Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries)

by B. B. Cantwell

  But that didn’t explain why Duffy was found in the bookmobile. Nor why Pim’s booster shoe had been the murder weapon. Maybe the booster shoe wasn’t what actually killed her. Maybe she’d been killed elsewhere, with some other kind of club, then her body planted in the bookmobile and the booster shoe clunked on her head as a red herring?

  “Right, Hester,” she muttered under her breath. “And maybe there was a mysterious one-armed man with a bad limp, a patch over one eye and a gravelly Mediterranean accent who met Duffy in the foundations department at Meier & Frank, dragged her into a fitting room and had his way with her before bashing her on the head with a frozen codfish, which he then cooked and ate for dinner, heavy on the tartar sauce.”

  She sighed. She’d probably read a few too many whodunits to be a very realistic gumshoe.

  But could Duffy and Pim have somehow met that night? Hester couldn’t shake her disbelief in the scenario. Pim had been awfully convincing in her recollections of Saturday.

  Pim said she’d spent the day pruning roses in her garden and treating them with dormant spray, then after a frozen pizza dinner had curled up with a video of “Ernest Goes to Camp.” She’d even kept a receipt showing she’d returned the video Sunday morning to a nearby Plaid Pantry. Hester had gritted her teeth as Pim explained, “I always get a receipt when I return videos – You never know when one of them Pakistani fellers is gonna screw up the records and claim I didn’t return one on time.”

  Her neighbors didn’t think she had gone out, but they couldn’t be sure, as they were in and out all day and had gone to play bingo at the Troutdale American Legion that night.

  Hester took a bite of her bagel and nodded gratefully as a counter clerk offered a coffee refill.

  Could Pim have called Duffy, lured her to the bookmobile barn under some false pretense and killed her? Even if Pim had the remotest capacity or motive for such a thing, it just didn’t make sense.

  One thing Pim had related from Darrow’s interrogation stuck in Hester’s mind: Pim clearly recalled Darrow saying something about the wound to the top of Duffy’s head.

  Recalling the grisly discovery in the bookmobile cupboard, Hester shuddered. She hadn’t gotten that clear a look at Miss Duffy’s wound.

  But if the blow clearly was to the top of her head, Hester didn’t see how Pim could have been the one who swung the booster shoe. Pim was 5 feet in heels – or, more accurately, 4 feet 10 in the Keds she usually sported. Miss Duffy was a willowy foot taller than that, easily. Pim could never have reached high enough to score a telling blow to the top of Miss Duffy’s head.

  Besides, Pim had often protested to Hester of the carpal tunnel syndrome in her right wrist from years of grinding the gears on good old Bookmobile No. 3, and she often wore a brace on that wrist. Plus, this damp time of year arthritis practically crippled her left wrist. Her doctor would testify to that. She couldn’t have hefted that booster shoe hard enough to hurt anybody, Hester was almost certain.

  Finishing her breakfast, Hester slid off the stool and slipped out of the cozy pub and into the chilly morning air. Glancing at her watch, she saw she still had time for a brisk walk beneath the Park Blocks’ towering trees to the Portland State campus and back.

  Strolling past the statue of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback and offering a smile and a nod to the elderly Chinese ladies who always gathered there for Tai Chi exercises, Hester continued to stew.

  The only thing that did make sense was that Duffy was at the bookmobile barn for some specific reason, and whomever she met did her in.

  So who was both familiar with the bookmobile and had reason to want Duffy gone for good? Somehow her book banning had to have something to do with it. That’s what had made Duffy famous, apparently nationwide. So who had the most to lose if Sara Duffy kept doing what she was doing?

  Something was nagging Hester, an idea trying to emerge from the back of her mind, slowing her feet as she walked past the old stone walls of St. James Lutheran Church. As she came to a park bench, she slowly sank onto it and watched traffic whiz past on Salmon Street.

  Across the street, a businessman emerged from his parked car. Hester watched vacantly as he went to the trunk and pulled out a brief case, then returned to the driver’s seat to make a call from his car, a big BMW.

  The car, that’s what Karen would lose. And the house, and the private schools, and all the little luxuries to which she must have become accustomed as a successful author.

