“OK, Ralph, that’s more than I need to know.” Hester cut him off with finality. “Thank you. We’ll just make the best of things.” Squeezing her eyes shut, Hester took a deep breath, then lifted her head and carried her coat back to the front of the bookmobile, where she draped it over the passenger seat.
“Look, Hester, I’m sorry,” Ralph said, both hands raised. “I know this all must have been pretty hard on you, finding her and all that.” Noticing Hester’s sudden pallor, he paused. “Listen, you sure you want to be here today?”
Kneeling down to a box of books, Hester looked up at him and nodded. “Yes. Thanks. I’ll be fine. Time to climb right back in the saddle, isn’t that what they say?”
“Right, right. But Hester, I’ve got to say – Pim’s a friend, you know. Ain’t no way I believe she did murder.”
‘“Well, Ralph, that makes two of us anyway,” Hester said, giving a courageous smile as she pulled books from the box and began to sort them by subject.
Ralph knelt over another box and inspected the contents. “Oh, boy, they did a number on jumbling these up, I’m afraid. Here’s Louis L’Amour on top of Danielle Steel!”
“She probably likes that, but I’d expect better of Louis,” Hester muttered, pushing a red curl out of her eyes.
Ralph spent more time poring over book jackets than sorting. A true-crime paperback held his attention a moment, its lurid cover showing a bloody steak knife wielded by a crazed suburban mother of four. “Hey, I don’t think I’ve read this one!” he said, turning to plop the book on the dashboard.
Another thought occupied Ralph’s face as he turned back, pausing to lean against a bookshelf. Arms crossed, he looked down at Hester.
“You know, they always consider family first. It’s amazing how many spouses kill each other, or brothers murder sisters, or cousins grab squirrel guns out of their pickups after a little squabble over who gets the last barbecued rib at the family reunion.”
Hester gave a little roll of her eyes, struggling to quell her first feelings of exasperation. “Well, if you’re talking about Miss Duffy, she had no family. Her last cousin passed away last year in Connecticut.”
Ralph wasn’t to be put off, however.
“Of course, if the victim is somebody old, they always look at the heirs, to see who inherits. People are greedy, and if there’s money, sometimes they get impatient. You know – there’s a lot of scuttlebutt about how old Sara wasn’t exactly poverty stricken.”
Hester had stopped sorting. She sat on the floor and leaned back against a cold metal wall to listen.
“So, Hester, if it wasn’t Pim, who did this? If I were investigating, first I’d want to know how much money old Duffy had stuffed in a mattress, and second, I’d want to know who gets it. Did she have any close friends?”
Hester’s eyes froze on a faded sign on the wall beyond Ralph’s head: “No tobacco-spitting on the bookmobile.” The sign had been there so long, she rarely noticed it, nor did she now as her mind processed the thought Ralph had planted.
“Friends?” she repeated.
Hester suddenly leaned forward and resumed her task of organizing books for the day’s run. Nodding at another box, she urged her driver to help. “Come on, Ralph, let’s get going. You gave me an idea that just might be worth talking to somebody about.”
The view from the top of Skyline that noon lived up to the reputation that made it a regular stop for tour buses filled with camera-toting tourists from Osaka, Oslo and Omaha.
Amid wafting puffs of cumulus beyond the city skyline, Mount Hood’s shark-tooth peak gleamed with snow. To the northeast Hester saw the low hump of Mount St. Helens. A flat, surgically precise cut marked where a wide crater had replaced the peak’s top thousand feet. Hester remembered the day it erupted. She and a long-ago flame were at a bed-and-breakfast in the Yakima Valley wine country. They saw the sky turn black at noon.
Hester had worried nobody would expect the bookmobile today. But Shelly Guenther, the library’s ace P.R. woman, had passed the word to Portland TV and radio. At least one bored news manager apparently found enough lingering sensationalism in the Duffy murder to air the announcement on news breaks all morning.
Through the windshield Hester saw several regulars clustered around a park bench, some looking a little grumpy that the bookmobile was 20 minutes late. “Uh oh, Ralph, I’m afraid we’re in for it,” Hester said, her loyal patrons pointedly glancing at watches as the driver wrestled the big bus over to the curb.
