B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery (18 page)

Chapter 38

The brightly
colored bookmobile was a quarter-mile behind the garish Wiener Wagen with its
bulbous, red-flecked bratwurst riding high atop a golden bun.

 All Darrow
could do was hold his foot to the floor and hope the roaring diesel engine had
guts. Slowly, he was gaining on them. Behind him, books flew to the floor each
time the big bus tipped in the wind. Several times, river water flew up on the
roadway and splashed across the bookmobile’s windshield as if tossed from a
bucket, sending Darrow frantically searching for the wiper switch.

His mind was
strangely detached as he willed the bookmobile forward. Looking out at the
broad vista of gale-thrashed water and misty hills, he could make out the river
bars called Desdemona Sands. A buddy who had taught Nate celestial navigation
had run aground there when heading out to sea in his home-built sailboat. Adept
at reading the stars but not so good at the world in front of his nose, he
thought with a thin smile. He felt that way himself sometimes.

Forcing his mind
back to the road, he saw the Wiener Wagen start uphill as the bridge gradually
rose toward its high arch. Stuck momentarily behind a slow and laboring old
Volkswagen microbus, the hot dog on wheels finally pulled out to pass. The pause
was what Darrow needed to close the gap.  

“I can ketchup,
I know it!” he said aloud. It was hard to avoid hot-dog humor.

As the
bookmobile rocked into the oncoming lane and barreled past the old VW, Darrow
flashed the headlights and blew the air horn in hopes of getting Gerbils’
attention.

“Meep, meep,”
answered the VW.

Finally the
bookmobile pulled within feet of the wind-wagging wiener, which showed no signs
of pulling over. The speedometer read 65. Darrow worried that the corkscrew
turn at the end of the bridge might be too great a test for Gerbils’ driving
skills.

“That could be a
turn for the wurst!” he blurted out loud, quickly chagrined that too little
sleep and too much coffee had brought out his inner 12-year-old.

Reminding
himself that Hester and Pim were in danger, Darrow punched the accelerator to
the floor again and pulled the magenta bus up next to the speeding Wiener Wagen
just as the two ungainly vehicles crested the bridge’s 20-story-high arch.

 Looking over,
Darrow waved his arm to signal Gerbils to pull over.

 Darrow could
see the wild-eyed sausage king look sideways, like a glance from a nervous
racehorse. A glimpse of red hair beyond the bald head told him Hester was there.

Whether from a
pummeling wind gust or an intentional swerve, suddenly the Wiener Wagen locked
mirrors with the bookmobile and bits of brightly colored fiberglass went
flying. Screeching like 500 fingernails on 500 chalkboards filled Darrow’s ears
as the sides of the two speeding vehicles ground together.

  Heart
pounding, Nate hit the brakes and swerved the bookmobile back into the right
lane as the Wiener Wagen bolted ahead.

“You’re not
going to do anybody any favors if we all end up going off the bridge,” Darrow chided
himself, with a frightening flashback to how his parents died – when their car flew
off this same Highway 101 into Washington’s Hood Canal some 18 years earlier.

“Just give him
room,” Darrow whispered, lifting his foot from the accelerator.

Darrow watched
the bookmobile’s speedometer sink to 40 as the Wiener Wagen disappeared into
the now-driving rain.

*    
*     *

As he rounded
the first curve of the corkscrew ramp, Gerhard Gerbils gripped the wheel like
Captain Ahab battling the white whale.

 The Wiener
Wagen lifted its wheels on one side but stayed upright. Behind the cockpit, condiments
flew across the galley Gerbils had added to the exotic vehicle.

Far below, in
the distance, a flotilla of speeding cars with flashing blue lights was
splitting traffic through downtown Astoria. They were coming his way.

Hester and Pim,
helpless to hold on, slid back and forth across the bench seat. Gerbils fought
to push them away as he struggled for control.

*    
*     *

As the Wiener
Wagen rounded the final downward curve to intersect with the highway through
town, Hester watched with alarm as the traffic signal turned to red in front of
them.

Gerbils wasn’t
stopping.

