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  Imogene Museum Mystery #7

  Jerusha Jones

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, companies, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Jerusha Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or 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.

  For more information about Jerusha Jones’s other novels, please visit www.jerushajones.com

  Cover design by Elizabeth Berry MacKenney.

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WHAT'S NEXT?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY JERUSHA JONES

  CHAPTER 1

  Frankie and I were agonizing over a seating chart. Normally such an administrative matter would’ve bored me to tears, and was much more suited to Frankie’s particular degree of efficiency. But this once-in-a-lifetime assignment was crucial, and I couldn’t keep my nose out of it.

  Crucial to the future happiness of several potential couples we had our sights on. Not only were Valerie Brown and Mac MacDougal finally getting hitched, but their wedding reception in the grand ballroom of the Imogene Museum gave us an additional chance to play matchmakers.

  “There,” Frankie said with some satisfaction as she deftly swiped several strips of paper with names scrawled on them into new positions on the chart. “If we move Griffin Hughes over here, then we can squeeze Ralph Moses in beside Betty Jenkins.”

  “But what about Owen Hobart?” I objected. “That leaves him sitting at a table with a bunch of retirees.”

  “He’s not dating anyone right now.”

  “Exactly.”

  Deputy Owen Hobart was young(ish), ruggedly handsome, popping with muscles, and painfully single. At least I thought he must be, although he’d never complained about his relationship status in my hearing. In truth, Owen had a tendency to not say much at all. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make a few well-placed constructive assumptions. He needed a girlfriend.

  The problem is, single and appropriately aged people of the female persuasion are hard to come by in Sockeye County. I blew my bangs out of my eyes.

  “Val gave me this list of friends she thinks are coming.” The Imogene Museum’s gift shop manager and my favorite administerial maven sighed and drew the wrinkled page closer. “But we don’t know them.”

  Worse than not setting Owen up at all?—setting him up with a painted, polished, ditzy city girl who didn’t know a calf from a colt. Or a Colt from a Glock, if it came right down to it. Names penciled in Val’s big loopy handwriting on a rumpled sheet of college-ruled notepaper were hardly inspiring.

  “Ladies. Still plotting, I see.” Rupert Hagg, director of the Imogene Museum and therefore my boss, world traveler, and inveterate flea-market haggler, leaned over the glass countertop in the gift shop and reviewed our strategy upside down.

  Frankie nonchalantly curled her left hand around one corner of the chart as though she was protecting the loose strips from a stray breeze he might’ve brought through the museum’s double glass doors with him. Wouldn’t be unheard of—the Imogene is a leaky old girl. But I had to admire her tradecraft. Because Rupert was one half of one of the couples we were conspiring on behalf of, but he—so far—seemed blissfully unaware of those particular machinations.

  Thankfully, his attention was snagged by Val’s list. “Darcy O’Hare,” he read from a line near the bottom. “Now there’s a solid Irish name. I vote for her.”

  “As good as any,” Frankie conceded. She slipped the page from his grasp and began snipping out the selected lady’s name with a pair of ancient, industrial-strength shears.

  Rupert swept off his tweed driving cap and wiped his bald forehead with the sleeve of his heavy peacoat. “All I can say is it’s a good thing the two lovebirds decided to get married before your new exhibit goes on display, Meredith.” He fumbled with unwinding a jaunty woolen muffler from around his neck. “Who wants to have their bridal-party photos taken next to scenes of horse thief hangings and moonshiners locked in stocks for public ridicule?” His whole body chuckled as he shook his head. “But if there are two people disinclined to be offended, I suspect they’re Val and Mac.”

  Frankie giggled. “Mac’s great granddaddy’s in one of those photos. I do believe the legacy of spirits production and distribution is a matter of family pride.”

  “Besides,” I added with a grin, quoting from the description I’d been working on to post beside the display, “it’s reported that many of the townsfolk provided comfort and sustenance during his time in alfresco gaol. Earning brownie points with the most popular guy in the county, and quite possibly payback in kind at a later date. Prohibition was a losing battle from the beginning—certainly in the hearts and gullets of the local population.”

  Rupert’s face was pink, and his bald pate glistened with a slight sheen of sweat. Not unusual, since his portly physique renders everyday activities like walking in from the parking lot somewhat exertive. But his eyes looked tired, the lids droopy, in spite of his crack about the county’s illustrious distilling history.

  “Are you getting sick?” I asked.

  As if on cue, he doubled over in a debilitating sneeze, not all of which he caught on the other sleeve of his coat. “It’s a possibility,” he croaked, while grappling to unhook his coat buttons and finally fishing a large handkerchief out of his pants pocket.

  “Go home,” Frankie said authoritatively, forefinger extended with stern emphasis. “Now.”