Beyond was a knot of new faces, several people craning their necks as the bookmobile ground to a halt. Small children played tag, running in and out of the crowd. There were several baby jogger-strollers piloted by slim mothers in Nike spandex. One entire helmeted family had come on bicycles, complete with one of those toddler trailers, its bright orange safety flag wagging in a light breeze.
In a parking slot just beyond, Hester noticed a TV news van with a microwave dish raised atop its roof. Cables snaked across the lawn and around the trunk of a lone fir, its branches sagging beneath a flock of starlings whose incessant chittering added to the general hubbub.
“I wonder what’s going on up here today, they must be having some kind of fun-run or something,” Ralph muttered as he yanked the huge parking brake into position.
“Yes, and it looks like a really slow news day for somebody if that’s what they’re covering,” Hester added.
Ralph dug the morning’s Oregonian from beneath his seat and propped one foot on the gear box as Hester set up the Instie-Circ. Unlike Pim, Ralph considered that he was a driver and nothing more. If Hester wanted help, she usually had to ask.
Oh, well, this is just temporary, I hope, she thought to herself as she threw open the forward door, turning a welcoming smile to her patrons.
First aboard were the Donaldson sisters, Marvella and LaVerne, in pink polyester pantsuits. All that distinguished them today: one’s kerchief was puce, the other’s chartreuse. The puce sister immediately stepped over to pat Hester on the shoulder.
“Dearie, dearie, how dreadful for you, all this horrible business with our dear, dear Miss Duffy!” she cooed. Hester nodded, absently wondering whether the use of “dear, dear” was a common generational tic or just a macabre tribute to the lexicon of Sara Duffy.
Recalling a secret Pim had taught her about the twins, Hester subtly tilted her head until she could see a mole beneath the sister’s left ear. “Mole means ‘M,’ for Marvella,” she muttered to herself.
The puce sister, undistracted, now dropped her voice to speak confidentially.
“I have a theory, you know, on who did it. You know that dreadful Eye-talian man who used to always come aboard smelling like garlic and anchovies? You know the one – sat over in the corner and read those art magazines? He used to give me the lewdest little winks. You tell the police that’s who did in poor Miss Duffy.”
Hester gave her patron an icy smile. She carefully chose her words before responding, “Why, Miss Donaldson, I’d never have thought of that on my own.”
Marvella Donaldson nodded vigorously as she turned back to her sister. They stepped over to scan the romance shelf.
Looking up, Hester gave a genuine smile as she saw Mrs. Loman pick her way carefully up the steps. Without a word, Hester reached under her table, pulled out the new Tony Hillerman and slipped it into one of Mrs. Loman’s bags. The old woman’s thin lips pulled back in a toothless grin as she stepped toward the mystery rack.
Stifling a chuckle, Hester turned to Ralph and whispered from the side of her mouth, “Oh dear, Mrs. L forgot her dentures again!”
Turning back to the door, Hester was surprised to see Paul Kenyon step in, for once unaccompanied by his mother.
Hester’s face burned as she looked down at her table and tried to look busy. Why was she blushing, she wondered, furious that she couldn’t exercise better control of her capillaries. Paul was the one with the little secret.
“Hester,” he said, nodding in g
reeting.
Hester looked up as if she hadn’t noticed him before. “Oh. Paul! Hi.” She quickly returned her eyes to the Instie-Circ and busily pushed keys.
Ignoring the snub, Kenyon stepped back to the magazine rack and picked up the latest issue of Byte Digest.
Hester noticed Paul wore his usual conservative clothes – green cotton sweater today, no earring. As he scanned the magazine, she kept sneaking peeks in a vain attempt to spy a hole in his earlobe.
She jumped when Ralph spoke. He was folding his newspaper to get a better look at a story he found of interest.
“Hey, says here in the Onion – ” Ralph liked to use the locals’ pejorative name for the daily paper – “says that the library is going to have a big audit. Says that new city commissioner has gotten in with those book-banning folks. Quotes her here: ‘We’re finally going to see where all that money is going.’ All that money, huh? What do you think of that, Hester?”
