Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (7 page)

True, when discrimination became
a contentious fixture of the workplace, Pim had seized upon it as a cause of
all her frustrations. The library had never officially addressed the issue, but
in an organization with such a long history of lily-white management, it
couldn't be discarded. However much substance was there, Hester knew Miss Duffy
had long ago blackballed Pim as a troublemaker.

“And it’s never been fair,”
Hester fumed, slapping her sponge mitt into the bath water.

Bubbles flew as Hester angrily
splashed her way out of the tub. Bingle T., who’d been curled on the bath mat,
scrambled for the hall, pausing only to give Hester a dirty look before he
stalked toward the bedroom.

“Well, this day isn’t over yet,
Mr. Holier Than Thou Kenyon. You just wait!” Hester fumed as she dried herself.
Remembering Marge Kenyon’s “emergency meeting” Hester stormed to her closet and
flung open the door. “The question is: What do you wear around these kinds of
people?”

It was 7:05 p.m., and the meeting
had already begun as Hester and Karen pulled up to the circular driveway in
front of the Mumfrey Mansion. In these hallowed halls, Women Who Care About
Children gathered regularly.

The mansion was a historic
eyesore in the west hills of Portland. Its architect and builder had been a sea
captain, to which the miserably narrow staircases offered mute testimony. WWCAC,
by virtue of the membership of Marella Mumfrey, had obtained a permanent
meeting place in the old ballroom on the fourth floor.

The mansion loomed large and ugly
in the gray, cold Portland night. Small, glaring lights picked out stepping
stones from the parking area to the front door. Floodlights on the building’s
exterior showed a cracked foundation and accentuated the badly listing south
tower. Miserable as it appeared at night, Hester knew it actually looked worse
in the daylight.

The home was erected with grand
pretense but a minimum of expense some 60 years earlier by Captain Mathusalum
Mumfrey, a founding member of the Columbia River Pilots Association, the
stalwart seafarers who venture out in any weather, day or night, to guide ships
into the mouth of the mighty Columbia, an area of turbulent waters aptly dubbed
the “Graveyard of the Pacific.”

When old Mathusalum was alive,
Karen explained, he had rarely allowed visitors into the mansion. But a few
years earlier, marking the pilot group’s golden jubilee and his own 90th
birthday, the crusty old salt had sought to prove that he could still make the
leap from a wildly tossing pilot boat to a ladder dangling from a storm-wracked
freighter off Astoria.

“He was wrong,” Karen chirped.

As Hester slipped on the soggy,
decaying leaves littering the front walk, the last stanza of “America the
Beautiful” squawked in matronly tones from an upstairs window. Karen, steadying
her friend’s elbow, grimaced. “At least we missed that!”

Hester’s arched brow and grimly
puckered mouth went unseen under a luxuriant black beard and bushy false eyebrows.
Karen, who had starred in “Oklahoma!” and “Bye-Bye, Birdie” in community
college, hadn’t forgotten her skills with theatrical makeup. With an old makeup
kit and plenty of spirit gum, she had transformed Hester’s features as they’d
sat in Karen’s BMW a few minutes earlier.

“This stuff itches,” Hester
mumbled. She straightened the Fedora her grandfather had worn. Black trousers,
an old white shirt, a “Scenic Crater Lake” souvenir necktie and a red-checked
sport coat from Steve White’s closet made up the rest of Hester’s disguise. The
sleeves of the sport coat, size 40 “short,” gave up three inches before
Hester’s arms did.

“I look like a circus clown,”
Hester whined.

“Quit being a baby,” Karen shot
back.

Whatever the horrors of the
Mumfrey Mansion’s exterior, the interior touched on magnificent. Here, old
Captain Mumfrey hadn’t scrimped. Varnished wood gleamed as brightly as the
brass fixtures all around. A mosaic marble foyer depicting snowcapped Mount
Hood in tiles gave way to teak floors intricately inlaid with contrasting
holly. None of it went at all well with the garish rhododendron wallpaper.

