B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery (3 page)

 Tire tracks
edged one side of his tubby torso, and his eyes stared sightlessly into the now-blue
June sky.

Chapter 3

For the second
time in four months, yellow police-line tape surrounded Portland’s magenta
bookmobile. But to Hester McGarrigle’s eye, there was nothing cheery about the
complementary colors.

Sitting in the
passenger seat of a parked police cruiser, she now noticed an old wooden sign
next to the horseshoe pit proclaiming it one of the practice sites for the
venerable Rose City Horseshoe Club (“Est. 1922”). In the sign’s center, an
elaborate logo featured a horseshoe intertwined with a vine of red roses. The
police car’s endlessly strobing red and blue lights reflected off the sign and,
next to it, the bookmobile’s bright finish.

“Nobody better
be epileptic or they’ll have a fit for sure,” she complained through a grating
to Pim, who occupied the cruiser’s back seat. “It’s worse than a disco ball in
the Jelly Belly factory. I wonder if I could turn them off?” she pondered,
lightly fingering a panel of switches beneath the car’s dashboard.

“Hester, don’t
go punching any buttons and getting us in worse trouble than we already are!”
Pim whispered in agitation. “Unless you see one marked ‘ejector seat.’ These
back seats aren’t exactly made for full-figured gals.”

Hester chuckled
nervously, then took a deep breath and blew it out with a “whoosh.”

“Oh, God, Pim,
how could this have happened – again?” she asked, bunching a fist to her mouth.

The previous
February, Hester had been the first to discover the body of the retired head
librarian, Sara Duffy, in the bookmobile’s back cupboard. After finally
confessing, the murderer drove the old bus off a cliff. The replacement bus was
named in Duffy’s honor.

Hester shuddered
at the memories. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to process this morning’s
events. When she looked up again, Detective Darrow was just opening the car
door to slip into the driver’s seat. He had found some rain pants in the
cruiser’s trunk and borrowed a nylon jacket, navy blue with large yellow
letters on the back spelling P-O-L-I-C-E.

“So, you two,”
he said, pursing his lips and staring through the windshield at the densely
wooded ridge rising abruptly above the industry-lined Willamette River. Along
the ridgeline the top branches of myriad fir trees formed an inky, dark
filigree pattern against blue sky. Darrow drummed his fingers on the dashboard.

Hester looked at
him with searching eyes. “Nate, uh, did the bookmobile actually… ”

Darrow spoke
quickly and matter-of-factly.

“There’s clear
evidence that one set of rear dual tires ran over the victim. It’s by no means
clear whether that caused his death. There’s a lot of blood in the sand and a
lot of sand caked on the body. The medical examiner is doing a preliminary look
now.”

Hester’s breath
whistled between her teeth. In the rear of the car, Pim was moaning softly and
holding her head in her hands.

“Pim, there was
no way you could have seen him, it was way too murky out there,” Hester
comforted.   

Darrow hung his
head for a moment and then looked up at Hester.

“Look, I’m sorry
you both have to go through all this again, but I think it would be best if you
went into the office and gave your statements there,” he said, watching in a
mirror as a KSNZ News van pulled onto the grass next to the trail and a crew
quickly raised a satellite dish atop the roof. Darrow recognized reporter Misty
Day as she peered at her reflection in the van’s passenger window and applied
fresh coral-colored lipstick.

Darrow also
noted with some concern that quite a crowd had gathered at the outer perimeter
of the police tape. He momentarily noticed that their expressions went beyond
the usual morbid curiosity common to a murder scene, instead bordering on …
indignation?

 Several waved
folded newspapers. What was up with that?

In answer, there
came a sudden tapping on the car window. Darrow lowered the window to his plainclothes
colleague, Harry Harrington, a slightly built man of conservative dress whose
demeanor tended to alternate between inexplicable optimist and hopeless worry
wart. A wave of coffee breath filled the car as Harrington leaned in a little
too far and hissed some news that Hester couldn’t help overhearing.

“Nate, we got
trouble! I know this sounds crazy, but there’s a whole passel of maniacs out
there who insist that the Rose Medallion is hidden in that damn horseshoe pit!
They say there’s hardly any doubt from the clue in this morning’s paper. Look
at this!”

Darrow took the
newspaper Harrington thrust at him and peered at some circled text:

Gallop north by
Nor’west to a park called For-est.

Beneath Thurman
Bridge find a pit, not a ridge.

Don’t get sand
in your eyes when you pick up the prize.

Pim, her interest
in the world around her suddenly revived, spoke up from the back seat.

“Is that today’s
Oregonian
? Can I have a look? I couldn’t find a copy for love nor money
this morning!”