  Hester shook her head, as if to rid it of the awful thought. Karen couldn’t have murdered Duffy. Or could she?

  What if Karen had twisted it into some sort of libertarian crusade? Maybe she’d managed to rationalize it somehow. Had Teri June extracted a frustrated and violent revenge in the name of literary freedom?

  Hester shivered, then looked around and noticed a cold wind rattling the tree limbs like sabers overhead. It was still February. She quickly stood and strode toward Grand Central Library.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday night, Karen’s husband drove the girls to the little town of Drain, Oregon, for a weekend with his mother, whom Karen could never abide. To make up for her grueling week, Hester had let Karen talk her into a “Girls Night Out.”

  With some worried reservations, Hester consented to Karen’s excited proposal: a drive 20 miles up into the scenic Columbia River Gorge to the Portland area’s latest entertainment novelty, a glitzy combination of Indian casino, thrill-ride park and rock-concert amphitheater known as Six Tepees Over Oregon. While other tribal casinos were struggling, the local Cold Lake tribe had decided that nothing succeeds like excess, and Las Vegas backers had helped make it happen.

  “Maybe the drive will allow me to ask some subtle questions about Karen’s whereabouts last Saturday night,” Hester told Bingle T., who perched like a furry meatloaf next to her on a ledge by the kitchen window. Hester watched through the dusky gloom for the glint of Karen’s mauve-colored Beamer, “leased to Teri June, Inc.,” Hester’s friend had confided during her giddy night of self-revelation earlier in the week.

  When it finally skidded around the corner, the car’s trumpeting honk sent the big Maine Coon scrambling beneath the kitchen table. Hester, on her way to meet Karen at the front door, paused at the mirror to inspect her choice of dusty-jade pants, pine-green silk blouse and a scarf with pink, orange and scarlet accents. What on earth do you wear to gamble, wondered Hester, who’d never been to Nevada.

  A rap at the door told Hester that Karen must have double-parked. Hester swung open the door, looked up and stepped back with her hand to her mouth.

  “What do you think?” Karen shrilled, twirling for Hester to inspect her gleaming white, neck-to-ankle leather jumpsuit. Its six-inch lapels and four-inch belt bore at least a dozen appliques of prancing horses and whirling lariats, as if sewn by Dale Evans on amphetamines. White snake-skin boots and giant silver hoop earrings completed the ensemble.

  “Oh dear lord, there are going to be Elvis sightings tonight!” Hester shrieked. She erupted in gales of laughter that went on and on, eventually subsiding into whooping snorts.

  Karen pursed her lips grimly, her hands on her hips.

  “Hey, I ordered this by FedEx from Veronica’s Closet just for tonight! Don’t be mean!”

  “I’m – huh, huh – sorry, Karen,” Hester panted, struggling for control. “It’s, uh, what can I say? It’s you, my dear!”

  “Thanks,” Karen said grumpily. “Come on, let’s go before I get towed. Though maybe the meter maid will be my friend. Lord knows I don’t have any others.”

  Ten minutes later, Hester still bit her lip as the powerful sedan smoothly accelerated eastbound onto the Banfield freeway, Interstate 84. Pouting, Karen drove in silence. The evening hadn’t started out as Hester had hoped. She pressed fingers to her temples.

  But the giant, classic neon 7-Up bottles with flashing bubbles on a sign over the Hollywood district overpass never failed to cheer Hester. She recalled childhood days with Kare
n when one of their mothers would drive them to the Lloyd Center ice rink. Whenever they passed the giant pop bottles, the girls would always have a belching contest, in the charming manner that only 11-year-olds really cultivate.

  As the car’s digital speedometer glowed “68,” Hester looked up at the soda bottles, then over at Karen. Hester swallowed a few gulps of air and then, rusty though she was, belched a quite audible “braap!”

  Karen’s head swiveled toward Hester in surprise. Then Karen realized where they were. A half-grin erupted at the silly memory. “Ha! Weren’t we a couple of little charmers?” She chuckled, her mood melting.

  After a moment, Hester ventured conversation.

  “So, anything new with the latest book? I hope you aren’t really going to have to change it because of the censors.”