The staircase from the foyer to
the first floor was broad and grand. The stairs to the second and third floors
were narrower and steeper. From there, the climb resembled the last 50 feet up
Mt. Everest, Hester thought as she puffed up the ladderlike steps.

“My God,” she wheezed. “Did they
ever actually have a ball up here? You’d never navigate
this
in heels!”

“Heavens no,” Karen panted. “You’d
die.”

Karen, her already full figure
accentuated with throw pillows crammed into a size 18 floral print from Value
Village, paused at the final landing. A blue-tinted wig completed her disguise.

Karen moaned and rubbed the heels
of her palms against her lower back.

“Serves you right for making us
do this!” Hester gasped, puffing her way to the top.

The pair tried to be
inconspicuous as they edged into the ballroom. They looked over the backs of
about 75 nodding heads, about an even mix of blue-rinse pin curls and blond beehives.
As they looked for seats, Hester turned and hissed to Karen, “Now we don’t want
to get stuck in the center ...” But Karen was already dragging her toward two
open seats near the middle of the last row of folding chairs. Hester was
thankful for the dim light cast by a single dusty chandelier high overhead.

At a podium up front, Marge
Kenyon spoke solemnly from beneath a black veil atop a black crepe caftan. They
were still in the “old business” portion of the meeting, Hester was relieved to
hear.

“We will quickly move to the
important and pressing business of the evening, the tragic and sad event that
has brought so many of you here.” Marge paused and looked about meaningfully. “But
while we have you here, let us hear a quick report on one of the many fine
works of the Women Who Care About Children, our Cold Lake Indian Reservation
Project.”

From their back row seats Hester
noticed a few other stragglers arriving. To her alarm, she saw that seats had
filled at both ends of their row.

“See that, Karen?” Hester had to
jab hard to penetrate the stuffing and get Karen’s attention. “We’re trapped.”

“Is it really hot in here or is
it just me?” Karen hissed back after rebalancing her bulk. A thin line of sweat
cut a path through the baby powder adorning her cheeks. The wig was only
slightly askew.

Then Marge Kenyon’s booming voice
announced that her son, Paul, would now take the floor to report on his
missionary work with the Cold Lake Indian children.

“As many of you know, Paul has
been setting up a permanent computer link for the children of the tribe to
access family-friendly computer programs. Through his new company, Paul.com, he
has donated the hardware and he generously gives his time to the little ones
every Friday night. I don’t claim to know anything about megabits or Univacs.
So Paul, come tell the ladies more!”

Paul, with a self-deprecating
smile, shook his head a little as he took the podium.

“Mother, of course, is a little
biased,” he said with a soapy smile. “But seriously, I have had the opportunity
to instill some family values in these underprivileged children. Many of you
have heard of the Internet’s wonders. Well, let me tell you, it is nothing more
than a Pandora’s Box of electronic smut. Opening that box has brought about the
ready availability of pornography right into the most devout family’s home. But
with every Pandora’s Box comes a key.” Paul paused to let the gathering
understand his last words before continuing.

“The key is limited access via a
controlled and protected network.”

“He really does know about this
stuff,” Hester whispered, amazed. “I thought he was all hot air.”

“Controlled and protected, ha!
Spell that C-E-N-S-O-R-E-D. God, I hate these people,” Karen snapped back.

Hester, curious at Karen’s wrath,
saw two bright red patches forming under her baby powder. Karen stared fixedly
ahead.

Paul warmed to the group as he
explained the “pro-family” computer games his software company was promoting: “Immortal
Kombat” and “Kumbaya Kidz.”

Polite applause accompanied him
to his seat.

In his place, a heavily buxom,
purple-clad matron shambled her way to the podium. Glowering at the crowd for a
moment, she let silence descend on the ballroom. Then she suddenly held up a
large photo of the late Sara Duffy.

“Struck down by an assassin’s
hand!” Her husky voice echoed through the room. “We must honor her name with a
meaningful action. I propose a sit-in at the Children’s Room of Grand Central
Library!”

