B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery (16 page)

Chapter 32

“So Charbonneau
may be telling the truth and the pistol could have been fired without any help
from him,” Harry Harrington speculated as he and Nate Darrow walked down 23
^rd
Avenue past the late breakfast crowd gobbling Eggs Benedict in the window at
Papa Haydn’s Cafe.

“It sounds that
way, though my buddy Pomp is far from guilt-free in all this.”

Hunched against
the morning’s unexpectedly cool wind, Darrow jangled change in his trouser
pocket as they waited for a light to change, then spoke again as he and Harry
crossed Kearney Street toward the parked Caprice.

“But if Pomp is
to be believed, someone else happened upon van Dyke after Charbonneau had left
him, removed the Rose Medallion that Pomp had left on a ribbon around his neck,
then fired the pistol into van Dyke’s heart. Then whoever the killer was
apparently threw the pistol into the creek – to be found by a fisherman – and
the medallion into the bushes, to be found by a sausage-loving dachshund.”

“A
sausage-loving dachshund owned by the victim’s law partner and escorted by his
soon-to-be son-in-law,” Harry pointed out as he unlocked the driver’s door of
the car, parked in a “police only” slot by the red-brick façade of Good
Samaritan Hospital, at 23
^rd
and Lovejoy.

“Yeah, that’s a
coincidence I don’t like at all,” Darrow sighed, folding himself into the
passenger seat of the car just as a horde of angry bees drowned out his words.

“Darrow!” he
shouted, after a few moments of scrambling to pull out his phone.

This time he
didn’t keep Harry guessing at the end of the phone call.

“That was the
lab. We might have hit pay-dirt on my wild hunch about the sausage grease on
the Rose Medallion. It will take a few days for DNA testing to be positive, but
Don Finkle says he can state with 75 percent certainty that the grease found on
the medallion came from the kitchen of the Wiener Dog!”

Harrington gave
a long, low whistle.

“Way to go with
the hunches, Nate, even though I thought Harriet was going to have my cojones
with brown mustard on a kaiser roll yesterday!”

Darrow was back
in remote mode, staring vacantly at the front veranda of a new-age bookstore
across the street in front of which two of the youngest Rajneeshees from Sauvie
Island were passing out carnations to passers-by.

When Nate spoke
again it was as if snapping out of a trance.

“So, Harry, that
day when the Rajneeshees were in the park feeding squirrels and Schnitzel the
wonder dog supposedly chased a squirrel into the bushes and came back with the
medallion, maybe it wasn’t such a surprise to Tony the cook.”

Harrington was
struggling to keep up with the thought process.

“You mean
because…”

“Exactly.
Because Tony the cook had smeared sausage grease on the medallion before hiding
it in those bushes so everyone would watch Schnitzel find it, steering
suspicion away from him by making an adorable animal story out of what had been
a grim murder investigation!”

Behind his
glasses, Harry’s eyes opened wide.

“And thanks to
the reward money Tony is now partners in his restaurant, not just the flunky boiling
bratwurst! Nate, we gotta talk to this guy!”

Harry turned the
ignition and wheeled the Caprice into traffic as he reached for the mike on his
police radio and started to report their destination as the restaurant at
Jantzen Beach.

“Hold on, Harry,
hold on. He’s not there today.”

“Not there? How
do you…”

“No, apparently he’s
down on the Lower Columbia somewhere – feeding hot dogs to Hester and her
library friends, if I’m not mistaken,” said Darrow, recalling that morning’s
colorful caravan on Highway 30.

Darrow pulled
out his phone.

“Let me find out
just where they went, and while I do that, you get us headed toward Astoria!”

Chapter 33

“Where did they
g-g-go?” asked Sage, the page, his teeth chattering from the cold wind on his dripping
braids as he scanned the wide and misty river for the other canoes.

“Oh, goodness,
they were just there! Just before that ship passed,” Candy Carmichael spoke up
from the rear of the dugout. “But hold on, that’s why we brought the
walkie-talkies! In case we got separated!”

In the interest
of cultural authenticity and self-reliance, Carmichael had forbidden the
paddlers from bringing cellular phones on the trip. But some type of communication
was needed in case of trouble. She pulled a palm-sized radio from a jacket
pocket, peered at it and twisted a knob to turn it on. It gave a beep. Poking
at a button, she spoke.