“Nobody could –
not until about an hour ago. They had some sort of press breakdown. But now
we’re getting mobbed by frustrated medallion hunters!” Harrington moaned. “What
are we supposed to do? These people are fanatics!”

Darrow shook his
head.

“That could mean
any number of things, for God’s sake. Harry, just be sure we have enough
uniforms to keep the turkeys out of our crime scene. Call for more backup, why
don’t you?”

Chapter 4

Misty Day had never
had to change her name from Gladys Frump or Mabel Crumb; the precious name her
parents had given her was perfect for TV. She grew up as a cheerleader, a natural
blond and a Beaverton High School valedictorian. She’d kept her figure thanks
to Thighmaster, Lean Cuisine and ordering salad dressing “on the side” ever since
Jimmy Carter was president. As for her still-yellow tresses? Only her
hairdresser knew for sure.

She had known her
days were numbered as co-anchor at Portland’s No. 2-rated network affiliate
when they hired a news director half her age – “younger than sperm,” she called
the young buck fresh out of USC.

 And sure
enough, not a week after her 50
^th
birthday, he’d taken her out for
lunch for the “it’s time to put you back on the beat” talk.

Between the
Chilean sea bass and the tiramisu, he’d shoveled flattery about how her “seasoned
eye” and keen sense of “the pulse of Portland” made her the right person to do
a series of people profiles they would call Misty’s Mavens.

But the other
shoe dropped when she learned who was taking her place at the anchor desk: an
oh-so-perky 29-year-old former weather girl in a push-up bra whose “hard news” claim
to fame was an exposé on pet psychics.

So Day was
hungry for a story that would help restore gravitas to her curriculum vitae.

“And being first
on air with another high-profile homicide on the Murdermobile sounds like just
the thing,” she said out loud, giving each word a snap like a staple-gun as she
trotted toward Detective Darrow at the edge of Forest Park. He had just waved
off a squad car that was threading its way along the narrow street back toward
downtown.

She didn’t wait
for any preliminaries but signaled her cameraman to roll video as she thrust
her microphone in Darrow’s face.

“Detective, is
it true that the ‘Murdermobile’ is back, and this time its victim is the head
of the Portland Pioneer Literary Society?”

Darrow, caught
off-guard, turned toward the camera with a look as if he’d just stepped in
something he didn’t like the smell of. But Day didn’t wait for him to respond.

“And is it true
that Pieter van Dyke was not only run over by the bookmobile but was stripped
naked and tortured in some sort of satanic cult ritual?”

“WHAT?” Darrow
spluttered. He hated being on TV. He always ended up looking like Eddie Haskell
from “Leave it to Beaver” – if you added a 5 o’clock shadow – and sounding like
Barney Fife. It just wasn’t his medium.

“And that
librarian just taken away in the patrol car – Heather Freelove Something, wasn’t
it? Is she part of the ‘free love’ cult out on Sauvie Island?” Day added.

Darrow managed to
snap his jaw shut rather than let it hang in response to the preposterous
questions.

“NO, we have no –
” he stopped to draw a breath  “ – no positive ID of the victim. And no comment
in this early stage of the investigation,” he said, biting off the urge to bite
the reporter’s head off. It would only fuel her fire.

 But that didn’t
stop Misty Day, who just gave him a smirking, “Thanks, Nick.”

Licking her lips
and dropping the microphone to her side, she looked him up and down. “Hey,
haven’t we passed each other on morning runs up here? I seem to remember some
tight green shorts.”

Darrow just
stared back at her under eyebrows like gathering storm clouds until she waved
her cameraman over to the horseshoe pit and quickly positioned herself for a
stand-up. A pair of white-shirted EMTs with a gurney was preparing to load a
body bag into the medical examiner’s windowless white van. After catching that
wide shot, the cameraman zoomed in on four horseshoe posts, sunk deeply in the
sand and still bearing hanks of duct tape, and a large dark stain marking where
the body had lain between them. Next he zoomed out to focus on the reporter as
she launched into her commentary.

“So, this is
Misty Day, asking questions with no answers –
just yet
. But I knew
Pieter van Dyke personally. I lunched with him just last week – paella in the
Pearl District. You all saw him lead the Rose Parade days ago in his charming
wooden shoes. Somehow this minion of Portland society has apparently met an
ignoble death here, in some sort of bizarre ritual. For months, our chief of
police has been harping about the petty crime wave in this corner of Portland,
with several arrests of residents of Downward Dog Farm, the Rajneeshee spinoff commune
on nearby Sauvie Island. Now, has this cult’s disrespect for the rule of law
turned deadly, targeting one of our most prominent civic leaders? I, for one,
won’t rest until questions are answered. I’m Misty Day, for KSNZ News You Can
Use.”

