Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) (3 page)

Tuesday morning dawned strangely
quiet. Sunlight filtered with an unusual clarity through the kitchen window of Hester’s
apartment as she emerged from her tiny bathroom and looked out. A half inch of
ice coated the outside of the pane.

“A silver thaw!” Hester
experienced a moment of delight. She turned up the radio to hear the beginning
of a long list of school closures.

Portland's famous silver thaw was
a local phenomenon Hester had grown up loving. It must have snowed some in the
night and then warmed just enough to change to freezing rain. The city turned
into one gigantic ice palace – just like the one in “Dr. Zhivago.”  The streets
became ribbons of ice, making travel unthinkable. The schools usually closed
and that was always cause for celebration!

“Oh please, please, please, let
the library be closed,” a grown-up Hester cooed to the radio just as she had as
a child from her upstairs bedroom in her family’s old Italianate three-story in
Portland’s historic Irvington neighborhood. Maintaining the decaying barn of a
house stretched her parents’ teaching salaries but her band-conductor father
said the 12-foot ceilings were necessary for good acoustics. Her mother, an
English teacher who taught tap-dancing in their basement on weekends, liked to
call the house a combination of Jane Austen’s “Northanger  Abbey” and P.G.
Wodehouse’s Totleigh Towers.

But despite the thin-paned windows
that frosted on the inside on winter’s coldest days and a cranky oil furnace
whose blower wasn’t quite up to the task, that house was a cozy fortress in
Hester’s memory. Snow days, when school was canceled, meant her whole family got
to sleep late. An only child, Hester fondly remembered Third Grade when a big
winter storm closed schools for a week and every morning she had climbed in
between her parents in their big four-poster bed so her father would read aloud
from “Chronicles of Narnia” while she imagined the White Witch riding her
sleigh down their street.

The reading bug claimed her
early. A saintly neighborhood librarian who helped Hester choose books from the
time she was old enough to have her own library card, then hired her for her
first after-school job, inspired her future. From that time, she never stopped
working in libraries. “Or wanted to,” she mused aloud.

The crackling radio brought
Hester out of her reverie.

“Mollala, Mollala High and Dickey
Prairie districts are closed,” the announcer droned. “Tualatin, Estacada and
the Portland Public Schools are closed.”

Hester didn't have any faith that
the library would close. The current board felt that the library was an essential
service and not to be closed unless truly necessary. Usually Hester agreed.

“All county offices are closed.” 

Her breath caught. The county
offices hardly ever closed. Hester looked outside again. The ice distorted the
view. It was really closer to an inch thick and there wasn't a soul passing the
neatly restored Victorians and brick-fronted apartments of her Northwest
Portland neighborhood.

“The Portland City Library is...”

BRRRINNG! BRRRINNG!

Hester ran to the shrilly ringing
phone. “What?” she shouted into the ancient black receiver of the old telephone
that fit her fondness for things that were classical and well-built. Missing
that last bit meant waiting another 20 minutes for the next reading of the
list.

“Well, I thought you'd be happy
to have a day off.” Pim’s voice squawked from the heavy handset.

“Pim! I didn't mean to shout! The
radio was just saying something about the library, but I didn't catch it.”

“Closed.”

“Really! I can't believe it!  We
never close.”

“Have you looked outside?”

Hester dragged the phone over to
the window and looked again. “I'd say we have an inch here.”

“More like two inches here.” Pim
lived in a trailer-house out on the banks of the Sandy River, east of the city.
She enjoyed a great view of drift-boating steelheaders on autumn afternoons but
always seemed to get the worst of winter storms. “We'd be grounded for sure if
the library opened for foot traffic.”

Grounded days were the worst.
Hester and Pim had to stay at the barn and do the paperwork, filing and report
writing that were the bane of a librarian's life. That kind of thing made
Hester want to break pencils. She had a desk drawer full of pencil halves.

“You feeling okay now, Hest? You
weren't looking so good yesterday.”

