B.B. Cantwell - Portland Bookmobile 02 - Corpse of Discovery Read Free Page A

fund,” Pim said with a wink over the top of
her cateye glasses. Pim lived along the pretty Sandy River in an aging, mossy
single-wide trailer house on 10 acres, part of a long-ago divorce settlement.
She often complained of being “land rich.”
    As Pim finished
setting up the Instie-Circ, the portable circulation computer, Hester put out
the step by the bookmobile’s rear door and waved through the murky mist to the day’s
first patron, Mrs. Loman, who was just coming into focus down the walk with her
customary two shopping bags of library books, one in each arm. Hester liked to
think the bags acted as ballast to keep the wispy octogenarian from blowing
away on the hilltop’s gusty winds.
    Mrs. Loman’s sweet
nature belied an insatiable appetite for murder mysteries. Hester reached into
a cupboard for the new J.A. Jance she had saved for her favorite patron, who
rewarded Hester with a smile made even wider by a pair of ill-fitting dentures.
    “Did you see us
in the parade, Mrs. L?” Pim asked, almost shouting to compensate for Mrs. Loman’s
hearing loss.
    “What’s that? I’m
fine if you don’t mumble, dear,” she warbled.
    “Parade! Parade!”
Pim bellowed.
    “Oh, I love charades!”
she said, looking slightly befuddled. “Is the library having another Seniors Parlor
Game Night?”
    Hester smiled,
nodded and handed Mrs. Loman a library events calendar.
    Next to climb
aboard were the Donaldson sisters, identical twins, both widowed in their late
60s, who dressed alike and lately had taken to checking out books with one
another’s library cards in a giggly effort to trick Hester.
    Behind them, a recent
new patron at this stop was Mr. O’Leary, a recently retired accountant and
self-proclaimed “available specimen” with too much time on his hands who was
making a study of mathematician biographies.
    “Hullo, Hester,”
he said through his walrus mustache, its tips waxed to a point. “I saw the
trouble you had in the parade. The TV said the bookmobile almost took out an
entire high-school class!”
    “Well, it really
wasn’t like that, you know how they exaggerate,” she said, giving him her “Hester
Sunshine” voice.
    “And they’re
saying now that it has to do with that van Dyke, that there’s some sort of
investigation of how he’s mishandled library funds. I guess he was supposed to
use a bunch of donated money to buy you gals a brand-spanking new bus, not this
tarted up old thing, eh?”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t
know about that,” Hester said, handing him a biography of Alexandre
Grothendieck, father of the Theory of Schemes, which Mr. O’Leary had ordered on
interlibrary loan from Boston Public Library. It was the only known copy in
North America.
     Hester had been
doing her best in recent weeks to divert this overly attentive patron’s
attentions to the Donaldson sisters, who were known, as Pim put it, “to take a
shine to anything in long trousers.” But every time Hester delivered a special
book he ordered, O’Leary acted as if she had done him a personal favor. The
red-faced little man ordered special books all the time.
    “Oh, my favorite
librarian in the world has another prize for me!” O’Leary brayed, with both
chins wagging. “Thank you, Saint Hester!”
    Hester sighed
deeply, readjusted the nametag pinned to her sweater and suddenly busied
herself helping a young mother with a 2-year-old in a tie-dyed onesie over by
the children’s shelves.
    “Let’s get moving,
Pim, before Mr. Mustachio comes back,” Hester hissed a half-hour later as she
pulled in the step. “I swear, I’m going to have to ask Bob to fumigate this
thing with Pine-Sol to get rid of the curse of Aramis. He must bathe in the
stuff.”
    The fog that
wrapped the city was a welcome cooling agent after the weekend’s heat. And it
was persistent. Pim leaned over the big steering wheel to peer through the
windshield. She flicked the wipers to squeal across the moist glass a few times
as they made their