Doubled Up (Imogene Museum Mystery #2) (2 page)

Rupert sounded like I
’d woken him up. “Delivery? No. Wait a minute. What’s today?”

I cringed at the crash as the phone hit the floor at Rupert
’s end.

“
Sorry about that. I think — I’m trying to find — oh, well, it could be. Don’t open anything until I get there.” Rupert clicked off.

I shook my head at Sheriff Marge
’s raised eyebrows. “Inconclusive.”

“
The back’s open.” Sheriff Marge jerked her head toward the end of the trailer.

We walked to the open door and surveyed the mess inside. The trailer floor was about even with Sheriff Marge
’s Kevlar corseted bustline. “Don’t think I can get myself up there,” she said.

“
If Terry still has the bills of lading, maybe we could figure out if anything was taken.”

“
Terry?”

“
The driver.”

“
Okay. Dale’s on his way. When Rupert gets here too, we’ll work on it.” Sheriff Marge bustled back to the knot of firefighters around Terry who was now sitting on the lowest step of his cab with a Mylar sheet wrapped around his shoulders. “I need to speak with Terry.”

“
He needs to go to the hospital first, get some stitches in his head,” one of the firefighters said.

“
I don’t do hospitals,” Terry said. “Can’t you stitch me up? Put a Band-Aid on it or something?”

“
Nope. A doc should look at you.”

“
Ain’t going to a hospital.” Terry scowled and hunched himself more firmly onto the step.

“
Well, Nick, can you patch it with butterfly bandages or something?” Sheriff Marge asked the firefighter.

“
It won’t be pretty.”

“
It’s the back of my head,” Terry said. “Don’t have to be pretty.”

“
Think we could do this inside?” Nick asked.

“
Sure.” I hurried to the museum’s large glass front doors and unlocked them. I punched the alarm code into the keypad and flipped on the lights.

Nick and another firefighter helped Terry shuffle to the men
’s room while everyone else dripped on the oak parquet floor and looked at each other.

“
Concussion?” Sheriff Marge asked.

“
Mild one, plus some hypothermia,” the battalion captain answered. “He needs to get into dry clothes and take it easy for the next twenty-four hours. He’ll have a bad headache for a while.”

Rupert barged through the front doors with Deputy Dale Larson on his heels. Rupert, normally quite dapper, was dressed in baggy sweatpants, a black nylon windbreaker and loafers without socks. He did have his trademark English tweed driving cap on his head.

“Rupert.” Sheriff Marge placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him aside. “What delivery were you expecting?”

Dale and I joined the huddle.

“Statuary from Berkshire, England.”

“
What?” I said. “How big? How many?” My mind raced ahead to the needed display mounts and lighting.

Rupert held his hand parallel to the floor, about waist high.
“You’d mentioned wanting a children’s garden, and these will be perfect. They’re based on the popular illustrations by Ernest Shepard.”

“
Who?” Dale asked.

A grin spread across my face.

“Ernest Shepard,” Rupert said. “His illustrations for
The Wind in the Willows
are perhaps the best-known and most loved.” He turned to me. “Kenneth Grahame, the author, loved his River Thames as much as you love your River Columbia. Different magnitude of river, but the same idea. I knew you’d like them.”

Rupert
’s eyes shone as I bounced on my toes, hands clasped together. I’m sure I looked like a five-year-old at a surprise birthday party.

“
Did you get Mole?”

“
Let’s have a look.”

“
Hold on a minute,” Sheriff Marge said. “That trailer is a crime scene until I say it’s not. Dale, get your kit.”

We walked outside and stood at the back of the trailer, waiting until Dale rummaged through his cruiser
’s trunk and rejoined us.

My teeth chattered from the cold and the excitement. I pressed my slinged arm across my middle, trying to retain some body heat inside my soggy sweater.

Dale pulled on latex gloves and hoisted himself into the trailer. Sheriff Marge handed him blue paper booties which he slipped on over his shoes.

“
Oh. I know.” I trotted to the cab and scanned the floorboards for a bundle of papers. I found what I was looking for in the pocket of the driver’s door — a clipboard of wet forms with smeared ink, Terry’s delivery schedule and bills of lading. I flipped through the stack, careful not to tear the limp pages.

“
He had two deliveries on board — one for us and one for a gallery in Portland. Both picked up in Seattle yesterday. The booking was handled by the same freight forwarding company that arranged their shipment in a sealed container, so they must have come over on the same freighter. Port of departure was Liverpool. Our shipment is listed as ‘stone statuary.’ The shipment for the Portland gallery is listed as ‘carved wood artifacts.’

“
What’s the name of that gallery, Meredith?” Dale asked from deep inside the trailer. He was bent over, aiming a pencil flashlight into the shadows.

I picked out the faded letters.
“The Rittenour Gallery, on Naito Parkway.”