Hester shook her head in despair. “Yes, libraries are notorious money-laundering operations. Millions, just millions flow through this institution. Why, the bookmobile is only a front for a gun-running operation between here and east county, you know.”
Hester gave a saucy smile to Paul Kenyon, who now hovered at her table. “Yes, sir? Did you want an AK-47 or an order of Uzis today? And don’t forget, we’re having a special in white slavery. Please leave your unmarked bills in the return bin.”
Paul gave a patronizing grin.
“Yes, seems like the library is having a few problems,” he said, glancing toward Ralph in the driver’s seat. “A shock about Pim, wasn’t it?”
Hester’s sarcastic glee dissolved. Her blue eyes smoldered purple at Paul Kenyon.
“Yes, and what’s really shocking is that they haven’t figured out what boobs they’re making of themselves by holding the wrong person in jail. You’d think they’d arrest the real murderer.”
Paul gave a look of mild surprise. “You mean there’s serious doubt? Boy, from what I’ve heard around the Justice Center, it’s just a matter of whether the prosecutor will go for the death penalty or not.”
Hester recoiled as if slapped. She had momentarily forgotten that possibility. “Oh, don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “Now excuse me while I finish checking in these returns.”
She punched the Instie-Circ’s keys with ferocity, only to have the machine emit a long, piercing beep that caused even Mrs. Loman to look up quizzically.
“Oh, drat this infernal piece of junk. I really don’t need this today! Ralph, can you take a look? I can’t get interfaced.”
Ralph shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. I’m not what they call computer literate. I cleaned up that machine for you this morning, but that’s as far as I go with blasted computers. Besides, I was just going on break.”
Pulling a cigarette from a shirt pocket, he fled out the door.
Just as Ralph disappeared out the front, there came a loud banging on the rear door.
“Come around front!” Hester called. But the banging sounded again, louder. As Hester rose from her seat, Paul Kenyon stepped over.
“While you deal with the crowds, why don’t you let me get the computer working for you,” he said in a hushed and sympathetic voice. Hester hesitated just a moment, then the banging started again.
Looking anxiously toward the door, she turned back to Paul. “Yes, thanks – the, uh, password is ‘Aloha’ – and the entry code is there – ”
She was interrupted as the rear door was yanked open. Stepping quickly to the back of the bookmobile, Hester called out, “Excuse me, this entry is closed today! Puh-leease use the front door!”
But a pimple-faced teenager with a severe bowl-shaped haircut thrust his face in. Several more young, leering faces peered from behind him. On the curb, the crowd of onlookers swarmed close.
“So where’d they find her?” the young hooligan blurted. “The TV said it was in the back, in a cupboard or something!”
Hester’s eyes widened in sudden fury. “What?!”
Opening her palm wide, she forcefully shoved the young man back to the curb, reaching past him in an effort to pull the door closed. She froze when a television camera suddenly turned her way. A young blonde woman she recognized from Channel 3 materialized out of the crowd, gripping a microphone and speaking loudly to be heard over the jostling.
“... and we now meet the checkout clerk. We’re told she actually discovered the body of the brutally slain library director, an elderly woman beloved by generations of Portlanders who grew up listening to story hours on this old bus, a vehicle that this crowd of regulars has now tragically dubbed ‘the murdermobile.’ Heather, tell us your feelings.”
With the microphone thrust her way, Hester felt her throat constrict. She stopped breathing as all eyes looked up at her. From the tree, the starlings silenced their racket. Suddenly the only noise in the park was the reporter’s script rustling in the breeze, joined from inside the bus by the muted squealing of one of Mrs. Loman’s hearing aids.
Finally, Hester felt her airway open and she could speak.
“Go. Get. Away. Shoo! Get. Get out of here!” she shrieked. “Ghouls!”
Grabbing the door, Hester slammed it shut and locked it. She turned and leaned back against the door as if to block further entry.
“What are these people? Vampires?” she gasped to Mrs. Loman, who silently nodded and smiled. Suddenly aware of the dark closet facing her, Hester strode back to her seat, from which Paul Kenyon quickly rose.
“Hester, what is it? Are you OK?”
She was surprised to see genuine concern in his face.
