B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery (13 page)

Chapter 25

The curry over
jasmine rice was just as Hester promised: the perfect antidote to hot weather,
and the fresh fruit on the side was like a culinary plunge into a cool forest
stream.

 With the cream
puffs, they finished the bottle of unoaked, biodynamic chardonnay Nate had
brought from his brother’s winery. As the light began to fade, bells gonged from
the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, a Gothic-revival wonder just down the street.

Darrow held his
glass aloft, struck an “I’m-going-to-quote-some-poetry-now” pose and then spoke
in a soft and melodic baritone:  

“The curfew
tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd
winds slowly o’er the lea,

The plowman
homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the
world to darkness and to me.”

Hester arched an
eyebrow.

 “Really, not
just named for Hawthorne but a reciter of Thomas Gray, Mr. Darrow? I’m
impressed.”

Darrow feigned a
wounded look.

 “I have more
culture than you know, Ms. McGarrigle. And it happens my mother paid me $5 to
memorize ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ when I was 10 years old. The
woman saw great things for her boys.”

“Ah.” She looked
into his dark eyes and held the gaze. “I think I would have liked your mom.”

Darrow held her
eyes, then broke the moment by picking up the wine bottle and staring owlishly
at the label.

 “Winemakers
call this naked chardonnay, when they don’t put it on oak,” Darrow said. “But
it’s one of the few things that I’m not sure is improved by being naked.”

Hester turned
slightly pink and swatted his hand, then took it and led him into the living
room, pushing him toward the long sofa of faded chintz with big red roses. She stepped
back into the kitchen for a few moments, then reappeared with a small plate of
Stilton cheese and two tiny glasses of ruby port.

 “Quote some
more of ‘Churchyard,” Hester implored her neighbor. “Please.”

Darrow gave her
a puckish look. “Ah. You’re going to challenge me.”

He sat up
straight and rolled his eyes upward in thought for a moment, then inserted his
hand inside an imaginary vest in a Napoleonic pose and spoke again in the same
lilting manner:

“Now fades the
glimm’ring landscape on the sight,

And all the air
a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the
beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy
tinklings lull the distant folds.”

Hester started
to applaud, but Nate glared at her and she froze. He continued:

“Save that from
yonder ivy-mantled tow’r

The moping owl
does to the moon complain

Of such, as wand’ring
near her secret bow’r,

Molest her
ancient solitary reign.”

This time Darrow
stopped and bowed.

“And that old
chestnut goes on for 32 stanzas – believe me, as one who once earned something
like 15 cents a stanza, I’ve counted.”

Hester’s face
shone with delight.

“I’d love to
hear it all sometime. I love to read good poetry, but the only thing I’ve ever
had a head for memorizing was ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee.’ I recited it in
Fourth Grade.”

Darrow’s face
lit up.

 “Robert
Service! Now
there’s
an artist!” He rolled his eyes back again, resumed
his pose and searched his memory.

“There are
strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who
moil for gold…”

“And then I’m
gonna need your help,” he begged Hester.

 She drew up her
shoulders, assumed her own pose and continued the poem in a soft singsong, as
if back in the Fourth Grade:

“The Arctic
trails have their secret tales

That would make
your blood run cold;

The Northern
Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest
they ever did see…”

Here Darrow
joined in to finish the stanza.

“Was that night
on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam
McGee.”

This time he
applauded as Hester curtsied.

When Nate
stopped grinning, he assumed a serious countenance. “Only I have to ask,
because I’ve always wondered: How exactly does one ‘moil,’ and what the heck is
the ‘marge’ of a lake?”

Hester spread
her hands apart in an “everyone knows this” expression.

“You know,
moil
.
It’s like panning for gold. You ‘moil’ the sand and rocks in your pan. And the
marge is the lakeshore, as in ‘margin.’ It’s quite obvious,” she sniffed.

“And I’m sure you
were a bewitching Fourth Grader,” Darrow smiled, taking her hand in his and
stretching his other arm comfortably around her shoulders. As his eye wandered across
the room it came to a stop at an old clock on Hester’s mantel and he came back
to earth.

