Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (2 page)

Monday morning started out with
that rare, pale blue radiance that heralds a near-perfect day in the Pacific
Northwest.  At the Portland City Library bookmobile barn the maintenance crew
filled the sleeping giant with gas for the day's run. Bob Newall, head mechanic,
oversaw the last details.

“Took an extra quart of oil,
Ethel,” Bob told Pim as she clambered aboard. The bookmobile was always taking
that “extra” quart these days. “Made a heckuva oily mess on the floor again,
too. I spread more cat litter to soak it up, but you ladies watch your step.”

“This old bus is nickel and
diming us to death!” fumed Pim, today wearing her aquamarine shirt with
frangipani, hibiscus and bananas. “When are they going to get a new one?”

Pim's complaint was familiar to
everyone in the barn, and it was a sentiment shared. The bookmobile service of
the City Library dated back to the days of the Model-T and had a colorful
history.
(The colorful history included the bookmobile’s magenta hue,
the favorite color of Portland’s first head librarian.)

The current library
administration, however, was not fond of history. Directors had hinted for some
time that this bookmobile, the last of what had been a fleet, would not be
replaced when it wore out. The service would end. With any luck the old relict
would outlast the administration, Pim fervently hoped.

Hester waltzed in carrying an
armload of science-fiction paperbacks. She ducked to enter the bookmobile from
the loading-dock ramp.

“Frabjous Day, Pim,” she called
with a twinkle.

“Kaloo, Kalay,” Pim muttered, her
mind obviously elsewhere.

The word play
was a
familiar greeting between the two. Given the way in which Pim replied Hester
could accurately gauge her colleague’s mood. Hester took the warning and went
about her work restocking the shelves so they reflected the particular tastes
of her patrons that day.

Working on the bookmobile wasn't
like working in a regular library.  Instead of always carrying the broadest
spectrum of books available, the bookmobile catered to the patrons on each run.
This meant a lot of extra work for Hester. She restocked the shelves every
morning. Today that meant heavy on the science fiction and an extra box of
paperback romances with well-muscled pectorals and ample cleavage emblazoned
across the covers.

“Pim, is this the run where Mrs.
Kenyon and Paul have been showing up?” Hester puzzled. “I mean, besides the
Skyline stop.”

From under the driver's seat a
muffled “uh-huh” assented to that.

“Pim, what are you doing down
there?” Hester peered over the counter and saw Pim on her hands and knees down
by the gas pedal.

“Bob took my booster shoe off the
gas again!” Pim said, tightening a clamp to secure a three-inch aluminum block
to the gas pedal. Pim's short legs could not reach the gas pedal under normal
circumstances. So early on in her driving career, she had devised a special clamp
that added the missing inches.

Dusting off her knees, Pim was
all smiles again. “What was that about Mrs. Kenyon and little Pauly?”

Pim, who remembered half her
adult patrons as if they still wore Oshkosh B’Gosh coveralls, never checked out
a book to the Kenyons without mirthfully recalling the time when Paul was 7 and
wet his pants in the middle of the “Cat in the Hat” story circle. Paul, who
thought her boorish, always turned beet red. That just made Pim laugh harder.

“Oh, I was just trying to remember
if this was the other stop where that book-banning duo has been popping up,”
Hester continued.

“Well it is. Usually Toshmore or
Holliday Plaza.”

“Good!  I have on board every
book they ever wanted to burn!”

Pim shook her head warily. If it
was possible to avoid a public confrontation, Pim would always do so. Much as
she liked her librarian, Pim secretly thought Hester's disposition was as fiery
as her hair.

When the bookmobile was loaded to
Hester's satisfaction and the last of the boxes stowed, Pim fired up the beast.
Leaving a huge and growing cloud of purple exhaust behind, Bookmobile No. 3
lurched out of the barn.

The bookmobile pulled up to its
first stop of the morning in the parking lot at Mt. Tabor Park. The park is
home to the only extinct volcano inside city boundaries in the United States,
the neighborhood’s readers had told Hester dozens of times. Hester's private
view was simple: The volcano had grown tired of competing with the likes of
Sara Duffy.