Like a bobsled
out of control at the bottom of its course, the giant hot dog shot into the
intersection. From the corner of her eye Hester saw a speeding log truck. She
yelled through the folds of moist towel. An air horn blasted without end.

Then everything
was spinning.

Chapter 39

Where they lay a
foot from each other on the wet asphalt, under the glare of headlights from
cars stopped at every which angle in the roadway, Pim and Hester opened their
eyes almost simultaneously. As they’d tumbled like wet laundry in the crash,
the tape had slipped off their wrists.

They each
reached slowly up and pulled the kitchen rags from their mouths.

The first sense
Hester perceived was a terrible headache. Dizziness. Then, surprisingly, a
sweet, spicy smell.

She watched as
Pim’s eyes came slowly into focus. Then shock and alarm played across her old
friend’s face.

 “My God,
Hester, you’re hurt! Your chin!” came Pim’s raspy words as she struggled to sit
up, wincing with the effort.

Hester put her
hand to her jaw and with a sense of unreality felt a sticky wetness. Seeing a red
smear on her fingers, her heart pounded with the realization that she was
injured and bleeding.

But wait. She
touched her fingers to her tongue.

“Ketchup!” she
cried.

A stocky
policeman was suddenly hovering over her, telling her not to move. Another cop,
skinny and with a crew cut, was tending to Pim.

Looking at her
bruised colleague, who would clearly have two black eyes, Hester strained to
understand what she was seeing. What terrible internal injury caused yellow
oozing? The Aloha shirt Pim had changed back into at Dismal Nitch was now
covered in –

“Mustard!”
Hester realized with a relieved sigh.

*    
*     *

Two hours later,
an Oregon State Police cruiser dropped Nate Darrow off at the park next to the
maritime museum, where a luscious, meaty aroma carried on the smoky breeze.

The afternoon
sky was now a mix of puffy white cumulus and occasional patches of blue, what
Darrow’s mother used to call “Dutchman’s pants.” Summer weather seemed to be on
the way back.

As Nate strode
toward the dining tent where a few straggling library staff still visited at
picnic tables littered with crumpled napkins and soiled paper plates, he saw
Harry Harrington wearing a white apron and the chef’s toque earlier sported by Tony
Pucci. Harry was poised with a large meat fork over a smoking campfire.

Pucci sat at a
picnic table nearby, handcuffed to the table frame.

“Hey, Nate, you’re
just in time for the last serving of Toussaint Charbonneau’s boudin blanc!”
Harrington called out to him. “But I’m afraid the wapato was toast an hour ago.
Those Dutch ovens get hot sitting right in the embers.”

Darrow mutely
held out a plate while Harrington speared two large sausage links from a huge
cast-iron skillet.

“How are they?”
Harrington asked.

Darrow, ravenous
after the long day, swallowed a bite before speaking. He knew Harry wasn’t
asking about the sausage.

“Pim broke her
collar bone – a hairline thing – and Hester has a severe concussion, and they
both have lots of nasty scrapes. But they were all pretty lucky, considering.
Gerbils broke a leg. They’re all staying the night at Columbia Memorial.”

“How about the
truck driver?”

“A bump on the
head. Even his Kenworth came through with only a few scrapes. But the Wiener
Wagen will roll no more. It was a clean slice. One end of the dog was on the
south side of the road, the other on the north. The vehicle frame was intact,
but the fiberglass body just broke into pieces. And there were condiments
everywhere!”

As if in proof,
Darrow pulled a slightly squashed squirt-bottle of mustard from his coat pocket.
He untwisted the pointy cap and drew two precise lines of yellow down the
length of his sausage and then took another bite.

While chewing,
he tilted his head toward Pucci with a questioning look at Harry.

“Oh, our friend
there?” Harrington responded. “Well, we started chatting over the campfire
after you left and it wasn’t long until I asked him about how the sausage
grease got on the Rose Medallion, at which time he decided to audition for the
100-yard dash. Luckily I’m no slouch with a Frisbee, or in this case a Dutch
oven lid. Caught him right in the back of the knee and it was quite the merry mix-up
of limbs as he went down. You can see how he got an unfortunate grass stain on
this nice white apron – ”

Harry held out a
corner of the apron he wore.

