Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (15 page)

Sunday started out poorly but got
better, in bizarre turns.

Hester had dropped into her favorite
breakfast spot, Shakers Cafe, named for the collection of whimsical
salt-and-pepper shakers lining the mirrored wall. A 15-minute-walk from her
apartment, it was across the Stadium Freeway in the Pearl District, where
Portland developers were experimenting with conversions of old warehouses to
residential lofts. The mode of living seemed to attract residents who read
magazines full of underfed – and underage – Calvin Klein models, Hester had
noticed from the stacks of well-thumbed reading material piled in the busy
cafe’s waiting area.

Usually, this was Hester’s time
to luxuriously dawdle over the Sunday paper. But she found herself a quarter
short when she came to her usual newspaper box. All she was able to glean that
morning from what other diners had left at empty tables: a half-done crossword
from
The Oregonian
; a ripped copy of Elle, reeking of musky perfume
samples, and a two-day old “Life” section from USA Today.

And once her order had been
brought to her, she found she couldn’t really enjoy the home fries and turkey
hash topped by an egg-over-easy. Without realizing it, she had ordered Pim’s
favorite breakfast.

Nor did a quick visit to the
Justice Center make her feel any better. Pim smiled at Hester’s gift of red
licorice whips, her favorite candy, but looked wan and tired.

In response to Hester’s insistent
questions, Pim finally recalled that on Monday morning she’d found the booster
shoe on a bookmobile shelf.

“I had to search all over the bus
to find it. It was shoved in with the kids’ books, right there in the
paperbacks, you know, where the preteen stuff goes – the Teri Junes.”

Hester frowned. “In the kids’
section? Who’d have put it there?”

Pim rolled her eyes. “Well,
Hester, it sure as shootin’ wasn’t the Tooth Fairy! The murderer, that’s who
put it there!”

Hester bit her lip and said
nothing. Was this Karen’s subtle way of sending a taunting message that only
Hester could now understand?

Hester still couldn’t shake Pim
from the conviction that she didn’t need a lawyer.

“I followed both of them O.J. Simpson
trials, remember. If he could get off, I’m a cinch,” Pim asserted. Her earnest naiveté
gave Hester a pain deep in her brain stem. Hester had a throbbing headache by
the time she tidied her apartment that afternoon.

Hester turned off her dusty old
Hoover and went in search of aspirin. She popped three tablets with a swallow
of cold coffee from the carafe on the kitchen counter.

“Good thing we’ve got cast-iron
stomachs, eh fishbreath?” she said as Bingle T. looked up from licking his bowl
clean. Hester, always on the lookout for unusual treats for the striped cat,
had come across a special on jack mackerel, which the local supermarket was
practically giving away. When she’d opened the can, the stuff smelled rank and
looked repulsive, but her feline friend had dug right in.

Hester was feeling almost human
and the apartment was filling with delectable aromas of sautéing chicken and
the lilting crescendos of Vivaldi when the door buzzer sounded at five minutes
after six.

“Coming!” Hester called, pausing
to put a wooden match to cedar kindling in the fireplace. A quick check in the
hall mirror at her chosen outfit: French-cut black jeans and a hand-knit,
waist-cut sweater of dusty blue and rose yarns in a pattern of artistic swirls
and sunbursts, with pearl buttons up the front – an impulse buy at the Saturday
Market. It looked simple yet elegant over her eggshell-white silk blouse,
Hester decided, and the colors bewitchingly accented her hair and eyes.

“Hester, you vixen,” she
whispered in self-mockery, sticking out her tongue at her image in the mirror
before stepping to the door and swinging it open.

Darrow again looked like he’d just
come out of the shower. His thick, graying mane swept back from his forehead in
a damp wave, his dark eyebrows accenting a rosy glow in his cheeks. And instead
of the slightly dank smell that was usual for the Luxor’s hallways, there came
with the opening door a rush of bay rum, Lifebuoy and a slight sweetness from a
bouquet of lilies and blue irises in Darrow’s hand. His other hand clutched a
bottle of wine.

“Well, hey, you clean up pretty
well,” Hester said with a smile, beckoning him in.