“Hear, hear!” someone in the
group called out. From one corner a small voice whispered, “She’d approve.”

At this, Marge Kenyon rose again
and turned to the crowd.

“We must, indeed, unite in a
dedicated action to remember our fallen colleague, Sara Duffy. We must make a meaningful
statement to the governing body of the Portland City Library. A sit-in at the
Children’s Room is a good start. But I propose we take this further. I propose
we shut Grand Central DOWN. I propose we demand that all the trash Teri June
has written be publicly burned in Pioneer Courthouse Square!”

The hushed crowd sat stunned at
the magnitude of her proposal. Mrs. Kenyon plunged ahead like an evangelist
preaching to her flock.

“It is time we take our case to
the people. Teri June is a nasty-minded secular humanist. She ridicules
old-fashioned standards. May I quote from” –  Marge folded back the paper cover
of a book and read with distaste – “ ‘Hanna’s Newest Daddy.’ This is from page
32, and I quote:

‘Oh, Travis? While you’re doing
the grocery shopping, will you get me a box of tampons?’

‘Sure, honey, regular or heavy
flow?’ ”

Marge exaggeratedly suppressed a
shudder. “This has NO PLACE in anyone’s home. This has NO PLACE in anyone’s
library. Teri June has passed all sense of normalcy with this kind of trash.
Trash should be BURNT and Teri June should be...”

Karen could no longer contain
herself. She flung her overstuffed figure out of her chair and knocked over two
empty seats in front of her. Heads whirling in response to the clatter, the
assemblage watched Karen march up the aisle and take the microphone away from
Marge Kenyon.

Hester sat in a frozen daze.

“I...I just can’t listen to... to
any more of these lies!” Karen’s voice trembled with emotion. “I am proud to say
that I am – I am a
personal friend
of Teri June!”

The audience gasped. An amazed
Hester glanced around self-consciously to see if she could make an unobtrusive
exit. Karen, shaking, forged on.

“It’s true! She has a husband and
three wonderful girls. And what she writes about, well, what she writes about
is
life
. As it is. Not the way some may want it.”

Karen turned to Marge and
condescendingly patted her shoulder. “Have a seat, dearie,” she said with a
push. Marge Kenyon, having never been so deftly outmaneuvered, slowly took her
seat.

Clearing her throat, Karen told
the visibly outraged audience, “Burning Teri June books won’t make the world
right. Sara Duffy was a librarian, honor her memory. Don’t you think she’d like
you to buy books, not burn them?”

An angry buzz began to spread
through the seated group. Marge Kenyon rose again and advanced with a menacing
frown.

Karen looked at Marge, took in
the faces of the crowd, and then dashed for the back of the hall. Hester
quickly eased from her hard metal seat.
Side-stepping down the skinny
row of chairs and toward the exit, she turned to pass the man in the aisle
seat. Ducking to shield her face, she felt herself suddenly jerked to a halt as
wispy strands of her beard brushed his shirt front. Looking down, Hester was
horrified to see her beard caught in the man’s tie pin, a small golden
sailboat.

“Take me now, Lord,” Hester
prayed silently.

She tugged quickly at the mess in
the tie pin and painfully ripped spirit gum from her face. As the man struggled
to steady her, Hester inhaled a strong waft of bay rum. Half-bearded, she
finally looked up directly into the cool eyes of Detective Nate Darrow.

He looked vaguely puzzled, then
winked, his face a study in poker-table control. Hester’s cheeks flushed to
match the red of the hair stuffed under her Fedora.

Dropping her head again, Hester
turned, grabbed Karen by the wrist and yanked her from the ballroom.

Jitters Coffee Co., Portland’s
local rival to Seattle’s snooty purveyors of caffeine, had long been Hester and
Karen’s chosen refuge when it came time to commiserate, complain or generally
analyze the world’s woes.

Hester wasn’t really sure “cozy”
would ever apply to Jitters’ new Northwest neighborhood cafe, with its bare
steel beams and industrial-modern interior. But the individuality appealed to
her more than the sameness of the Starbucks across the street, whose clones she
had seen in San Diego, Sacramento and Boise.