Today sunbeams streamed through a
tall stand of Douglas firs. A light breeze carried the morning’s chill into the
old bus. Another glorious, albeit cold, storm-cleansed day in Portland, Hester
thought, watching her breath steam the window.

“Looks like we're a bit early,
Pim,” Hester called as she trotted to the back of the bookmobile where Pim was
setting up the Instie-Circ – a small computerized circulation desk designed to “take
the hassle out of checking out books and free the clerk for other tasks,” as
the gizmo’s manual boasted.

“Is that awful thing working? I
thought it was supposed to be in the repair shop.”

“
They
said to try it
again,” Pim grimaced. “They” meant Dora, the City Library's bookkeeper, who
tried to maintain the library on a stringent budget. “Though why we have to use
it in the first place is beyond me, I do faster with a paper and pencil.
You
never know what it’s going to do if you hit the wrong key. The
other day
I was trying to access the overdue list and ended up with the Friends of the
Library budget. Tomorrow it’ll probably be the senior’s lunch menu for Loaves
and Fishes! If this
thing
eats the day’s run again, I'm using it as a
doorstop.”

Hester had to smile. The
Instie-Circ had provoked Pim for years now. It regularly ate the day’s circulation
statistics when it was “dumped” into the main computer after each run. The
result: Overdue notices went out to every patron on the run.

The regulars just shook their
heads and handed the notices to Hester. New patrons were always upset and had
to be reassured that their reputations were intact.

“Pim,” Hester said as she pulled
at the back cupboard. “This door is really jammed.” The tall cabinet with a
small handle was always hard to open in winter when dampness swelled the wood.

“Let me try prying the lousy thing,”
Pim said, pushing back from the Instie-Circ. “I’ll grab my tool kit.” But
before she could rise, the first of the morning’s patrons rapped on the door, and
then pulled it open to peek in. Pim and Hester quickly began helping patrons aboard
without the aid of the step stored in the jammed cupboard.

The day was finally warming as
the last stop before lunch brought the bookmobile to Toshmore Court, a
retirement complex for the well-heeled. Toshmore’s fussy patrons expected a
little more in the way of conveniences than the usual bookmobile user, so
Hester went back to the cupboard to pull out the step.

“Pim,” Hester called out. “Help
me with this will you?” The door was still jammed tight. Yanking did little but
threaten to pull the flimsy handle from its moorings. Pim peered closely at the
door and pointed to a bit of navy blue wool wedged in the crack.

“My kit's up front. If I can get
that stuff out, the door should open,” she said, heading for the front of the
bus.

Hester reached for a nail file
from the pocket of her greatcoat and began to saw at the material. “Got it,”
she called out. Putting her shoulder to the door and bracing her weight against
it, Hester wrenched open the tall cupboard.

The shriek made Pim jump. She
whirled and caught sight of the intrepid librarian trying to say something. All
that came out was a squeak. Then Hester’s eyes rolled back in her head, she
teetered on her heels, and then dropped to the cold linoleum floor.

Scrambling to help, Pim skidded
to a stop at the sight of bloody hand prints smearing the inside of the
cupboard door. And slumping from the step in the bottom of the cupboard was the
still figure of Portland's former head librarian, Sara Duffy.

An hour later, yellow “police
line” tape encircled the magenta bookmobile, giving it the incongruous
appearance of a gaily wrapped Christmas package.

Inside, a Portland Police Bureau
detective conferred with an assistant medical examiner. Outside, a
now-conscious Hester leaned against a brick wall separating the two wings of
Toshmore Court. As curious neighbors milled among the usual bookmobile patrons,
Pim was telling a uniformed police officer what had happened.

“Excuse
me
,” a shrill
voice intruded. “My books are due today. Are you going to talk all day? I have books
to return!” Eldon Purdy, his badly dyed black hair falling in strings across
his face, tried to shove a handful of books at Hester. Pim blocked the move
like a skilled linebacker.

“You'll have to take them to a
branch,” Pim told him firmly. “The bookmobile can't do any more business today.”

“But my books are due today,” the
indignant reader whined. “And you're public servants,” he said, as if this was
the first time anyone had thought of it. “I pay your wages!” The little man
glared at Pim gloatingly.

Hester turned to Mr. Purdy and
said, “You can take them to the box over by that tree.”

