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

by B. B. Cantwell

  Morse squared his jaw and nodded.

  “Any group whose history shows a blatant disregard for the health of the Oregon public will certainly be spotlighted by our intensive investigation, and this particular community has recently been involved in a series of shoplifting incidents in Northwest Portland, along with aggressive panhandling involving threatening use of finger cymbals.”

  Nate Darrow, leaning against a doorjamb at the back of the room, ground his teeth over the chief’s blind-spot on anything remotely related to the Rajneeshees. And this blond bimbo from Channel 3 was just making things worse.

  Morse, after pausing to take a long gulp from a glass of ice water, continued.

  “Now I’d like to allow a representative from the victim’s law firm to say a word.”

  Today, Gerhard Gerbils’ gray pinstripe suit cast him in a more businesslike demeanor than Saturday’s outfit from the “Sound of Music” costume closet. But the serious image didn’t last long: Rising from a side table, Gerbils tripped over one of the 15 microphone cords leading to the dais and, grasping to catch himself, knocked over the chief’s water pitcher. With a flash of sparks and a painful popping noise, the amplifier went dead. Behind Gerbils, DeWitt Vanderpol slapped a hand over his eyes.

  Gerbils, his eyes popping from his round, nearly hairless head, cleared his throat, gave a solicitous nod to van Dyke’s black-veiled widow, standing in an alcove, and spoke into the microphones as if nothing had happened.

  “I just wanted to say…I just wanted to tell all of Portland that Pieter van Dyke was not only our inspirational and hardworking colleague, he was our friend,” he said in a quavering voice with a slight German accent that came out only when the Oregon-born lawyer was under stress. German was the language in the Gerbils home when Gerhard was a young child and his grandfather lived with them.

  “Can you speak up, the mike isn’t working!” came a cry from the back row.

  Gerbils’ eyes darted around the room as if looking for a savior, but no tech-savvy amplifier expert stepped forward. He tried again, with his family heritage asserting itself even more in his speech.

  “I chust wanted to say that Pieter was not only our colleague, but our friend,” he repeated.

  “LOUDER, PLEASE!” came another call from the back.

  “PIETER WAS NOT CHUST A COLLEAGUE, HE VAS OUR FRIEND!” Gerbils said, turning red and almost shouting now. “He is…that is, he vas our friend and colleague, and a high-minded civic hero in der community!”

  As if surprised at his own vehemence, Gerbils paused and cocked his head, then continued, articulating more carefully now.

  “We are shocked at the heinous crime that has taken this God-fearing, public-spirited leader from our midst, and while my friend DeWitt Vanderpol and I will soldier bravely on in Pieter’s tradition, we vow to work within the legal community to ensure that no effort is spared to bring to justice whomever is responsible!” Now he was hitting his stride, the round little man thought to himself.

  “And let me just say, that if that determination and vigilance leads to the godless pagans to whom our police chief refers, I say this: BRING. ZEM. ON!”

  A stunned hush filled the room.

  At the back, leaning in an unlit corner where they seemed to have been corralled by snaking TV cables, Nate Darrow shook his head and muttered into Harry Harrington’s ear, “Oh, goody, sounds like we’re paying a social call on the tie-dye terrorists of Sauvie Island.”

  Chapter 7

  With the bookmobile sidelined until a police forensics team finished gathering evidence, Hester reported Wednesday morning to a temporary reassignment at Portland’s Grand Central Library, downtown on Tenth Avenue.

  She’d been instructed to divide her time over the next few days between two assignments: taking inventory of the library’s prized McLoughlin Collection, eclectic holdings of art and artifacts donated over many decades by Portland’s wealthiest benefactors, and filling in for vacation absences on Reference Line, the library’s ask-us-anything telephone information service.

  While the McLoughlin assignment spoke of the administration’s high regard for her competence, the Reference Line gig was more Hester’s idea of fun. The eight-member “Answer Crew” was not only smart and quick witted, but their morning ritual of racing in teams to complete the daily New York Times crossword puzzle – the losers bought muffins – appealed to Hester’s competitive nature.