Darrow had made an effort at
dressing to fit his trendy new neighborhood, with a little help from a visit to
Goodwill. Under a soft leather bomber jacket of burnished brown, a forest-green
tattersall shirt contrasted with a narrow, 1950s tie of burgundy acetate.
Pleated khaki trousers topped tasseled cordovan loafers.

“And you are a vision of
loveliness, charming neighbor,” Nate replied as he stepped inside. “Your beauty
is obviously matched by your culinary talents, because boy does something smell
good in here!”

Hester grinned and blushed. “Well,
I hope you like chicken. It’s another family favorite of mine – chicken scaloppini
– basically poor man’s veal scaloppini, with lots of sherry and lemon. I think
I actually prefer the lighter meat as a base, and no baby cows are involved.”

Hester took Nate’s coat and hung
it in the closet, then busied herself putting the flowers in a vase and the
wine in the fridge as Nate once again surveyed titles on her book shelves. “I
have a Tualatin white open, would you like a glass?” she called from the
kitchen. “I always believe in having a bottle of cooking wine open, even if it
only goes in the cook!”

“Sounds good,” Nate called. “Mind
if I do the manly thing and poke at your fire? It’s never going to burn the way
you’ve got that kindling stacked.”

“What?” Hester called. “Oh. No –
wait, don’t touch – I had it perfect – ”

She came back into the room just
as Darrow pushed the screen back into place and replaced the fireplace poker to
its hook.

“There, that’s better,” he
smiled, taking the wine glass from her hand. Flames licked the cedar kindling
and sparks flew as the wood popped. Hester glowered and took a gulp of wine
before speaking again.

“So why don’t you sit down in
front of that nice fire and tell me what the master detective has been up to on
his day off?”

Insouciantly shrugging off her
pique, Darrow accepted the invitation and sank into the deep cushions of the
big chair nearest the fire. The wood-paneled room was a cozy haven against the
cold, drizzly evening outside.

“Well, this morning I finally had
a chance to go for a serious run for the first time this week. It was cold and
fresh and I did 10 miles in Forest Park and I am kind of feeling it tonight,”
he said, working one of his knees back and forth like Dorothy’s rusty tin
woodsman.

“Ten miles!” Hester almost spurted
wine. “Goodness, I’ve seen you go out in those ridiculously short shorts a
couple mornings, looking far too cold for this time of year, so I knew you were
a fanatic, but I didn’t realize you were a nut!”

Nate’s smile reflected the warm
light of the fire.

“I’m afraid so. Cross-country in
high school, where I was quite the star, then a track scholarship at U of O,
where I was quite mediocre. Phil Knight and Prefontaine and names like that
kind of overshadowed Nate Darrow in Eugene’s sports annals. Now it at least
keeps me from getting fat and clears my head. With a couple of tough homicide cases,
the answer came to me after about eight miles of trail running. ‘Endorphin
epiphanies,’ I call them.”

As he talked, Hester glanced down
at the fire and let her eyes wander up to where the khakis hugged his waist.
There were no love handles there, not like Kevin, her last “gentleman caller,”
as Hester thought of her male friends. An ACLU lawyer she’d seen for six
months, Kevin had abruptly left town the previous fall to take a job as an
environmental lobbyist in D.C. Since then, she’d received one “wish you were
here” postcard with a 3-D photo of the Washington Monument. Compensating for
something, she couldn’t help but think.

Dinner with Darrow was relaxed
and pleasant. Hester opened the wine he had brought. The chicken was tender, with
a sauce that brought the pasta to life. Hester found herself speaking with
carefree comfort of her family life, of her father’s love of John Philip Sousa
,
of how her mother was considered an old-fashioned terror by lazy students and
worshipped as a font of knowledge by those who bothered to crack a classic
novel.

“She’s never told me with a
straight face exactly why she saddled me with the name of the infamous Miss Prynne
of ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ ” Hester told Darrow as she topped off his wine glass.
“She always told me to study the work and figure out for myself why Hester
should be a heroine to modern women. I finally concluded it has to do with how
she refused to be shamed by the men who tried to control her and who condemned
her with their narrow-minded labels. She was one of the first feminists in
American literature, to my mother’s mind. Mama did her master’s thesis on
Hawthorne.”