  “Oh, I talked to my editor a couple times today. They’re still being a little stupid about it. They don’t really want to cave, but they might postpone publication until all this blows over, especially with the publicity over Duffy. I just can’t win,” Karen muttered, more to herself than to Hester.

  It was time to talk turkey, Hester decided as the car sped into the night.

  “You know, Karen, we’ve known each other a long, long time, and despite the jumpsuit – ” Karen gave her a glare. “ – I mean despite anything, you’re my oldest friend. If anything is ever really bothering you, you know you can always trust the friends – the friends who mean the most...”

  Karen’s thoughts, always flighty, were on fast-forward tonight. Distractedly, she cut off Hester’s hesitating sincerity.

  “The Friends? Don’t talk to me about trusting The Friends. That was another thing today that made me crazy. I got my annual donation statement from them in the mail – late, as usual. My tax accountant’s been bugging me for weeks. Of course, you wouldn’t know, but I’ve been donating a percentage – a generous percentage – of my Teri June income to The Friends of the Library. That’s what really galls me about these book banners: For all practical purposes, I’ve been paying for all the Teri June books the library buys! And those stickybeaks dare to get in a snit about ‘expending public funds on unsuitable materi-awls,’ ” Karen said, drawing out the last syllable with a highbrow pronunciation.

  “Anyway, the statement said I’d donated only like a tenth of what I actually gave last year! I have the check stubs somewhere, but now I have to hunt through all the shoe boxes in my back closet to prove it! And you know, I’m not the only member this happened to! I was at a Friends meeting and even that old bat Duffy was ranting to the treasurer...”

  Karen suddenly fell silent.

  Hester, until now numbed by her friend’s chatter, glanced sharply across the seat. “You and Miss Duffy were at a Friends meeting? When?”

  Karen gave her head a shimmy. “When? Ohh, I don’t... Well, I guess it was last Saturday, you probably got the meeting notice.”

  As if in a trance, Karen stared beyond the glove-leather steering wheel, her mind processing. Then she spoke in a rush.

  “Oooo, Hester, was that the night Duffy was killed? Oh, how creepy – it must have happened on her way home or something! Hester, didn’t you say she was wearing that dowdy blue dress when you found her? That’s what she was wearing to the meeting that night! She was there at the Friends of the Library meeting at the old Masonic Temple!”

  Hester blanched, looking ghostly in the strobe-effect of passing freeway lights.

  “Oh my God. Karen, the police have been trying all week to figure out where Miss Duffy had been that evening! But because she lived alone, nobody seemed to know. We should stop and call Nate Darrow right now,” Hester declared, pointing ahead to the Troutdale exit. “Here, the truck stop will have pay phones.”

  “Hester, no way!” said Karen. “This week has been hell enough on you. I know you and that looker of a detective are getting kind of chummy, but the cops aren’t going to do anything at this hour, it’s not going to get Pim out of jail. And we’re just going to have fun tonight!”

  Karen tromped the accelerator and the BMW shot across the Sandy River bridge, where a large sign marked the boundary of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Ahead, moonlight outlined the gorge’s soaring walls and the jagged tops of firs swaying in a light breeze. The moon chalked a white streak across the inky, cold waters of the mile-wide Columbia, just to their left.

  Hester, glancing down as the shallow Sandy River flashed beneath them on its way to join the bigger river, thought sadly of Pim’s home upstream. It would be dark, empty and cold tonight. “It’s just not fair,” she muttered wearily. And Karen’s not helping, Hester thought uncomfortably.

  Hester refocused with a start.

  “Karen, did Miss Duffy talk to anybody in particular that night? Was she with anybody? Did you see her leave with anybody? What time did she go? Think! This could be the break Pim needs!”

  Karen puffed out her cheeks for a moment. “You’re just not going to let this drop, are you?” She pursed her lips, smearing her Passionate Plum lipstick, the latest “must-have” pushed by her favorite cosmetics girl at Nordstrom.

  “OK, let me think for a minute, Hester. OK, Duffy was huffing and puffing to Carol Willoughby, the Friends’ director. The old bat said her tax statement reflected, how did she put it, ‘a mere fraction of the generosity I have tried to show my dear, dear library,’ and yes, I swear to God, she said that again,” declared Karen, raising a hand from the steering wheel in oath. “She went on and on, not really making a scene so that everybody noticed, but just bitchy enough that poor Carol was turning beet red and spluttering a lot.”

