleague.

  “This sounds like your buddy the inspector, all over again! Can’t he get anything right?”

  Hester, stunned that the murder investigation just wouldn’t leave her alone, felt her heart sink.

  “I don’t know, Pim. I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 18

  Saturday, June 15

  Some of the week’s worries faded on Saturday as Hester and Pim took the bookmobile on their monthly run up into the lovely Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

  It was another blazing, blue-sky day. As the big bus rounded the 700-foot promontory of Crown Point on the gorge’s winding, historic highway, Hester could look down and see caravans of summer revelers turning off the freeway far below on their way to the beach at Rooster Rock State Park.

  “We’ll take this bend a little carefully,” Pim said, as if to herself, the only acknowledgment they made of the previous bookmobile’s demise when Hester had watched a confessed murderer drive it off this cliff.

  That evening, Hester admitted she was actually kind of looking forward to the Macarena Cruise when Karen picked her up at 6.

  The day had topped out at 86 degrees, and an open boat deck on the river might at least offer a cooler evening than she’d spend cooped up in her hot apartment with a fuzzy cat on her lap. And the promise of piña coladas didn’t hurt.

  At Hester’s urging, Karen had extended the invitation to Linda Dimple, the children’s librarian at Grand Central Library. Privately, Hester didn’t think Linda spent enough time with adults. She secretly also thought Linda’s wholesome presence might be a welcome dampener to Karen’s matchmaking ambitions that evening.

  “Oh, this is an excellent opportunity for me, the kids just love that dance and I’ve been wanting to do some research on it!” Linda trilled from the back seat of Karen’s big BMW. “People often don’t recognize the academic side of being a children’s librarian. In grad school, I once wrote an entire term paper on the color blue!”

  A half-hour later, as the big stern-wheeler, the Portland Rose, pushed off into the Willamette River from the dock at Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Hester and Linda leaned on a varnished teak railing together looking at the skyline while Karen went off in search of their first round of cocktails. Hester had changed into another favorite sundress, this one bedecked in pink cabbage roses. Linda wore a navy-blue sailor dress.

  “I didn’t know they made them in adult sizes,” Karen had whispered cattily as she and Hester had walked up the gangplank behind Linda.

  As the vessel blew its steam whistle, Linda waved wildly at the joggers and dog-walkers on shore.

  “Farewell, farewell, we’ll send a postcard from Southampton!” she shouted, pulling a handful of rolled confetti paper streamers from her pocket and unleashing them over the side.

  To Hester’s look of mild shock, Linda turned and explained, “I’ve never been on a cruise before! I wanted to do it right!”

  At that moment Karen returned with three drinks squeezed together in her hands. As usual, Hester’s childhood friend had dressed for the occasion – or, some might say, overdressed. For the warm evening, she wore snug-fitting Capri pants in a red, green and yellow floral print, a fire-engine red tank top and a necklace of lacquered, nearly life-size papier-mâché fruit.

  “Shouldn’t that fruit be on a hat, Carmen?” Hester said dryly.

  Karen scrunched her button nose in a look Hester remembered well from grade school. “The night is still young!” she replied saucily.

  “Speaking of fruit, I’ve never had a drink like this!” squeaked Linda, as Karen handed each of them a giant tulip glass with a large spear of pineapple and half a banana poking from a golden, frosty froth.

  “Well don’t be shy, because Teri June Inc. got us the all-drinks-included tickets, and my accountant says I can write it off as an entertainment expense because both of you help me so often in my book research!”

  “Just be careful you don’t put an eye out,” Hester admonished, twisting her head sideways to dodge the pineapple spear and get her mouth on the fat red straw.
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  “Not so fast, ladies!” Karen interrupted, raising her glass to the golden sun that was just lowering to the top of the forested hills behind the city. “First, a toast.”

  The others raised their glasses as Karen continued.

  “To Almost Summer, because it’s just a week away, and we had one of the wettest winters ever seen.”

  “Hear, hear,” Hester chimed in.

  “To being back home in the sweetest little town around, because I’ve sampled plenty of others lately!” Karen hung her tongue and made a face of pinched exhaustion.

  “And to dancing the night away!” she concluded with a shimmy of her ample hips.

  They clinked glasses and took big sips.

