Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (10 page)

Friday night, Karen’s husband
drove the girls to the little town of Drain, Oregon, for a weekend with his
mother, whom Karen could never abide. To make up for her grueling week, Hester
had let Karen talk her into a “Girls Night Out.”

With some worried reservations,
Hester consented to Karen’s excited proposal: a drive 20 miles up into the
scenic Columbia River Gorge to the Portland area’s latest entertainment
novelty, a glitzy combination of Indian casino, thrill-ride park and
rock-concert amphitheater known as Six Tepees Over Oregon. While other tribal
casinos were struggling, the local Cold Lake tribe had decided that nothing
succeeds like excess, and Las Vegas backers had helped make it happen.

“Maybe the drive will allow me to
ask some subtle questions about Karen’s whereabouts last Saturday night,”
Hester told Bingle T., who perched like a furry meatloaf next to her on a ledge
by the kitchen window. Hester watched through the dusky gloom for the glint of
Karen’s mauve-colored Beamer, “leased to Teri June, Inc.,” Hester’s friend had
confided during her giddy night of self-revelation earlier in the week.

When it finally skidded around
the corner, the car’s trumpeting honk sent the big Maine Coon scrambling
beneath the kitchen table. Hester, on her way to meet Karen at the front door,
paused at the mirror to inspect her choice of dusty-jade pants, pine-green silk
blouse and a scarf with pink, orange and scarlet accents. What on earth do you
wear to gamble, wondered Hester, who’d never been to Nevada.

A rap at the door told Hester
that Karen must have double-parked. Hester swung open the door, looked up and
stepped back with her hand to her mouth.

“What do you think?” Karen
shrilled, twirling for Hester to inspect her gleaming white, neck-to-ankle
leather jumpsuit. Its six-inch lapels and four-inch belt bore at least a dozen
appliques of prancing horses and whirling lariats, as if sewn by Dale Evans on
amphetamines. White snake-skin boots and giant silver hoop earrings completed
the ensemble.

“Oh dear lord, there are going to
be Elvis sightings tonight!” Hester shrieked. She erupted in gales of laughter
that went on and on, eventually subsiding into whooping snorts.

Karen pursed her lips grimly, her
hands on her hips.

“Hey, I ordered this by FedEx
from Veronica’s Closet just for tonight! Don’t be mean!”

“I’m – huh, huh – sorry, Karen,”
Hester panted, struggling for control. “It’s, uh, what can I say? It’s
you
,
my dear!”

“Thanks,” Karen said grumpily. “Come
on, let’s go before I get towed. Though maybe the meter maid will be my friend.
Lord knows I don’t have any others.”

Ten minutes later, Hester still
bit her lip as the powerful sedan smoothly accelerated eastbound onto the Banfield
freeway, Interstate 84. Pouting, Karen drove in silence. The evening hadn’t
started out as Hester had hoped. She pressed fingers to her temples.

But the giant, classic neon 7-Up
bottles with flashing bubbles on a sign over the Hollywood district overpass
never failed to cheer Hester. She recalled childhood days with Karen when one
of their mothers would drive them to the Lloyd Center ice rink. Whenever they
passed the giant pop bottles, the girls would always have a belching contest,
in the charming manner that only 11-year-olds really cultivate.

As the car’s digital speedometer
glowed “68,” Hester looked up at the soda bottles, then over at Karen. Hester
swallowed a few gulps of air and then, rusty though she was, belched a quite
audible “braap!”

Karen’s head swiveled toward
Hester in surprise. Then Karen realized where they were. A half-grin erupted at
the silly memory. “Ha! Weren’t we a couple of little charmers?” She chuckled,
her mood melting.

After a moment, Hester ventured
conversation.

“So, anything new with the latest
book? I hope you aren’t really going to have to change it because of the
censors.”

“Oh, I talked to my editor a
couple times today. They’re still being a little stupid about it. They don’t
really want to cave, but they might postpone publication until all this blows
over, especially with the publicity over Duffy. I just can’t win,” Karen
muttered, more to herself than to Hester.

It was time to talk turkey,
Hester decided as the car sped into the night.