“Oh, it’s – it’s nothing. I’m OK. Just a little crowd-control problem. I’m fine.” She felt her eyes drawn to his for a moment, then looked quickly away. “Thanks.”
“The Instie-Circ is working now. I hope it doesn’t give you any more problems.”
Hester arched her eyebrows. “Well, thank you. That makes my day a little easier.”
Paul nodded a farewell, and when Ralph climbed back aboard, Hester instructed him to guard the door and bar entry to any patron without a library card.
We’ll see how that plays on the evening news, Hester thought, dreading the call she could expect from administration Monday morning.
Hester calmed down as she went about the routine task of checking out materials for her real “regulars” and seeing them on their way. As usual, Mr. Fields waited until he was last aboard to check out his selection of “Star Trek” paperbacks.
As Hester punched his card number into the Instie-Circ, it responded with a beep like a hospital heart monitor on a patient who wouldn’t see tomorrow.
“Damn! I’ve got to reboot this blasted thing!” Hester blurted. After punching the restart button and counting impatiently to 10, she spun the machine around to peer at the 10-digit entry code Pim had long ago taped to the back because it was too long to memorize. Hester found no sign of the crinkled and faded note in Pim’s penciled scrawl.
“Ralph, what’s become of Pim’s cheat sheet? I need the code for this darn machine again!” She shook her head apologetically at Mr. Fields.
Ralph turned from his station by the door. “You mean that tattered little paper stuck on the back? I came across that when I was cleaning up the machine this morning. I figured it was just Pim’s mother’s phone number or something. Couldn’t hardly read it anyway, so I chucked it. And I tell you, it took a pint of acetone to get that old sticky tape off!”
“Oh, great, how am I –” Hester stopped as a thought struck her. “Well, then, how did Paul get this thing to work?”
She attempted a few keystrokes, only to have the computer squeal in protest. She shook her head in puzzlement. “He must be good. Every time I think I’m getting the hang of computers, I meet some computer whiz who makes me feel like a kid playing with an Etch A Sketch.”
Picking up a pad and pencil and digging for her date stamp, Hester muttered, “Well, I guess we do things the
old-fashioned way the rest of the run.”
Chapter Twenty
That Saturday kept reminding Hester of a title from the library’s video collection – an old war movie she often delivered to the Disabled American Veterans Home out in St. Johns: “The Longest Day.”
By mid-afternoon, she’d run into a variety store to buy a cheap bed sheet to drape over the back closet to discourage the morbidly curious. Even still, she’d twice had to shoo away snoops who’d pulled the sheet aside, thoughtlessly ripping down its anchoring thumbtacks, which ricocheted like buckshot in the bookmobile’s tight confines.
“Now I know who those rubberneckers are who cause traffic jams around every freeway wreck,” Hester had groaned to Ralph.
After finally trudging up the Luxor’s front steps in a rapidly thickening dusk, she’d changed into a comfortable old sweater and jeans and opened a tin of Seafood Medley for Bingle T. Then she quickly munched a Caesar salad from the not-quite-wilted romaine in her fridge before gathering herself up again.
Hopping in her dented blue Civic, the car her mother described as resembling “a little wedge of cheese on wheels,” Hester drove across the Willamette to her favorite market to pick up a few ingredients for her special Sunday dinner.
Knute’s and Barry’s was a Portland original, started by a couple of Scandinavian-born health nuts. It catered to an eclectic clientele of Baby Boomer gentry, a sizable population of hippie holdovers with Reed College decals on their old VWs, a growing segment of spiked hair-and-Doc Martens Internet groupies and anybody else who liked unprocessed, high-quality food with an international flavor. Hester would shop there if only for the fragrant and chewy hazelnut-sunflower pumpernickel baked by a co-op in Tillamook.
Today, Knute himself was manning the all-you-can-eat organic lutefisk bar. Hester gave a polite shake of her head at the proffered sample tray, which never seemed to empty. She wondered absently how any food processed with lye could be labeled “organic.”
“Instead of all-you-can-eat, maybe they should call it ‘all-you-can-take,’ ” Hester confided to another woman lining up at the checkout counter.
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