  “So how’d it end?”

  “I’m trying to think. Oh, yes, I remember. Duffy said something to the effect of, ‘Well if you don’t know the right person to talk to, I do!’ And I think she marched out then and there, with that way she had, you know, of looking like an old snob even with her back turned to you? She left by herself, as far as I saw. I just figured she was going to go have a hissy fit to one of the board members or somebody.”

  “Do you have any idea what time it was?”

  “The time? Let’s see, I don’t think it was even 8 o’clock yet. That’s right, because people started sitting down for the formal program just then and anybody who had noticed sort of forgot about it,” concluded Karen.

  “Well, good grief,” Hester said. “Why hasn’t anybody from the meeting told this to the police, for heaven’s sake? Don’t people read the newspapers?”

  “Oh, Hester, you knew Dame Sara. She was pursing her pruney old lips and storming out of places in a huff so often over some imagined slight that all of our heads would have exploded if we’d tried to keep track of her every tantrum. The woman got so you had to ignore her half the time or else you’d sock her in the mouth!”

  Either Karen’s telling the truth about Miss Duffy or her college acting days just paid off royally, Hester thought. “I’ll feel a lot better after I hear Carol Willoughby’s version of all this, though.”

  “Pardon?” Karen asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I’m sorry, I’m so shell-shocked I’m talking to myself now. Look, there’s the casino. My goodness, how do they get away with those sweeping searchlights so close to the Scenic Area? That’s rather unfortunate. I guess the reservation has its own rules.”

  Karen had pulled off the freeway and the car purred up a long, steep county road. For five minutes they climbed under an arch of spidery maple limbs until they crested the hill into the little town of Corbin, on the edge of the Cold Lake Reservation. In another 30 seconds, they motored past the town’s one store, offering “FINE FOODS, CHEAP GAS and HOT VIDEOS,” then past a new high school, home of the Corbin Killdeers, a sign announced (and generously subsidized by Nevada money behind the Six Tepees development, Hester had heard on the news). Then past the one-truck fire station of Multnomah County Fire District 41 and they were through Corbin and bisecting rolling fields of blueberries and wine grapes.

  The
Six Tepees complex looked as out of place as a streetwalker in Lake Oswego, Hester thought with alarm as Karen turned in at a sign across from a berry field. Ahead, the sprawling wood-and-lava rock casino with old-growth timbers supporting the roof was fronted by a three-story-high carved cedar eagle outlined in white neon. The building was a hexagon the breadth of a football field, at each point of which sat one of the namesake tepees, giant cones of canvas supported by intertwined fir logs. The tallest tepee supported a bungee-jump platform.

  In a concession to scenic-area protections, the former wildflower meadow that tribal leaders had chosen for their new cash cow was just over the brow of the hill and out of sight of visitors to the lovely gorge below.

  Out of sight wasn’t out of mind, however. From the looks of the packed parking lot, most of Portland, Beaverton, Gresham, Hillsboro and Aloha had made the trip out tonight. Besides the casino and rides, tonight’s attractions included a Three Dog Night reunion concert, a strobing electronic readerboard advised.

  Karen squeezed the BMW into the valet lane. A handsome, tanned, muscular and very Caucasian parking attendant in little more than a breechcloth and Nike high-tops loped up to open her door.

  “You’re no Geronimo!” Karen teased him as she took her ticket. Up close, she saw he actually wore a clingy Lycra body suit, almost transparent and leaving little to the imagination.

  “Maybe not Geronimo, but plenty red-blooded, ma’am,” the attendant responded with a practiced leer as he hopped in, tossed his blond ponytail and punched the BMW’s accelerator.

  “He’d better be red-blooded to run around half naked in the Gorge in February,” Hester marveled. “I’m sure the Cold Lake people 100 years ago were never that dumb.”

  “Yeah, but I bet he gets great tips,” Karen sighed, absently gazing after her car’s disappearing taillights. “I wonder where he stuffs them.” She shivered, then pulled her attention back to Hester.