But instead of tossing the cars aside, the sputtering and overheated bookmobile, one rear tire flapping, wedged between the skidding cars and a cement curb on the outer edge of the hairpin curve.
Kenyon wrenched the wheel in an effort to break free. With a blast of black smoke, the bookmobile suddenly jumped the curb. Like a wild creature thrashing in a trap, the dented magenta bus lurched against a low stone guardrail. Sparks soared on the gale.
With a screeching that seemed the voice of the storm itself, the old guardrail began to disintegrate. Round stones shot from it like cannonballs. Old, weathered mortar crumbled. The 12-ton bus slid along the rail as if on a banister.
Slowly, unavoidably, the bookmobile began to tilt, then dip.
A hundred feet down the road, the third cruiser skidded to a halt. Hester threw open the rear door and leaned out, horror on her face, as Bookmobile No. 3 disappeared over the edge of the abyss, leaving behind only a cloud of choking haze amid the steaming downpour.
Chapter Twenty-nine
A week later, Hester idly watched the Sandy River’s jade-green water swirl past Tad’s Chic Dump – a venerable rural roadhouse dedicated to good old-fashioned comfort food.
Half the letters on the restaurant’s neon sign had long ago burned out, so at night only the “Chic Dump” part of “Chicken ’n Dumplins” remained readable. Most of Portland affectionately knew the place simply as the Chic Dump.
Darrow had requested a window table overlooking the river.
Next to Hester sat Pim, her elbows splayed across a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She wore her get-out-of-jail gift from Hester: a new Hawaiian shirt featuring dancing pineapples, swaying palm trees and singing coconuts against a purple background.
To celebrate, Pim had ordered the house special with extra dumplings.
“What I still don’t understand,” she said with a glare at Darrow, “is why I was cooped up if you had another suspect.”
Nate sighed lightly and sipped from his bottle of Full Sail amber. He responded with customary politeness.
“Honestly, it wasn’t my call. In fact, Marge Kenyon was all for having you tried for the crime even after Paul took that plunge off Crown Point. She’s convinced that Paul was an innocent. For a horrible moment it looked like the brass might actually go for it. I swear, a look from that woman can make a man’s voice go falsetto at 50 paces.”
Hester was a picture of disbelief. “Is she insane? Paul told Ralph and me the whole story.”
Nate explained like a patient school teacher, punctuating his remarks with a waving breadstick.
“Ah, but you see, that only feeds her conspiracy theory. She insists that you kidnapped her poor son and masterminded the whole thing. Pim was the perpetrator and you and Ralph the brains.”
“What I don’t see is how Paul thought he could actually get away with it,” Hester said as she busied herself refilling wine glasses from a carafe of Pim’s Chic Dump favorite, the house ruby chablis.
“Well, from what we’ve been able to piece together, we don’t think murder was part of the original plan. Paul had long ago gained the confidence of Sara Duffy, who really did almost regard him as the son she never had, according to what we heard from Marge Kenyon. That was before Marge realized she might be an accessory and clammed up. She swore up and down that Paul only ever used the bookmobile computer to monitor library book orders for her book-banning group. She was convinced there wasn’t really anything illegal about it because Duffy had given him the key to the barn and all the passwords he needed – none of which had changed in years. No doubt Paul used the bookmobile computer because security at the barn was virtually nonexistent compared with Grand Central.”
Hester looked puzzled.
“Why couldn’t he just hack into the library computer from his home PC? It sounds to me like he would know how.”
Darrow smiled primly, as if proud of his ace pupil for asking the right question.
“Ah, but Duffy left such an antediluvian legacy that the library still uses an ancient mainframe to track finances and most other records. The amazing thing is it’s not hooked up to any outside phone lines. Even the link from the bookmobile barn to downtown is an old closed-circuit line that’s probably been there since Thomas Edison told them how to wire it.”
Pim’s patience, already stretched, was rapidly waning after three glasses of ruby chablis. Nor was she ready to warm to Darrow. She waved her nearly empty glass at him and knocked a bowl of Sweet ‘n Low packets off the table as she spoke.
