Shift Burn (Imogene Museum Mystery #6)

by Jerusha Jones

  Rupert chuckled and bent even farther to scratch behind her ears. He has the Humpty Dumpty body type but with a dash of debonair flare in professorial tweeds. I didn’t know how he could stand to wear wool pants in this heat, even though inside the Imogene was a good twenty degrees cooler than outside.

  Rupert straightened and padded toward me, his face flushed from the exertion. “Meredith, my dear. I do apologize for the unfortunate timing of this delivery. I feel rotten about interfering with your honeymoon.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I patted his arm. “Do you know why the donor was in such a hurry to transfer the collection? Seems unusual.”

  “It’s my understanding he’s packing up his entire household — and quite a household, you should have seen it — because he’ll be living abroad indefinitely. Tell me about the Tins—”

  Rupert’s words were obliterated by the blast of a jackhammer. I jumped and clutched at his elbow. No matter how aware I am — one can hardly avoid it — of the construction, the jackhammers get me every time. Rupert blinked as a new sprinkling of fine white dust settled on his glasses.

  The jackhammer stopped as quickly as it started, and Rupert was left shouting, “Tinsleys. Herb and Harriet?” He modulated his deep, gravelly voice. “I heard about Herb’s stroke.”

  “It was minor. He seemed to be responding very well to treatment last night.”

  Frankie bustled up. She was wearing a pair of neat jeans and cute short-sleeved blouse with lace edges — her idea of grubby clothes for the heavy lifting we’d be doing later. “Is he coming home today?”

  I nodded and winced as another jackhammer barrage sounded from the opposite side of the building. The workmen had been doing this last week too — the bizarre staggered squawks of jackhammering all around the building’s perimeter — like some kind of freaky, grating mating calls of blind pterodactyls who were playing Marco Polo, trying to find each other. It was horrible.

  As soon as the racket stopped, while my ears were still ringing, Rupert slid his warm, plump hands under Frankie’s and my elbows and scooted us out onto the sidewalk. “I am buying you two fine ladies a cup of coffee at the Burger Basket. I can’t think straight in there. It’s a good thing we decided to close the museum during repairs — no visitors could endure this.”

  Tuppence must have thought Rupert’s idea was excellent because she trotted ahead of us toward the marina, the white tip of her tail in the air. I satisfied — as much as I could anyway — Rupert’s and Frankie’s concern about the Tinsleys during our stroll. They peppered me with questions about the barn fire too, and I truthfully skirted around the answers as best I could. Clearly the rumors about an arsonist had spread and reached even the normally quiet halls of the Imogene. Sheriff Marge’s battle to contain the information was already lost.

  Technically, Finney Hooper’s fine establishment is called the Burger Basket & Bait Shop and floats on algae-covered pontoons alongside the marina’s rental slips. We tramped down the gangway and entered the restaurant end of the building. I figured Tuppence smelled nicer — at least now that she had recuperated — and was better behaved than most of the paunchy old men who regularly sat around the long tables swapping tales and only occasionally making the effort to fling a line over the edge of the dock, so Finney wouldn’t mind if I let her inside.

  We helped ourselves to Finney’s guaranteed-to-grow-hair-on-your-chest coffee from the giant urn and crowded around a table covered with a red and white checked vinyl tablecloth. Rupert dumped a packet of powdered creamer in his mug and swirled a spoon in it until the coffee was mud colored.

  I wanted to divert his and Frankie’s attention from fires — whether wild, accidental or intentional — so I opened a new topic. “This donor, Silas Guardado, tell us about him. What motivates a man to pick up and leave — and donate a world-class collection to a museum like the Imogene?”

  “Esquire,” Rupert chuckled. “Don’t forget the esquire. And don’t sell us short, my dear. The Imogene is a fine museum, thanks in large part to you. But why he insists upon the title, I don’t know. He’s not a lawyer, and I wouldn’t consider him snobby at all. Brilliant, shifty — yes. Snobby — no. Quite genial.”