Besides, the goateed barista
behind the granite counter brewed a Black Ocelot espresso that made your ears
waggle.

“Here’s your drug of choice, my
dear,” Hester said, plopping a tiny, froth-topped cup in front of Karen, then
plopping into one of the sculpted, white-maple chairs that were surprisingly
comfortable for all their modern design.

In Karen’s car, a painful tug and
a quick rub with some cold-cream had defoliated Hester’s chin and removed most
of the spirit gum. She’d ditched the hat and substituted her own coat for the
red-checked nightmare, which offered little protection against a cold wind that
had met them as they’d left the overheated mansion. The remaining shirt, tie
and trousers just made her look fashionable among the eclectic evening crowd in
the trendy neighborhood they now looked out on.

Karen, in a fit of perverse
humor, had refused to doff her disguise.

“I feel like the straight man in
a Carol Burnett skit,” Hester fumed from between clenched teeth. She took a sip
of hot, strong coffee, then looked her friend in the eye. “So – you want to
explain yourself?”

Karen was still giddy. “Did you
see how the old ducks spluttered when I started singing praises
of Teri
June? Lord, they love to demonize people!”

She dug through her purse, pulled
out an evil-looking brown cigarette and quickly lit it with a dainty gold
lighter. She blew a cloud of clove-scented smoke toward the rusty beam
overhead. Hester winced and waved her hand in the air.

“Oh, Karen, not those Indonesian
things again! The smell gets into my coat and the next day people in the
elevator all wonder why I smell like an Easter ham!” She cast a guilty look
around the brightly lit coffee house and saw no other smokers.

“Hester, dear, chill out. I tell
you, I’m so excited. I’ve never really talked before about my relationship with
Teri June. And you know what? It felt good!”

“Well, that’s nice, Karen, I know
you believe in free speech, and you’re preaching to the choir as far as I’m
concerned, but do you really – ”

“But Hester, I’ve decided! Right
now! I want to come out – I want to finally get this out in the open between
us!”

“ – think that riling up those
people is going to do any good – ’’ Hester stopped in mid-lecture, her eye
suddenly frozen on the cameo brooch fastening a dusty pink cardigan at Karen’s
neck.  “You – you what?”

Karen slurped at her coffee, blew
smoke from her nose and grasped Hester’s hand.

 “Oh, God, I’ve wanted to tell
you for so long, but I promised Steve I’d be discreet back when he worked for
McCluskey, Wright & Schermerhorn – that firm was
so
stuffy. And even
now that he’s on his own – well, the old secret just got to be a habit. But if
I can’t tell my best friend, who
can
I tell? Oh, this feel’s so right!”

Hester carefully set her cup back
in its saucer. She studied Karen’s overpowdered face beneath the crazy wig that
now sat slightly cockeyed, then cast a wary eye at a nearby table. A
professorial man with short gray hair topped by a hound’s-tooth deerstalker was
casting dark glances from over the top of his slim volume of Flaubert. Hester
adjusted her necktie and blew him a kiss.

Leaning closer to Karen, she
spoke in a near-whisper. “Uh, just what is it you’re telling me, dear heart?”

“Hester, don’t you understand? I
don’t just
know
Teri June! I
am
Teri June!”

Hester slapped a palm to her
chest. For a moment, the only sound was a mad hissing as a double-tall-skinny
cappuccino was concocted across the cafe. Then Hester’s breath erupted in a
braying laugh reminiscent of one of the donkey-boys from “Pinocchio.”

She covered her mouth. “Oh, my
lord, Karen, what are you saying?” Hester wheezed, then caught her breath. “What
do you mean you’re Teri June! I don’t know who could write all those god-awful
stories, but I know you well enough to know that – ”

Karen glared at her.

“That is, I mean, c’mon, Karen,
quit kidding around, what’s this really all about?”

Karen sniffed and furiously
crushed out her cigarette in her coffee saucer. She bit her lip through a long,
pouting silence and then spoke quietly. “Hundreds of thousands of girls across
the country don’t seem to think they’re so god-awful.”

