Rock Bottom (Imogene Museum Mystery #1) (6 page)

I scanned the river, soaking its wild frothiness into my soul
— inhaling it. Fresh rain meeting the well-traveled water in the river tingled my senses. The Columbia held secrets — deep ones, old ones, plus new ones in the flotsam. Time and mystery flowed in its component molecules. Long ago, the local tribes buried their ancestors on islands in the river.

We climbed into the truck, and I pulled off my outer layers. We stank in tandem of wet dog and sweat-soaked wool and steamed up the windows immediately. I shared the last sandwich with Tuppence while the defroster blasted.

I swung through Caffè-a-Go-Go on the way home in an attempt to keep myself awake. My rubbery body gelled into the seat contours. My hands felt like ten-pound weights, my fingertips barely able to keep them in place on the steering wheel. Tuppence snored.

As I passed the
Imogene Museum a mile from home, Pete’s concern about Ford niggled at me. The small cabin was barely visible through the trees. I should check on him, when I was more alert.

CHAPTER
5

Late Tuesday afternoon, Mac backed his rusty step van up to the museum
’s side door, lurching slowly as Ford gave him conflicting hand signals.

I yelled
“Stop!” at the last moment — to save a large terracotta flower pot and to prevent yet another dent in Mac’s bumper.

Ford was so excited that spittle clung to his lips when he spoke.
“Nice and easy. Nice and easy.” He unlatched the van’s roll-up door and gave it a push.

Ford was in his element when I asked him to lend his expertise in the form of strong back and shoulders to shove display cases into place. And Mac was so good with Ford
— they were drinking buddies to the extent that teetotaler Ford enjoyed Dr. Pepper while Mac swigged an amber ale or two during
SportsCenter
at the Sidetrack.

Mac slammed the driver
’s door closed and bounded around to the back. His legs must be made of springs. I quickly squashed the fleeting image of what he might look like in shorts. Sometimes my subconscious scares me.

Mac was bundled in a heavy flannel jacket with a watch cap pulled tight over his head. The first frost had come overnight, and the temperature hovered barely above freezing now
— the warmest part of the day. Mac’s sparse mushroom beige hair doesn’t show up well on his balding scalp, so he shaves it off and has taken to wearing hats. The problem is, the hats emphasize the fact that something’s not quite symmetrical about his head.

Mac
’s like those puzzles in kiddie activity books where there’s a lineup of the same person drawn five times and you’re supposed to find the identical two by discovering slight variances in the others — a belt buckle off-center or shoes different colors or freckles vs. no freckles. Mac’s eliminating feature is a missing left earlobe. Same incident when he lost his left pinkie finger down to the first knuckle.

I understand how fingers can get in the way when operating a table saw, but an earlobe? Still a mystery. Not that Mac hadn
’t related the episode in great detail the first time we met. After a quick handshake, he said, “I suppose you noticed I’m missing an earlobe,” and then he didn’t shut up for half an hour.

But the focus of his story was more on the search for and final recovery of the earlobe from an open polyurethane container two days later. I hadn
’t the stomach to ask for more information. Unfortunately, Mac missed out on the stoicism stereotypical of Scotsmen.

His chin and lower jaw were covered with scraggly red blotches as if he
’d developed rosacea since Sunday. I stepped next to him to examine the cases in the back of the van and realized it was new beard growth. I know a couple of men whose beards came in a different color from their head hair, but the red surprised me.

“
Hey, I missed saying good-bye to you on Sunday,” Mac said.

I thought back to my quick escape in the midst of the crowd. I hated to admit it was intentional, so I changed the subject.
“Growing a beard?”

“
Yeah,” he grunted. He turned to look at me. He has blue eyes, not sapphire blue like Pete’s, but pale, washed-out blue, like their vitality had leaked and left pinprick pupils behind. “Starting to get cold. Figured if I had hair on my face to keep me warm I wouldn’t have to heat the workshop so much. Save some money.”

Mac and Ford wheeled the first case down the ramp.

“Have you been going without sleep to work on these cases?” I asked.

I waited for the answer while Mac and Ford tipped the second case up and wedged dollies underneath.

“What? Nah.”

I was pretty sure he was lying.

“I wanted to ask you Sunday. I could always shave it off.” He looked at me hopefully, his warm breath coming in spurts on the cold air. “Pete Sills has a beard.”

Ahh.

I held the door open for them and wondered if Mac realized how transparent he was. I was also pretty sure Pete Sills didn’t care one iota what other people thought of his appearance, and his beard was most certainly not for my benefit. If he’d asked, I would have told him I preferred clean-shaven men. Scratchy neck nuzzles aren’t my thing.

“
Makes sense to me,” I answered. “What about your hands, though? When my hands are cold, I get clumsier. You’ll want to keep your remaining digits intact.”

Mac flushed brightly like the latent redhead he apparently is and said,
“I have
all
of my digits.”

I shook my head.
“Digits are fingers and toes.”