  “Shifty?” I asked and ducked my head to check on Tuppence who had curled up under my chair. She hadn’t exhibited even a whiff of interest in scouting for breakfast morsels that might have been dropped on the floor. Good girl.

  “The weight of worldly possessions. I see it often among the dedicated — or perhaps I should say obsessed — collectors. They become distracted, suspicious, extremely competitive. It gives them a shifty, calculating sort of nervousness. Silas Guardado has succumbed in spades, in spite of how much he tries to conceal it. I’m guessing it will do his health, if not his mind, good to be free of it all for a while.”

  “Is he ill?” Frankie asked.

  “No, no. I didn’t mean to give that impression. Said he was going to start his extended European vacation at the Viva Mayr Spa in Austria.”

  “Sounds fancy.” Frankie’s eyes widened.

  “It is if you like eating shredded cardboard and drinking Epsom salt solutions.” Rupert grimaced. “It’s the sort of treatment to be taken in small doses.”

  “The pressures of the job,” I murmured.

  “I might be starting to feel it myself.” Rupert scratched his neck beneath his neatly trimmed, mostly gray beard, leaving red welts behind. “The idea of being responsible for artifacts four or five thousand years old is —”

  I shushed him and glanced over at the nearest group of fishermen. However, they didn’t register even a blip of interest in our conversation. One was stabbing the tabletop with a blunt forefinger, vociferously arguing the efficacy of twitching jigs for catching Coho salmon while the others pshawed as only old men can.

  “Right,” Rupert muttered. “See what I mean? I’m slipping.”

  “It’ll be over soon.” I squeezed his hand. “We’ll get the delivery, finish the foundation, and lock everything up, visible but untouchable. Just a few more weeks.”

  He’d been so excited when he first told me about this acquisition — a free and clear donation, no less — but now that he mentioned the weight of concern he was carrying, I could see the deepening circles under his eyes and a haggardness that came from not sleeping well.

  “How’s the insurance?” I asked.

  Rupert nodded soberly. “There’s one thing that’s moving ahead of schedule. I should receive the paperwork for a provisional policy by courier this afternoon. After we — I mean you—” he tipped his mug my direction, “confirm the items on the list are actually in the shipment, we’ll get a more robust rider. They won’t cover replacement since that’s impossible, but they will insure for recovery, restoration and repair should anything happen. Lloyd’s wants to send out an expert at a later date to verify authenticity of the artifacts. They like knowing that what they’re insuring is the real deal.”

  I expelled a deep breath. That was actually good news — great news — in fact, the best news I’d had with regard to this collection. An independent audit. Because I probably wouldn’t be able to tell a Babylonian bowl from a Tijuana tourist trap flower pot.

  “I have an idea.” I waited for Rupert to arch his brows and peer at me over the rim of his mug. “Since the board of trustees is springing for this provisional insurance policy before we’ve even seen the shipment, how about we speed up the process of verifying the contents with an extra pair of hands?”

  “I assume you have someone in mind.” A smile was starting to twitch at the corners of Rupert’s mouth, returning some of the normal cheerfulness to his demeanor.

  “We keep in touch. He’s followed Lindsay to Pullman while she finishes her degree. But I think he’d be willing to make the four-hour drive and spend a week or so helping me tag every cup, tile, shard and tool.” I matched Rupert’s grin.

  Rupert thunked his palm on the table. “Done. Do it. I’ll haggle with the board. They won’
t be able to say no.”

  Rupert’s chairman of the board and the only remaining descendant of the Imogene’s founding Hagg family, so his wishes carry extra weight with the other members. I had every confidence I’d receive a reasonable, earmarked sum in the next few days.

  “Greg?” Frankie squealed and bounced on the edge of her seat.

  Greg had been my intern while he was in the anthropology doctoral program at Oregon State University, but then he graduated, and the museum didn’t have the funds to hire him. Besides, we don’t have quite the appeal as his fiancée (and my former gift shop manager) Lindsay does, so it was an easy decision for him to find work closer to her. But I was sure he’d be glad to spare us a week of mega-overtime as a temporary laborer since we had the enticement of a collection an anthropologist might only get to handle once in a lifetime, if that.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse through the window of a huge, moving white panel gleaming in the sunlight — the side of an unmarked semi-truck and trailer combo rolling down the long parking lot shared by the museum, county park and marina, its hazard lights flashing.

