Sight Shot (Imogene Museum Mystery #3) Page 2

  “Had a little incident at the museum this morning.”

  “Dead body?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  “Huh.”

  It’s not that Sheriff Marge likes dead bodies; it’s just that I’ve found a couple. Enough to last me a lifetime. No, I’d take unexpected psychotic behavior over a murder any day.

  “My new gift shop manager locked an elderly couple in the museum overnight, probably accidentally. Still, I needed to fire her, but she quit before I could. Kind of aggressively. I thought she was going to attack me, but Wade Snead held her back.”

  “Wade Snead’s in town? Huh.” Sheriff Marge cleared her throat. “Are you wanting to file charges?”

  “No. She just seemed a little unbalanced, and I was wondering if you knew her, if I should be worried.”

  “Gonna tell me her name?”

  “Sorry. Edna Garman.”

  “Edna Garman? You hired Edna Garman?” Sheriff Marge chortled.

  “Is that funny?”

  Sheriff Marge was howling with laughter now. I could just picture her doubled over slapping her thigh.

  I groaned. “I want a Lindsay clone. Why is this so hard?”

  “Can’t help you with that one, but next time you’re thinking of hiring someone, run them by me, okay? I’ll give a character reference without violating confidentiality.” Sheriff Marge chuckled again. “Edna Garman. Oh boy.”

  I heaved a sigh into the phone. “Are you going to tell me why you find this so amusing?”

  “Edna’s a kleptomaniac. You better look around the gift shop and see if anything’s missing.”

  “But she seemed so — so nondescript, so innocuous. Really?” My eyes skittered across the shelves and racks — glossy coffee table books about local geology, Native American clans, Lewis and Clark, wildlife and wildflowers; 3-D puzzles; the usual tourist knickknack keychains, magnets and mugs; postcards; jewelry; polished river rock paperweights — it all looked the same to me. “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out to the Garman place to retrieve stuff for shop owners and private citizens. She took a hamster home from her last job at the pet store. Had it in a shoe box on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. Had some other things up there I’m sure weren’t originally hers, but since no one’d reported them missing, I left them with Edna for safekeeping. That’s one thing — she never damages what she takes. It’s all carefully stored.”

  “Wow. She was scary today, though. Went ballistic.”

  “It’s not like Edna to get emotional. Tell you what — look around, make a list of what’s missing, and I’ll talk to her. Maybe something’s going on that’s pushed her over the edge.” Sheriff Marge paused for a moment. “Yeah. Her mother’s not in the best health. I should check on them anyway. Call me.” She hung up.

  I exhaled. What else did Sheriff Marge know? I shook my head. Knowing everyone’s faults must be a real burden. I know she feels a great deal of responsibility for her constituents, and I’d benefited her gruff compassion enough times to expect she shows the same to others.

  There was only one way to find out what was missing. I called Lindsay.

  “No problem,” Lindsay said when I’d explained. “I can’t believe that happened, though. Wow. I’m sure I can fill in for the next few days, starting this afternoon. I don’t leave until the 5th for new student orientation.”

  “You’re a lifesaver.” I snagged a book on Pacific Northwest birds and settled behind the cash register to wait for Lindsay and any visitors.

  Rupert Hagg was the first arrival during normal business hours. He’s the museum director and world-traveling scout for the Imogene’s ever-expanding collections. He looks like a cross between my childhood teddy bear and Sean Connery. He has a teddy bear physique but the actor’s lack of head hair, expressive face and warm brown eyes. Deep, gravelly voice too, but no brogue.

  He ambled into the gift shop, hands deep in his pants pockets. “There you are.” He looked at me quizzically. “Why are you in here?”

  I hated to tell him my hiring failure had put the museum’s reputation in jeopardy, but I spilled everything from Wally and Ginny to Edna and Wade.

  Rupert shook his head and chuckled. “You know, sleepovers at the museum might not be a bad idea. Except we don’t have a ghost to entertain them.”

  “We’d never pass whatever inspections are necessary for hotels,” I said. “But maybe we could swing it occasionally as a fundraising event. We could present lectures and serve appetizers.”