 “Canoe Three to
Canoe One, Canoe Three to Canoe One, come in Canoe One!”

All they heard
was static.

“This is some
new gadget Vance picked up at Radio Shack. Does anybody know anything about
these things?” Candy asked in disgust.

 The Three
Oracles, as Hester had come to think of them, tended to take such questions too
literally.

“The Federal
Communications Commission authorized the new Family Radio Service as an
improved walkie-talkie radio system using channelized frequencies around 462
and 467 megahertz in the ultra high frequency band,” responded Jeanette Nelson.
 

“It does not
suffer the interference found on citizen’s band radio at 27 megahertz, or on
the 49 megahertz band also used by cordless phones, toys and baby monitors,”
added Debbie Wilkes.

“FRS radios
function on 14 channels, and individual handsets must be tuned to the same
channel in order to communicate,” Eva Temple chimed in, turning to give Candy a
skeptical glance over the top rim of her glasses. “I don’t suppose you and the
other geniuses agreed on a channel before leaving the shore?”

Candy gave her a
dirty look, frowned and punched some more buttons. The radio beeped and
squawked.

Pim, never one
to suffer fools gladly, groaned. “Why don’t we just paddle the goldurn boat?
That Vince guy said we should stay in the shipping channel – to catch the
current or something.”

“Yes,” Hester
piped up. “I vote we follow that ship! We’re bound to see the others when the
fog lifts!”

 So they
paddled. To the good, the exercise helped warm them up. Pim soon grew more
accustomed to the regular strokes. Eva’s bursitis seemed to ease. Sage’s teeth
stopped chattering.

So when they
finally passed Pillar Rock, he showed his good spirits by bolting to a crouch
in the bow of the dugout, emoting with a hand shading his brow, gazing into the
distance and shouting, “Ocian in view!”

And then he fell
overboard again.

The spirit of re-enactment
paled quickly after the second man-overboard drill, just about the same time
the sky grew darker and whitecaps started roiling the water. The paddlers
labored on silently, still looking for the other canoes ahead, while taking
turns digging out jackets and sweatshirts in an effort to stave off
goosepimples caused by the rapidly dropping temperature. Hester finally spoke
up again.

“Does anybody
know what it means when the waves start breaking on top like that? And is it
just me or does it seem like we’re not moving ahead anymore?”

“On the Beaufort
scale, whitecaps generally begin when the wind reaches a velocity of 10 to 12
knots,” Jeanette answered.

“And small-craft
navigation on the Lower Columbia is often complicated by tidal action during a
flood tide that actually reverses the river’s flow as far as 25 miles inland
from the mouth,” Debbie declared.

“OK, STOP!”
Hester commanded. “I mean…” She took a deep breath. “Thank you, ladies.”

She rested her
paddle and watched the droplets of water stream off its end into the river, an
inky green now that the sky had become gloomier overhead. Then Hester raised
her head, turned back to the organizer of the day’s voyage and spoke in a calm
voice that belied her thoughts.

“And Candy,
might I ask how carefully we consulted the tide tables before setting out
today?”

Candy Carmichael’s
face twitched three times before she answered.

 “I…I went up to
Science and Business and asked about currents and they came up with some
equation and said something like the currents ‘would
really
be in our
favor when they were in our favor,’ which I took to just be some kind of
librarian doublespeak. I mean, of course, the current would be in our favor. We’re
going downstream! It’s a river!”

The seven other
paddlers returned dark stares in her direction.

At the same
time, the wind began to gust, sending salty spray in their faces and rendering further
conversation pointless. Without prompting, everyone in the canoe started
paddling, just to help steady out their craft in the bouncing water.

It soon became
evident they weren’t going to make it to Astoria. With the rolling fog and
wind-whipped water, it was hard to see
where
they were going. But the
winds and currents were obviously deciding their course for them. Paddling
toward the river’s center, toward Oregon, their progress quickly stalled and their
paddles thrashed the water with little result. Paddling for the Washington
shore, they drew steadily closer to a high banked beach.

Onshore, trees
were beginning to sway. It occurred to Hester, and the realization seemed
reflected on the grim faces of her weary crewmates: With the weather deteriorating,
they could be battling for their lives if they didn’t soon reach the beach.

