B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery

Corpse of Discovery

A

Portland

Bookmobile

Mystery

B.B.
Cantwell

Portland Bookmobile Mysteries

available
on
Amazon.com

Murdermobile

Corpse of
Discovery

Cover illustration by Stevie Lennartson

Text copyright © 2014 Barbara and Brian Cantwell

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Learn
more about Portland Bookmobile Mysteries at

murdermobile.weebly.com

For
Lillian Freelove

We hope you’ll forgive
us someday

(we
could have gone with Princetta)

Preface

If you lived in
Portland, Oregon – or many other parts of the United States – in the late 20
^th
century, you’d remember bookmobiles.

These big buses
brought entertainment to our doorsteps – or darn close. Every Saturday or so,
the bookmobile would lumber up to a nearby park or playground and open its
doors to anyone with a library card, whether we were 8 or 80.

It brought tales
of faraway lands, ghoulish monsters, fantastic swordfights. It brought romance,
history and adventure – before video was something that streamed, before “texting”
meant anything more than sitting down with a pen and writing a story.

If you went to
grade school in Portland you’d also know the exciting history of Lewis and
Clark’s Corps of Discovery.

This story
weaves all that together – along with quirky tales of the mystical Rajneeshees
(who really
did
poison salad bars), miniature horses (which really
are
used as service animals), and wooden shoes (which probably
would
give
you blisters if you wore them in a parade). This is, indeed, a work of fiction,
but much of it is true.

Oh, there’s also
a murder. I served on Portland’s bookmobile, and I can tell you all about it.

–
B.B.
Cantwell

Chapter 1

Saturday, June
8, 1996

 Portland,
Oregon

The bookmobile
was starting to steam.

“Dagnabit, this
is what they get for going cheap and buying this ‘reconditioned’ thing instead
of the new vehicle we were promised,” fumed Ethel Pimala, perched behind the wheel
of the Miss Sara Duffy Memorial Bookmobile as it crept along Broadway in
downtown Portland. The bookmobile driver’s years of working with children
always showed in her tame cursing.

Just ahead,
Corvallis High School’s Spartan marching band, in elaborate chrome helmets,
tootled away at the “Washington Post March.” At least their togas look well-ventilated,
thought Hester Freelove McGarrigle, the bookmobile’s librarian, wiping a limp
wisp of auburn hair from her perspiring brow.

It was an unseasonable
scorcher of a June day for the Grand Floral Parade, a highlight of the annual
Rose Festival in a town known as Oregon’s Rose City.

Putting the “new”
Portland City Library bookmobile in the parade was the scheme of the
publicity-conscious president of the Portland Pioneer Literary Society, the
private organization – “our little aristocracy,” Hester called it – that
contracted with the city to provide library services
.
The president had crowed
to his board that the shiny magenta bus with its supergraphics of the late head
librarian, Sara Duffy, reading to a circle of adoring children would be “boffo”
exposure for the library.

“Just how well
it will play when the bookmobile blows a gasket and they have to send
paramedics to rescue us from heat stroke is another question,” muttered Hester.

The willowy,
blue-eyed “Miss Marple librarian,” as the local TV stations had annoyingly
dubbed her after her involvement in a local murder investigation, scurried to
the rear of the bus a third time to see if she could get the jammed back window
to open.

Once more, the
library board had buckled to cost constraints and gone with a bookmobile with
no air conditioning. Who knew it would be 92 degrees for the Rose Parade? When Hester
had agreed to dress up as pioneer Narcissa Whitman in an 1850s-era dress,
complete with whalebone corset, she had assumed it would be a typical cool and
showery early-June day.

 The costume was
in keeping with the Rose Festival’s theme for this year: “Voyages of Discovery.”
Keyed to Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and the subsequent history of 19
^th
-century
pioneers in what was then called “Oregon Country,” the festival encouraged all
Portlanders to celebrate their heritage.

“Oh, Pim,”
Hester called despairingly to her diminutive, somewhat-pineapple-shaped driver whose
Filipino-Hawaiian surname, Pimala, was often shortened by friends. “My father, the
band teacher, would love this, but if I have to listen to one more John Philip
Sousa march, I’m going to tear off this corset and run screaming and naked into
Nordstrom’s to find some classical piano – and air conditioning!”

 Pim, who had
come from Hilo decades earlier to study at Portland State University before her
scholarship had dried up, waggled the fronds of her woven pandanus-leaf hat, a
tribute to the “Kanaka” workers from Hawaii who helped build and run nearby
Fort Vancouver, the historic site where Pim volunteered for re-enactments.

