Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) Read Online Free

the
list.
    “Well, I thought you'd be happy
to have a day off.” Pim’s voice squawked from the heavy handset.
    “Pim! I didn't mean to shout! The
radio was just saying something about the library, but I didn't catch it.”
    “Closed.”
    “Really! I can't believe it!  We
never close.”
    “Have you looked outside?”
    Hester dragged the phone over to
the window and looked again. “I'd say we have an inch here.”
    “More like two inches here.” Pim
lived in a trailer-house out on the banks of the Sandy River, east of the city.
She enjoyed a great view of drift-boating steelheaders on autumn afternoons but
always seemed to get the worst of winter storms. “We'd be grounded for sure if
the library opened for foot traffic.”
    Grounded days were the worst.
Hester and Pim had to stay at the barn and do the paperwork, filing and report
writing that were the bane of a librarian's life. That kind of thing made
Hester want to break pencils. She had a desk drawer full of pencil halves.
    “You feeling okay now, Hest? You
weren't looking so good yesterday.”
    Pim's casual remark brought
Hester to a sudden stop. “Oh, Pim. I had – kind of forgotten. I never even
thought... Oh, damn! There's someone at the door, I've got to go. I’ll call you
right back.”
    The rapping at her apartment door
continued.  Hester undid the chain and deadbolt and opened the door wide to
face Detective Darrow.
    “May I come in?” he said as he
walked into the room.
    Hester waved him into the living
room. With a quick glance in the hall mirror, she noted that the blue denim
shirt-dress she had chosen this morning brought out the color in her eyes.
    Hester mentally shook herself.
Detective Darrow was here for a reason that had nothing to do with her eyes.
    “How on earth did you make it
through the ice?” Hester asked. “Can I get you some coffee?”
    Darrow, eyes rheumy and cheeks
shaded by dark stubble, smiled a grateful yes. He peeled off a faded,
mustard-colored anorak to reveal a rumpled blue sweater emblazoned with the
knitted eight-inch high inscription, “POLICE.” How, uh, charming, Hester
thought as she disappeared into the kitchen.
    Darrow stifled a yawn, shifting
his weight from one weary foot to another as he glanced around the apartment.
Hester's living room was as filled with books as a room could possibly be. It
looked like a second-hand book shop he used to haunt, Darrow reflected as he
shifted a stack of books so he could slump for a moment in an old dining chair
shoved in a corner.
    One wall was a built-in rosewood
bookcase, floor to ceiling, jammed with hundreds of volumes. Some appeared to
be first editions, probably rare. Opposite the book wall was a fireplace of
sooty river rock framing andirons that Darrow recognized as cast-iron
silhouettes of Paul Bunyan on one side and Babe the Blue Ox on the other. The
furniture, too, was just right for a bookshop. To one side of the fireplace,
two overstuffed leather chairs in teal blue sat on each side of a solid
mahogany table topped by a Tiffany-style lamp.  A long sofa in faded chintz
with huge red roses on a cream background straddled a multicolored rug, not
Persian, but certainly hand-woven. A sideboard, loaded with more books, and a
few scattered tables and lamps finished the decor.
    Darrow stood again, peering at
the bookcase and scanning titles when Hester came back with a pewter tray.  “The
coffee’s freshly ground Kona Blend, but I’m afraid the cinnamon rolls are
day-old,” she announced.
    “You've got some pretty valuable
books here,” Darrow said, holding out a first edition of Robert Louis
Stevenson's “Letters.”
    “Uncle Hamish's,” Hester said as
she set down the tray.  “He was a bibliophile and something of a nut. He left
me his library in his will. Most of these were his.”
    Darrow replaced the volume and
took a seat as Hester motioned to the overstuffed leather chair that wasn’t occupied
by her sleeping roommate, a huge Maine Coon