“YEAH, NATE, I THINK THE CHIEF WILL BE HOT ON THIS RAJNEESHEE CONNECTION AGAIN. LET ME SEE IF I CAN TRACK HER DOWN.”
“OK, Harry, why don’t you make a few phone calls to old friends and neighbors, but keep it on the sly. If that doesn’t lead anywhere we’ll take a run out to Sauvie Island first thing tomorrow, just to be sure she hasn’t shown up there. Right now I’m psyched up and loaded for bear to go to work on Charbonneau. With his link to the pistol I still see him as our best suspect.”
“OK, LOADED FOR BEAR, I HEAR YOU. SAUVIE ISLAND FIRST THING TOMORROW. ROGER THAT, NATE.”
As Harrington punched the disconnect button and dropped the phone into his pocket, another member of the St. James congregation, standing behind an oak tree a few feet away, pulled her phone out of her purse and punched a quick-dial button.
“Yeah, Sid? Listen, it’s Misty. I need a satellite van first thing tomorrow for Sauvie Island. And book me with a live feed for the morning news. I’ve got a break on the van Dyke case.”
Chapter 23
As he drove toward the Washington County Jail in Hillsboro, Darrow remembered another phone call he needed to make. He was in a sour mood, driving a boxy old brown Volvo station wagon on loan from Orvald, his cranky Swedish auto repairman. He’d had to leave Sven at the garage again – something about tie rods that sounded expensive.
Steering with his knees and holding the cellphone even with the dashboard so he could more or less watch the road, he managed to punch the number for the Police Bureau’s lab.
The phone buzzed six times before being answered by a youthful voice that Nate recognized as James Chin, a twenty-something whiz kid who ran the lab on Sundays.
“Hey, Jimmy, it’s Nate Darrow, calling to see if you have anything yet on the Rose Medallion.”
An ear-rattling slurping sound indicated that the bristle-haired science geek was in his usual pose, with his red Converse All Stars up on a desk while sucking Mountain Dew through a straw from a Big Gulp cup.
“Oh, sure, they filed the report late last night, I was going to give you a buzz. Hang on.”
Nate heard the phone drop, followed by a solid minute of shuffling noises and the sound of a tinny radio being tuned to a rap station before Chin picked up again.
“Yeah, here it is. The only fingerprints were from the medallion’s finder, Anthony Pucci, 28, of Gresham. There was some dog hair – no surprise there, I understand. Traces of what we think is squirrel dung. We didn’t have a confirmed sample to authenticate by, but if you want me to run over to the Park Blocks I could probably remedy that. Oh, and get this: sausage grease. Quite a bit of it in the fine grooves of the medallion’s detailing.”
Darrow’s knee jerked and he dropped the phone as he grabbed for the steering wheel to keep the wagon from veering into an 18-wheeler next to him on the Sunset Highway.
After ducking to the floor to retrieve the phone and getting an airhorn blast from the truck in the next lane, he responded to Chin.
“Tell me more about that last thing. Did you say sausage grease?”
More pages flipping, another slurp and the sound of chopsticks scraping a takeout carton as Chin finished last night’s leftover chicken chow yuk from Hung Far Low, one of Portland’s oldest Chinese restaurants.
“Umm, yeah, there was pork and beef fat mingled with spices typical of, like, German sausage or bratwurst, says here.”
“Do me a favor and check the chain of evidence. Wasn’t that medallion turned in to officers on the scene at Forest Park? The finder didn’t take it anywhere else, right?”
“Uh, let’s see. Nope, nowhere else. Officers took custody of the medallion at the park and gave the finder a receipt on-site.”
Darrow’s eyes bounced from his rearview mirror to his speedometer and back to the road as his mind worked.
“And you say the grease was worked into the crevices on the medallion? Not something that would have just happened from being casually handled by someone who worked in a kitchen?”
“Well, you might need to check that with Don Finkle, who wrote the report, but his notes here indicate the amount of grease in the grooves of the medallion’s design – like the lines that make up the rose image – was consistent with the whole medal being rubbed with, or even dipped in, grease.”