“Ya know, you remind me of that ‘Pink Panther’ detective – whatsisname? Inspector Caruso, something like that. Well, Caruso, let’s cut to the chase. So Paul liked to play computer games. That doesn’t explain why he conked ol’ Sara Bluenose with my booster shoe.”
Darrow traded glances with Hester. She gave him a questioning look that said she’d like to hear this spelled out, too. She knew the basics but Darrow had been so busy the past week she had yet to hear all the details.
Gathering his thoughts, he watched a blue heron take wing across the river. The birds, so statuesque when they stood in shallows waiting for fish to come near, looked like ungainly pterodactyls in flight. It briefly occurred to Darrow that he hoped to get through this lunch with some semblance of grace.
Clearing his throat, he turned back to Pim.
“Basically, it was over money – money Paul apparently embezzled, and a bunch of money he owed. It appears Paul has used Miss Duffy’s influence to bamboozle his way into a contract with the Friends of the Library to update their financial records. As it was, because they still used the library’s crotchety old computer, Paul was about the only consultant who would even touch the project. Once he had compromised what security safeguards existed, he used electronic transfers to move more than $100,000 to his own bank account over the past six months.”
Hester gasped.
“And he was using our Instie-Circ the whole time!” she said to Pim, who shuddered and mutely held out her empty wine glass for a refill. Darrow poured this time.
Hester turned to Nate with a curious look. “How much did this have to do with the casino?”
Darrow nodded at her perceptiveness.
“Everything, it sounds like.”
“And him, goody-two-shoeing all over the place about his Kumbaya Kidz,” Pim sniffed.
“But that wasn’t just made up,” Darrow said. “A source up at the Six Tepees told us Paul had started playing up there when he first started working with the kids – it sounds like he had the classic addictive personality when it came to gambling. In fact, he took on the job of debugging their fancy computer-poker game as a way of paying off some of the debt he’d already run up in their back-room game.”
The waitress brought a huge tray covered with steaming dishes of chicken and dumplings. Pim cleared space on the table for her extra plate of dumplings. The chicken looked succulent and the dumplings baked to perfection. Pim tucked in.
“And from what I saw, he kept gambling,” Hester continued when the waitress had left. “Have you been able to find out how much he owed? It must have been impressive to drive him to murder.”
“He was up to his neck. He owed more than a quarter million.”
Hester was stunned. “They let people owe that much?”
“It’s an old game, Hester. And it’s really not a lot different from how your friendly neighborhood banker does business. At first they extend a little credit and find out if you can pay it back. When you keep making payments, they keep extending more credit. Well, once Paul started skimming from Friends of the Library, his credit limit just got higher and higher. And it looks like he got sloppier and sloppier with his embezzlement until even his Aunt Sara noticed something was fishy with her donation statement. That sloppiness might be explained by another problem Paul had.”
Hester stopped in mid-bite and lowered her fork full of dumpling.
“You know, I thought he was awfully manic the day he hijacke
d the bookmobile.”
Again, Nate nodded.
“The autopsy showed enough amphetamines in his system to keep a long-haul trucker awake from Boston to Seattle.”
Hester clucked her tongue. “Now, that I wouldn’t have guessed about Paul Kenyon.”
“You think you know people, right?” Nate asked.
Looking down as if he suddenly realized there was food, Darrow quickly salted his chicken, took a taste, then salted it some more. Then he picked up a pepper mill and waggled it over his plate with a growling twirl of the handle until his gravy had more spots than a leopard. Hester watched in plain amazement. Looking up, Nate glared back at her, then continued his explanation.
“Apparently the computer-poker debugging wasn’t going well. One source up there says Paul would show up three or four nights a week, play cards until the game shut down, then spend the rest of the night working on the software. You can’t go without sleep like that. So his new friends from Nevada offered him a little pick-me-up. Nice guys, huh?”
Pim was just wiping up gravy with the last dumpling from her first plate. She wolfed it down, took a satisfied gulp from her wine glass, stifled a small belch and focused again on Darrow.