“Oh, criminy, is
that the time? I better get on my way, what with your canoe paddling adventure
tomorrow,” Darrow said, harking back to one of the topics over dinner.

A little sigh
escaped Hester’s lips.

 “So. Detective.
I don’t know if you’ve gotten the clue, but you don’t really have to make that
long trip home,” she said, a sapphire sparkle in her eye. “I mean, I have
pumped you full of good Oregon wine, and I’d hate for you, as an officer of the
law, to get an SUI.”

Nate squinted
his eyes and cocked his head, struggling to suss it out. “OK, I’ll bite. What’s
an SUI?”

“Stairclimbing
Under the Influence,” Hester deadpanned.

“Aha,” Darrow
said, nodding in comprehension, with a small twist of a grin flashing briefly
across his face.

He gazed up at
Hester’s crowded bookcase and momentarily scanned the authors: Jane Austen to
Charlotte Brontë to Dorothy L. Sayers to P.G. Wodehouse, their names in gold on
wrinkled leather book spines. Puffing out his cheeks, he took a quick sip of
the port and turned his eyes to hers in an air of blurting confession.

“Hester, that
night we had in February was one of the sweetest I’ve known, for the
spontaneity and the playfulness, and simply the lovely nature of it all – cat
vomit aside,” he said in a pensive recollection of how Bingle T.’s
unfortunately aimed retching had led to his need to get out of his clothes
during a previous dinner visit.

 “And I can’t
tell you how much I’ve thought about it these past few months, and how many
times I almost showed up at your door unannounced with a good bottle of bubbly
in hopes that you’d say, ‘Oh, Nate, how sweet, let’s hop in the sack again!’ ”
he said in a rush.

Hester, having
just taken a sip of the aromatic ruby liquid, half-choked and almost sprayed
her port across the room at this last statement, but Darrow continued before
she had a chance to say anything.

“But I also know
that there was talk around the department and eyebrows raised about how chummy
I’d gotten with a prime witness in a high-profile homicide. And if it had gone
up the chain any farther I would so have gotten my butt fired,” he said, his
eyes riveted now on the cold ashes of the fireplace. “And frankly I’m sorry for
being such a coward.”

Hester, having
regained her composure, took another sip of wine, cleared her throat and
mentally chewed on his tone of pragmatic guilt.

“And it’s such a
cute butt,” she said.

Hester was a
pragmatist in many ways herself, recognizing that there was no profit in taking
insult that Darrow put career over romance.

She silently
contemplated his profile and the dark stubble on his sharp jaw line as she
poured him another sip of port, nibbled at a crumb of the delightfully spunky
cheese, then asked in deliberate provocation, “And speaking of that derrière,
you never told me the whole story of how you got the tattoo,” she said, humming
a quick few bars of “Anchors Aweigh.”

It was Darrow’s rare
turn to lightly blush in Hester’s presence.

“Oh. You’re
talking about my well-anchored personality,” he quipped, referring to the
anchor tattooed on his right buttock.

 Never one to
sit still for too long, Darrow sprang from his chair, facing away from Hester,
stretching his arms over his head, and then lowering his hands to massage his
lower back with an appreciative groan. Slowly his palms wandered lower to cup
his own rear end in playful provocation.

Hester didn’t
pass up the opportunity to give him a swat on the back pocket. “Now stop that!”

He sat back down
and hastened to explain.

“I was kind of a
basket case the summer after my folks were killed in the car crash. I think I
told you about that before.” Hester nodded mutely.

“So to get away
from the world I’d sailed up the inside of Vancouver Island with my Uncle Babe,
from Port Townsend. And one night in Nanaimo I made some friends whose names I
will never remember and after a very misguided few hours in a dive bar playing
foosball and drinking way too many red beers – the worst thing I can think of
now, tomato juice mixed with Pabst Blue Ribbon! – we ended up at a tattoo
parlor. I guess I’m just lucky it wasn’t somebody’s name that I would have to
get surgically removed. I can tell you that it was sore as the blazes and Uncle
Babe made me sit at the helm for several days in a previously unknown streak of
sadism.”