  I checked my watch. “Guess who made extraordinarily good time today?”

  CHAPTER 9

  I didn’t want to leave Rupert in the dust, but as a portly gentleman, he just couldn’t cover ground as fast as I could. “I’ll direct them around back,” I hollered over my shoulder and picked up speed, leaving Frankie to accompany him.

  Four legs trump two every time, and Tuppence beat me to the semi-truck just as a middle-aged man of slender build jumped down from the driver’s seat.

  “Well, hello there.” He bent and tousled Tuppence’s ears as she inspected his jeans from the knees down.

  “Sorry about that,” I huffed, pulling up beside him. “She’s friendly, but nosy.”

  “Of course she is. Wouldn’t expect anything else. We always travel with our dogs too.” He reached up into the cab and returned with two brown fur balls in his hands. One had a pink ribbon tied in its hair, the other a blue ribbon. “Meet Hans and Franz. Hans is a girl, but she doesn’t care what we call her.” He released the Yorkies, and they tore around Tuppence’s legs, barking their heads off.

  I tried to smile politely. My poor dog. I think she’d rather encounter a skunk than a couple of foo-foo yappers of her own species. She sat on her haunches with a heavy sigh and fixed me with a pathetic, long-suffering look.

  “I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but we don’t have a loading dock. Wood crates?”

  “Yep.” The man reached back inside the cab, and a feminine hand passed him a clipboard with a thick stack of curled papers. “This here’s my wife, Ginger. I’m Karl DeVoss. Sure was a beautiful drive down the gorge. Got a big wildfire burning east a ways, though, that interfered with visibility for a while.”

  I stepped to the side and peeked in the cab, giving his wife a quick wave. She was pretty and petite, her wavy blonde hair pulled back with a blue ribbon. I wondered how she reached the pedals. My freight paperwork had listed them as both CDL holders.

  “So,” Karl continued, “we need to break open the crates?”

  “Yeah. I’m hoping there are inner cartons that we’ll be able to wheel inside with a hand truck or on dollies.”

  Karl clicked his pen and made a few notes on the top sheet. “Should be. This is our second load for a museum, and the first one was packed to the nth degree. I expect this will be the same.”

  “Best access is around back. And there’s room back there for you to turn around, barely.”

  Karl’s face split into a tight grin. “I know all about barely. That’s why Ginger’s along — she does the tight spot maneuvering.”

  I glanced up at Ginger with new admiration.

  Karl whistled for his dogs, and they responded with surprising alacrity. He scooped them up and plopped them on his seat before climbing in after them.

  I took the shortcut through the museum, making a dash up two stories to my office to grab the paperwork that I needed to match to Karl’s. On the way back down, breathing hard, I phoned Pete.

  “Hey, Babe,” I said. “Want a workout?”

  I could hear the grin in his voice. “What kind of workout?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you — it’s lifting heavy boxes.”

  “Will you kiss me when it’s over?” he asked.

  “Till you beg for mercy.”

  “I’m there.” Pete clicked off.

  I’m telling you, I picked a good one — husband I mean. I skipped down the last flight of stairs to the dark basement and flicked on a bank of light switches.

  The cavernous space slowly flickered into view, and the door at the far end swung open.

  “Missus Morehouse,” Ford shouted. He was silhouetted in the opening. “Truck’s here.”

  “Thanks, Ford,” I yelled back.

  Ford’s the caretaker for the Imogene’s property. He keeps the expansive lawn mowed and the shrubbery pruned. He’d also been helping me with the kitchen garden rejuvenation. But I think his favorite part of the job is unloading big deliveries. Ford’s happiest when he has something to do. He grew up in an age when those with learning disabilities weren’t diagnosed, just stereotyped and separated. No matter his IQ, he’s one of the most perceptive and empathetic people I’ve met.