  “Ah-ha.” Rupert aimed a blunt finger at me. “Brilliant. Especially when you see what I just bought.” His grin radiated delight and mischief.

  My eyebrows shot up. Rupert had just returned from Europe — Paris specifically, but probably other places as well. He operates tangentially, so it’s hard to pin him down about his travel plans, about his collection goals and for big decisions — small ones too, for that matter. He always keeps his acquisitions a surprise so I get the feeling of Christmas every time I open a shipment.

  “A hint? Just one?” I grinned.

  “Nope.” Rupert tugged on the brim of his tweed driving cap and turned to leave. “I put the paperwork on your desk.”

  “We need to talk about an improved security system before your next trip,” I called, but Rupert had disappeared around the corner.

  I manage all the day-to-day operations of the museum, but I still need Rupert’s approval for large expenditures. We’re lucky the security system we have isn’t fully functioning, or Wally and Ginny would have been scared out of their skins by the ear-splitting screech of an intruder alarm. With the increasing value of the Imogene’s collections, I was getting worried. The doors and windows had open/close sensors, but the internal motion detectors were on bypass because spiders held disco dance competitions in front of the seeing-eye beams in the middle of the night.

  I welcomed a few visitors but mostly fidgeted for the next couple hours. I was so anxious to run upstairs and check the paperwork on the new shipment. Sometimes the generic item listings on the bills of lading provide enough information to get Mac MacDougal, owner of the Sidetrack Tavern and my custom cabinetmaker, started on display cases in the right sizes.

  Lindsay breezed in. She was bundled in a puffy coat and cheery red scarf. “Whew,” she said as she extricated herself. “If this cold spell keeps up, we’re going turn to icicles during the New Year’s Eve fireworks.”

  “Greg’ll keep you warm.” I couldn’t help teasing her. Greg’s my graduate student intern who drives up from Oregon State University to work weekends at the Imogene, and they’d recently started dating.

  Lindsay blushed. “Oh, shush. We’re taking things slow, especially since we’ll hardly see each other now until summer.”

  “What about weekends? Pullman’s what — five hours away?”

  “Meet in the middle? Yeah, I expect we’ll try to do that a few times. I’m worried about how much homework I’ll have, though. I still can hardly believe this is happening.” Lindsay shook her head. “College. Me.”

  She strolled through the gift shop, her expert eye taking in all the products and displays. “If Edna took any of the small items where we have a bunch — like this,” she scooped up a handful of strung wampum beads, “I’d never know, but nothing important or expensive is missing.”

  “Do you know Edna?”

  “Nope. I mean, I know who she is, of course, but I don’t know anything about her. I never would have guessed she’s a kleptomaniac. My mom said Edna’s father was killed in action and that her mom was never right after that. It’s why they live pretty secluded.”

  “She was really upset about something.” I pulled my arms across my chest and clutched my shoulders. The Imogene is draft central on the best of days. But now that Lindsay’d mentioned the outside temperature, I felt extra chilly air currents curl around my ankles, and I shivered. “I don’t want Edna to get in trouble.”

  Lin
dsay rummaged through the cabinets and drawers under the cash register. “Did you throw away the black bear figurine with the broken leg?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t know there was one.”

  “A kid dropped it a few weeks back. I didn’t ask the parents to pay for it, said I’d try to glue it. I shoved it in here and kind of forgot about it. I know we could never sell it, but I thought we might be able to give it away.” Her voice was muffled as she shifted stuff around deep in the cupboard. Then she stood and pushed her long blond hair behind her shoulder. “It’s gone, both pieces. It certainly wasn’t worth anything, though. Maybe Edna realized that and threw it away, but you’d think she’d have tidied other things in the process.”

  Lindsay surveyed the room one more time, then shrugged. “Looks okay.”

  “I started a new notebook for tallying visitors.” I pointed to the clean page open next to the register.

  “Gotcha. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Thanks for coming in.”

