Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (19 page)

A week later, Hester idly watched
the Sandy River’s jade-green water swirl past Tad’s Chic Dump – a venerable
rural roadhouse dedicated to good old-fashioned comfort food.

Half the letters on the
restaurant’s neon sign had long ago burned out, so at night only the “Chic Dump”
part of “Chicken ’n Dumplins” remained readable. Most of Portland
affectionately knew the place simply as the Chic Dump.

Darrow had requested a window table
overlooking the river.

Next to Hester sat Pim, her
elbows splayed across a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She wore her
get-out-of-jail gift from Hester: a new Hawaiian shirt featuring dancing
pineapples, swaying palm trees and singing coconuts against a purple
background.

To celebrate, Pim had ordered the
house special with extra dumplings. 

“What I still don’t understand,”
she said with a glare at Darrow, “is why I was cooped up if you had another
suspect.”

Nate sighed lightly and sipped
from his bottle of Full Sail amber. He responded with customary politeness.

“Honestly, it wasn’t my call. In
fact, Marge Kenyon was all for having you tried for the crime even after Paul
took that plunge off Crown Point. She’s convinced that Paul was an innocent.
For a horrible moment it looked like the brass might actually go for it. I
swear, a look from that woman can make a man’s voice go falsetto at 50 paces.”

Hester was a picture of
disbelief. “Is she insane? Paul told Ralph and me the whole story.”

Nate explained like a patient
school teacher, punctuating his remarks with a waving breadstick.

“Ah, but you see, that only feeds
her conspiracy theory. She insists that you kidnapped her poor son and
masterminded the whole thing. Pim was the perpetrator and you and Ralph the
brains.”

“What I don’t see is how Paul
thought he could actually get away with it,” Hester said as she busied herself
refilling wine glasses from a carafe of Pim’s Chic Dump favorite, the house
ruby chablis.

“Well, from what we’ve been able
to piece together, we don’t think murder was part of the original plan. Paul
had long ago gained the confidence of Sara Duffy, who really did almost regard
him as the son she never had, according to what we heard from Marge Kenyon.
That was before Marge realized she might be an accessory and clammed up. She
swore up and down that Paul only ever used the bookmobile computer to monitor
library book orders for her book-banning group. She was convinced there wasn’t
really anything illegal about it because Duffy had given him the key to the
barn and all the passwords he needed – none of which had changed in years. No
doubt Paul used the bookmobile computer because security at the barn was
virtually nonexistent compared with Grand Central.”

Hester looked puzzled.

“Why couldn’t he just hack into
the library computer from his home PC? It sounds to me like he would know how.”

Darrow smiled primly, as if proud
of his ace pupil for asking the right question.

“Ah, but Duffy left such an
antediluvian legacy that the library still uses an ancient mainframe to track
finances and most other records. The amazing thing is it’s not hooked up to
any
outside phone lines. Even the link from the bookmobile barn to downtown is an
old closed-circuit line that’s probably been there since Thomas Edison told
them how to wire it.”

Pim’s patience, already
stretched, was rapidly waning after three glasses of ruby chablis. Nor was she
ready to warm to Darrow. She waved her nearly empty glass at him and knocked a
bowl of Sweet ‘n Low packets off the table as she spoke.

“Ya know, you remind me of that
‘Pink Panther’ detective – whatsisname? Inspector Caruso, something like that.
Well, Caruso, let’s cut to the chase. So Paul liked to play computer games.
That doesn’t explain why he conked ol’ Sara Bluenose with my booster shoe.”

Darrow traded glances with
Hester. She gave him a questioning look that said she’d like to hear this
spelled out, too. She knew the basics but Darrow had been so busy the past week
she had yet to hear all the details.

Gathering his thoughts, he
watched a blue heron take wing across the river. The birds, so statuesque when
they stood in shallows waiting for fish to come near, looked like ungainly
pterodactyls in flight. It briefly occurred to Darrow that he hoped to get through
this lunch with some semblance of grace.

Clearing his throat, he turned
back to Pim.

“Basically, it was over money –
money Paul apparently embezzled, and a bunch of money he owed. It appears Paul
has used Miss Duffy’s influence to bamboozle his way into a contract with the
Friends of the Library to update their financial records. As it was, because
they still used the library’s crotchety old computer, Paul was about the only
consultant who would even touch the project. Once he had compromised what security
safeguards existed, he used electronic transfers to move more than $100,000 to
his own bank account over the past six months.”

Hester gasped.

“And he was using our Instie-Circ
the whole time!” she said to Pim, who shuddered and mutely held out her empty
wine glass for a refill. Darrow poured this time.

Hester turned to Nate with a
curious look. “How much did this have to do with the casino?”

Darrow nodded at her
perceptiveness.

“Everything, it sounds like.”

“And him, goody-two-shoeing all
over the place about his Kumbaya Kidz,” Pim sniffed.

“But that wasn’t just made up,”
Darrow said. “A source up at the Six Tepees told us Paul had started playing up
there when he first started working with the kids – it sounds like he had the
classic addictive personality when it came to gambling. In fact, he took on the
job of debugging their fancy computer-poker game as a way of paying off some of
the debt he’d already run up in their back-room game.”

The waitress brought a huge tray
covered with steaming dishes of chicken and dumplings. Pim cleared space on the
table for her extra plate of dumplings. The chicken looked succulent and the
dumplings baked to perfection. Pim tucked in.

“And from what I saw, he kept
gambling,” Hester continued when the waitress had left. “Have you been able to
find out how much he owed? It must have been impressive to drive him to murder.”

“He was up to his neck. He owed
more than a quarter million.”

Hester was stunned. “They let
people owe that much?”

