Tin Foil (Imogene Museum Mystery #4)

  TIN

  FOIL

  an Imogene Museum mystery — book #4

  Jerusha Jones

  When Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, and her friend, George, narrowly miss death via explosion, Meredith’s curiosity instinct kicks in. The explosion could’ve been accidental, but if not, who was the target?

  Meredith’s about to take the witness stand in Sockeye County’s trial of the decade. George is a semi-retired fisherman. But George’s earlier hint that he needs to talk to Meredith’s new beau, hunky tugboat captain Pete Sills, about something he’s seen indicates not all is peaceful on the mighty Columbia River.

  Can Meredith and Pete sort out George’s frightening suspicions before someone puts one or both or all three of them out of commission?

  Copyright © 2013 by Jerusha Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Cover design by Elizabeth Berry MacKenney. www.berrygraphics.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Sneak Peek Book #5 — Faux Reel

  Notes & Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  I shifted against the sticky nylon webbing of George Longshoe’s lawn chair and ran my fingers along the seat’s frayed edge. This was George’s best chair — his company chair. He chose to use a three-legged campstool in order to preserve the chair with arms and a back for his occasional guests.

  George rattled pots and clanked dishes in the minuscule kitchen while heating water for our tea. I didn’t know how he could stand to be inside his tin can trailer. He was probably boiling right alongside the water. He’d insisted that drinking hot tea on a blistering day would help us cool off. Seemed counterproductive to me, but I’ve learned that George’s advice is worth following.

  I stretched again, trying not to have any of my skin doubled back on itself in the sweltering lean-to of tarps and two-by-fours that expanded George’s living space and sheltered his expansive library. The canopy provided shade but restricted air flow. It was a toss-up as to which was preferable, and neither was going to relieve my discomfort.

  I am not an elegant perspirer. Forget glistening — I wiped trickles from my brow with the back of my hand. My short brown hair, normally curls with a mind of their own, gave up all ambition and stuck limp against my scalp and neck.

  George stepped down from his trailer onto the green indoor-outdoor faux-grass carpet, two stoneware mugs in hand. He handed me the one with teal glaze drips hanging from the rim like stalactites against the speckled exterior — my favorite.

  “You ever think about moving, George?” I asked. “Living somewhere else, somewhere more protected from the elements?”

  “In time, I may join the elders. The elements are not a problem.”

  “How old do you have to be to qualify as an elder?”

  “It is more a matter of experience and the tribe’s need for your wisdom and judgment than age.” George raised his mug in salute and took a sip.

  George’s tea reminds me of the astringent coca tea I drank once in Arequipa, Peru to ward off altitude sickness. It acted more like a diuretic. Maybe the idea is that if you spend most of your time in the bathroom, you won’t notice that you’re also short of breath. George’s concoction makes me feel warm — not necessarily helpful today — and mildly, serenely euphoric. I slurped in moderation. I have not asked for the recipe — no doubt a local harvest of roots and leaves I would hike right past without a second thought.

  “How are you holding up?” George leaned forward, elbows on knees, his bottomless brown eyes studying me.

  I wrinkled my nose and focused on the sagging bookshelves behind him. “Trying not to think about it. The prosecuting attorney and I reviewed my initial statement the other day, as preparation.”

  “The scene keep playing in your mind?”

  I nodded. “The dreams have started again. And I’ll have to relive finding Ham’s body several more times while on the witness stand. I have no idea what the defense attorney will ask.”

  George grunted sympathetically. “It must be done.” Then he inhaled deeply and straightened. “When will Pete be in town? I would like to speak with him.”

  I tried to hide my surprise behind my mug. Pete’s my friend — the term boyfriend seems too juvenile, and we’re just getting started at this dating business, so it’s a weird claim to make — and a tugboat captain. He’s away pushing barges much more than he’s in port at Platt’s Landing — one of the reasons dating is moving at glacial speed. I didn’t know Pete and George were acquainted with each other, but they’ve both lived and worked on the Columbia River most of their lives.

  “End of the week.” I balanced my mug on the chair arm. “Need him to do a job for you?”

  George shook his head, his smooth salt-and-pepper hair brushing his shoulders and his lips pressed together. “He is a keen observer. I want to see if his observations match mine.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  George waggled a finger. “It is too early to worry. Come.” He set his mug on the ground and reached for mine. “We will find a breeze.”

  We emerged into the sun’s blinding glare. George touched my elbow, directing me along the rutted tire tracks — the main drag in this shanty village of ancient camper trailers — toward the rickety dock and little cove protected from the river’s lazy churning.

  I squinted and shielded my eyes with my hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ll grab my sunglasses. They’re in my truck.”

  The last thing I remember was George’s heavily lined face nodding in concern. He was just turning to walk up to the paved road with me, ever the gentleman, when he slammed against me — both of us flattened into the packed dirt by a giant fireball.

  oOo

  “Meredith! Meredith!” Someone was bellowing in my ear.

  I cracked open my eyelids. A stocky silhouette knelt over me, her Stetson hat blocking the sun.

