Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (16 page)

“I was a mess after that. I was
still just a kid, really. It was only thanks to hard work by some really decent
people that the jerk was ever caught and locked away so he couldn’t kill
anybody else’s family. And at the time, that kind of changed my outlook on
life. I took some time off school, and when I went back to college I changed my
major. I’d been doing journalism – it was the Watergate decade and we all
wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. But I decided to do police science instead.
U of O wasn’t the place for that, so I transferred to Southern Oregon State,
down in Ashland.”

Hester bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I
shouldn’t have pressed.”

Nate shook his head and patted
her hand. “No, I don’t mind. Really, it’s like ancient history now.”

Darrow shoved his chair away from
the table, picked up his wine glass and set it on the mantel while he slid
another log from the wood carrier into the fireplace. Over the mantel, a framed
black-and-white photograph caught his eye. The image was of a pockmarked,
leering gargoyle surrounded by roughly hewn stone. In a corner of the photo,
the penciled initials “HFM.”

“Speaking of ancient history,
who’s your friend?” Nate asked.

“Oh, that’s from a trip to Rome
last year. I love gargoyles and architectural foofaraw like that. It’s what
attracted me to this old place, even with the spooky acoustics in the air
shaft.”

“Ah, but you have such a lovely
singing voice!”

Hester gave him a dark,
questioning look. Nate just grinned, sinking into the chintz sofa and holding
out his hand to be sniffed by the cat, perched atop the sofa with his front
legs tucked beneath him, in his meatloaf pose.

Hester stepped to the stereo to
put on more music. Watching Darrow scratch the old cat behind the ears, she
decided to take a risk and put on one of her favorite tapes: Dean Martin
crooning old favorites. Some people loved its nostalgia; others, such as Karen,
had been known to run screaming from the room after three songs. She brought
the wine bottle and joined Nate on the sofa. The fire had made the room warm.

“Travel much?” Nate asked her,
turning so that his knee touched her thigh, just lightly.

“Oh, not as much as I’d like,
I’ll tell you. I think I love travel more than anything else in the world. It
expands your mind, your horizons, your possibilities... A couple of other
librarians and I have made sojourns to Europe every two years. Rome last time,
one of my favorites. This year, we’re arguing. Gail wants to do Paris and Janna
is campaigning for something completely different: Cairo, to see the pyramids.
Frankly, if it were just me, I’d go back to Italy.”

As if on cue, the music swelled.
Nate, smiling, lifted his wine glass to her in a toast, then joined the lilting
voice of Dino:

“When the moon hits your eye

Like a big pizza pie

That’s amore!”

Hester grinned and joined in.
Arms entwined, they swayed back and forth, wine glasses sloshing, their faces rocking
closely.

When the song ended, they laughed
until they had to put their wine glasses down on the side table to keep from
dousing each other.

“Oh, dear, I hope that didn’t get
broadcast through the air shaft!” Hester giggled. Nate slapped his hand to his
mouth.

“Where did you dig up that old
chestnut?” he whispered through his fingers. Then drawing a deep breath and
putting on a face of mock solemnity, he declared, “Madame, I think I’ve had
enough wine.”

At that moment, the sweet,
slurred voice on the stereo launched into the next song, “Tiny Bubbles,”
sending them into new chuckles that soon erupted into guffaws.

When the fit of laughter
subsided, Nate and Hester sank back into the sofa in an easy hug.

Suddenly, Hester became very
conscious of his arms holding her. She smelled his sweet and spicy smell, and
she pulled back to see his hazel gray eyes turning to hers. She turned her lips
to meet his.

Their lips brushed and Hester
raised her hand to touch the line of his jawbone, slightly roughened with dark
stubble. Nate pressed his mouth to hers and Hester felt an electric thrill in
her spine. She pulled him closer and the corny, comfortable music filled the
room.

“Tiny bubbles, in the wine

Make you feel happy,

Make you feel fine...”

And something else.

Another noise.

A retching, a coughing. A
neighbor? From the air shaft? Hester’s mind reeled. Then she jerked away from
Nate.

