Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries)

by B. B. Cantwell

  She exchanged pleasantries and sore-feet stories as her favorite checker, a smiling young woman with a bleached-blonde buzz cut, rang up her purchases: organic endive-and-radicchio salad blend, Sicilian radiatori pasta, chanterelle mushrooms and four range-fed chicken breasts wrapped in recycled brown paper.

  When the total appeared on the register, Hester dug through her old straw purse for her checkbook.

  It took a moment, as the line grew behind her, before a picture suddenly appeared in Hester’s mind: In the middle of that day’s muddle, she’d written a check for Campfire mints to irresistible little Molly Hartley, a 9-year-old Beverly Cleary fan at the Eastmoreland stop. She’d slipped the mints and her checkbook into a drawer...

  “Oh, Lord, take me now! I left my checkbook on the bookmobile!” Hester exclaimed. Concern flitted across the checker’s face. Behind Hester, a man in a teal Gore-Tex windbreaker who’d been nervously jingling a Range Rover key ring picked up his package of apple-jalapeno sausage links and stormed off to the next checkout.

  “I’m sorry,” Hester pleaded to the checker.

  “Oh, don’t mind him, he always comes through the line with the one item in the store that’s not marked,” the checker confided. “We call him ‘Price-Check Charlie.’ Look, I can hold on to this stuff, it’s all rung through. If you come right back with a check for the exact amount I won’t even have to re-ring you.”

  “Thanks!” Hester blurted, digging the bookmobile key ring from her pocket. “It won’t be 15 minutes!”

  Hester drove quickly through streets rapidly clogging with weekend revelers headed for a Trail Blazers game. The bookmobile barn was less than a dozen blocks away, tucked between two wide and busy commercial streets.

  At night, the side street was a quiet and dark mix of small warehouses, closed offices and a few peeling-paint, dirt-yard houses. Tightly drawn drapes revealed only the flickering telltale glow of televisions being watched. Not one house showed a lit porch light, perhaps on the theory that one doesn’t want to stand out in a neighborhood like this, Hester thought as she passed.

  She noticed the one streetlight on the block had again been doused, probably by a neighbor kid’s BB gun – if not something of larger caliber. Hester shuddered, thinking for a moment that she might be wiser to head for a well-lit bank machine and get some cash on her credit card.

  No, she’d just gotten the balance down to zero on that darn card, and she was saving it for her next Europe trip. She resolved to just run in and out of the bookmobile barn.

  Halfway down the street, Hester turned the little Honda into a driveway blocked by a chain-link gate with a large padlock hanging from a hasp. Ten yards beyond, the light from her headlights reflected off the fading magenta of Bookmobile No. 3, seemingly the only source of color on the block.

  A single mercury-vapor security light did its best to illuminate the driveway. But as on most February days in Oregon, the weather had changed from a few hours earlier. Heavy clouds now scudded overhead on a cold wind. A few big raindrops plopped on Hester’s windshield. The darkening night absorbed the light like a blotter wicks up ink.

  Hester sat for a moment in her car’s warm cocoon, listening to the heater fan whir and the familiar patter of a public-radio talk show. She cast a look up and down at what she could see of the empty street.

  “OK, brave heart, what are you waiting for – an engraved invitation?” she asked herself. Opening the door, she thought for a moment of leaving the car running and the headlights on. Then she pictured a dark figure leaping into the Civic and tires squealing into the distance the moment she stepped away.

  “Yeah, good idea, Hester,” she said, switching the engine off and pulling out the key. She briefly thought of leaving the headlights on. Then she considered how her day had gone, and how it might conclude. “We’re talking dead battery, right?” she asked the cold wind that whistled an imperceptible reply.

  Switching off the lights, Hester hurriedly locked the car door and walked a few feet down the cracked and uneven sidewalk to a small gate designed for pedestrian entry. Around her feet, dead brown leaves scuffled in the wind.

  Already, she was just outside the ring of light. As she fumbled with her library keys, trying to find the right key for this small padlock, something from the bookmobile caught Hester’s attention.

  At day’s end, she always left the bookmobile with shades drawn over the side windows. She thought that it might discourage a prowler from spying the Instie-Circ, which despite its outmoded capabilities did resemble a valuable computer.