  She’d subbed there before, so there was little preamble as she plopped down in front of the bank of phones. To perk up her mood, she was wearing the lavender sundress with hand-stitching by her aunt that she wore only in warm weather.

  “Hester! What’s a four-letter word starting with ‘g’ for ‘trivia-loving oaf in eyeglasses,’ ” called out young Sean Archer, whose amazing knowledge of minutiae made him the unchallenged Reference Line whiz kid, a proud status reflected in a glint in his eye, easily seen even through his horn-rimmed spectacles.

  “That would be ‘geek,’ Sean,” Hester cooed, with a pat on the curly blond head of her favorite crossword partner.

  “So sorry about what happened with you guys and the bookmobile, Hester!” commiserated Holly Fontana, another phone specialist, whose matronly figure was a testimonial to the wonderful cookies she baked and often shared with her cohorts. “Why on earth would anyone do that to Pieter?”

  Her use of van Dyke’s first name wasn’t uncommon; his social whirl brought him in contact with people of every stratum, even if just for a holiday-time “meet and greet” in the library lobby. Many in Grand Central felt as if they’d lost a friend.

  “Oh, goodness, I can’t begin to guess,” Hester responded, puffing out her cheeks in bewilderment over the previous day’s events. “Some people are hinting at a Rajneeshee connection, but that sounds pretty loony, doesn’t it? I think those poisoned salad bars made our police chief a little paranoid.”

  Phones started ringing then, precluding further discussion. Hester soon found herself paging through almanacs in search of the weight of an average housefly. You never knew what callers would ask, which is why Reference Line was rarely boring.

  “As long as they don’t ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we’re happy,” Sean confided in her at lunch break. “As often as not, we’re probably just settling somebody’s bar bet.”

  After lunch, Hester climbed the grandly curving marble staircase that ascended from the lobby, past stone columns reaching four stories high to a gilded ceiling, and made her way to the McLoughlin Room.

  By 3 p.m. her eyes were already crossing as she carefully checked off items on a spreadsheet. The paintings were easy to account for: Big 19th-century Rubenesque nudes by a Dutch painter who might have been Pieter van Dyke’s great uncle crowded the walls. If a painting was missing, the bare spot on the wall would be a giveaway.

  But the scores of other artifacts took more attention. Until she’d gone through a big album of them, Hester had never heard of first-day covers, fine-stationery mailing envelopes embossed with historical illustrations related to the subject of a new postage stamp that was affixed to the envelope and custom-canceled on the first day the stamp was issued. The McLoughlin Collection included what was apparently a valuable trove of them, donated – incidentally – by Pieter Van Dyke’s father.

  “So how’s it going, Miss McGarrigle?” asked Dabney Pensler, the McLoughlin Collection archivist, striding in as Hester was finishing her day and pulling off a sweater she’d brought to wear in these over-air-conditioned cloisters.

  A tall and high-strung man who reminded Hester of Ichabod Crane, Pensler was the only real human being she’d ever met who actually wore pince nez, through which he delighted in peering at you down his beaklike nose. Rarely did anyone introduced to him go five minutes before they’d learned not only that he was a member of Mensa, but that he was only in Portland “on special loan” from the prestigious Martinbury Institute in Philadelphia. His “special loan” was stretching on toward 15 years
now.

  “Oh, Dabney. It’s a big job, isn’t it?” Hester replied, stacking her sheets of work into a big manila envelope.

  “Oh, yes, it’s a tremendous responsibility,” he said, preening at his thick, gray hair, swept back in a Paul Revere pony tail.

  “I’m glad you stopped by, because I did find one problem, and it’s kind of a big one,” Hester continued. “All I found was an empty box for the Charbonneau pistol replica. Do you know anything about that?”

  The lanky man’s eyebrows rose toward the ceiling and his pince nez fell from his nose and swung like a pendulum on a burgundy sateen ribbon that circled his collar.