“
Oh. In that case, I have nineteen and a half out of twenty.”

I left him doing the math and ducked down a hall and around a corner to grab a transit cart of chamber pots. I wheeled it into the freight elevator beside the first two cases.

On the way up, Mac said, “So, on a scale from one to ten, I’m a 9.5.” He elbowed me and winked. “Not bad, eh?”  

I tried to laugh it off, but the sound came out more like the noise old Amos Stanley makes when he hawks loogies and spits on the sidewalk in front of God and everyone, especially ladies. He also clears a path through the earwax by inserting an index finger and waggling it vigorously, but that
’s beside the point. At least old Amos hadn’t asked me out yet.

“
Nice and easy,” Ford crooned.

The guys wrangled the cases into place and left to get the others while I started arranging chamber pots. I couldn
’t remember the exact sequence, so I dashed upstairs for the description cards, my leg muscles reminding me of yesterday’s long hike.

The phone rang just as I opened my office door.

“Hello?” I answered, breathless.

The red message light was flashing. Since when did I get messages on my work line?

“Ah, we speak at last.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
This is Dr. Clyde Elroy. I believe you are supervising the internship of one of my students, Greg Boykin?”

“
Yes, I am.” What of it, I wanted to say, but held my tongue for Greg’s sake. His adviser sounded pinched and nasal, like he was looking down his nose just to talk on the phone.

“
I wanted to know if you’re requiring overtime of Greg without my permission.”

And Greg thought I should meet this guy. Huh.

“Well, he did come early on Thursday, but that was because he wanted to. We received a new collection —”

“
I mean yesterday and so far today,” Dr. Elroy cut me off.

“
No, I gave Greg Sunday off since he worked so hard —”

“
Do you know where he is?”

I gritted my teeth. His rudeness was off the chart.
“He should be in Corvallis, attending classes as usual.”

“
He missed his weekly four o’clock meeting with me yesterday, and he’s not answering his phone.”

Maybe he got fed up with your snobbishness, I thought.

“I checked with his other professors. He did not attend his classes yesterday or today.”

Okay, that was a problem.
“As far as I know, he left here on Sunday, possibly even earlier than normal since he had no commitments here at the museum.”

“
And as far as I know, he never arrived here,” Dr. Elroy answered.

“
Have you called his parents, his friends?”

“
His mother is next on my list. I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily.”

I exhaled.
“I see. While you do that, I’ll call the lady he rents a room from to see if she knows what time he left.”

“
Thank you.” Dr. Elroy clicked off.

My knees wobbled, and I dropped into the chair. Greg was nothing if not reliable. The thought of his Prius mangled against a concrete barrier along I-5 made my stomach cramp.

“Please, no. Please, no,” I whispered as I flipped through the county White Pages booklet looking for Betty Jenkins’ number. Hoping the E stood for Elizabeth, I dialed. The other options were T and O.

“
Hello?” A sweet, light voice answered.

“
Betty? Mrs. Jenkins? This is Meredith Morehouse from the Imogene Museum. Is Greg still there?”

“
Oh, no, honey. He left early on Sunday, right after —”

Her last few words were drowned out by loud rumbling that had to be a freight train. We waited a solid two minutes until it was quiet enough to speak again.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“
Right after breakfast. He’s such a kind boy. He helped me wash the dishes then left in that tiny car of his.”

“
Did he say where he was going?”

“
Oh, no, dear. He always goes back to school on Sundays.”

“
Did he leave anything in his room, as though he was going out but would come back?”

“
I don’t know about that. I told him he could leave his things here during the week. No sense in packing them away every time since he’s my only lodger. I clean his room, but I don’t disturb his things. He doesn’t usually leave much.”

“
Oh, I know,” I said. “You take good care of him. His professor called. It seems Greg didn’t make it back to school on Sunday. Did he say anything to you about stopping along the way home?”

“
Oh dear. No. I’m afraid I rattled on about this and that, and he didn’t say much at all.”

“
Do you remember anything he did say?”

“
Just polite things like, ‘Let me help you with that.’”

“
All right. I need to go now, Mrs. Jenkins. I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

“
Okay, sweetie. Oh dear.”

I found Dr. Elroy
’s phone number from caller ID and dialed. “His landlady says he left Sunday morning right after breakfast.”

“
His mother hasn’t heard from him since last week. And then she panicked on me.” Dr. Elroy sighed. “Obviously, I don’t have his friends’ phone numbers. I will notify the Oregon State Police. They have an office here on campus, and they could check his apartment.”

I nodded, then remembered he couldn
’t see me. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll call the county sheriff. She’s a friend.” I took a deep breath. “We’ll find him.”

“
Greg is one of my best students, you know.”

“
I’m not surprised.” I liked Dr. Elroy better now. After giving him my cell phone number, I hung up and called Sheriff Marge.

“
Where are you?” Sheriff Marge asked when I finished explaining.

“
At the museum.”