“Oh God, look out!”

It was too late. Bingle T., still
perched just behind Darrow on the back of the sofa, lurched with one more tremendous
retch and spewed his dinner down the back of Darrow’s shirt. One more cough
racked the cat’s arched body, spewing fishy juice across the left leg of
Darrow’s trousers.

“Oh, my God, oh no, oh Bingle. Oh
Nate, I’m sorry! Oh, your poor shirt!”

Hester gingerly hoisted the
still-retching cat, ran into the kitchen and deposited him with a cooing pat
onto a kitchen chair, then dashed back to Nate with a handful of paper towels.
Darrow stood ignominiously dripping. He alternately gasped and held his breath
because of the aroma.

“Mackerel, right? I’d recognize
that reek anywhere. The fish processor my grandfather worked for used to sell
off the rotten mackerel for fertilizer. Whoo, boy, does this bring back the
memories!”

Hester furiously daubed at him
with the paper towels, but quickly realized the futility.

“Come on, into the bathroom,
we’ve got to get these clothes off you! Oh, he even got some in your hair! You
better get into the shower. You can’t go home like this or you’ll have every
cat in the building yowling as you pass their doors.”

Holding his arms out like
Frankenstein’s monster, Nate grinned as he shuffled to the bathroom. “I’ve seen
clever ploys to get me out of my clothes on a first date, but Ms. McGarrigle, I
think this is a bit extreme!”

She gasped. “Anybody who smells
as bad as you can’t be fresh at the same time!”

Hester gave him a gentle kick as
she shoved him in and closed the bathroom door.

Once more, Hester regarded Nate
Darrow wrapped in towels. This time, he sat in her kitchen and sipped coffee, a
large, striped beach towel draping his torso, and a pink bath towel wrapping
his waist.

Nate had refused Hester’s offer
of her pink bathrobe with the faux fur collar.

“Your clothes are clean now,”
Hester had announced as she returned from the laundry room in the building’s
basement. “The bad news is that the dryer queens are out in force. The Russian
lady from the third floor is down there with her weekly 18 loads, and Mrs.
Bacardi from 406 is following her usual protocol of one lingerie item per
dryer. Based on my best predictions for when a dryer will be available, you
could see your clothes again by approximately 3 a.m.”

Hester sighed as she plopped down
opposite Nate and poured herself a cup of coffee. “What a disaster.”

Nate pulled his towel tighter and
sipped from his cup. He looked up at Hester. Hester looked back at him. Nate
held her gaze for a second. He cracked first.

Again, the two dissolved in
laughter – laughs that turned to snorts, which caused giggles, until Nate’s
towel started to slip.

“Oops,” he said, hitching it up.
Hester caught her breath and took a sip of coffee, noticing the goosepimples
erupting on his bare calves. Her eyes wandered to a drop of perspiration in the
small hollow of bronzed skin at the center of his chest. Biting her lip, her
mind cast about desperately for a conversation topic.

“Where’d you get that tan anyway,
Sherlock? It sure wasn’t around here,” she blurted, as a wintry gust rattled
the kitchen window.

Nate followed her gaze. “Oh, uh,
sorry.” He pulled the towel together. “Um, Mexico. I spent Christmas on the Sea
of Cortez. My uncle who used to live up in Washington is a widower now and lives
on an old sailboat moored down there. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Baja
when I can get there. La Paz. It’s nice. Almost Italian. The people are a lot
alike, I think. Very family oriented, very friendly, very Catholic.”

Hester reached out and held his hand.

“Maybe you could come see it
sometime,” Nate said, his voice cracking slightly.

Hester smiled at him and squinted
her eyes, blue as Bahia Magdalena, Darrow thought to himself. She spoke softly.

“Look, Nate. I don’t know when
your clothes are going to be ready, and I’m so sorry about that. But you can’t
go back to your apartment like this. All the little old ladies on the peephole
grapevine would short out the building’s intercom system, and old-fashioned as
it might sound, I try to preserve whatever reputation I can. I’m in grave
danger even laundering a man’s clothes in this building.”