  “The Charbonneau? Missing? What on earth do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean it’s not there. There’s a nice archival box with all the detailed labels and the provenance record, but nothing inside but velvet wrappings. It appears from the paperwork that we loaned it to Fort Vancouver for a special event in May and apparently it was never returned.”

  The rosewood-handled pistol with steel barrel and handsome brass fittings was an exact copy of the 1801 French flintlock cavalry pistol carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition by French trapper and guide Toussaint Charbonneau. The replica was made in 1905 for the McLoughlin family by the same French gunsmithery as the original, to help mark the 100th anniversary of the famous Corps of Discovery exploration. Even as a replica, it was worth thousands for its authenticity and antiquity.

  Hester had never seen a man wring his hands as vigorously, in true praying mantis style.

  “Well, they must still have it!” Pensler croaked. “We must call them immediately! I’m sure the National Park Service has taken proper care with it, but it was to be returned within a week. This is inexcusable!”

  “Dabney, I’ve already left an urgent message for their curator to get back to me,” Hester said in her most soothing voice. “And it happens I’m going up there tomorrow on another errand. My colleague Ethel Pimala is there helping with a re-enactment and we’re meeting for lunch – remember I told you I’d just be in for the afternoon? So I’ll be sure to track down the pistol and escort it back here personally.”

  Pensler pulled out a linen handkerchief monogrammed with “DP” in old English letters and mopped the dripping sweat from his forehead. With Hester’s calming words he quickly composed himself.

  “Well, that will be fine then.” He sniffed, replaced his pince nez, and peered down his nose at Hester. “You’ll keep me informed?”

  “Of course. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Hester sighed as the storklike man strode through the room’s carved oak doors.

  “My, I’ve earned my little paycheck today,” she whispered as she gathered her purse and followed him out.

  Chapter 8

  Harry Harrington was buck naked except for a strategically draped beach towel that he wore like Superman’s cape to cover his backside and a beach ball he carried in front of him.

  Walking behind him, Nate Darrow, who refused to remove his clothing, noticed a butterfly-shaped birthmark on his colleague’s bony right shoulder as the two detectives wound their way on a dusty trail past snowberries and beneath mossy cottonwoods toward Collins Beach, Sauvie Island’s famed nude sunning spot. It was such an institution that there was even an official county sign out by the road informing the public that the beach was clothing-optional.

  They’d been directed here after stopping up the road at Downward Dog Farm only to be told that the farm’s Spiritual Leader, Ma Anand Martha, was spending the day “renewing her oneness with the Sun God, Ra.” The late-spring heat had returned to northern Oregon.

  “I’ve read about these people, and you can’t expect them to cooperate unless you’re on the same spiritual plain, and that means getting bare,” the balding, fifty-something Harrington had lectured Darrow at their parked car as he stripped down with what Nate found to be discomfiting zeal. Nate breathed a small sigh of relief when Harry pulled his modesty-ensuring beach accessories from the car’s trunk.

  “OK, Harry, you can take the lead on this interview, and I wish you luck, but I’m keeping my pants on,” Darrow told him. “I don’t mind skinny dipping now and then, but the whole idea of these nudists who go on picnics, munch fried chicken, play Twister and pretend that everything is perfectly normal while way too many things are hanging out in the breeze, just kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Well, Nate, my friend, the missus and I are no naturists, but she has a crazy aunt down in Bandon who’s always talked up this sort of thing,” Harrington replied, pushing his perennially slipping eyeglasses up with one hand and then patting his careful comb-over back into place, while the other hand carefully grasped the multicolored beach ball to his waist as they walked.

  “She says baring your soul to the universe is the spiritual equivalent of a high colonic. She sent my wife’s cousin to this crazy school that always sounded to me like that place Auntie Mame sent little Patrick Dennis, you know? Where they all swam like salmon going upstream to spawn? Did you ever see that movie?”

  It didn’t take long to find Ma Anand Martha on the sandy Columbia River beach. She and a group of four deeply tanned followers were the only beachgoers with a tie-dyed kite, soaring in the breeze above them, tethered to the ground by a string of Tibetan prayer flags.