“You know, Karen, we’ve known
each other a long, long time, and despite the jumpsuit – ” Karen gave her a
glare. “ – I mean despite anything, you’re my oldest friend. If anything is
ever really bothering you, you know you can always trust the friends –
the
friends
who mean the most...”

Karen’s thoughts, always flighty,
were on fast-forward tonight. Distractedly, she cut off Hester’s hesitating
sincerity.

“The Friends? Don’t talk to me
about trusting
The Friends
. That was another thing today that made me
crazy. I got my annual donation statement from them in the mail – late, as
usual. My tax accountant’s been bugging me for weeks. Of course, you wouldn’t
know, but I’ve been donating a percentage – a
generous
percentage – of
my Teri June income to The Friends of the Library. That’s what really galls me
about these book banners: For all practical purposes,
I’ve
been paying
for all the Teri June books the library buys! And those stickybeaks dare to get
in a snit about ‘expending public funds on unsuitable materi-awls,’ ” Karen
said, drawing out the last syllable with a highbrow pronunciation.

“Anyway, the statement said I’d
donated only like
a tenth
of what I actually gave last year! I have the
check stubs somewhere, but now I have to hunt through all the shoe boxes in my
back closet to prove it! And you know, I’m not the only member this happened
to! I was at a Friends meeting and even that old bat Duffy was ranting to the
treasurer...”

Karen suddenly fell silent.

Hester, until now numbed by her
friend’s chatter, glanced sharply across the seat. “You and Miss Duffy were at
a Friends meeting? When?”

Karen gave her head a shimmy. “When?
Ohh, I don’t... Well, I guess it was last Saturday, you probably got the
meeting notice.”

As if in a trance, Karen stared
beyond the glove-leather steering wheel, her mind processing. Then she spoke in
a rush.

“Oooo, Hester, was that the night
Duffy was killed?
Oh, how creepy – it must have happened on her way home
or something! Hester, didn’t you say she was wearing that dowdy blue dress when
you found her? That’s what she was wearing to the meeting that night! She was
there at the Friends of the Library meeting at the old Masonic Temple!”

Hester blanched, looking ghostly
in the strobe-effect of passing freeway lights.

“Oh my God. Karen, the police
have been trying all week to figure out where Miss Duffy had been that evening!
But because she lived alone, nobody seemed to know. We should stop and call
Nate Darrow right now,” Hester declared, pointing ahead to the Troutdale exit. “Here,
the truck stop will have pay phones.”

“Hester, no way!” said Karen. “This
week has been hell enough on you. I know you and that looker of a detective are
getting kind of chummy, but the cops aren’t going to do anything at this hour,
it’s not going to get Pim out of jail. And we’re just going to have fun
tonight!”

Karen tromped the accelerator and
the BMW shot across the Sandy River bridge, where a large sign marked the
boundary of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Ahead, moonlight
outlined the gorge’s soaring walls and the jagged tops of firs swaying in a
light breeze. The moon chalked a white streak across the inky, cold waters of
the mile-wide Columbia, just to their left.

Hester, glancing down as the
shallow Sandy River flashed beneath them on its way to join the bigger river,
thought sadly of Pim’s home upstream. It would be dark, empty and cold tonight.
“It’s just not fair,” she muttered wearily. And Karen’s not helping, Hester
thought uncomfortably.

Hester refocused with a start.

“Karen, did Miss Duffy talk to
anybody in particular that night? Was she with anybody? Did you see her leave
with anybody? What time did she go? Think! This could be the break Pim needs!”

Karen puffed out her cheeks for a
moment. “You’re just not going to let this drop, are you?” She pursed her lips,
smearing her Passionate Plum lipstick, the latest “must-have” pushed by her
favorite cosmetics girl at Nordstrom.

“OK, let me think for a minute,
Hester. OK, Duffy was huffing and puffing to Carol Willoughby, the Friends’
director. The old bat said her tax statement reflected, how did she put it, ‘a
mere fraction of the generosity I have tried to show my dear, dear library,’
and yes, I swear to God, she said that again,” declared Karen, raising a hand
from the steering wheel in oath. “She went on and on, not really making a scene
so that everybody noticed, but just bitchy enough that poor Carol was turning
beet red and spluttering a lot.”