“Well, if we can’t
keep this old bus moving so the fan belt runs faster, you’re not the only one
who’s going to have a breakdown,” she warned.

It didn’t help
that the Literary Society’s leader had arranged to have two giant dugout canoes
– “just like the ones Lewis and Clark paddled” – strapped atop the bookmobile
to add “historic flavor.”

“And about 500
more pounds to haul up Broadway,” Pim had been grumbling all morning.

Hester
remembered with alarm her first car – a stubby little blue Toyota from the
1960s with a high ceiling and truck-sized steering wheel that she had fondly
called her “Mr. Magoo car.” It had been a good little car except for its
penchant for overheating at stoplights on warm days. Just out of library
school, she’d spent a year as an elementary-school librarian in the sun-baked Yakima
Valley of Washington, where she’d carefully plotted routes to work that allowed
her to turn right and circle around a block until a light changed in order to
keep air flowing through the radiator.

“Oh, dear. Pim,
would it help if we turned on the heater? That’s supposed to help drain heat
from the engine, isn’t it?”

 “I’ve already
got it going full blast, and since the only cooling we’re getting is from these
window-defroster fans, it’s getting to be a question of whether this bus melts
down first or we do!” Pim replied, reaching down to unbutton the top of her
Aloha shirt, part of a collection well-known among her colleagues. Today’s was
hot pink with hula-dancing tropical fish and scenes of Diamond Head.

Scanning the
gauges on the “new” bus – recently retired from Ketchikan, Alaska, one of the
few places in the United States where A.C. wouldn’t be considered necessary –
Pim gave a low whistle.

“We’re just
edging into the red on the temp gauge. Hester, if this parade doesn’t get moving,
I’m going to have to take desperate measures.”

*    
*     *

Leading the
parade marched the man responsible for Pim’s worries.

Pieter van Dyke,
president of the Portland Pioneer Literary Society, was also chairman of the
Rose Festival. And chairman of the Oregon Zoo. And vice chairman of the
Portland Art Museum. And a socially-climbing member of boards of half a dozen
other influential Portland-area community groups, colleges and nonprofits.

In his late 50s,
thick-bodied with pouchy eyes and thinning flaxen hair on a head shaped a bit
like a tulip bulb, van Dyke today was celebrating his Dutch heritage – and his
position as self-appointed grand marshal of the Grand Floral Parade – by
marching at its head in wooden shoes.

The impractical
footwear was shared by van Dyke’s taller, grayer, pinch-faced law partner and
fellow Dutchman, DeWitt Vanderpol, limping at his side. Trailing just behind, their
baldheaded, bespectacled and plumply unfit junior partner, Gerhard Gerbils, sported
lederhosen to reflect his German ancestry. This particular garment fit better
in the lawyer’s younger days, a few thousand sausages ago. His partners joked
that Gerbils’ dimpled thighs looked “the wurst for wear.”

Gerbils’ father
had changed the spelling of the family name from “Goebbels” – yes, they
were
related to the infamous Nazi propaganda wizard – when fleeing Germany just
before Hitler invaded Poland. Much to his descendants’ consternation, old
Goebbels simply Anglicized the spelling but kept the pronunciation, with the
hard “G,” though the new spelling meant his descendants were often mocked as
school boys for having the same name as a pet rodent.

Van Dyke and
Vanderpol didn’t often let their partner forget his distant Nazi relative, smirking
together over their private joke the day they appointed Gerbils to handle the
firm’s public relations.

Gerbils thought
their sense of humor mean-spirited.

Today, van Dyke
was in his element, waving happily at the crowd lining the curb and beaming
with a smile that spoke of dental-chair whitening treatments.

The parade was
rounding the block to Fifth Avenue to pass in the shadow of “Portlandia,” the 34-foot
Statue-of-Liberty-like copper sculpture kneeling over the entry to the
neo-art-deco Portland Building. Van Dyke, always hamming it up in public, a
habit dating to a high-school role in “Guys and Dolls,” threw his hand to his
chest and mimicked getting skewered by the giant trident the statue brandished.
Onlookers guffawed.

“Wait till they
see the bookmobile,” he shouted into Vanderpol’s ear so as to be heard over the
sound of the marching bands. “Getting that reconditioned model left us enough
money to hire the airbrush muralist out of Atlanta who does all the fancy
graphics on the trucks that carry NASCAR teams. Old Sara Duffy never looked so
good!” he said of the elderly librarian, the victim in the murder case Hester
had helped solve. “That little glint in her eye? The guy actually uses diamond dust
to get that effect!”