“It’s an old game, Hester. And
it’s really not a lot different from how your friendly neighborhood banker does
business. At first they extend a little credit and find out if you can pay it
back. When you keep making payments, they keep extending more credit. Well,
once Paul started skimming from Friends of the Library, his credit limit just
got higher and higher. And it looks like he got sloppier and sloppier with his
embezzlement until even his Aunt Sara noticed something was fishy with her donation
statement. That sloppiness might be explained by another problem Paul had.”

Hester stopped in mid-bite and
lowered her fork full of dumpling.

“You know, I thought he was
awfully manic the day he hijacked the bookmobile.”

Again, Nate nodded.

“The autopsy showed enough
amphetamines in his system to keep a long-haul trucker awake from Boston to
Seattle.”

Hester clucked her tongue. “Now,
that
I wouldn’t have guessed about Paul Kenyon.”

“You think you know people,
right?” Nate asked.

Looking down as if he suddenly
realized there was food, Darrow quickly salted his chicken, took a taste, then
salted it some more. Then he picked up a pepper mill and waggled it over his
plate with a growling twirl of the handle until his gravy had more spots than a
leopard. Hester watched in plain amazement. Looking up, Nate glared back at
her, then continued his explanation.

“Apparently the computer-poker
debugging wasn’t going well. One source up there says Paul would show up three
or four nights a week, play cards until the game shut down, then spend the rest
of the night working on the software. You can’t go without sleep like that. So
his new friends from Nevada offered him a little pick-me-up. Nice guys, huh?”

Pim was just wiping up gravy with
the last dumpling from her first plate. She wolfed it down, took a satisfied
gulp from her wine glass, stifled a small belch and focused again on Darrow.

“So you still haven’t said,
Caruso.”

Nate looked startled. “Pardon?”

“Why he snuffed her.”

Hester gave Pim a severe glance.
She deftly moved the wine carafe to the other end of the table.

Darrow finished chewing and
continued.

“You’re right, Ethel. All we know
is that Miss Duffy made a fuss at the Friends of the Library meeting about her
donation statement and stormed out saying she was going to talk to somebody
about it. Our best guess is that she called Paul and he conned her into meeting
him at the bookmobile. Maybe he said they’d look at the records and figure it
out. Forensics says she was killed there and then, on the bookmobile. Paul must
have waited to find out how much she really suspected, then maybe he panicked
and your booster shoe was the first heavy object handy. Of course, if it was
totally unpremeditated, he’d have left fingerprints, which he didn’t. The fact
is, he had a double motive: covering up his embezzlement, and another
interesting thing we discovered – he figured prominently in Aunt Sara’s will.”

Hester’s mouth was round. “Oh,
and I can’t imagine Miss Duffy keeping something like that a secret. She loved
to lord it over people, using any little bit of leverage she could get. Pim,
can’t you just hear her threatening to cut Paul out of the will if he didn’t
behave himself?”

Darrow, forgetting his food
entirely, continued with hardly a pause. “Oh, I think he knew about the will,
all right. But personally, I don’t think Duffy knew a thing about what Paul was
up to. She would have gone to his mother if she did, that was more her style,
don’t you think?”

Hester nodded. That rang true.
Sara Duffy was not the kind to call attention to problems if they were “in the
family.” She wouldn’t hesitate to get a stranger in trouble, but a friend’s son
was another matter. Hester remembered a time when a bridge-club friend of Miss
Duffy’s had accumulated a $50 library fine. Miss Duffy simply went to the
circulation desk and wiped out the fine the next time her friend came in,
completely ignoring the poor clerk on duty.

Pim picked absently at her teeth
and mused, “I’ll never figure that kid out. Did you know he came to jail to see
me?”

“Paul did?” Hester asked in
amazement.

“Yeah, he said it would go easier
for me if I confessed,” Pim said, pulling her second plate of dumplings over
and picking up her fork again.

“We got word on that,” Nate said.
“It was starting to look like he was everywhere. And that was what made me look
at him more closely. I called the police science instructor at Clackamas
College and asked about him. You know why he washed out of the course? He
flunked the psych test, the practice test they give you that’s just like the
standard test every cop shop in the country uses to screen new hires. Smarter
than anybody in the class, but you never knew when he’d flake out on you,
people said. I talked to his computer instructor, too. Turns out he was warned
more than once about privacy issues and hacking.”

Hester stabbed another piece of
chicken and silently vowed to take Karen White out for an “all-you-can-drink”
margaritas night as soon as possible. Grateful that she had never voiced
suspicions about her friend to Nate, she asked, “Was there an inheritance after
all?”

Darrow gave a low whistle.

“Oh yes, quite a tidy sum. Miss
Duffy had a regular savings program and a decent investment adviser. She had something
like $800,000 in blue-chip stocks. That had to make Paul crazy. He stood to
inherit a quarter of that. And the folks he owed money to were going to hurt
him next time he missed a payment. With the Las Vegas faction, we’re talking
the kind of goons who break kneecaps. I think they must have scared him.
Killing Miss Duffy was sheer desperation.”

Hester chewed thoughtfully and
asked, “So, with Paul gone, who gets it?”

“Well.” Nate paused for effect,
his eyes shining at the redhead on his right. “Looks like you do.”

Hester choked. After draining a
glass of water she turned, her eyes locking on Nate’s, and croaked, “Me?”

“Well, not directly,” Darrow said
quickly, happy to have gotten the better of Hester. “The money goes to Friends
of the Library. Last night they had an emergency meeting and voted unanimously
to put a chunk of the money into a brand-spanking new bookmobile and to endow a
bookmobile librarian. It will be the ‘Miss Sara Duffy Bookmobile,’ to be
decorated on the outside with lovingly airbrushed portraits of Miss Duffy
reading to a circle of adoring children.”

“Something she never did in her
life!” Pim snorted, spraying gravy.