  But now, unexpectedly, Hester thought she saw something in the front window. In the periphery of her vision, a soft blue glow outlined the window, like the moon suddenly burning through a rain cloud.

  Hester stared at the bookmobile. Was it a reflection of the TV blur from houses across the street? No, there it was again. It must be the night maintenance crew, Hester thought. Maybe they could let her in?

  “Bob?” she shouted. “Bob Newall? Is that you? Bob, it’s Hester. Come let me in!”

  The glow vanished but nothing more happened. Stamping her foot, Hester stepped back beneath the security light and furiously sorted through the two dozen keys on her ring. Finally, she found the tiny key for the padlock. “Thank you, Lord!” Hester shouted into the brooding sky, the burst of manic energy overcoming her reserve.

  As if to punctuate her exclamation, a door slammed.

  Hester’s head swiveled back toward the bookmobile. “Bob? Ralph? Who’s there?”

  Over the sudden pounding of blood through her temples, Hester heard rapid footsteps. A running figure dodged in and out of shadows beyond the bookmobile, approaching a gate at the far side of the barn. For a fleeting moment, as the far gate opened and closed, another security light dimly illuminated the hurrying figure. The chain link, the distance and gloom diminished Hester’s view.

  All Hester could really make out was a tan coat, and something about its texture. It was – crinkled. Maybe just wrinkled. Or it was, perhaps, leather? Whoever it was, they were gone. Hester stared hard after the vanished figure.

  Buttoning up her coat and gathering her wits, Hester opened the lock and marched in, greeted by the familiar smell of diesel fuel and the scrunch of cat-box litter beneath her feet. Switching on the fluorescent light inside the bookmobile, she found nothing out of place. The Instie-Circ remained on its shelf, she noted with a bit of disappointment. And there was her checkbook, in the drawer with the mints.

  Hester stood for a moment in the greenish fluorescent glow. Was that the light she’d spied around the edge of the drawn shade? No, too bright. She was at a loss to figure out what anybody would want on the bookmobile.

  Unless the police missed something in their search, Hester thought with alarm.

  But what? Some evidence left behind, something with obvious meaning only to the killer? Shuddering to think she might have encountered Miss Duffy’s murderer, Hester suddenly decided it was time to get back among other people – quickly. Hastily locking doors behind her, Hester ran back to the Civic.

  A few minutes later, her breathing was still shallow as she wrote a check and handed it over for her groceries.

  Back in the car, setting her purchases on the passenger seat and locking the doors, Hester finally felt her heart slow. She took comfort in the mundane surge of shoppers back and forth in the parking lot around her, and paused to evaluate what she’d seen. What should she do about it? Who should she tell?

  Nate Darrow would probably be angry at her for entering the bookmobile after seeing the fleeing figure, Hester considered. She’d hear a big lecture on how foolish she’d been. But somehow, she had sensed that once the intruder had fled, she was in no danger. How could she explain that to a man – especially one whom, she had to admit, she was trying to impress?

  Besides, Hester wondered, what if what she’d seen had nothing to do with the murder investigation? What if her imagination was working overtime? She’d feel foolish if the intrud
er was just some street person looking for a dry place to spend the night.

  Hester drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. With a sense of detachment, she gazed out her window, from the sign in the market’s window touting “Organic Bulgur, Radish Sprouts, Echinacea Smoothies,” down to her steering wheel, to the little trumpet symbol on the horn button. A symbol of warning, a symbol of caution.

  And suddenly Hester recognized a warning in the back of her head. Suddenly she knew why she wouldn’t tell the police, at least not immediately. She would keep this to herself, at least until she puzzled things out.

  She’d keep it to herself because she knew someone who liked to wear leather.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sunday started out poorly but got better, in bizarre turns.

  Hester had dropped into her favorite breakfast spot, Shakers Cafe, named for the collection of whimsical salt-and-pepper shakers lining the mirrored wall. A 15-minute-walk from her apartment, it was across the Stadium Freeway in the Pearl District, where Portland developers were experimenting with conversions of old warehouses to residential lofts. The mode of living seemed to attract residents who read magazines full of underfed – and underage – Calvin Klein models, Hester had noticed from the stacks of well-thumbed reading material piled in the busy cafe’s waiting area.