Darrow didn’t hesitate to respond this time.
“Jimmy, if I brought you a sausage from the right restaurant, could that grease be matched to its source?”
“Ummm, yeah, I think it probably could be. We could even do DNA analysis on the pork and beef that could be a real lock if you needed.”
Darrow thanked him and punched the disconnect button just as he took the exit at Hillsboro, then pulled the wagon to the shoulder and hit quick-dial for another number.
“Hey, Harry, it’s me again.”
“NATE, LONG TIME NO HEAR!”
“Look, Harry, I know this is messing up your plans for the day, but I wonder if you and Harriet like German food, ’cause I gotta ask another favor. When you’re done checking out the rabid Rajneeshee lady, could you maybe take your wife to lunch at the Wiener Dog, out at Jantzen Beach? Enjoy your meal, but also say you’re having a party later and want an order of every sausage they make, packed to go. And take it straight to Jimmy Chin in the lab. He’ll be expecting you.”
“HOT DOGS FOR SUNDAY BRUNCH? I DON’T KNOW HOW WELL THAT WILL PLAY WITH HARRIET!”
“Talk up sauerbraten and spätzle, but be sure and get takeout of every sausage and bratwurst on the menu. I have a hunch I can tell you about later, but if you do this and it pays off I’ll buy beer on Fridays for a month.”
“OK, NATE, I LIKE THOSE ODDS.”
“And Harry? Don’t let on you’re a cop, just act hungry.”
Chapter 24
Hester had spent the afternoon doing some laundry and packing for the next day’s trip on the Columbia River.
She was finally sipping a glass of good Dundee pinot gris in her cozy little yellow kitchen as she stirred a bubbling pot of golden curry sauce and watched the baby carrots swim among islands of Yukon Gold potato. Cooking good food – especially comfort food her mother taught her to make – always made her hum happily.
Every time she opened the fridge she stole another peek at dessert: a tray of cream puffs she’d concocted in between washing loads. She’d carefully drizzled the crusty tops with the just-right thin icing made from bittersweet baker’s chocolate, as prescribed in the recipe from her grandmother’s homemade cookbook. This was the family dessert she’d grown up adoring.
“I remember the first time I got them just right,” she told Bingle T. as he sat on her kitchen windowsill watching for hummingbirds at a new feeder hanging outside. “When I took a bite and they tasted just like Nana’s, I got tears in my eyes.”
Lost in thought, she took a sip of wine, then finished the memory.
“Of course I didn’t get the proportions right, and each cream puff was the size of a human head, but they tasted great!” she said with a chuckle.
When the door buzzer sounded at 6:25 Hester quickly flipped on the rice cooker, stepped to the hallway mirror to push a steam-limped red curl back behind her ear and swung open the door to welcome Nate Darrow.
The evening was still warm, but on his return from Hillsboro Darrow had stopped back in his apartment for a cool shower and now presented himself in baggy, caramel-colored cotton slacks, Teva sport sandals and a burgundy polo shirt. He carried a small bouquet of purple irises and a bottle of wine.
Hester had changed into a blue batik butterfly top, somewhat resembling an old tablecloth with a hole for her head, over a pair of white culottes. Her bare feet showed off freshly polished crimson-red toenails.
Nate looked her up and down. “My, that’s a more bohemian look than usual for the lady of this house.” He paused. “It suits you, Hester.”
She batted her eyelashes exaggeratedly, smiled and led him to her cheerful kitchen and a wicker chair at a round, two-seater pedestal
table next to a pair of open windows. The table held two place settings on mats of red linen.
“We’re dining at the Round Table tonight, Sir Nathaniel of Everett Street, because this lovely southeasterly breeze kicked in a half-hour ago and it’s rather heavenly with the windows thrown wide,” she said. “I’ve got fans running in the rest of the apartment but they’re just moving the hot air around.”
“Ah, this is nice,” Darrow said, laughing as a little freshet coming up from the river wrapped a gauzy curtain around his head.