  He knows Pete and I are married now — he’d been reminding me of the coming event with eager anticipation for the past couple weeks — but I’ll always be Missus Morehouse to him. In fact, Pete’s and my first date, if you can call it that, included Ford seated between us in my pickup on the way home from a high school football game. Good times.

  I hustled down the narrow aisle between piled boxes of items I still hadn’t documented for display and the leftover junk an old building accumulates but doesn’t readily dispose of through more than a century, first as a vacation residence and then as a museum. The Imogene’s basement is an archaeological dig in its own right.

  Nearer the basement door was an area I’d cleared, hoping it was sufficient floor space to hold the contents of the crates with a little room to spare for further unpacking, photographing, tagging and researching. Greg and I would be operating in close quarters for the foreseeable future.

  I stepped through the open door into the blinding sunlight. I trotted up the ramp in time to see the semi-truck and trailer backing steadily, and very neatly, into place.

  Karl and Ginger must have swapped seats because it was Ginger who stuck her head out the driver’s window and called, “Close enough?”

  “Yup,” Ford shouted back.

  Karl walked me through all the spots I needed to initial and sign on his paperwork, then he punched a code into the lockbox which was clamped around the handles on the trailer’s rear doors.

  “Handy new gadget,” he said. “This lock has a GPS mechanism that only allows me to open it when it’s within a specified geographic zone. Our dispatcher plugged the museum’s coordinates into the system. If we’d tried to open it a mile down the road, nothing would have happened. Prevents tampering and theft. Safest way to travel.” He heaved on the doors and pulled them open.

  “Whew. Somewhat anti-climactic, isn’t it, my dear?” Rupert wheezed as he shuffled up.

  He was right — as far as it went. Crates are nothing special. “It’s what’s inside that counts.” I grinned at him.

  Ford fetched the museum’s selection of crowbars and hammers and climbed up in the trailer with Karl. Pete arrived shortly after, and we let the guys do the hard work of cracking the crates open. Frankie, Ginger and I loaded and wheeled — back and forth, back and forth — into the basement. I suggested Rupert manage the receiving end, and he promptly dragged a hideous ottoman upholstered in 1970’s psychedelic velour into the best position for proper oversight and took up his perch with scratch paper in hand for a rough diagram of which crate’s contents were placed where.

  He also kept an eye on Tuppence who dozed contentedly at his feet. Doc Corn had writte
n that it would take a while for her to regain stamina after her distressing episode.

  Karl and Ginger had confirmed they had the time and inclination to help us, which was certainly above and beyond their job description. I think they were as curious about their cargo as we were. After interacting with them over the course of several sweaty hours, I was comfortable they operated with discretion. They weren’t long for the neighborhood anyway, since they had a load to pick up in Hermiston the next day. Everyone on our work crew knew how to keep their own counsel when necessary, for which I was grateful.

  Not that the DeVosses got to see any of the artifacts, though, since it turned out they were thoroughly, perhaps excessively, protected. We only dismantled the cartons enough to get them through the basement door. Greg and I would do the remainder inside the privacy of the Imogene’s thick foundation walls.

  Watching the unpacking unfold set my mind at ease about potential losses. The transportation phase is definitely the most risky element of a collection’s transfer, and I was glad to see Silas Guardado had taken excellent preventive care of the artifacts he was willing to give away.

  We wrapped up close to dusk with an empty semi-trailer and a full dumpster and about a year’s worth of new work sitting in the basement. Dirty, grimy, my muscles wobbly from the exertion, but it felt good.

  Ginger squeaked the truck out of our back lot and pulled it along the curb near the marina for their overnight stay in the sleeper cab. Rupert hurried off to keep his promise to treat them to “the best cheeseburgers this side of the Cascades” (his words) at the Burger Basket.

  I glanced at Frankie. Her hair was slightly askew, a big smudge on her cheek, but she was humming under her breath.

  “What are your plans for tonight?” I asked.

  She turned slightly pink, as I thought she might. “Clean up, for one thing.” She brushed her hands together in a futile attempt to dislodge the dirt ground into her palm creases. “Then cook dinner.”

  “Having company?” I whispered.