  “George?” I croaked.

  “The EMTs are working on him. You’re not to move,” Sheriff Marge said.

  “What?” I struggled to push up on my elbow.

  “Stay,” Sheriff Marge ordered, jabbing her stubby forefinger at my shoulder but stopping an inch short. It was as though she didn’t want to touch me, like I might break.

  “What’s wrong?” I couldn’t seem to move anyway. I peered down the length of my body to two black lumps sticking straight up. The tips of my super cute red and white rubber-toed sneakers were bubbled like burnt marshmallows.

  “Ow.”

  Sheriff Marge followed my gaze and inhaled through her teeth, whistling faintly. “Hold still.” She gently loosened the laces and slipped the sneakers off my feet.

  My white cotton footie socks were toasted brown o
n the toes with a sprinkling of black carbon flakes — the color roasted marshmallows are supposed to be.

  “Might be okay,” Sheriff Marge murmured as she plucked the socks away from my skin.

  My toes were bright red, but I still had five on each foot. I counted. My legs and arms and face prickled as though my skin was too small for me, and what I could see beyond my sleeves and shorts was the color of severe sunburn.

  “How long — what happened — George?” I knew the words weren’t coming out right. I licked my cracked lips.

  Sheriff Marge bent over me again, returning the shade. “George is in bad shape, Meredith. Which is why the EMTs are with him. There’s another ambulance on its way for you. Fire department’s busy—” She looked over her shoulder.

  That’s when I noticed the smell, the tang in the back of my throat and grit in my mouth — the choking, carcinogenic smoke billowing from things that shouldn’t be burned.

  This time I did sit up and looked past my own feet to the inferno that had been George’s trailer and the trailers on either side of his. “Dear God.”

  “Exactly. If you and George had been any closer—” Sheriff Marge stared at me with serious gray eyes.

  “But he’s alive?” I clutched her arm so hard she winced.

  “Last I knew, yeah.” She pried my fingers off and pulled a little notebook from her chest pocket. “What do you remember?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.” My face was so tight. I pinched and stretched my cheeks to give my mouth some room to move. It stung like crazy but felt better when I finished.

  “I’ll get you some water.” Sheriff Marge tucked a leg under herself in order to stand.

  “Later. I’m alright. You don’t think it’s suspicious?” I waved an arm toward the two firefighters holding a hose blast on the heart of the flames. “Nothing here is up to code. Electrical wires and extension cords everywhere. Flammable materials, cramped living quarters. If it was winter, it would have been someone’s propane heater that blew.” I tried to shrug and flinched at the sharp pain that sparked up my neck. “I don’t know.”

  “Not my jurisdiction. But they’ll shut this place down if it was accidental.” Sheriff Marge pushed her hat up and wiped her forehead. “Probably regardless.”

  I’d forgotten. We were in Oregon. Sheriff Marge serves and protects Sockeye County, Washington. “Why are you here? Where will they go?” I’d also just noticed about twenty residents of the trailer park standing in subdued groups near the dock.

  “I was just on the other end of the bridge when the call came in. Helped set up a perimeter. Saw your truck and knew you’d be visiting George.” Sheriff Marge gave me another appraising look over her ever-present reading glasses.

  “Anyone else hurt?”

  “Nope. Too hot. Everyone had either gone to town for air conditioning or was down by the river.” She sighed. “I don’t know where they’d go. Family, hopefully. The Tribes have social support systems, but these people—” she nodded toward the groups, “choose to live here, independently. They won’t be happy with any solution they see as restricting their freedom. Not sure they could afford anything else.”

  A young man in a navy blue uniform with a medical emblem on his sleeve hurried up, carrying a matching duffel bag. He looked twelve — way too young to know anything about my insides, or my externals.

  “I’m okay.” I grabbed Sheriff Marge’s shoulder and pulled my knees up, my bare feet gaining purchase on a couple clumps of dead, scratchy weeds. “Just getting a hand here.”

  Sheriff Marge frowned, but helped leverage me to standing.

  She hung onto my arm as if I might topple over without warning. I was dizzy — I scrunched my eyes closed.

  “It’ll wear off,” I mumbled.

  Sheriff Marge nodded to the medic. “Let’s walk.”

  He latched onto my other arm, and they sandwiched me in a slow stroll up to the paved road lined with emergency vehicles. They deposited me on the ambulance’s bumper. The medic tried to administer a concussion check, but my head was on a swivel.

  “Where’s George? Is there another ambulance?”

  “They took him to the hospital in Lupine, ma’am.” The medic cupped my chin and flashed a penlight into my eyes. Over his shoulder, I had a good view of the destruction.

  Not an eagle’s-eye view — more like a meadowlark’s view — but enough to see that the campground was nestled in a shallow dip between old Oregon Highway 30 and the Columbia River — the kind of place an elk herd would bed down for the night, except there had been decrepit, moss-covered trailers hunkered together. Now it was a muddy mess, as though a garbage dump had exploded during a typhoon. Half a dozen firefighters in full suits and helmets still trained water spray on the charred, mangled remains of George’s trailer. Pages from his books flapped from nearby trees and lay plastered in what had been the dirt road, churned into a paper mache slurry by the firefighters’ boots.