“Oh, put this cookbook on the sill to hold those down. Bingle was perched there until he heard the buzzer. He usually goes into hiding until he’s decided it’s someone he likes.”
The furry, gray-striped cat took that moment to stalk into the kitchen with his tail up like an exclamation point, leap onto Darrow’s lap and then back to the windowsill, where he promptly settled into meatloaf position to look outside.
Surprise flashed across Hester’s face. “Well! I guess you’ve passed muster, good knight. Cold beer or a drop of this nice wine?”
“I’ll have what you’re having, please.”
As she pulled down another crystal goblet, one of two she’d brought home from a trip to Venice, Hester took the opportunity to ask Nate about his day – and how the case was going.
“Oh, God, I spent a hot afternoon in an airless little interrogation room with Gomer, I mean Pomp, Charbonneau.”
He squeezed his palms against both temples and made a sound like a deflating tire.
“Anyway – our survivalist Gaul refused to lawyer up, protesting his innocence, but when it became apparent that we really did think he might have killed van Dyke, he spilled like milk. He now admits that he made van Dyke strip and staked him out in the horseshoe pit but insists he only did it to humiliate him because van Dyke had made a chump of him – Charbonneau – by cutting him out of the big payoff from the Japanese collector.”
He took the wine glass from Hester and gave it a swirl and an appreciative sniff before continuing.
“Actually, it’s hard to blame old Pomp for being a little ticked, since van Dyke seemed perfectly happy to let him take the blame for counterfeiting the Flying Canoe cover when all the time Charbonneau thought he was just making a collector’s copy.”
Darrow brooded for a moment, then decided to share more details with his neighbor, who’d proven she could be a discreet – and helpful – sounding board.
“Charbonneau says he called van Dyke and arranged a midnight meeting in the park, demanding that van Dyke share some of his newfound wealth. He wouldn’t exactly own up to it but I gather old Pomp was dabbling in the ancient art of blackmail, something along the line of ‘bring me 20,000 bucks or I’ll tell my friends at the newspaper about your sleight of hand with library property.’ He claims van Dyke showed up with the old pistol and no cash, hoping to scare Charbonneau off. But van Dyke stunk of gin, and it wasn’t hard to take the gun away, Charbonneau says.”
Hester sat down opposite Nate and set out a plate of butterfly crackers with runny brie topped by jalapeño jelly. She sipped at her wine and put her head back to compute what he was telling her.
“So maybe the pistol had been returned to the library from Fort Vancouver, and Pieter van Dyke borrowed it because it was an easy way to get a gun?” Hester posed.
Darrow tasted his wine for the first time as he thought back over the story and nodded.
“Out of curiosity, I made a quick call and van Dyke’s wife claimed he never owned a gun. Hated them, and wouldn’t know how to shoot one.”
Hester took this in.
“So Charbonneau admits he was the shooter?”
“No. But of course he wouldn’t, would he? He swears on the good name of Sacajawea – who I guess really is his great-great-grandmother or something – that van Dyke was alive when he left the park that night, and swearing a blue streak at him until his mouth was taped.”
“What about the library pistol?” Hester asked, hopping up to stir the bubbling curry and then returning to the little table.
Darrow paused while he munched down a cracker, giving an appreciative “Mmmm, mmm” as he chewed.
“He says once van Dyke was trussed up, he left the old library pistol sitting on van Dyke’s fat belly, unfired. He figured being caught with the purloined pistol would cook van Dyke’s goose even if he didn’t squeal on him.”
Hester spread brie on a cracker and chewed it in thought. “But wait – what about the whole Rose Medallion connection? How did that play into it?”
Nate shook his head in mild wonder.