“So how’d it end?”

“I’m trying to think. Oh, yes, I
remember. Duffy said something to the effect of, ‘Well if you don’t know the
right person to talk to, I do!’ And I think she marched out then and there,
with that way she had, you know, of looking like an old snob even with her back
turned to you? She left by herself, as far as I saw. I just figured she was
going to go have a hissy fit to one of the board members or somebody.”

“Do you have any idea what time
it was?”

“The time? Let’s see, I don’t
think it was even 8 o’clock yet. That’s right, because people started sitting
down for the formal program just then and anybody who had noticed sort of
forgot about it,” concluded Karen.

“Well, good grief,” Hester said. “Why
hasn’t anybody from the meeting told this to the police, for heaven’s sake?
Don’t people read the newspapers?”

“Oh, Hester, you knew Dame Sara.
She was pursing her pruney old lips and storming out of places in a huff so often
over some imagined slight that all of our heads would have exploded if we’d
tried to keep track of her every tantrum. The woman got so you had to ignore
her half the time or else you’d sock her in the mouth!”

Either Karen’s telling the truth
about Miss Duffy or her college acting days just paid off royally, Hester
thought. “I’ll feel a lot better after I hear Carol Willoughby’s version of all
this, though.”

“Pardon?” Karen asked.

“Oh, nothing. I’m sorry, I’m so
shell-shocked I’m talking to myself now. Look, there’s the casino. My goodness,
how do they get away with those sweeping searchlights so close to the Scenic
Area?
That’s
rather unfortunate. I guess the reservation has its own
rules.”

Karen had pulled off the freeway
and the car purred up a long, steep county road. For five minutes they climbed
under an arch of spidery maple limbs until they crested the hill into the
little town of Corbin, on the edge of the Cold Lake Reservation. In another 30
seconds, they motored past the town’s one store, offering “FINE FOODS, CHEAP
GAS and HOT VIDEOS,” then past a new high school, home of the Corbin Killdeers,
a sign announced (and generously subsidized by Nevada money behind the Six
Tepees development, Hester had heard on the news). Then past the one-truck fire
station of Multnomah County Fire District 41 and they were through Corbin and
bisecting rolling fields of blueberries and wine grapes.

The Six Tepees complex looked as
out of place as a streetwalker in Lake Oswego, Hester thought with alarm as
Karen turned in at a sign across from a berry field. Ahead, the sprawling
wood-and-lava rock casino with old-growth timbers supporting the roof was
fronted by a three-story-high carved cedar eagle outlined in white neon. The
building was a hexagon the breadth of a football field, at each point of which
sat one of the namesake tepees, giant cones of canvas supported by intertwined
fir logs. The tallest tepee supported a bungee-jump platform.

In a concession to scenic-area
protections, the former wildflower meadow that tribal leaders had chosen for
their new cash cow was just over the brow of the hill and out of sight of
visitors to the lovely gorge below.

Out of sight wasn’t out of mind,
however. From the looks of the packed parking lot, most of Portland, Beaverton,
Gresham, Hillsboro and Aloha had made the trip out tonight. Besides the casino
and rides, tonight’s attractions included a Three Dog Night reunion concert, a
strobing electronic readerboard advised.

Karen squeezed the BMW into the
valet lane. A handsome, tanned, muscular and very Caucasian parking attendant
in little more than a breechcloth and Nike high-tops loped up to open her door.

“You’re no Geronimo!” Karen
teased him as she took her ticket. Up close, she saw he actually wore a clingy
Lycra body suit, almost transparent and leaving little to the imagination.

“Maybe not Geronimo, but plenty
red-blooded, ma’am,” the attendant responded with a practiced leer as he hopped
in, tossed his blond ponytail and punched the BMW’s accelerator.

“He’d better be red-blooded to
run around half naked in the Gorge in February,” Hester marveled. “I’m sure the
Cold Lake people 100 years ago were never that dumb.”