  Nate hung back near the tree line, hands in pockets, and watched as Harry introduced himself and flashed his badge, which he had pinned to his beach towel. As he spoke, Ma Anand Martha, a freckled brunette whose demeanor was more La Jolla than Lhasa, provocatively rubbed baby oil on her breasts. Nate heard Harry choke three times during their exchange of words, muffled by a soft breeze blowing down the river.

  “Let’s just hope he doesn’t need his gun,” Darrow thought to himself, watching idly as a heavily laden inbound freighter with “TOYOTA” in giant letters across its topsides pushed aside a high bow wave as it trundled 50 yards from shore on its way to the Port of Portland.

  But the conversation was surprisingly calm and brief. After a few minutes Harrington pulled out a ballpoint pen – from where? Darrow wondered – and jotted something down on his beach ball.

  “They say they have an airtight alibi,” Harry told Nate as they kicked up a small dust cloud from the dry path on their walk back to the car. “The night van Dyke was killed all 10 members of their group were up all night long in their barn because their favorite horse was giving birth. They say the local veterinarian can vouch for them.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, with Harrington again attired in the blue-and-white striped seersucker suit he favored in warm weather, they were in the log-cabin-style Sauvie Island Animal Clinic watching Dr. Nigel Hartley give a mewling tabby kitten its first vaccinations. Hartley, who sounded like a transplant from New Zealand or Australia, was confirming the Rajneeshees’ story.

  “Yes, mates, I was there all night with them, from about 8 p.m. until almost bloody 6 in the morning,” said the plaid-shirted, mutton-chopped vet, shaking his shaggy brown locks at the memory. “Those folks are good clients and they care about their animals, but crikey, they almost drove me round the twist that night. It was Rainbow, their favorite miniature horse. They got her with the idea of breeding and selling the offspring – you’d be amazed what you can get for these novelty breeds. But they’re so loopy over their animals I don’t think they’ll ever give one up.”

  He paused while he took the kitten back to a Dutch door and handed it over to its waiting owner, a shyly smiling 8-year-old girl from a nearby farmhouse.

  “There you go, little Madeline, now be sure Squeaker gets a bowl of cream as a treat when you get her home,” the kindly vet told her, then turned back to Darrow and continued.

  “Anyway, they were there all night chanting and burning incense,” Hartley continued as he washed his hands over a basin next to the door. “And I know it was all of them because I kept trying to suggest that we didn’t need 10 people to assist and maybe some of them should get some sleep, b
ut they wouldn’t hear of it.

  “So it turned out the little mare was bursting with twin foals in a bad presentation and I had to do a C-section, and I tell you it took about two hours of palavering to convince them it was necessary and that just giving her a beet-juice enema wouldn’t solve the problem!”

  Hartley agreed that he would sign a sworn statement if necessary, and Nate and Harry stepped back out into the bright sunshine, breathing deeply of the interesting mix of aromas on the breeze: floral scents from a neighboring nursery and earthy manure from a dairy farm.

  As Harrington guided the Caprice back across the narrow old steel-girder bridge over Multnomah Channel, a Willamette River offshoot that separated the island from the mainland, Darrow drummed his fingers on the dashboard and frowned in thought.

  “Harry, I don’t want to know what the captain is going to say when he hears that we struck out with the Rajneeshees, and I hate to think what he’s going to tell the chief,” Darrow said, sucking on his teeth.

  Harrington, the veteran of many bosses and several chiefs, seemed to be taking it in stride.

  “You just tell the truth, Nate,” he said, twirling the steering wheel to merge onto Highway 30 back toward the city. “The quick arrest the chief promised the public was foiled by a bunch of prayer-flag waving nudists chanting over a miniature horse named Rainbow.”

  Darrow rubbed his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid you were going to say.”

  He flinched when a furious beeping sounded from his jacket. Fumbling and scrambling to find his new cellular phone, something all Portland detectives had been issued two weeks earlier, Darrow finally fished the phone from his pocket, raised its little antenna, peered at it long enough to pick out the “answer” button and held it to his ear. “Hello! Nate Darrow.”