Darrow had learned
the hard way that trying to correct the wild ideas that some TV reporters
tended to sling about like gravy on Thanksgiving was about as easy as, well,
getting a gravy stain off a silk tie. He turned to face a problem he could do
something about: the crowd of onlookers who were starting to hop the police
tape. He grabbed a bullhorn from the trunk of Harry Harrington’s unmarked blue Caprice.

“Hey, hey,
folks, let us do our job here, this is a crime scene and we will be here all
day, so please just go home,” Darrow beseeched, his amplified words echoing with
a tinny vibrato through the little canyon beneath the bridge.

“But I was here
first and if I could just look for the Rose Medallion for two minutes I promise
I won’t touch anything,” pleaded a young mother in Coke-bottle eyeglasses and
chestnut braids with a crying baby in a knitted bag strapped to her chest.

“NO, I’M SORRY –
” Darrow stopped and lowered the bullhorn as the baby’s cries turned to
shrieks. “I’m sorry,” he said in a muted voice. “We have what looks to be a
homicide here. It has to take priority, I’m sure you understand. Please just go
home.”

Darrow hadn’t
had any coffee before setting out for his morning run, so now his head was
pounding from caffeine withdrawal. Added to the charley-horse in his right
calf, he was gimping about like Long John Silver after a hard night of
pillaging. He staggered over to his fellow detective.

“Harry, it looks
like the crime-scene folks and the extra uniforms can handle this now. How
about giving me a lift back downtown?” he asked. “I need to interview a
librarian I know.”

*     *     *

DeWitt
Vanderpol had just turned off the television and was on the phone to his law
partner, Gerhard Gerbils.

“Why do
I
have to be the one to make a statement about his death?” Gerbils asked, not
trying to conceal a prickly tone.

“Because you’re
the firm’s spokesman, remember?” said Vanderpol, who did his best to conceal a
lifelong fear of public speaking which he had hoped to overcome by becoming a
lawyer.

“I just think
you knew him better, you worked with him longer, and besides, I’m the junior
partner, which means you get 5 percent more of the firm’s gross than I do,” Gerbils
added snarkily. Suddenly, something dawned on him. “So…now that Pieter is gone,
shouldn’t we just split things 50-50?”

“It’s way too
early to be thinking of anything like that!” Vanderpol snapped. “But we just
lost our biggest link to the community. There may not be anything left to split
unless we’re way out in front on this – ‘what a tragedy it is, but we’ll
continue serving our loyal clients, it’s what he’d want,’ all that kind of stuff.
I called the police chief and he expects to have a press briefing tomorrow. I
told him we’d be there.”

*     *     *

Pomp
Charbonneau plopped down in the dinette of his travel trailer, the cushions draped
with a French tricolor afghan knitted by Wife No. 2, and munched on a snack of
brie and Triscuits as he paused to admire the new antelope head mounted above his
portable television. He saw no need to tell anyone it was road kill from an
unfortunate accident he’d had driving across Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
on a recent trip to southeastern Oregon.

He flipped on KSNZ
news in the hope of catching that foxy new anchor girl. So much better than the
old bag she replaced. And he always had an eye out for the “next former Mrs.
Charbonneau,” as he liked to call his romantic conquests.

There she was!

 “Oh, my heart
goes pitty pat, mon cheri!” he cooed, holding up his wineglass in salute and
waggling the other hand over his chest. She was introducing a news story.

“And now we have
a live report from veteran reporter Misty Day at the scene of the apparent
murder of Portland civic leader Pieter van Dyke, on the edge of Forest Park.
Misty?”

Charbonneau’s
head jerked as if he’d been slapped the way Wife No. 3 used to do. His wineglass
dropped and shattered, soaking a rug with several ounces of a very nice Sancerre.

*     *     *

On rural Sauvie
Island, 10 miles northwest of downtown, the Portland area’s most famous nude
beach was sprinkled with its usual cross-section of patchouli-scented hippie
women, aging gay men and grizzled old bikers with more faded tattoos than
anyone ever wanted to see. As usual, binocular-toting crews on heavily laden
container ships plodding up the Columbia River crowded the starboard railing to
get a look at their next port of call – and anything else they could see.

Mostly farmland
and wildlife refuge, the island was where Hester’s parents had taken her as a
child to pick pumpkins at Halloween. Her mother had delighted in spying for
migrating buffleheads and mergansers there with her Audubon chapter while her
father explored the back roads with his teachers’ cycling group.

Down the road
from the nude beach, it was another sunny June day at Downward Dog Farm. Ma
Anand Martha was out in the farmyard petting the chickens, each of whom had a
name and none of whom would ever be slaughtered. Downward Dog Farm had some of
the oldest chickens in Oregon.

What it didn’t
have was a television.