“Well, that’s where I have to start wondering if Charbonneau might just be innocent – of murder, anyway. He says he wanted van Dyke to be humiliated and uncomfortable for a few hours but he didn’t want the guy to be out there so long that he’d die of exposure. So, see, he works at The Oregonian and helps put together the page that gives the Rose Medallion clue every day. He knows that as the search goes on, the daily clues get more and more obvious about where the medallion is hidden, and this search was already only three days away from what they call ‘the giveaway clue.’ So he manages to switch clues for that next day, inserting the giveaway clue – something the contest coordinator at the newspaper confirmed for me, and is royally peeved about, by the way. Considering the fanatical legions that hunt for this thing, compounded by the big cash prize this time, Charbonneau says his clue switch virtually guaranteed that not only would someone find van Dyke within a half-hour of the first paper hitting the streets that next morning, but it ensured maximum exposure, if you’ll pardon the term, of van Dyke’s humiliation – which apparently Charbonneau planned to carry through with whether old Pieter brought the payoff or not.”
“But hold on, what about the press breakdown?” Hester responded. “We were the first people to find van Dyke, and it was long after the normal time for the newspaper to come out. None of the medallion hunters got the clue in time.”
“Right. Charboneau admits things didn’t go as planned. But he says he had no way of knowing about the press breakdown when he left van Dyke; that’s a part of the printing process that happens after he goes home. He claims it gave someone extra time to come across van Dyke and kill him. Charbonneau insists he left van Dyke by quarter to 1, and the medical examiner places the time of death at between 3 and 5 a.m. ”
Thinking skeptically, Hester made a face as if she’d gotten a piece of bad cheese.
“But if the Rose Medallion was worth $50,000, why wouldn’t Charbonneau have just taken it with him? Then he wouldn’t have cared about any payoff from Pieter van Dyke!”
“Well, as an Oregonian employee, neither Charbonneau nor any of his relatives was eligible to claim the prize. He says he pulled the medallion off the park sign and left it on a ribbon around van Dyke’s neck, just to make the humiliation complete.”
“Wow,” Hester sighed. “The whole thing sounds diabolical. And if it’s true it certainly steers suspicion away from Charbonneau as the killer, unless he’s one of those people who really wants to be caught. Maybe he is that weird?”
Darrow absently fingered the leaves of the irises Hester had put in a vase on the table, then spread brie on two crackers and munched them quickly down, his eyes momentarily popping wide when he got to the hot jelly. He sipped some cool wine, then spoke again.
“The thing is – he has an oddball sense of humor, but I have to say this guy doesn’t feel like a liar to me, Hester. And I’ve listened to a few good liars in my day.”
She put down her wineglass and hopped up to check on the steaming rice before responding.
“So if not Charbonneau, who?”
Darrow shrugged.
“I’m still noodling that. Got a few irons in the fire. In the meantime, Charbonneau’s confession lets us hold him on obstruction, at least, and assault, maybe with intent. And we’re moving him to our jail.”
Chapter 25
The curry over jasmine rice was just as Hester pr
omised: the perfect antidote to hot weather, and the fresh fruit on the side was like a culinary plunge into a cool forest stream.
With the cream puffs, they finished the bottle of unoaked, biodynamic chardonnay Nate had brought from his brother’s winery. As the light began to fade, bells gonged from the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, a Gothic-revival wonder just down the street.
Darrow held his glass aloft, struck an “I’m-going-to-quote-some-poetry-now” pose and then spoke in a soft and melodic baritone:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”
Hester arched an eyebrow.
“Really, not just named for Hawthorne but a reciter of Thomas Gray, Mr. Darrow? I’m impressed.”
Darrow feigned a wounded look.
“I have more culture than you know, Ms. McGarrigle. And it happens my mother paid me $5 to memorize ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ when I was 10 years old. The woman saw great things for her boys.”
“Ah.” She looked into his dark eyes and held the gaze. “I think I would have liked your mom.”
Darrow held her eyes, then broke the moment by picking up the wine bottle and staring owlishly at the label.
“Winemakers call this naked chardonnay, when they don’t put it on oak,” Darrow said. “But it’s one of the few things that I’m not sure is improved by being naked.”
Hester turned slightly pink and swatted his hand, then took it and led him into the living room, pushing him toward the long sofa of faded chintz with big red roses. She stepped back into the kitchen for a few moments, then reappeared with a small plate of Stilton cheese and two tiny glasses of ruby port.
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