  A thoughtful look crossed Karen’s face as she took a second slurp, swirled it between her teeth and then winced.

  “The thing with these fruity, frosty drinks – First, they put hardly any liquor in them, because you can’t taste it anyway. And second, they count on the fact that you get such an ice-cream headache you’ll never be able to drink many!”

  “Oh, I know how to counteract that!” Linda piped up. “My brother did a research paper on it in medical school. The trick is to rub your tongue on the roof of your mouth and warm your palate. It’s a proven medical cure!”

  For a moment all three women took on the look of preoccupied bullfrogs as they busily worked their tongues.

  “Well, at least it gives you something to do, and makes sure that people stay away from you because you look like an idiot!” Hester quipped.

  “Humph!” Karen responded. “Don’t take that attitude, Hester dear. Tonight we’re going to find you a man!”

  At that moment an emcee with an overamplified microphone began to introduce the entertainers and Karen turned toward the stage. Hester made a face behind her back.

  From there, the evening became a long blur in Hester’s mind: of pink and orange sky reflected in the river; of the boat passing beneath what seemed like a dozen bridges, the lowest of which had to raise for the sternwheeler’s tall black smokestacks; of seeing curious Portlanders climb from their idling cars to look down and laugh as the vessel passed beneath them. Hester wasn’t sure they were always laughing “with” the dancing cruise-goers with outstretched arms windmilling in the air.

  And throughout it all, endless repetitions of the signature “Macarena” song, played at evermore deafening decibels. Apparently the band hired for the cruise didn’t know any other tunes.

  Karen managed to cajole Hester into trying the dance a few times. Hester finally found a large potted palm to hide behind to escape the advances of a Bert Parks-lookalike with a terrible cheap toupee that showed baseball stitching up the part.

  She was peeking through the palm fronds when she heard someone clear their throat. She looked around to see one of the wait staff offering her a tray with miniature tubs of guacamole and chips. Hester smiled wanly and shook her head at the curly-haired young man with two pierced nostrils.

  Only after he’d stepped away did she remember him as one of the Rajneeshees who hung out on 23rd Avenue and regularly urged her to donate a dollar for a “free” flower. Was the murder case trying to edge back into her brain?

  But that wasn’t the big surprise of the evening.

  Taking Karen’s encouragement to heart, Linda Dimple hadn’t been shy about keeping her glass topped up.

  “No scurvy on this voyage!” she had announced with glee around 9 p.m. as she chewed on her 12th spear of pineapple for the night and stepped up to lead a conga line. While the band was on a break, recorded salsa music trumpeted from the loudspeakers.

  Hester closed her eyes, fearing for Linda’s head in the morning, and knowing that Sunday was one of the busier days for the children’s room.

  But suddenly Hester’s eyes popped back open, as what she had just seen registered more clearly in her own slightly rum-addled brain.

  The man in the conga line just behind Linda. The bald man with his hands firmly planted on the waggling hips of Grand Central Library’s children’s librarian. Didn’t she know him?

  Hester’s hand flew to her lips as she stifled a slight burp. The buffet’s enchiladas hadn’t agreed with her, and a slight sour taste filled her mouth.

  A taste not unlike sauerkraut.

  Her hand pressed her lips even harder at the sudden recognition. Wearing an open-collared cotton shirt in an exotic Indonesian batik design above a pair of well-filled khaki Dockers, he was dressed differently than she’d seen before.

  But the broadly smiling man behind Linda Dimple was Gerhard Gerbils.

  “You sure weren’t in mourning for long, Herr Wiener Dog,” Hester whispered.

  Chapter 19

  In staring at the dancers, Hester had inadvertently caught Linda’s attention. Sometime in the evening’s revelries, Hester noted with mild alarm, her diminutive colleague had topped off her sailor outfit with an oversize sombrero embroidered with, “Hola, my name is Jorge.”

  Linda veered the conga line over to Hester’s potted palm and refused to continue until Hester joined them, cutting in a few people behind the Wiener Dog proprietor.

  Another jolt came when Hester realized she recognized the wavy-haired, twenty-something young man, his biceps bulging the sleeves of a salmon-pink polo shirt, whose trim waist she now gripped.

  “Say, didn’t I see you on TV?” she shouted into his ear. “Didn’t you find the Rose Medallion?”