Pim's casual remark brought
Hester to a sudden stop. “Oh, Pim. I had – kind of forgotten. I never even
thought... Oh, damn! There's someone at the door, I've got to go. I’ll call you
right back.”

The rapping at her apartment door
continued.  Hester undid the chain and deadbolt and opened the door wide to
face Detective Darrow.

“May I come in?” he said as he
walked into the room.

Hester waved him into the living
room. With a quick glance in the hall mirror, she noted that the blue denim
shirt-dress she had chosen this morning brought out the color in her eyes.

Hester mentally shook herself.
Detective Darrow was here for a reason that had nothing to do with her eyes.

“How on earth did you make it
through the ice?” Hester asked. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Darrow, eyes rheumy and cheeks
shaded by dark stubble, smiled a grateful yes. He peeled off a faded,
mustard-colored anorak to reveal a rumpled blue sweater emblazoned with the
knitted eight-inch high inscription, “POLICE.” How, uh, charming, Hester
thought as she disappeared into the kitchen.

Darrow stifled a yawn, shifting
his weight from one weary foot to another as he glanced around the apartment.
Hester's living room was as filled with books as a room could possibly be. It
looked like a second-hand book shop he used to haunt, Darrow reflected as he
shifted a stack of books so he could slump for a moment in an old dining chair
shoved in a corner.

One wall was a built-in rosewood
bookcase, floor to ceiling, jammed with hundreds of volumes. Some appeared to
be first editions, probably rare. Opposite the book wall was a fireplace of
sooty river rock framing andirons that Darrow recognized as cast-iron
silhouettes of Paul Bunyan on one side and Babe the Blue Ox on the other. The
furniture, too, was just right for a bookshop. To one side of the fireplace,
two overstuffed leather chairs in teal blue sat on each side of a solid
mahogany table topped by a Tiffany-style lamp.  A long sofa in faded chintz
with huge red roses on a cream background straddled a multicolored rug, not
Persian, but certainly hand-woven. A sideboard, loaded with more books, and a
few scattered tables and lamps finished the decor.

Darrow stood again, peering at
the bookcase and scanning titles when Hester came back with a pewter tray.  “The
coffee’s freshly ground Kona Blend, but I’m afraid the cinnamon rolls are
day-old,” she announced.

“You've got some pretty valuable
books here,” Darrow said, holding out a first edition of Robert Louis
Stevenson's “Letters.”

“Uncle Hamish's,” Hester said as
she set down the tray.  “He was a bibliophile and something of a nut. He left
me his library in his will. Most of these were his.”

Darrow replaced the volume and
took a seat as Hester motioned to the overstuffed leather chair that wasn’t occupied
by her sleeping roommate, a huge Maine Coon cat.

“The cinnamon rolls are edible
only if you dunk them,” Hester said, demonstrating the technique.

His loud laugh caused a startled
Hester to plop a chunk of roll into her coffee.

“I've never met a female dunker
before! I always thought this was a male-only foible.” Darrow dunked his roll
with a practiced dip and shake, guiding the coffee-dribbling roll deftly to his
mouth without a drop on Hester’s rug.

After a moment of thoughtful
chewing he broke the silence. “You were on the phone when I knocked. I hope I
didn’t interrupt anything.”

Hester paused only an instant
between that perilous moment when her cinnamon roll might have become
over-soaked and the right time to pop the morsel into her mouth. “Pim, uh, that
is, Ethel Pimala, the bookmobile driver, just called to tell me the library was
closed.”

Nate scribbled in a notebook
Hester hadn't noticed before.

Gulping down some hot coffee,
Hester turned her full attention to Darrow. “Why?”

“That was going to be my
question,” Darrow said.

“Because of the silver thaw.”

“No, why did, uh, Ms. Pimala call
you
? Aren't you her boss?”

“Pim called me because that's the
way the 'telephone tree' works.” Hester explained the “tree.” “Pim lives
farther out from the barn than I do, so she calls me and I call...Oh, dear!”
Hester leapt to her feet and dived for the phone. She quickly dialed her
clerk's number. “Leslie? This is Hester.” Leslie Milstone was a new hire in the
last year and was very dedicated to library rules. Hester was relieved to find
her still at home. A quick glance at the clock in the hall told Hester she’d
had only a few more minutes before Leslie would have started out. 