“So you still haven’t said, Caruso.”
Nate looked startled. “Pardon?”
“Why he snuffed her.”
Hester gave Pim a severe glance. She deftly moved the wine carafe to the other end of the table.
Darrow finished chewing and continued.
“You’re right, Ethel. All we know is that Miss Duffy made a fuss at the Friends of the Library meeting about her donation statement and stormed out saying she was going to talk to somebody about it. Our best guess is that she called Paul and he conned her into meeting him at the bookmobile. Maybe he said they’d look at the records and figure it out. Forensics says she was killed there and then, on the bookmobile. Paul must have waited to find out how much she really suspected, then maybe he panicked and your booster shoe was the first heavy object handy. Of course, if it was totally unpremeditated, he’d have left fingerprints, which he didn’t. The fact is, he had a double motive: covering up his embezzlement, and another interesting thing we discovered – he figured prominently in Aunt Sara’s will.”
Hester’s mouth was round. “Oh, and I can’t imagine Miss Duffy keeping something like that a secret. She loved to lord it over people, using any little bit of leverage she could get. Pim, can’t you just hear her threatening to cut Paul out of the will if he didn’t behave himself?”
Darrow, forgetting his food entirely, continued with hardly a pause. “Oh, I think he knew about the will, all right. But personally, I don’t think Duffy knew a thing about what Paul was up to. She would have gone to his mother if she did, that was more her style, don’t you think?”
Hester nodded. That rang true. Sara Duffy was not the kind to call attention to problems if they were “in the family.” She wouldn’t hesitate to get a stranger in trouble, but a friend’s son was another matter. Hester remembered a time when a bridge-club friend of Miss Duffy’s had accumulated a $50 library fine. Miss Duffy simply went to the circulation desk and wiped out the fine the next time her friend came in, completely ignoring the poor clerk on duty.
Pim picked absently at her teeth and mused, “I’ll never figure that kid out. Did you know he came to jail to see me?”
“Paul did?” Hester asked in amazement.
“Yeah, he said it would go easier for me if I confessed,” Pim said, pulling her second plate of dumplings over and picking up her fork again.
“We got word on that,” Nate said. “It was starting to look like he was everywhere. And that was what made me look at him more closely. I called the police science instructor at Clackamas College and asked about him. You know why he washed out of the course? He flunked the psych test, the practice test they give you that’s just like the standard test every cop shop in the country uses to screen new hires. Smarter than anybody in the class, but you never knew when he’d flake out on you, people said. I talked to his computer instructor, too. Turns out he was warned more than once about privacy issues and hacking.”
Hester stabbed another piece of chicken and silently vowed to take Karen White out for an “all-you-can-drink” margaritas night as soon as possible. Grateful that she had never voiced suspicions about her friend to Nate, she asked, “Was there an inheritance after all?”
Darrow gave a low whistle.
“Oh yes, quite a tidy sum. Miss Duffy had a regular savings program and a decent investment adviser. She had something like $800,000 in blue-chip stocks. That had to make Paul crazy. He stood to inherit a quarter of that. And the folks he owed money to were going to hurt him next time he missed a payment. With the Las Vegas faction, we’re talking the kind of goons who break kneecaps. I think they must have scared him. Killing Miss Duffy was sheer desperation.”
Hester chewed thoughtfully and asked, “So, with Paul gone, who gets it?”
“Well.” Nate paused for effect, his eyes shining at the redhead on his right. “Looks like you do.”
Hester choked. After draining a glass of water she turned, her eyes locking on Nate’s, and croaked, “Me?”
“Well, not directly,” Darrow said quickly, happy to have gotten the better of Hester. “The money goes to Friends of the Library. Last night they had an emergency meeting and voted unanimously to put a chunk of the money into a brand-spanking new bookmobile and to endow a bookmobile librarian. It will be the ‘Miss Sara Duffy Bookmobile,’ to be decorated on the outside with lovingly airbrushed portraits of Miss Duffy reading to a circle of adoring children.”
“Something she never did in her life!” Pim snorted, spraying gravy.