  This was where I’d seen my first dead body — on the river bank near the dock. George’s boat had bumped into the body while he was checking his nets, and he'd towed it to shore. I’d come to identify the body, but it wasn’t the one I was looking for. George had been a solace for me then and since. My stomach knotted. How badly was he injured?

  I passed the number of fingers, current president, day of the week, name and address test and generally made enough sense the medic decided I was safe to drive. I stuffed my feet back in my melted shoes and headed for my pickup.

  Sheriff Marge had been huddled in conversation with a few local deputies and the fire captain. She caught up with me as I opened the truck door. “Go home, Meredith.”

  “I need to see George.”

  “They took him straight into surgery. It’ll be a while before he’s out and awake. I’m going there after we wrap up the scene. I’ll call you.” She gave me her super-strict grandmother do-as-I-tell-you look. “I mean it. Sleep. Take some Tylenol or whatever the medic told you.”

  I dipped my head.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  “What if it wasn’t an accident?” I whispered.

  Sheriff Marge’s jaw tightened, forming a network of wrinkles — more than I’d noticed before — at the corners of her mouth, and I wondered what she’d just been discussing with the other officials. She didn’t seem surprised by my question.

  “Go. We’ll talk later.”

  CHAPTER 2

  I live in a trailer too — a fifth-wheel RV parked at the Riverside RV Ranch near Platts Landing, Washington. It’s a luxury model that I bought cheap off a recent widow a few years ago. It’s amazing how life curves around the bends, and you don’t see what’s coming. She never could have expected her wanderlusting husband would die before their first outing in their new RV. And I never thought I’d flee big-city life for the bucolic Columbia River Gorge. The kind of peaceful setting where your good friend is nearly fried when his living quarters explode.

  I also have a roommate. She was flopped under a large, shady maple, but the white tip of her tail started waving when she saw me drive up. By the time I’d opened the truck door and slid to the ground, she’d roused herself and ambled over to poke my leg with her cool nose. She spent an extra long time sniffing my shoes with typical hound inquisitiveness.

  “Can you tell I’ve been to George’s?” I tousled the long, silky ears.

  Tuppence snorted.

  “Yeah, it was awful.” I knelt and hugged her. “I’m glad you weren’t there.”

  I creaked to standing and rubbed my lower back. Being thrown to the ground with nothing to break my fall, and then being landed on by another adult had knocked a few of my joints out of whack. But that’s why I was able to walk away from the scene and George wasn’t. He’d shielded me from the searing flames. Had he dragged me out of the way? Someone had.

  I’ve had broken bones, but burns — burns must be the most excruciating kind of injury. I hoped they were giving George lots of mor
phine. I followed Tuppence to the cool grass under her tree and dropped to the ground cross-legged. I blinked back tears. Tuppence stuck her muzzle under my chin and nudged me until I pulled her onto my lap — all seventy pounds of her.

  Had George seen it coming? Had he known? Or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time — between the trailer and me? It happened so fast. My memory fuzzed, my brain riveted on the flash of light and heat. I hadn’t registered much more.

  It’d be hours before I could see George. I had to think about something else and keep my body moving or I’d go crazy.

  The fifth-wheel has air conditioning, but I’d turned it off when I left. I opened the door to let the cramped space inside air out and set up my laptop on the picnic table. As curator of the Imogene Museum, I get to develop new exhibits, figure out how to arrange and display our collections, as well as document the huge backlog of pieces Rupert Hagg, the director, has and continues to acquire. I say ‘get to’ on purpose. This is the best job I’ve ever had, and I love every day of it. Sure, there are ups and downs and foibles and problems, but this job is such a relief after the insanely stressful marketing director position I’d held in Portland.

  My projects have so much to tell me, but they never talk back. I have to dig into their pasts and suss out their provenance and history and function, if there is one. The Imogene houses several unique folk art collections as well as local history documents and artifacts and some fine art. It’s a flea sale version of a museum — a smattering of unusual things — chamber pots, model cannons, taxidermy wildlife, Victorian ball gowns, Klickitat and Wishram baskets, Czech marionettes. You name it — we probably have one, and maybe several.

  The museum’s closed on Mondays, but I don’t mind working on my day off, especially since I was in the final stages of planning a WWII black and white photography exhibit. WWII affected Columbia Gorge residents in mostly second-hand ways — the boom in shipyard manufacturing in Portland and Vancouver, the Tongue Point Naval Air Station in Astoria, local boys who went to fight and didn’t come back, victory gardens and ration books. Support efforts aren’t remembered with the kind of intensity that scenes of battlefields and bombings evoke. But the war was certainly on everyone’s mind, all the time — and I wanted to show that consciousness through a series of photographs by a well-known Portland-based photographer, Clarence Whitaker.