Time condensed.
Muscles ached and hands grew numb, but finally their bow crunched against the
pebbly shore. They dragged themselves out of the dugout, now filled with
puddles of water, and staggered to safety. Hester and Pim gave a hand to Sage,
who was shivering and pale, and they all plopped down on a bleached gray drift
log against a high bank covered with amber-colored sea grass.

Eva Temple, who’d
replaced her Baudelaire with a small digest of William Clark’s journals before
leaving shore, pulled the volume from a fanny pack and studied it wordlessly
while the others looked on in exhausted silence, their arms clasped around
themselves against the cold. She unfolded a map and wrestled with it as it
flapped in the wind. She peered downriver, toward a mist-shrouded bridge about
a mile away, and then spoke with conviction to her seven companions.

“When Lewis and
Clark hit this stretch of river the Corps of Discovery ran into weather much
like this. And much like we just experienced, their canoes were driven ashore.
They were trapped for six miserable days by winds and waves at a spot that
Clark in his journal called a ‘dismal little nitch.’ ”

She paused, as
if for dramatic effect, once again gazing around her with weary eyes.

“Well, ladies –
and gentleman – we’re having one hell of a re-enactment. From what I read and what
I see on this map, I’m pretty certain this is the place. Welcome to Dismal
Nitch!”

Chapter 34

In November 1805,
Clark in his journal described Dismal Nitch as little more than jagged rocks
and a steep hillside that prevented the Corps’ escape from a narrow strip of
beach. Wind-driven waves pummeled the beached canoes and endless rain punished
the explorers, whose leather clothing by this time in their journey was rotting
on their backs.

The good news
for the band of weary librarians: Two centuries had transformed the landscape, pretty
much leveling the high bluff and turning Dismal Nitch into a minor historical
site, complete with a highway rest area and a fishermen-tramped path that led
down to the beach.

“Oh saints be
praised, look up there, do I see restrooms?” Hester called, rallying the morale
of the windblown crew just as big raindrops started to splatter on their
foreheads.

“I got first
dibs on the electric hand dryer,” Linda Dimple shouted, showing a burst of
speed up the path that Hester wouldn’t have thought possible in a children’s
librarian little taller than the average attendee of her Saturday morning story
hour.

Pim, always
practical, recruited the Three Oracles to help her pull the canoe up the beach
and tie its bow line to a log. Seeing the walkie-talkie Candy Carmichael had
left on her seat, she popped it into a pocket for safekeeping. Then they all
trooped up the path and took shelter in the public restrooms, gathering curious
looks from a carload of tourists from Boise.

Candy
Carmichael, reasserting her authority, spied a pay phone next to an information
kiosk, collected spare dimes from her cohorts and was soon on the line with Bob
Newall, one of the few library employees who had been issued a cellular phone.

Bob had taken
the bookmobile to the waterfront park in Astoria where the Wiener Wagen was
setting up for the afternoon picnic. The other two canoes had arrived safely a
short time earlier, he said.

“They caught the
counter-current through the sloughs on the Oregon side and made fantastic
progress – they hardly had to paddle at all!” Newall said. “In fact, I heard
one of them say it was like having a little outboard motor on their transom!”

Carmichael,
deciding not to pass this latter news on to her paddling colleagues, soon
convinced Newall that the Canoe No. 3 crew needed rescuing.

“I can get
someone to bring one of the vans for the crew, but that darn Lars Simpson was
driving the van with the trailer and he took a load of library folk out to
Seaside to ride the bumper cars,” Newall said. “I think there was some kinda
challenge between the Periodicals Department and Government Documents.”

“Bob, I don’t
care if the whole bleeding staff has gone off to Cannon Beach for pony rides,
we just need some help over here!”

“But I’ll have
to bring your canoe back, too, don’t you see?” Newall spluttered. “Those are
valuable artifacts and my friend Lester Fishhawk from the Chinook tribe will
skin me if anything happens to that canoe! I guess I’ll have to bring the
bookmobile over and we can hoist it on top.”

“OK, whatever,
but please get over here as soon as you can. One of our crew fell overboard
twice and I think he’s in a bad way. And Bob? Get the Wiener Dog people to send
over some food and hot coffee when you come!”