“
Then I think I got something,” Dale said. He squatted and lifted a crate the size of an apple box and brought it to the open doorway. “This crate’s addressed to Rittenour. It fell between a couple of the big crates that are addressed to the Imogene. Your crates appear intact, and there are five of them. Does that match the paperwork?”

“
Yes. Five statues,” Rupert said. “Toad, Rat, Mole, Otter, Badger.”

I shuffled quickly.
“Yeah. Five listed on the bill of lading, too.”

“
So somebody followed this truck, conked the driver on the head and stole the crates addressed to the Rittenour Gallery,” Sheriff Marge said.

“
Except they missed one.” Dale tapped the wood box.

“
There were fourteen crates for the Rittenour,” I said.

“
Uh-huh." Sheriff Marge stood with arms akimbo. “Rupert, would you mind checking on Terry, see if Nick is finished with him yet? Set him up with some coffee. I’ll be in soon to take his statement.”

Rupert nodded and disappeared around the side of the trailer.

Sheriff Marge pulled a folded clear plastic tarp out of Dale’s kit bag and opened it on the ground. “Since it’s stopped raining, Dale, set the crate down here.”

Dale jumped from the trailer, slid the crate off and eased it to the tarp.
“Thing weighs a ton for its size.”

We stared at it. Sheriff Marge cleared her throat.

I glanced at Sheriff Marge and found her ogling me with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“
I think that, as the curator of a similar institution, you might be overcome with professional curiosity,” Sheriff Marge said. “Especially since I don’t have a search warrant on me.”

Dale bent his head and scratched his neck then strode to his squad car and returned with a crowbar. The bottomless trunk of a deputy sheriff. He handed me the crowbar.
“Happy birthday.”

“
It’s not — oh. Thank you.”

Sheriff Marge turned and gazed out over the river, where the clouds had lifted a little, revealing a couple of winterized sailboats bobbing at the end of the marina docks. She whistled the same three notes over and over.

I shared an amused look with Dale then stuck the flat end of the crowbar under the corner of the crate’s lid. It came off with a sharp cracking sound. Compressed raffia-like packing material sprang up and some tumbled out.

Sheriff Marge and Dale crowded in to watch but let me do the unpacking. I removed a few clumps of the brown grassy stuff then jumped back.
“Yah!” I shrieked.

Sheriff Marge high-stepped out of the way as half a dozen huge brown beetles scrambled over the lip of the crate, plopped onto the tarp and darted under the trailer.

I realized I still had packing material in my hand and flung it to the ground. “What were those?”

“
Haven’t you ever seen cockroaches?” Sheriff Marge asked, breathing hard.

“
Gross. Shouldn’t they have died? In the crate?”

“
Cockroaches can go a month without food,” Dale said. “In fact, they can live that long without heads, too, because they breathe through spiracles. They really only need their heads for eating and drinking.”

Sheriff Marge and I stared at him.

Dale shrugged. “My kid’s doing a report on insects for school. Hey.” He snapped his fingers. “If I can catch one of those, he could pin it in his display case.”

“
There’ll be plenty more,” Sheriff Marge said. “You ready?”

She kicked the crate and quickly retreated. An extended family of creepy monster bugs fled over the crate
’s sides. Dale held up the tarp edge to keep the scrabbling creatures contained. He reached in with a gloved hand and grabbed a big one. Then he let the tarp drop, and we watched the rest of the roaches escape through the puddles. Dale dropped his catch in an evidence bag and sealed it.

I shuddered.
“I need gloves before I’m touching anything else in that crate.”

Dale handed me a pair of gloves. I slid them on and bent over the crate, gingerly picking at the packing material. It became musty and damp the deeper I plunged.
“Phew. Water must have leaked in somehow.”

“
Which would have made the roaches happy,” Dale said near my shoulder. He was squatting, watching closely as I pulled out a gob of reeking cockroach nest.

“
I think maybe I should be wearing a mask,” I said, and my hand bumped something hard. I felt around the foot-long object and lifted it, brushing off the loose raffia strands. A dark carved wood statue of a woman with a grotesquely disproportionate face and figure.

“
Whoa,” Dale said. “Thank God none of the women I know look like that.”

I rolled my eyes.

“What is it?” Sheriff Marge asked.

“
I’d guess aboriginal folk art. I can’t even tell you what continent, but probably Pacific Island, Australia or Africa. If I knew what kind of wood, that might narrow down the location. It’s really heavy.”

“
Because it got wet?” Sheriff Marge held out her gloved hands.

“
I don’t know.” I handed the statue to her and bent to rummage through the crate again. I found seven more statues — another woman, three men, a water buffalo/cow, a goat and a creature that appeared to be a cross between a boar and an anteater — all with body parts skewed or somehow not quite right.

“
Fourteen crates of those, huh,” Dale said. “How much do you think they’re worth?”

“
Not much, except to a collector,” I answered, “or for historical reasons. But if they’re valuable historically, they should have stayed in their country of origin, which I am quite sure is not England.”