“The library's closed, Leslie.”
Hester apologized for the last-minute notification and rang off.

Hester turned to see Nate busily
writing in his notebook.

“I completely forgot to call
Leslie. She would have tried to get in.”

“The radio has been repeating for
quite some time that the library is closed,” Darrow said, indicating the ancient
Motorola on the sideboard.

“Unless you get a call from the
tree the rules say you have to go in.”

“Sounds a bit archaic.” Nate made
a note.

“When was the last time you were
in the library? Everything is a bit archaic down there!” Hester resumed her
seat. She sipped her coffee and found it cool.

“How do you like working there? I
understand it is run by a private group.” Darrow thumbed through his notes and
read aloud, “The Portland Pioneer Literary Society.”

“Yes, the society does run the
show,” Hester replied. “We're not as big as the County Library and we don't get
the pay or benefits they have, but we do have a little more autonomy. The
county gave up its bookmobiles because they were a money loser.” 

“Where does the City Library get
its money?” Darrow continued.

“Oh, there’s a levy. They, uh –”
She shook her head and fixed him with a quizzical gaze. “Excuse me, but I’m a
bit confused. What do library finances have to do with your investigation? I
mean, Miss Duffy had been retired for three years.”

Darrow looked out the ice-covered
window and could see the first of the brave few attempting to walk the slick
sidewalks. “Well, I’m new to town, Ms. McGarrigle. I need to learn in a hurry
as much about the library and Sara Duffy as possible if I’m going to find her
killer.”

The word “killer” sent a cold
shiver down Hester’s spine. “How was she, uh, killed?” Hester finally asked.
She thought back to the curious, numb moment when she had opened the bookmobile
cupboard. She’d glimpsed Miss Duffy’s normally bluish hair tinged with pink,
almost like Mrs. Barrymore’s wig. Except for the dark red, almost black, stain
near the crown of her head... 

Darrow finally swallowed a dry
chunk of pastry and interrupted Hester’s grim musings.

“Can’t really say yet. Autopsy
might tell. We’ll have a better idea of just what we’re dealing with then.”

“Well, let’s see then, about our
funding...” Trying to wipe from her mind the gruesome image of the autopsy, she
put down the remains of her cinnamon roll.

“We have a city-wide levy every
four years, and we have endowments. The Friends of the Library is a very strong
fund-raising group in this town. Luckily, they pick up when government lets us
down. The Friends contribute a big chunk of our book-buying budget. In fact
there was just an article in the paper about how they raised a quarter-million
dollars in their New Year’s gala at the Heathman Hotel. It’s a huge costume
ball, something they do every year, very fancy. And let’s see, the county gives
us some money, too. We supply library service within the city limits and they
pick up the rest of the county, except for a couple of bookmobile runs we do
for them up into the Columbia River Gorge.”

“How does someone join the
Literary Society?”

“By being born into one of the
pioneer families, or marrying in, I think.”

Darrow stared hard at Hester. “An
aristocracy?”

It was Hester's turn to laugh
aloud. “You really are new to Portland if that’s a surprise.” Without waiting
for a comment she continued, “I'm sure some of them feel that way, but most of
the society members just find the business of the library a burden. A small
faction has been lobbying to get rid of the present system and merge us with
the county for years, but it'll never happen. Too much money and artwork to
fight over.”

“And what about this other group,
Friends of the Library? Do you have to be a big cheese to become a ‘Friend,’
too?”

“Oh, no, anyone can join. I think
it’s $25 and you get a bumper sticker. But of course, The Friends also court
people who have money. I understand they set it up on a sort of subscription
basis with members who can afford to give a certain amount each month. Sort of
like public television, you know? A good friend of mine is active in the
Friends. Personally, I just can’t find time. I figure I’m doing my part by just
showing up for work some days,” Hester said with a defiant smile.