Hester bit back
a giggle, then leaned over and pecked him on the stubbly cheek. Then it was her
turn to turn owlish, peering at the light through her glass of port for a
moment before speaking.

“Since it’s True
Confession night, I will say I had some guilt to work out after our February
tryst as well. While I’ve ridden the Roller Coaster of Love more than once in
my day, I am not one to roll in the hay with just any hayseed who comes along,
and I admit I hadn’t known you for long. So I needed a little time to think
about it.”

She took another
contemplative sip of port and ruefully remembered how alcohol tended to inspire
her to mix metaphors.

“And while I did
give you some space these past few months, all those times we ran into each
other at your favorite pizza joint weren’t entirely coincidental. I’ve eaten
more pizza than I’ve ever had in my
life,
thank you very much. I’ve had
to walk around the Park Blocks twice a day just to keep from becoming a blimp!”

It was Nate’s
turn to let his eyes wander. The curve of her slim neck, with a few fetching
freckles at the base, showed the pizza had done no harm. He leaned over slowly
and let his lips nuzzle her left ear.

Hester shrieked
in ticklish surprise. “No, not the ear!”

He moved his
mouth to her neck and heard an intake of breath. Hester turned her chin and her
lips met his. The kiss went on, and on.

Out in the
kitchen, Bingle T. was on the windowsill again, his teeth chattering and eyes
darting with the movement of a tiny Anna’s hummingbird at the feeder a few feet
beyond his reach.

 This time the
cat had nothing to do with the urgent removal of Nate Darrow’s clothing.

Chapter 26

“Why are we
having Sunday brunch at a hot-dog restaurant?” Harriet Harrington hissed at her
husband.

“It’s a little
thing I have to do for work, Harriet. You know how you always say you don’t
want to know the details about my work? Well, let’s just say it’s one of those
times, dear,” Harry whispered across the table where they’d just been seated by
Gerhard Gerbils, once again clad in his brown jodhpurs. “And they have more
than just hot dogs, honeybunch – I hear the sauerbraten and spätzle are good. I
have no idea what they are, but I understand they’re really quite nice.”

 When they’d
finished their meal and Gerbils brought Harry the check, along with two large
plastic bags full of takeout cartons, his wife’s eyes opened wide in
astonishment.

“Harry, what on
earth…?”

“Oh, these are
for the
party
tonight, dear. Remember the
party
we’re having,
with all our friends from my office who love German sausage?” Harry emoted,
winking at his wife five times.

“Do you have something
in your eye, dear?” she asked, scowling with confusion. Gerbils stared and
Harry blushed.

“Just pay the
man so we can go,” Harriet demanded.

Harry reached
for his wallet in the breast pocket of his suit coat but the pocket was empty.
He reached for a side pocket with no better luck. Finally after he frantically
patted his midsection he found the wallet wedged into the other side pocket.

It was a tight
fit in a pocket not usually used for his wallet, and he had to pry it out of
the folds. When it finally came, something else popped out, too: a small
leather folder containing Harrington’s gold-colored detective’s shield, with an
eagle at the top and “Portland Police” boldly emblazoned on a blue stripe
across the bottom.

The folder came
to rest atop the restaurant check with the badge staring up at Gerhard Gerbils.

Harry watched Gerbils’
eyes flick downward and then back to Harry’s face, which flushed crimson.

“Oh, how did
that get there, Harriet?” he stammered. “Was – was Junior playing policeman
again? You know he really shouldn’t, ah, shouldn’t leave his toys in Daddy’s
pockets.”

Harriet didn’t
try to hide her confusion as she picked up her husband’s wallet, pulled out a
credit card and handed it to Gerbils.

“Would you
please just take this so we can be on our way?” she asked, with an air of
glacial coolness.