“But I figured
it was less messy than shooting him, and saved me a whole lot of lousy
paperwork. Kinda burned my fingers, though,” he said, shaking his hand in the
air.

Darrow listened
with bemusement. Once again, he saw new depths in Harry Harrington.

Peering at Harry’s
fingers, Nate instructed, “Here, hold your hand out. This is a Darrow family
secret cure. Where does it hurt?”

Harry held out
three fingers and Nate squirted yellow mustard on the burned fingertips.

“REALLY? Nate,
don’t mess around.”

“I’m not
kidding. Just leave it there for five minutes and then tell me if it still
hurts.”

“This sounds
like some kind of New England witchcraft thing with your family.”

“Hey, Mom came
from old Salem. We never used the ‘W’ word in our home. She was an herbalist,
that’s all.”

 “Well, my
family came from Salem,
Oregon,
where chamomile is a weed and wheat
grass is stuff you feed pigs.” Harry kept a skeptical cast to his eye. Darrow
chewed.

“Well, we got
the new tire on the car,” Harry finally added. “Again, we can drive with
dignity.”

Darrow nodded
and gave a small grin as he finished the last bite of his second sausage, then
gazed for a moment at Tony Pucci, who sat just out of earshot with his head
cradled on one elbow, looking miserable.

“So did the
Galloping Gourmet over there give any hints about who did what and why?”

Harrington
reached over and used a long stick to poke at the remains of one of the
bonfires until he brought a log back aflame, then raised a foot on the picnic
bench next to Darrow and shook his head.

“After I
Mirandized him, he clammed up at first. I think he was hoping his future
father-in-law would come back and give him some legal advice. But he heard
about the accident at the same time the Astoria cop came by to tell me, and he
got a little chatty after that. Insisted he knew nothing about van Dyke’s
murder, but that Gerbils had been searching for the medallion all week and
found it ‘under a bush in the park,’ so he said. But, the cook says, Gerbils
realized that whoever turned in the medallion would become a murder suspect. So
he came up with the idea of smearing it with sausage grease and having the dog find
it, with a little help from the cook. And the cook’s reward for keeping quiet
and handing over the $50,000 reward would be a partnership in the restaurant,
along with marrying into the family.”

Darrow rolled
his eyes. Then, spotting an insulated picnic jug at the end of the table, he
grabbed a paper cup from a stack and worked the jug’s tap to get some lemonade,
which he drank in one gulp.

“Well, part of
that sounds plausible, but it doesn’t explain why Gerhard Gerbils kidnapped two
library workers and drove his Wiener Wagen into a load of old-growth Doug fir.”

He threw the
paper cup on to the fire and watched it flame.

“In any case, we
have Mr. Pucci on obstruction of justice, unlawful flight and possibly animal
cruelty.”

At Harrington’s
look of confusion, Nate elaborated.

“Feeding a
dachshund a steady diet of sausage grease can’t be good for it.”

As Harry untied
the apron and pulled off the chef’s hat, Darrow asked, “How are the fingers?”

Harry held up
his hand, fingers splayed wide, and stared. Most of the yellow mustard had
soaked into his skin.

“You know, I’d
forgotten all about the burns,” he said in wonder. “I guess – I guess your
mother
mustard
known something about first aid!”

Darrow winced.

Harrington looked
thoughtful for a moment, then added, “Come on, let’s hit the road. I don’t
relish
being late for dinner.”

“OK, OK, I
realize this case is going to be haunted by hot dog jokes, so just get them out
of your system now!” Darrow protested.

Harrington gave
an innocent look.

“
Frankly
,
Nate, I don’t usually indulge in that kind of low humor. But if you really want
a joke contest, I say let the
wiener
take all.”

Darrow, walking
away toward the Caprice, waggled his fingers back at Harry in a ‘bring it on’ gesture.

“I have to say I
never
sausage
a miracle cure for burns!” Harrington hollered after him,
pausing just a moment before adding, “My fingers don’t hurt a
teeny wienie
bit!”

Nate Darrow
opened the passenger door of the car and climbed in with his index fingers
plugging both ears.