  Rupert’s watery gaze slid in my direction as he positioned the handkerchief for another hearty blow. As though he were asking permission. The man is a chronic workaholic. In a role he relishes like a hog in mud, but still…

  I was already nodding along. “We have everything under control. Dennis confirmed the head count for the catered dinner. Jim Carter’s handling the table and chair rentals. Val’s mother is reportedly a dab hand at decorating within the constraints I outlined for her.” I lifted my shoulders in a reassuring shrug. Since the museum is full of artifacts and displays of historical and artistic—if rather quirky—value, there’s a long set of rules about where things like adhesive tape, thumbtacks, and hot glue can and cannot be placed. “We’re good.”

  The reception wasn’t being hosted at Mac’s lubricating establishment, the Sidetrack Tavern, because Val had insisted he take at least one night off from slinging drinks and pay attention to her. Not that he needed prodding. He’d been tongue-draggingly enamored of her from the moment they’d met. And while potlucks are de rigueur for such festive occasions in Sockeye County, the weather and the sheer number of guests attending had turned this particular event into a more formal affair out of necessity—and deemed the museum to be the
best place to hold it. We’d proven—largely thanks to Frankie’s administrative prowess—our ability to accommodate large groups in the past, and the rental fees always helped the museum’s meager bottom line.

  “What about the basement?” Rupert rasped. “Did you find those trunks I told you about?”

  “Not yet.” I lifted his red and white striped muffler from the counter and handed it back to him. “But there’s still hope. I’m up to the first world war in my excavations.” The museum’s basement is a storehouse of jumbled collections, rejects, and plain old junk—and a liability disaster area which is why it isn’t open to the public. Nothing down there is documented, but it’s more or less layered by time period.

  “I’m sorry you inherited decades of neglect when you accepted this job, my dear. But I’m nearly positive the coroner’s tools—first Doc Halpern’s and then Doc Merit’s—are in a small, leather trunk somewhere in the dark recesses. I remember my father showing them to me when I was a kid. Doc Halpern was actually a veterinarian, but he was the most qualified citizen at the time.” Rupert’s chuckling turned into a phlegmy hacking fit as he reswathed his neck and head into a lumpy replication of a barbershop pole. “They’ll make a nice addition to your exhibit because most of the deaths the good doctors confirmed in that era didn’t occur peacefully.”

  Then he turned and, with a resigned wave over his shoulder, hunched back out into the gale-force wind and stinging ice particles that were currently registering as precipitation.

  oOo

  Thanks to her newly bolstered foundation and stone block construction, the Imogene is a bunker. Sorting over a century’s worth of detritus in the basement is like tunneling in a mine shaft with all outside stimuli blocked. Except for the buzzing bank of overhead florescent lights, I was alone, digging in my own shadow, up to my knees and elbows in fossilized dust and grime.

  And getting closer to the elusive coroner’s medical kit, judging by the box of flapper regalia I’d just unearthed. It really was a useful exercise—this separating and collating of the reams of articles in the basement. Not one I had time for, truthfully, but still a thorough basement cleanout was a down-the-road looming task on my acres-long to-do list. Baby steps. I kept telling myself that projects seem less overwhelming when I can get at least a cursory grasp of the nature of the behemoth.

  “Knock, knock,” Sheriff Marge called from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Over here,” I hollered. “Behind the marquee with the semi-naked girl on it.”

  Her footsteps clunked on the concrete floor as she approached. “That’s a doozy,” she said, eyeing the massive painted sign propped against a couple old armoires—remnants of the Hagg family’s vacation occupancy of the mansion a long time ago. “Is this something I should know about?” she asked, a stern officer-of-the-law frown on her face.

  Sockeye County is pretty clean when it comes to skin shows and that type of thing, at least recently. It does have its Wild West past, however. Generally speaking, the current population’s major vices are drinking, recreational marijuana, and a penchant for stupid risk taking at inopportune moments. (Note: There is a high correlation among these things.) And I’m pretty sure Sheriff Marge prefers it that way—in lieu of more serious problems.

  I shook my head. “Before your time. This beauty was banned from Main Street by the all-female city council in 1925.” I chuckled. “After gracing the facade of Lively’s Pool Hall for all of three days. A marketing investment gone to waste, I guess. But Warren Lively should’ve known better. His third wife was on the council, and she was worried about one of the new girls supplanting her.”

  “That new girl?” Sheriff Marge jerked her chin toward the nearly pristine portrait of a buxom lass with pouty lips, clad in fishnet stockings and a feather boa and not much else.

  “That was the rumor.”

  Sheriff Marge whistled softly. “Wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall in that household.”

  I pointed to a small scribble in one corner. “See the signature? This was painted by one of the premier pinup artists of the time. He’d later go on to become almost a household name during World War Two. The commission for this probably cost a fortune, and it has real historical value.”

  “You’re not going to display it, are you?” Sheriff Marge snapped, clearly unimpressed by the marquee’s provenance.

  I propped my fists on my hips and grinned at her. “Prudence dictates otherwise.”