  Usually, this was Hester’s time to luxuriously dawdle over the Sunday paper. But she found herself a quarter short when she came to her usual newspaper box. All she was able to glean that morning from what other diners had left at empty tables: a half-done crossword from The Oregonian; a ripped copy of Elle, reeking of musky perfume samples, and a two-day old “Life” section from USA Today.

  And once her order had been brought to her, she found she couldn’t really enjoy the home fries and turkey hash topped by an egg-over-easy. Without realizing it, she had ordered Pim’s favorite breakfast.

  Nor did a quick visit to the Justice Center make her feel any better. Pim smiled at Hester’s gift of red licorice whips, her favorite candy, but looked wan and tired.

  In response to Hester’s insistent questions, Pim finally recalled that on Monday morning she’d found the booster shoe on a bookmobile shelf.

  “I had to search all over the bus to find it. It was shoved in with the kids’ books, right there in the paperbacks, you know, where the preteen stuff goes – the Teri Junes.”

  Hester frowned. “In the kids’ section? Who’d have put it there?”

  Pim rolled her eyes. “Well, Hester, it sure as shootin’ wasn’t the Tooth Fairy! The murderer, that’s who put it there!”

  Hester bit her lip and said nothing. Was this Karen’s subtle way of sending a taunting message that only Hester could now understand?

  Hester still couldn’t shake Pim from the conviction that she didn’t need a lawyer.

  “I followed both of them O.J. Simpson trials, remember. If he could get off, I’m a cinch,” Pim asserted. Her earnest naiveté gave Hester a pain deep in her brain stem. Hester had a throbbing headache by the time she tidied her apartment that afternoon.

  Hester turned off her dusty old Hoover and went in search of aspirin. She popped three tablets with a swallow of cold coffee from the carafe on the kitchen counter.

  “Good thing we’ve got cast-iron stomachs, eh fishbreath?” she said as Bingle T. looked up from licking his bowl clean. Hester, always on the lookout for unusual treats for the striped cat, had come across a special on jack mackerel, which the local supermarket was practically giving away. When she’d opened the can, the stuff smelled rank and looked repulsive, but her feline friend had dug right in.

  Hester was feeling almost human and the apartment was filling with delectable aromas of sautéing chicken and the lilting crescendos of Vivaldi when the door buzzer sounded at five minutes after six.

  “Coming!” Hester called, pausing to put a wooden match to cedar kindling in the fireplace. A quick check in the hall mirror at her chosen outfit: French-cut black jeans and a hand-knit, waist-cut sweater of dusty blue and rose yarns in a pattern of artistic swirls and sunbursts, with pearl buttons up the front – an impulse buy at the Saturday Market. It looked simple yet elegant over her eggshell-white silk blouse, Hester decided, and the colors bewitchingly accented her hair and eyes.

  “Hester, you vixen,” she whispered in self-mockery, sticking out her tongue at her image in the mirror before stepping to the door and swinging it open.

  Darrow again looked like he’d just come out of the shower. His thick, graying mane swept back from his forehead in a damp wave, his dark eyebrows accenting a rosy glow in his cheeks. And instead of the slightly dank smell that was usual for the Luxor’s hallways, there came with the opening door a rush of bay rum, Lifebuoy and a slight sweetness from a bouquet of lilies and blue irises in Darrow’s hand. His other hand clutched a bottle of wine.

  “Well, hey, you clean up pretty well,” Hester said with a smile, beckoning him in.

  Darrow had made an effort at dressing to fit his trendy new neighborhood, with a little help from a visit to Goodwill. Under a soft leather bomber jacket of burnished brown, a forest-green tattersall shirt contrasted with a narrow, 1950s tie of burgundy acetate. Pleated khaki trousers topped tasseled cordovan loafers.

  “And you are a vision of loveliness, charming neighbor,” Nate replied as he stepped inside. “Your beauty is obviously matched by your culinary talents, because boy does something smell good in here!”