  “I’m going to miss this place. Don’t forget to let whoever you hire know that the job’s mine again this summer.” Lindsay flapped her hand toward the door. “I’m sure you have something to research. Rupert’s back, isn’t he?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. With another mystery shipment on the way.”

  I dashed upstairs and scooped up Rupert’s paperwork. Then I flopped in my chair and flipped through the pages. I don’t know how he can keep a lid on his excitement, except he’s the kind of person who’s on to the next potential find as soon as he’s signed the check.

  I, on the other hand, love the anticipation even though it drives me crazy. There were two shipments from Paris and one from Istanbul. Rupert had been to Istanbul? I would love to sit down with him and a recorder and force him to tell me all about his exploits. He has intimate knowledge of all the major flea markets, world-wide.

  I fired up my laptop and tracked the shipments on the freight forwarding company’s website. Two were in New York on U.S. Customs holds. Phooey. Not uncommon and guaranteed to add seven to ten days of wait time. The third, one of the Paris shipments, was on a train barreling through Chicago with a January 2nd estimated date of arrival. What a great reason to come back to work after the holiday.

  I leaned back and gazed out of the huge picture window toward the choppy Columbia River. Shimmery steel with a few white caps. The wind swirled low clouds in all possible shades of gray — pewter, silver, ash, charcoal, slate — hard names for an amorphous substance. They bumped against the mansion and surged over it. It was like watching their underbellies ripple up the window and flow onward. Creepy, I suppose, but I also like to think of clouds as a layer of protection, and they were moving out in double time. An even colder cold front coming.

  Then I remembered I’d have to go through the job posting rigmarole again. I printed new flyers. We don’t have Craig’s List or a local newspaper, so jobs in Platts Landing are filled by word of mouth in the best case scenario and through flyers posted around town otherwise. Techniques from The Dark Ages.

  I dialed Sheriff Marge.

  “Yep.” The brakes of her Ford Explorer squealed in the background. Sheriff Marge drives as though everything is an emergency. And she talks on her phone while driving through a Bluetooth clipped to her visor. She will wrap herself around a tree one day.

  “Nothing of significance is missing.”

  “She had what — two days — in the gift shop?”

  “Um, well, we might be missing a broken bear figurine.”

  “A what?”

  “A ceramic black bear about four inches tall. A back leg’s broken off. Not a big deal. Lindsay would have thrown it away except she thought it was glueable.”

  “I’ll check. So far, Edna’s never taken valuable stuff — just trinkets, doodads that strike her fancy. She likes animals.”

  “I noticed. I don’t want to press charges, and I don’t even want the bear back. But I am worried about her if you think her outburst wasn’t normal.”

  “I’ll swing by around dinnertime. Have a chat with both Edna and Ramona. See what’s up.” Sheriff Marge hung up.

  I emptied Wade’s bag onto my desk and sorted it into piles by type of object. There were lots of loose papers, correspondence still in the original envelopes, photographs and even a sampling of three-dimensional items — war medals and ribbons and an assortment of small rocks, feathers and what appeared to be a few withered flower bulbs.

  “Ooo. Uh-oh.” I inhaled sharply as one of the bulbs disintegrated to powder in my hand.

  I tapped the flaky bits onto a clean sheet of paper. If Wade thought these things were valuable, he should have stored them better.

  I knew if I even started skimming the papers, I’d become absorbed and end up staying at the museum until the wee hours. Not to mention I had one hungry hound at home.

  I turned out the light, locked my office and skipped down two flights of stairs to the main ballroom. Lindsay’d already locked up, so the room was lost in shadow. But I could traverse the Imogene blindfolded and made it to the front doors without bumping into anything.

  A blast of cold air hit me in the face when I stepped outside. The sky was the deep cerulean that follows the sun around the curvature of the earth. In the east, velvety midnight blue was rising higher, dotted with the blinking lights of a couple passenger jets. Not a cloud in sight, which explained the frigidity that took my breath away.

  Early stars would wink on in a few minutes. But another easterly gorge gust jolted me into a quick trot across the parking lot to my pickup. The wind chill was not conducive to lingering over scenery.