  She sniffed. “I should say so. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with the phone calls from irate parents after the kindergarten class’s annual museum tour.”

  “Most museums have a pretty voluminous stash of items they can’t display for one reason or another. Sometimes the artifacts are too delicate and sometimes they’re too risqué”—I pointed to the item in question—“or too macabre. Or too politically polarizing.”

  “Huh. Well, I’m adding to your woes, then.” Sheriff Marge slowly creaked into a bent position and let the heavy box she’d had balanced on her jutted hip slide to the floor. “And that’s not the last of it. I’ll be tossing a box or two into the back of my Explorer every time I come out this way until I have the storeroom at the station cleaned out.”

  I already had the flaps open and was gently pawing through the items inside. “No problem,” I replied eagerly—maybe a bit too eagerly.

  Sheriff Marge’s sigh was laden with weariness above me. I tipped my head back and studied her expression. She wasn’t looking so hot, and I wondered if she was catching whatever viral bug Rupert had. But it was hard to tell in the harsh lighting. I also probably looked like an anemic ghoul who hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours.

  So it was better to just ask. “How are you?” Then I jumped up and dragged over a hideous ottoman upholstered in 1970’s psychedelic velour. I patted the seat, resurrecting poofs of dust. “Take a load off.”

  Sometimes Sheriff Marge’s leg aches. It’s healed well after being broken in the collision that totaled her old rig and wiped out a tree, and she’s back to stumping around with alacrity. She never complains, but sometimes I wonder if her body’s just wearing down from all the years of playing mother hen to the entire county.

  “Gonna act as shrink?” she grumbled, but complied.

  “Tell me what this exhibit’s about,” I commanded. “Rupert thinks it’s my idea, so we have success in that regard. But to accomplish your purpose, I’m going to need more information. You have a burr under your saddle, and it’s been worrying you for a while.”

  “That obvious, huh?” She sighed again and mopped a hand over her face. “Petty crime’s not petty when it’s on a grand scale.”

  “Define grand.”

  “Well, yeah, it’s relative,” she admitted, shifting her weight and yanking one of the protuberances hanging from her duty belt out from under her left cheek. “But we’re having a real rash of annoying incidents—broken windows in vehicles and businesses, thefts from farms and ranches, even from people’s backyards, vandalism. It’s not stupid teenager stuff, either. This seems to be with intent. I just can’t figure out what intent. And it’s keeping the deputies and me hopping.”

  “Hence clearing out space for a new hire?” I prodded. The sheriff’s department was housed in a modular building up on blocks in the cracked parking lot of a former grocery store. The temporary-turned-permanent accommodations were neither glamorous nor spacious. But the county commissioners had just expanded Sheriff Marge’s budget so she could hire another deputy, and that was cause for major celebrating.

  But she wasn’t rejoicing nearly enough. Her gray eyes remained somber in the garish light. “Not only that. Most people in this county aren’t terribly subtle. But I’m just about at the end of my rope and am hoping that a prominently advertised exhibit about crime and punishment”—she raised her voice to a bellow to emphasize the words—“will put the concept at the forefront of their minds. And maybe act as a deterrent to the hooligans who seem to be running rampant lately.”
>
  “Do you mean this?” I asked, lifting a heavy metal object out of her box of grisly warnings. It was a massive animal trap, bigger than any I’d seen before—mastodon-sized—with angry teeth on the spring mechanism. Teeth that had a dried black flaky substance on them.

  “Exactly. That was before my time too, but not by much. Haven’t had a bank robbery since Copeland Smith got his leg stuck in that trap while he was hiding out up on Gifford Mountain with the loot. Poetic justice, I guess, since the trap was set by a poacher. He nearly died of septicemia before hunters found him, and did end up losing most of his leg to gangrene. Lot of good unearned riches do you when you have to use a wheelchair for the rest of your life.”

  “I can work with that,” I said, nodding. “I suppose you wouldn’t be surprised, but museum visitors do tend to gawk over the gory bits.”

  “Safe for kiddies, though,” Sheriff Marge sighed, her strict-grandmother persona in full force.

  “I’ll put the exhibit on the second floor, with a warning sign about mature audiences only. The sad truth is, most kids see much worse on television today.”

  “They see worse than that, too,” she replied, pointing toward the naked girl on the marquee. “I’m getting old.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Home. It was such a foreign concept. And a wonderful one. I was putting down roots with the man I loved. All because of the extreme generosity of a very dear set of elderly twins who’d retired and gifted us their old homestead, complete with campground, rickety farmhouse, ancient fruit trees, and a large charred spot where a barn used to be. All on the gorgeous bank of the Columbia River.

  Every time I drove along the winding driveway, my blood pressure dropped ten points. And then I laughed aloud.

  Because there was the sprightly female half of the pair of twins standing on the steps to the back porch with my ecstatic hound wriggling an enthusiastic figure eight around her legs.