The grandson of Vincent
van Dyke, a former governor and subsequent Oregon Supreme Court justice, Pieter
van Dyke had grown up watching his father, Vincent Jr. – also a lawyer –
unsuccessfully run for one public office after another. Pieter’s basic life strategy
was to glad-hand his way into the public’s heart. He had a reputation for
throwing Portland’s most lavish high-society parties, including hosting the
annual Friends of the Library New Year’s Costume Ball, the group’s premier
fundraiser. Pieter always dressed as Pierrot.

“Speaking of the
good old book bus, I wonder where it ended up in the parade? I told them to put
it near the front,” van Dyke told Vanderpol, as both peered over their
shoulders.

*    
*     *

Watching the
bookmobile’s temperature needle climb every time the hot engine idled, Pim was
sweating from nerves as much as from the heat.

“I’ve got to
keep this thing moving and keep that fan spinning or she’s going to boil over
for sure!” she told Hester. “Hold on, I’m going through the marching band!”

“Pim, be
careful!” Hester grimaced, covering her eyes with both hands.

Pim, who had been
driving for the library for 40 years, gently goosed the accelerator and the
bookmobile edged toward the waddling derrières of the Spartan band’s tuba
section. Then fate took a hand. It was time for the band’s special drill, and
as the drum major’s whistle shrieked, the band members pivoted to march
backward, aiming straight for the oncoming 12-ton bus, whose magenta hue – the
favorite color of Portland’s first head librarian – made it hard to miss.

Pim flashed the
high beams through a cloud of steam and Hester waved her long arms like a Navy
signal officer working the semaphore.

The drum major –
a quick-thinking member of the Math Club – nodded his high, plumed hat, shrilled
his whistle three times and waggled arms in his own special code as the band
magically parted on each side of the big bus. Pistoning trombone slides
narrowly missed the rearview mirrors. Pim hit the air horn in rhythm to the
band’s march – Hester recognized “Stars and Stripes Forever” – and the crowd
cheered at what looked like a planned bit of choreography.

But disaster
loomed.

“Pim, look out,
the sheriff’s horse patrol is stopped in front of us!” Hester warned.

“I will not be a
horse murderer!” Pim said grimly. Her love of animals started at home with her
ancient cockapoo, Queen Liliuokalani.

“Quick, take
this right turn and maybe we can circle around the block and rejoin the parade
after this thing has cooled off a bit!” Hester coached.

“Just like in
your old Magoo car!” Pim grinned, gunning the engine. Giving it all the
leverage her 4-foot-10 physique could muster, she cranked the wheel to swing
the lumbering vehicle onto Yamhill Street.

*    
*     *

City father
Simon Benson wanted Portland to be walkable, so downtown blocks were platted
half the size of city blocks in New York.

“Pim, we’re
going to need to go several streets over if you really want to give the fan
time to cool down this beast,” opined Hester, leaning out the open passenger
window in an effort to get some fresh air. She reached up and yanked out a
pearl-handled hair pin so her coppery tresses fell out of the pioneer bun and
caught the breeze.

Glancing in the
bus’s side mirror and catching a reflection of her own slim face with strong
cheekbones straining for the air currents, she suddenly felt like one of those
floppy-eared dogs who just love to go for rides.

 “And I don’t give
a hoot!” she thought, relishing the few cooling freshets.

Pim leaned on
the horn, ran yellow lights and sent more than one baby-jogger-pushing mother
scurrying for the curb. Hester, peering down side streets, finally glimpsed the
parade where it had turned a corner and headed back on a parallel course.

“Pim, hang a
left, I think there’s an opening for us!”

The big bus
bobbed and swayed, and as it leaned around the corner a few unsecured books
flew from the mystery shelves.

“OK, the needle’s
dropped, thank you Goddess Pele!” said Pim, addressing the sky. “And look ahead
up there at the parade, Hester, that looks like the Allee-ANCE Fran-SAY fur
trappers from over at the fort,” she added, tackling the re-enactment group’s
name with her usual exaggerated diction reserved for tweaking what she called “them
highfalutin’ languages.”

“Oh, are those
the fellows you know from the historical park? Do you think they’ll let us
barge in?”

“Sure, that’s my
buddy Pomp Charbonneau leading them! He’s a direct descendant of one of the
Lewis and Clark gang. He was the guy who helped me print up those fliers for
the Kanaka Village fundraising picnic. Remember, you met him that once.”