“But I want them checked in
now
;
I don't want to get any of those notices.” Mr. Purdy was about to cite each and
every overdue notice he had ever received when the uniformed cop chimed in.

“No!
” The police officer clearly
cowed the man, who walked over to the box, complaining as he went.

Hester cast a thank-you glance at
the officer. She began to give her statement when the detective who had been in
the bookmobile squeezed open the door, ducked under the yellow tape and strode
across a patch of lawn to join them.

“I’m Detective Darrow,” he said,
extending his hand to Hester.

She found herself looking up.
Nate Darrow was several inches taller than Hester, who stood 5-feet-11 in her
Birkenstocked feet. His slim build accentuated broad shoulders and a thatch of
prematurely graying hair contrasted with luxuriant, chestnut-colored eyebrows.
A Donegal tweed sport coat, heather gray with flecks of yellow and blue, hung
unbuttoned over a white Oxford shirt, plum-colored knit tie and gray corduroy
trousers. About her own age, she guessed, though there was a boyishness about
his face.

“Is she really dead?” Hester
asked, knowing it was a foolish hope to think otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” Darrow replied with
a nod, holding her gaze for a moment before reaching for the uniformed
officer’s notes and quickly assessing the information.  Handing back the officer’s
notebook, he took out his own and continued the line of questioning with
Hester.

“ ‘Hester Freelove McGarrigle.’
That’s quite a name,” Darrow said with a small smile.

Hester found that his quiet
warmth helped her focus. “Freelove is a family name,” she volunteered. “It’s a
virtue name, you know, like Faith, Hope and Charity. I kept it a secret for
years,” she said with a chuckle, then stopped, embarrassed by her own chatter.

Darrow paused. “And ‘Hester’?
That’s none too common.”

“No, that’s an English-teacher
mother with an overdeveloped penchant for Hawthorne.”

“Then we have something in
common,” Darrow said. “My first name is Nathaniel, also after the scribe of
Salem. My parents came from New England.”

“Goodness! Maybe we should form a
club.”

Glancing sideways into her eyes, Darrow
suppressed another smile, then returned to business. “This obviously is quite a
shock for you, Ms. McGarrigle, but it is important that we get as much
information as we can as soon as we can. I take it you knew the victim. Were
you close?”

Hester closed her eyes to put her
thoughts in order. Turning to Darrow she said haltingly, “Yes, and no. Miss
Duffy was the former head librarian of the Portland City Library. She has, uh,
had
been a bookmobile patron from the day she retired three years ago.”

Hester paused. “I knew Miss Duffy
for at least 10 years but I was never part of her circle. I did notice certain
things about her, though. Like, when she had a special errand to run or a
friend to meet she would wear that blue dress with the little frill at the
neckline.  When she had a doctor’s appointment, she would wear an identical one
in beige. The rest of the time she wore a plain wool skirt with a matching
twin-set.”

“Twin-set?”

“You know, a pullover sweater
with a matching cardigan, usually come in pinks or gray or white?” She caught
herself. “Sorry, I’m babbling. You don’t really look like you’re an expert in
over-50 ladies’ fashions.”

Shaking his head vacantly, Darrow
made a note on his pad. It sounded like the sort of thing his grandmother had
worn, always smelling of liniment.

“Now, can you think of anything
that was unusual about the bookmobile today?” he continued.

Pim looked at him in disbelief. “There
was a body in the back cupboard,” she said with a deadpan gruffness.

Annoyance played on the
detective’s face as Pim interrupted his rapport with Hester.

Hester caught the look but her
mind had gone blank. She stammered that she really couldn't think of anything.
Darrow scribbled more in his notebook. 

“We’ll have your statements
printed up in a few minutes,” Darrow said curtly, indicating the Police Bureau
clerk who had set up shop with a laptop and printer near the bookmobile.  “As
soon as you have signed, the patrolman over there will give you a ride to
wherever you need to go. We’re impounding your vehicle. But you’re free to go
about your business for now.”

“For now,” Hester whispered to
Pim as they walked toward the waiting patrol car. Pim, who had become quiet and
grim, nodded, “I don't like that man.”

Hester, turning to look back at
the bookmobile, had a different thought.