Darrow chuckled.

“And I’d put you up for the night
on the sofa, but – ” Hester held her nose and spoke in a nasally voice – “I
really don’t think you’d enjoy that. And, no, I will never buy jack mackerel
again!”

Nate squeezed Hester’s hand, then
reached over and lowered the shade in front of the window next to them. He
leaned across the small table and gently put his lips to Hester’s. He tasted of
coffee and cream, with lots of sugar.

Pulling away, she rose and pulled
Darrow to his feet.

“Anyway, I’m afraid the options
have been narrowed.” Hester continued to speak, as if nothing had happened. “You
can’t go home for a while, and I can’t have you catching your death of cold out
here.”

Giving a peck to his stubbly
cheek, Hester led Nate down the hall.

By 6:30 Monday morning, Hester
had learned much more about Nathaniel James Darrow. Besides running track, he
had played the trumpet at Corvallis High School – home of the Spartans – but
dropped out of the marching band because they had to wear togas and stupid
helmets. After high school, he’d worked on a crabbing boat out of Newport one
summer to buy his old Volvo.

Hester had learned, too, that
Nate Darrow could make a decent cup of coffee. That he liked his eggs over
easy. And that his right buttock bore a small tattoo of an anchor, souvenir of
a little-remembered, rum-soaked night in Nanaimo, B.C., the summer after his
parents were killed.

Hester felt a little bit guilty,
a feeling shared by her breakfast-in-bed companion. Their reasons differed.

“There’s something I should have
told you yesterday,” Hester finally blurted as she poured Nate a second cup of
coffee from the bedside tray.

Darrow arched an eyebrow and
shifted to face her, in the process disrupting the hefty Maine Coon that had
draped itself over his ankles long enough for all feeling to have left his
lower extremities.

“Oh,
there’s
a good
opening line on the morning after,” Darrow said. “Don’t tell me – You’re
actually married to the heavyweight champ of Wrestlemania, who has been away on
a five-week tour of Montana and Idaho logging towns but is due to arrive home
any minute?”

Hester gave him a look of
disdain. “If you’re going to joke, I won’t tell you.”

“Sorry!” Nate raised his palms in
apology, then mimed zipping his mouth shut. He crossed his arms and looked at
her expectantly.

Hester told him about her scare
at the Bookmobile Barn on Saturday night. Darrow’s expression took on more
exasperation as the story progressed.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you
sooner. It’s probably important, but I wasn’t sure at the time, and I didn’t
want to sound like a helpless female,” she concluded.

Darrow’s guilt that morning
stemmed from his precipitously escalated romantic involvement with a witness in
a high-profile murder case. He usually walked a narrow and straight path when
it came to police ethics. Last night he’d let himself wander off a cliff, and
he was still trying to analyze how he felt about it – exhilarated from the free
fall, or worried about hitting the bottom.

Added to that, he couldn’t deny
some professional irritation that Hester had withheld this news. Complicating
it all was the knowledge that the object of his pleasant dalliance could have
been in danger – and still might be, if the killer thought Hester could
identify him.

“So how close a look did you
actually get?” Darrow asked after a brooding silence. “Did he see you?”

“Probably. I don’t know. I’m
pretty sure whoever it was heard me, though.”

Darrow threw back the bed sheet,
rose and strode in his blue flannel boxer shorts to the hook on the door where
Hester had hung his laundered clothes. He quickly pulled on his trousers, stuck
one arm in his shirt and simultaneously checked the watch in his trouser
pocket.

“Almost 7. May I use your phone?”

“Sure. It’s out there – you know.
I’ve got to freshen up. Help yourself.”

Darrow went to the phone table in
the hall, lifted the heavy black handset and laboriously picked out a number on
the ancient rotary dial. As he finished dialing, he called to Hester.

“Where’d you get this phone, on
some archaeological dig?”

She turned off the faucet in the
bathroom to call back.

“Don’t you break my phone. It’s a
classic piece of mid-20th century functionalism, which is to say it’s old, it
still works and I like it!”

