B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery by B.B. Cantwell

gas?”
    Darrow, relieved
that he seemed forgiven, returned to gobbling pizza.
    Pausing to look
at her neighbor again, Hester’s eyes wandered down to his service revolver in a
shoulder holster.
    “You ever shoot
that thing?” she asked, ready to change the subject.
    Darrow blanched
and slapped his forehead, realizing he’d forgotten his usual routine of locking
the gun in his nightstand drawer the moment he stepped in the door.
    “Well, actually
I don’t even keep it loaded most days,” he called back, having moved quickly
into the next room to peel off the shoulder harness. Beyond the wall and
through the open door, she heard him add, “I’m not very good at following
procedures, I’m afraid.” A silent pause. “I’m a terrible policeman, really.”
    Hester smiled at
that admission. He might not follow all procedures, but she wasn’t sure that
made him a bad policeman. The more she got to know him, she was pretty sure Darrow
felt the same way.
    “I probably do
enough procedure following for the both of us,” she said to herself, reflecting
on her day as she opened the pizza box and helped herself to a fresh slice.
    “What’s that you
say?” Nate asked as he returned and plunked down in a dining chair of carved
wood and forest-green leather.
    “Actually, I was
just thinking I need to depart from procedures myself and tell you about
something I haven’t even told my bosses yet,” Hester said, taking a quick gulp
of her neighbor’s refreshingly hoppy home brew to bolster her resolve.     
    It was Darrow’s
turn to look quizzical as he plucked a piece of slightly burnt pepperoni from
the top of the pizza and surreptitiously handed it to the cat that was now
furiously polishing his ankles.
    By the time Hester
had filled Darrow in on the afternoon’s latest discovery with the McLoughlin
Collection, cold grease stains had spread across the bottom of the cardboard
pizza box like nimbus clouds across a March sky.
    Darrow gave a
long, low whistle.
    “Pomp Charbonneau
is a name I really didn’t need to have come up in my dinnertime conversation, I
have to tell you, Miss Marple,” Darrow said.
    “I’ll kick you
in the shins if you call me that again,” Hester said coquettishly, but with a
steely cast in her eye that Darrow couldn’t miss.
    “Guess how I
spent my whole afternoon,” he continued. “Running all over Greater Portland
trying to find our friend Pomp Charbonneau.”
    He shook his
head at the recollection.
    “We did figure
out that he’s a swing-shift printer at The Oregonian, but when I dropped by
there the deputy publisher who saw ‘All The President’s Men’ a few too many
times got all First Amendment on me and demanded a warrant before they’d even
give me the guy’s phone number. So I cruised out to Newberg to visit the
address we dug up from state tax records only to find it was one of those
private mailbox centers in a strip mall between a KFC and a nail salon. I got
pepperoni tonight because I needed something to help get the ‘bucket o’ chicken’
smell out of my sinuses after sitting outside the stupid mailbox place for two
hours hoping the guy would stop in to pick up his Publisher’s Clearing House
mailer. He could already be a millionaire, you know, and he doesn’t even seem
to care.”
    Darrow sighed and
took a long swallow of his beer. “Mmm, that came out pretty nicely,” he
murmured appreciatively to the ceiling before continuing.
    “So now, Hester,
from what you tell me, it sounds like Charbonneau not only might know something
about the gun that killed Pieter van Dyke, but might somehow also be mixed up
in, what, the counterfeiting of a valuable library artifact? Some sort
of stamp-collector’s envelope thingy that once belonged to van Dyke’s father?”
    Darrow looked
into her blue eyes with that gaze that Hester found hard to take calmly.
    “These are some
really weird tea leaves we’ve got to read here, wouldn’t you say?” he said