It was Hester’s turn to stare. “Oh,
sweet Jesus, you’re serious.”

 “And no, it might not be great
literature, but it says something to girls that I think is important,” Karen
said, a defiant note entering her voice. “It lets them know that what they’re
going through is, well, normal, and that they’re not some kind of freak without
a friend in the world.” She sniffed. “And maybe you thought I was always Little
Miss Sweetness and Light, but when I was 12, I, for one, could have used a
little more of that kind of reassurance once in a while.”

Hester grabbed Karen’s hand. “Oh,
Karen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. You’ve just – Well, you’ve kind of
blindsided me on this one.”

Suddenly, a thought transformed
Hester’s sympathy. “Boy, are you the faker! All these months of ‘Got any Teri
Junes?!’ This is just so bizarre. I mean, I know you’ve been a staunch defender
of her’s – uh, yours – but really, all this time I was just clueless!”

Karen allowed a small smile. “I
was
pretty good, wasn’t I? I have to say, it was tough at first. But like I said,
once it became a habit, it was probably a lot like JFK telling Jackie she was
his one and only snooky-ookums.”

“Wow.” Hester shook her head and
gulped the last of her espresso. “Congratulations, I think.” She waved toward
the counter and caught the barista’s eye, then called across the room. “Emilio,
we definitely need another round!”

Slowly, a smile spread across
Karen’s face. Finally, she giggled. “I’m so glad you know.”

Hester giggled back. The man in
the deerstalker scraped his chair loudly and huffily whisked past them on his
way out the door.

Karen looked down at the table
for a moment, then spoke again. “But you can’t tell anybody.”

Hester raised her eyebrows in
question.

“It’s Steve. I – I don’t want him
hurt. He’s such a lamb, really – You’ve seen him with the girls. They adore
him. And I do, too, really, though it’s been kind of a long haul. He’s a
sweetheart. And ever since McCluskey Wright sacked him – ”

“What?” Hester blurted. “He was
fired? You never told me that!”

“Oh, dear. My turn to apologize,
Hester. I’m afraid it’s part and parcel of the same situation, though. Steve had
such high ambitions. You know, I wrote my first Teri June when he was in his
final year of grad school up at the U of W. Lord, you should have seen the
hovel we called an apartment, up in the rafters of this old firetrap on
Brooklyn – of course, at that age, we just called it bohemian. But we were
so
poor, the student loan payments were coming soon, I was pregnant with Heidi –
believe me, it was desperation time.” Karen gave a sad smile of nostalgia.

“And somehow, I sold the first
book I wrote. I sent it in a manila envelope to an agent I picked out of the
Yellow Pages, right there in Seattle – she’s now the biggest agency in town,
thanks to yours truly. I guess I’m just good at it. Some people are.”

She turned to welcome a second
cup of Black Ocelot from the cheerful Emilio. “Got any rum to put in that?”
Hester asked him with a wink.

“Sorry, loves, just had a busload
of blue-hairs through from that Jesus Northwest convention and they drank the
place dry,’’ he said, twirling one end of his mustache as he hustled back
behind the counter with the five-dollar bill Hester handed him. Karen turned
back to Hester, carefully choosing her next words.

“Steve, unfortunately, isn’t
exactly gifted in his chosen profession.”

Puzzlement flashed across
Hester’s face. “But all that about setting up his own firm, how clients were
wooing him right and left – “

“None of it true. Guilty as
charged. And I am truly sorry.” Karen put her hand over her eyes. “Oh, what a
mess. Hester, please forgive me for letting this all go so far. The thing is,
Steve couldn’t cut it at the big firm. He did so well in school, honestly. But
he just wasn’t corporate. Going straight to the big office was a monumental
mistake. All over Portland, architects were doing wonderful things like the
Portland Building; KOIN Tower; RiverPlace. And Steve was on the losing side of
every proposal, at the firm that was always supposed to win. So they showed him
the door.”