Darrow heard various clicks and
crackles through the handset and waited for the line to ring at the other end.
He called back to Hester. “So what’s on your agenda today? Bookmobile runs as
usual?”

She again turned off the faucet. “Yes.
North Portland, Albina and that area. Oh, and then it’s up the Gorge to
Bonneville School. The county contracts with us to go up there once a month.
That’s always a nice change of pace. It’s so pretty up there!”

Darrow grunted, then turned his
attention back to the phone. Hester heard him speaking quietly as she continued
brushing her teeth. As she brushed she watched her reflection in the old wavy
mirror over her sink. She tried to decide if she looked honest or not.

One thing about Saturday night
she hadn’t told Nate: her suspicions about Karen and the leather coat. Somehow,
Hester thought to herself, if it was Karen, she needed to know for certain
first. What kind of a friend would she be otherwise? Why, it could just as
easily have been Linda Dimple. She’s getting more and more militant about
censorship! Or what about Carol Willoughby, director of Friends of the Library?
What if Miss Duffy planned to leave all her money to the Friends? Carol put in
endless hours working to see that the library survived the constant threats to
its tax base. What if she saw a sure thing and decided to expedite matters?

Hester shook herself. This was
all putting crazy notions in her head.

Darrow, hovering outside the
half-open bathroom door, cleared his throat. “Uh, Hester, excuse me, but I’ve
got to disappear.”

She quickly rinsed her face,
blotted with a towel and pulled her robe tight as she stepped out. Standing by
the front door, Darrow was all dressed and had on his bomber jacket, the
burgundy tie trailing from one pocket. Beyond him, Hester saw the kitchen
window dotted with raindrops.

“Well, looks like another day of
the same old, same old out there,” she said. “Try to stay dry. Don’t get your
nice jacket all wet.” She looked at the coat. “Ha! I guess everybody wears
leather jackets now!”

Darrow looked down. “Oh, do you
like it? They had a huge sale at that factory store out in Beaverton.
Considering the mob there last weekend, you’re probably right. Your description
of the Bookmobile Bandit could fit half of Portland.”

Silent for a moment, he looked
uncharacteristically serious. “Uh, Hester, listen. I talked to one of the crime
scene folks and she’s going to run over to the bookmobile first thing and just
take a look around. Probably there’s nothing to see, it’s just good form.
Probably she won’t slow you up at all this morning.”

“Oh.” She crossed her arms. “Do
you really think – ”

“Well, you never know. Maybe the
guy dropped his wallet or spit out his gum or jotted his address down on one of
those ‘patron comment’ cards, you never know.” Darrow gave a half grin.

“So you do think it was the
murderer.”

Hester’s statement hung in the
air unchallenged. Suddenly feeling formal again after their intimacy, she
self-consciously plucked at the terry cloth pills on her pink bathrobe sleeve.
Darrow jingled the keys in his jacket pocket, then spoke again.

“And Hester, I asked one of my
cohorts to kind of keep a watch on the bookmobile for a couple days. Name’s
Harry Harrington. He might come aboard and say hi, or you might not even see
him. No big deal, just a routine part of this kind of business.”

Hester took this in with a
growing sense of concern. “Oh, listen, I don’t think that’s really necessary. I
hate to put anybody to all that trouble. I mean I’ve got Ralph driving and he’s
ex-Navy and all. Goodness, we can take care of ourselves.”

Darrow started to pull the door
open.

“Well, humor me and just pretend
you’re in a B movie. Like I say, you probably won’t even know Harry’s around.
But do me a favor and lead an ordinary, boring life for a few days. Don’t go
wandering down dark alleys in search of adventure.”

Nate took Hester’s hand and held
it for a moment. He leaned forward and gave her a gentle peck on the cheek,
then spoke softly into her ear.

“I had a wonderful time at your
house last night, Ms. McGarrigle. And I have to say I agree with you. It
is
nicer
with chicken than with veal.”

Hester swatted him on the rear.
Darrow strode off down the hall to go to work.

He would never get the time to
shave that day.