Darrow added, “And Hester – you are to be the endowed librarian, whatever that means.”
Hester hung her head as it sank in.
“It means,” she said in a very small voice, “that I will have to sign all my letters with ‘Miss Sara Duffy Bookmobile Librarian’ after my name until I retire, quit, or die of humiliation, whichever comes first.”
Her attention was drawn back to her faithful driver who was starting to shake like a small earthquake.
Pim’s deep, rumbling laughter spilled over like lava flowing from Kilauea. Chicken gravy liberally splashed the dancing pineapples and singing coconuts as a dumpling surfed slowly into her lap.
The End
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: B.B. Cantwell is the pen name for the wife-and-husband writing team of Barbara and Brian Cantwell, of Seattle. Barbara was formerly a bookmobile librarian for the Portland library. Brian is an editor and travel writer for a daily newspaper. Learn more at murdermobile.weebly.com.
TURN THE PAGE for a sample chapter from “Corpse of Discovery,” the next installment in B.B. Cantwell’s Portland Bookmobile Mysteries, released in April 2014 and now available on Amazon.com.
Corpse of Discovery
A
Portland
Bookmobile
Mystery
B.B. Cantwell
Chapter 1
Saturday, June 8, 1996
Portland, Oregon
The bookmobile was starting to steam.
“Dagnabit, this is what they get for going cheap and buying this ‘reconditioned’ thing instead of the new vehicle we were promised,” fumed Ethel Pimala, perched behind the wheel of the Miss Sara Duffy Memorial Bookmobile as it crept along Broadway in downtown Portland. The bookmobile driver’s years of working with children always showed in her tame cursing.
Just ahead, Corvallis High School’s Spartan marching band, in elaborate chrome helmets, tootled away at the “Washington Post March.” At least their togas look well-ventilated, thought Hester Freelove McGarrigle, the bookmobile’s librarian, wiping a limp wisp of auburn hair from her perspiring brow.
It was an unseasonable scorcher of a June day for the Grand Floral Parade, a highlight of the annual Rose Festival in a town known as Oregon’s Rose City.
Putting the “new” Portland City Library bookmobile in the parade was the scheme of the publicity-conscious president of the Portland Pioneer Literary Society, the private organization – “our little aristocracy,” Hester called it – that contracted with the city to provide library services. The president had crowed to his board that the shiny magenta bus with its supergraphics of the late head librarian, Sara Duffy, reading to a circle of adoring children would be “boffo” exposure for the library.
“Just how well it will play when the bookmobile blows a gasket and they have to send paramedics to rescue us from heat stroke is another question,” muttered Hester.
The willowy, blue-eyed “Miss Marple librarian,” as the local TV stations had annoyingly dubbed her after her involvement in a local murder investigation, scurried to the rear of the bus a third time to see if she could get the jammed back window to open.
Once more, the library board had buckled to cost constraints and gone with a bookmobile with no air conditioning. Who knew it would be 92 degrees for the Rose Parade? When Hester had agreed to dress up as pioneer Narcissa Whitman in an 1850s-era dress, complete with whalebone corset, she had assumed it would be a typical cool and showery early-June day.
The costume was in keeping with the Rose Festival’s theme for this year: “Voyages of Discovery.” Keyed to Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and the subsequent history of 19th-century pioneers in what was then called “Oregon Country,” the festival encouraged all Portlanders to celebrate their heritage.
“Oh, Pim,” Hester called despairingly to her diminutive, somewhat-pineapple-shaped driver whose Filipino-Hawaiian surname, Pimala, was often shortened by friends. “My father, the band teacher, would love this, but if I have to listen to one more John Philip Sousa march, I’m going to tear off this corset and run screaming and naked into Nordstrom’s to find some classical piano – and air conditioning!”
Pim, who had come from Hilo decades earlier to study at Portland State University before her scholarship had dried up, waggled the fronds of her woven pandanus-leaf hat, a tribute to the “Kanaka” workers from Hawaii who helped build and run nearby Fort Vancouver, the historic site where Pim volunteered for re-enactments.
Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) Page 17