As he savored a bite of his meal,
Nate’s eyes reflected the glow from candles that slowly dripped red wax onto
silver candlesticks in the middle of Hester’s dining table.

“And not only ‘Hester’ but
‘Freelove,’ too?” he asked. “Your mother must have a bit of a sense of humor to
pair those two monikers.”

Hester grinned and shook her head
ruefully.

“Ah, yes, one or the other alone
would have done fine, don’t you think? My father’s favorite aunt back in Nova
Scotia was Freelove Princetta McGarrigle. Thank my lucky stars I didn’t get
‘Princetta,’ too. Mama could have gone for the triple whammy!”

Darrow held her eyes with a soft
grin for a long, musing moment before speaking.

“What an odd coincidence that my grandmother
was also a Hawthorne follower,” he said. “She came from Salem, the one in Massachusetts,
where Hawthorne spent much of his life. It’s why I got the old-fashioned name.”

“True, there aren’t that many
Nathaniels running around these days, not in this part of the country anyway. Do
you still have any family back East?” Hester asked.

“A few cousins I barely know, and
an ancient uncle with a spread on Lake Winnipesaukee
.
Otherwise there’s
just my brother who made this wine. But you’d be surprised about ‘Nathaniel.’
It’s made a comeback as a yuppie baby name. Before we know it, this country
will be ruled by Jasons and Jeremys, and all their cabinet members will be
Nathaniels or Dakotas.”

“So how did a guy named after the
great Hawthorne
and
the lawyer from the Scopes Monkey Trial end up being
a cop in Portland, Oregon?” Hester asked, pouring more of the amber liquid into
Nate’s glass.

It was Darrow’s turn to grin.

“Ah, yes, the Monkey Trial,
that’s often the first thing people bring up when they meet me. Do you know
Darrow actually lost that case? And no, Clarence wasn’t my grandfather. But I
might actually be related to him, in a ragged shirttail sort of way. My mother
got sucked into one of those deals once where you send $19.95 to some genealogy
outfit and they sent back a phonied up family crest and a family tree that
claimed I was something like Clarence’s great nephew twice removed.”

“And the other part of my
question?” Hester pressed. She was enjoying watching him speak. It had been a
long time since she’d felt that little fizziness from just looking at someone.
She didn’t think it was just the wine.

Nate shifted in his chair and
took a quick sip from his glass. “How’d I end up being a cop? Oh...long story.” 
Nate looked out the window at the rain splashing rhythmically on the pane. 

“There’s nobody else waiting for
the table,” Hester said, reaching past her wine glass and running her finger
across his knuckles. Nate looked up, a little startled. But he didn’t pull his
hand away. Hester continued, “I have to wonder how a nice person decides to
become a guy who carries a gun around and mixes every day with people who
aren’t exactly the finer element of society.”

Darrow leveled his gaze at her.

“You mean was there any one
thing?” He shifted in his chair, stretching his legs, and frowned for a moment.

“Well, actually there was. Not to
get all maudlin, but you asked. When I was still at U of O, I met up with my
folks one summer to visit a great-aunt and uncle of mine on the Olympic
Peninsula, up in Washington. My folks were returning from a visit with some
wine researchers over in the Yakima Valley – my dad was becoming a big
wine-grape expert at OSU. So we had each driven our own cars, and just as we
were starting back to Oregon, on Highway 101, a drunk-as-a-skunk good ol’ boy
in a jacked-up pickup truck ran them off the road, a hit-and-run thing. It was
one of those stretches where the highway goes right along the edge of Hood
Canal, and their car went into the water. I was driving right behind them, and
just watched it happen, like a bad dream. I jumped out of my car and actually dove
in, like I was going to rescue them...But that canal is like a fjord, it just
drops straight down deep. Not a chance.”

Hester furrowed her brow and
formed an “o” with her lips. Darrow went on, speaking as if he was on autopilot.