Hester sat in stunned silence.
Karen sipped at her coffee, her hand shaking slightly from nerves and caffeine,
then continued, broodingly.

“And his own firm is just as big
a disaster. To tell you the truth, Hester, the only thing he’s working on right
now is our own house, and that’s turning into a financial nightmare you
wouldn’t believe. Without Teri June, we’d have been living out of that old
Dodge Dart I used to drive.”

Hester, still dazed by her
friend’s subterfuge, bit her lip as Karen rummaged through her purse and then
lit another cigarette. Karen blew smoke rings for a moment and gazed out the
window at passing couples, some all in black, some in business suits, of widely
varied social strata and mixed and matched genders, hurrying to get somewhere
out of the cold.

“And frankly things haven’t been
going so well lately for Teri June, either,” Karen spoke again, almost to
herself. Turning back to her present company, her eyes focused again.

“Hester, you know what’s really
gotten under my skin with those old biddies of WWCAC? I’ll tell you. I got a
call from my agent about a month ago, regarding the roughs of my latest
manuscript. And you know what? She says I have to ‘tone it down.’ There’s a storyline
dealing with self-gratification in early-maturing preteens – tastefully
handled, mind you, but the unvarnished truth, as it should be.”

Hester pinkened as she glanced
around them. A few tables away, a pair of high-school boys with chemistry texts
spread across a table had stopped munching biscotti and were unabashedly
eavesdropping.

Karen paused just long enough to
peer out the window, where a fine mist had started falling a few minutes
earlier. As she watched, it mixed with an occasional drifting ice pellet.

“Anyway, my agent tells me, the
big bookstores have been getting pressure from morality groups across the
country – a big letter-writing campaign,” Karen said bitterly. “All started by
Sara Duffy and her jackbooted book burners here in Oregon, this supposed
bastion of progressive thinking!”

Hester’s embarrassment turned to
anger.

“You’re joking! Karen, I had no
idea they had that kind of influence. I thought – well, they were just some
local kooks.”

“Yeah, well, people thought that
of a weird Austrian with a wimpy little mustache under his nose, at first,
until huge crowds started shouting ‘Heil’ at him,” Karen said, absently
fingering her cameo. The tip of her cigarette glowed brightly as she sucked in
a lungful of the acrid smoke, sifting it out through clenched teeth before she
spoke again.

“I’m fighting the changes. I’m
not giving in. And I’ll win that battle, you just watch me. But this is the
absolute worst time this could be happening.”

She frowned, waving the
cigarette. “The last book, actually, didn’t do as well as it should have. I’m
not sure the book banners weren’t making themselves felt already. And now
there’s some sort of balloon payment coming due on the house construction loan –
I made the mistake of letting Steve handle the financing. And what with the
likely delays on the book advance because of this nonsense, I just don’t know
what’s going to happen. I admit, we’ve been living pretty fat. The private
school for the girls doesn’t come cheap, and – ” She cast a glance outside to the
big BMW parked at the curb. “Well, I haven’t exactly been denying myself. I’m
afraid we don’t have much of what you might call a safety net if the checks
stop rolling in.”

Hester swallowed a gulp of the
strong coffee, then cleared her throat. “Well, not to pry, but I have no idea
how it works when you’re self-employed. How have you handled investments for
retirement and that sort of thing? Do you have some sort of mutual fund or
something?”

Karen snorted. “Ha! That’s a good
one. Let me put it this way, Hest. If I hocked this cheap wig I’m wearing and
added in my savings and retirement plan, I’d have almost enough to get fries
with my Big Mac.”

“Oh.” Hester pursed her lips. “Dear.
Well, Karen, listen, if I can help out – Goodness knows I’m not going to be
spending my savings on any fancy vacations anytime soon. If I took two weeks
off, it would give the library board the perfect excuse to park the bookmobile
and crow about how nobody ever missed it.” She paused in thought, then added,
as if to herself, “Of course, if my patrons were able to drive to library-board
meetings to complain, they wouldn’t be using the bookmobile in the first
place...”