  He turned his flushed face back to her and smiled with perfect white teeth. “Yes! We’re celebrating tonight!”

  At that moment, the conga line was passing a cocktail table where Karen White was doing her best to fend off Bert Parks. Spying Hester and the young hunk exchanging words, Karen caught Hester’s eye and gave her two enthusiastic thumbs up and a suggestive leer. Hester stuck out her tongue in reply.

  After the conga line had finally broken up and the dancers had descended on the buffet now filled with a fresh assortment of Latin-inspired desserts, a curious Hester noticed that her buff dance partner and the nubile young blonde who had been ahead of him in the lineup had joined Gerbils and a knot of others, many of whom looked like family.

  Hester grabbed a spoon and a small flan garnished with strawberries and quickly found a seat at an adjoining table facing away from the group, with a view of the churning paddlewheel at the stern of the ship.

  A loud pop of a cork and a cry of “Cava!” told her that Gerbils and his family weren’t ready to stop celebrating just yet.

  At the sound of “tinga, tinga, tinga” as someone behind her tapped a spoon against a glass to silence the group, Hester cocked an ear that way.

  When the happy chatter around the table had ceased, it was the Wiener Dog proprietor who spoke.

  “I want to once again congratulate young Tony, our talented chef, on his good fortune this week. And besides his happy plans which most of you already know – to wed our lovely Greta next month – I have some more wonderful news!”

  Gerbils’ booming baritone voice dripped with bonhomie and familial spirit, inspired by more than a few piña coladas, Hester guessed.

  “I want our family and friends to be the first to know that I have offered, and Tony has enthusiastically accepted, a partnership in Wiener Dog Incorporated!”

  Happy cries, a smattering of applause and the clink of glasses ensued, along with words of congratulation. The chatter resumed at full volume, just as the sternwheeler’s haunting whistle announced they were arriving back at the dock.

  “Hmmm,” Hester wondered to herself as she gobbled a final strawberry and plopped her spoon down, ready to track down her friends and call it a night. “I wonder just how much of that $50,000 young Mr. Biceps will ever see!”

  Chapter 20

  Nate Darrow had spent long hours the previous afternoon interviewing Pomp Charbonneau in the Washington County Jail in Hillsboro, just west of Portland.

  Unless and until Portland filed a murder charge that would take precedence over th
e reckless endangerment and property damage charges on which Wayne Jordan arrested him, protocol dictated that Charbonneau would remain in the Hillsboro lockup.

  So far, the winemaker hadn’t fessed up to much. To Darrow’s relief, a bail hearing was delayed until Monday afternoon.

  Saturday, Darrow welcomed the sunny weather as he’d headed north to Vancouver Lake, tucked inside a bend of the Columbia, where he’d taken the first in a series of windsurfing lessons for which he’d signed up.

  That afternoon he’d taken Sven in for some service at the local Volvo mechanic, then picked up some supplies from the do-it-yourself brewer’s warehouse and went back to the Luxor to run a load of wash. In the laundry room, he spent 20 minutes fending off the attentions of Mrs. Kleinholtz from 419, who wanted to debate whether Glock or Smith & Wesson made the better police revolver.

  He’d planned a quiet night with some Thai takeout and an old favorite video. It was after 10 p.m. and Darrow was on his third beer when someone buzzed at his door.

  Like many apartments in the Pacific Northwest, the Luxor had no air conditioning. And Darrow had swung the door wide before he remembered he’d stripped down to just his sheerest nylon running shorts to try to beat the heat.

  “Oh!” Hester exclaimed, her eyes doing a quick up and down of his lean frame before she stopped to stare at the floor.

  “Oh,” Darrow said, holding a forefinger up to ask her to wait while he ducked back into the recesses of his apartment. In a moment, he reappeared wrapped in a white terry robe.

  Hester declined his offer of beer but gratefully accepted an iced tea, then sat at her neighbor’s old pastel green Formica kitchen table as she told Darrow of her strange encounters aboard the Portland Rose earlier in the evening.

  “First the Rajneeshee waiter, then Gerbils and his son-in-law-to-be and a whole gaggle of happy family – I kept looking underfoot for Schnitzel the Wonder Dog!”