  CHAPTER 3

  I sped to the Imogene early the next morning eager to start on Wade’s research, but I had real work to do first. Not that the real work isn’t fun — I love organizing Rupert’s finds and assembling them into cohesive displays for visitors. I bounded up the grand staircase wearing a quilted down vest over a long-sleeved thermal t-shirt, flannel-lined jeans and fingerless mittens. The museum’s furnace system is set to vacant until shortly before opening time, so I’d spend the first few hours of my day mummified in layers of natural fibers.

  I was breathing hard by the time I unlocked the door to my office. Running the museum’s stairs was about all the exercise I’d been getting lately. I should take my dog, Tuppence, for a hike over the holiday.

  I plunked my tote bag and coffee thermos on the floor and powered up the laptop. Twenty-eight Wishram baskets needed description cards before they could be exhibited in our Native American room, which had been the men’s smoking lounge back when the museum was the Hagg family’s vacation mansion. I shoved Wade’s things out of the way and rubbed my fingers together to prepare them for typing.

  Five hours later, I pushed away from the desk and arched my back. Done. The baskets were ready for interment in their final resting place, a climate-controlled glass-shelved display case. Greg could do the honors when he arrived.

  I grabbed the pile of Snead family correspondence and quickly sorted the envelopes into chronological order based on postmarks. The ink on a few had so deteriorated with age that I couldn’t read the dates, so I put those on top of the stack — oldest to newest. The lettering ranged from spidery fountain pen to manual typewriter to bold block capitals in blue ink, the hurried script of a young man. Most were addressed to Parker Snead, some to Stuart Snead, and a few to Spencer Snead. I was a little surprised no women’s names appeared since women were often the more faithful correspondents before the days of email and texting.

  Next, I examined the photographs, checking for names written on the back or other identifiers. After a few passes through the pile, I picked out a couple boys/men who made regular appearances. Using clothing and haircuts as indicators, I also shuffled the pictures into chronological order. In what was clearly a photo of siblings in droopy swimsuits at the beach, two boys sandwiched a younger sister, their arms around her, silly grins on their faces.

  The taller t
een with a Leave It To Beaver clean haircut reemerged as a young man with sideburns and thick fu manchu mustache. Hello, 1970s. Then a buzz cut. Hello, military. I assumed he was drafted for Vietnam. Then a photo of both brothers with buzz cuts, bare-chested and flexing their biceps on a suburban front lawn. The older brother had a tattoo on his left shoulder.

  I couldn’t find the younger brother in any other photos.

  I almost missed the older brother when he appeared in later pictures. He had changed so much — a worn, thin face, no more hamming for the camera, never locking gaze with the photographer, turning away, slumped in a lawn chair clutching a beer bottle. He wore a patch over his right eye.

  “Hiya.” Greg Boykin, my intern, poked his head in the open doorway.

  I smiled. “You’re early.”

  “You know I love the Imogene, but now I have particular incentive to be in Platts Landing,” Greg replied.

  “She’s a sweetheart to cover the gift shop.”

  “You won’t get argument from me on that score.” Greg grinned and pushed his glasses up on his nose. He tilted his head and glanced over the papers spread on my desk. “What’s this?”

  “Practically the Snead family diary. I feel like I’m intruding.” I sighed. “Wade Snead asked me to see if there’s anything valuable. So far it all looks personal and not much older than the 60s.”

  Greg folded his lanky frame onto a chair and stretched his left leg out, resting the heel of his walking boot cast on the garbage can.

  “How’s your leg?” I involuntarily rolled my shoulder, testing my healed collarbone. We’d gotten our broken bones from falling into the same cavern, but Greg’s injury was much worse.

  “Hurts.” He shrugged and picked up the stack of correspondence and thumbed through it. “Usually descendants have a pretty good idea of what qualifies as a family heirloom.”

  “Unless they’ve been watching too much Antiques Roadshow.”

  Greg snorted. “Or are desperate for cash.”

  “Hmmm. I didn’t get that impression. Historical curiosity, I thought. Wade mentioned they’re a local family. There’s no monetary value here.” I waved my arm over the desk.