  Hester grinned and blushed. “Well, I hope you like chicken. It’s another family favorite of mine – chicken scaloppini – basically poor man’s veal scaloppini, with lots of sherry and lemon. I think I actually prefer the lighter meat as a base, and no baby cows are involved.”

  Hester took Nate’s coat and hung it in the closet, then busied herself putting the flowers in a vase and the wine in the fridge as Nate once again surveyed titles on her book shelves. “I have a Tualatin white open, would you like a glass?” she called from the kitchen. “I always believe in having a bottle of cooking wine open, even if it only goes in the cook!”

  “Sounds good,” Nate called. “Mind if I do the manly thing and poke at your fire? It’s never going to burn the way you’ve got that kindling stacked.”

  “What?” Hester called. “Oh. No – wait, don’t touch – I had it perfect – ”

  She came back into the room just as Darrow pushed the screen back into place and replaced the fireplace poker to its hook.

  “There, that’s better,” he smiled, taking the wine glass from her hand. Flames licked the cedar kindling and sparks flew as the wood popped. Hester glowered and took a gulp of wine before speaking again.

  “So why don’t you sit down in front of that nice fire and tell me what the master detective has been up to on his day off?”

  Insouciantly shrugging off her pique, Darrow accepted the invitation and sank into the deep cushions of the big chair nearest the fire. The wood-paneled room was a cozy haven against the cold, drizzly evening outside.

  “Well, this morning I finally had a chance to go for a serious run for the first time this week. It was cold and fresh and I did 10 miles in Forest Park and I am kind of feeling it tonight,” he said, working one of his knees back and forth like Dorothy’s rusty tin woodsman.

  “Ten miles!” Hester almost spurted wine. “Goodness, I’ve seen you go out in those ridiculously short shorts a couple mornings, looking far too cold for this time of year, so I knew you were a fanatic, but I didn’t realize you were a nut!”

  Nate’s smile reflected the warm light of the fire.

  “I’m afraid so. Cross-country in high school, where I was quite the star, then a track scholarship at U of O, where I was quite mediocre. Phil Knight and Prefontaine and names like that kind of overshadowed Nate Darrow in Eugene’s sports annals. Now it at least keeps me from getting fat and clears my head. With a couple of tough homicide cases, the answer came to me after about eight miles of trail running. ‘Endorphin epiphanies,’ I call them.”

/>   As he talked, Hester glanced down at the fire and let her eyes wander up to where the khakis hugged his waist. There were no love handles there, not like Kevin, her last “gentleman caller,” as Hester thought of her male friends. An ACLU lawyer she’d seen for six months, Kevin had abruptly left town the previous fall to take a job as an environmental lobbyist in D.C. Since then, she’d received one “wish you were here” postcard with a 3-D photo of the Washington Monument. Compensating for something, she couldn’t help but think.

  Dinner with Darrow was relaxed and pleasant. Hester opened the wine he had brought. The chicken was tender, with a sauce that brought the pasta to life. Hester found herself speaking with carefree comfort of her family life, of her father’s love of John Philip Sousa, of how her mother was considered an old-fashioned terror by lazy students and worshipped as a font of knowledge by those who bothered to crack a classic novel.

  “She’s never told me with a straight face exactly why she saddled me with the name of the infamous Miss Prynne of ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ ” Hester told Darrow as she topped off his wine glass. “She always told me to study the work and figure out for myself why Hester should be a heroine to modern women. I finally concluded it has to do with how she refused to be shamed by the men who tried to control her and who condemned her with their narrow-minded labels. She was one of the first feminists in American literature, to my mother’s mind. Mama did her master’s thesis on Hawthorne.”

  As he savored a bite of his meal, Nate’s eyes reflected the glow from candles that slowly dripped red wax onto silver candlesticks in the middle of Hester’s dining table.

  “And not only ‘Hester’ but ‘Freelove,’ too?” he asked. “Your mother must have a bit of a sense of humor to pair those two monikers.”

  Hester grinned and shook her head ruefully.

  “Ah, yes, one or the other alone would have done fine, don’t you think? My father’s favorite aunt back in Nova Scotia was Freelove Princetta McGarrigle. Thank my lucky stars I didn’t get ‘Princetta,’ too. Mama could have gone for the triple whammy!”