Free Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries) by B.B. Cantwell

that
had met them as they’d left the overheated mansion. The remaining shirt, tie
and trousers just made her look fashionable among the eclectic evening crowd in
the trendy neighborhood they now looked out on.
    Karen, in a fit of perverse
humor, had refused to doff her disguise.
    “I feel like the straight man in
a Carol Burnett skit,” Hester fumed from between clenched teeth. She took a sip
of hot, strong coffee, then looked her friend in the eye. “So – you want to
explain yourself?”
    Karen was still giddy. “Did you
see how the old ducks spluttered when I started singing praisesof Teri
June? Lord, they love to demonize people!”
    She dug through her purse, pulled
out an evil-looking brown cigarette and quickly lit it with a dainty gold
lighter. She blew a cloud of clove-scented smoke toward the rusty beam
overhead. Hester winced and waved her hand in the air.
    “Oh, Karen, not those Indonesian
things again! The smell gets into my coat and the next day people in the
elevator all wonder why I smell like an Easter ham!” She cast a guilty look
around the brightly lit coffee house and saw no other smokers.
    “Hester, dear, chill out. I tell
you, I’m so excited. I’ve never really talked before about my relationship with
Teri June. And you know what? It felt good!”
    “Well, that’s nice, Karen, I know
you believe in free speech, and you’re preaching to the choir as far as I’m
concerned, but do you really – ”
    “But Hester, I’ve decided! Right
now! I want to come out – I want to finally get this out in the open between
us!”
    “ – think that riling up those
people is going to do any good – ’’ Hester stopped in mid-lecture, her eye
suddenly frozen on the cameo brooch fastening a dusty pink cardigan at Karen’s
neck.  “You – you what?”
    Karen slurped at her coffee, blew
smoke from her nose and grasped Hester’s hand.
     “Oh, God, I’ve wanted to tell
you for so long, but I promised Steve I’d be discreet back when he worked for
McCluskey, Wright & Schermerhorn – that firm was so stuffy. And even
now that he’s on his own – well, the old secret just got to be a habit. But if
I can’t tell my best friend, who can I tell? Oh, this feel’s so right!”
    Hester carefully set her cup back
in its saucer. She studied Karen’s overpowdered face beneath the crazy wig that
now sat slightly cockeyed, then cast a wary eye at a nearby table. A
professorial man with short gray hair topped by a hound’s-tooth deerstalker was
casting dark glances from over the top of his slim volume of Flaubert. Hester
adjusted her necktie and blew him a kiss.
    Leaning closer to Karen, she
spoke in a near-whisper. “Uh, just what is it you’re telling me, dear heart?”
    “Hester, don’t you understand? I
don’t just know Teri June! I am Teri June!”
    Hester slapped a palm to her
chest. For a moment, the only sound was a mad hissing as a double-tall-skinny
cappuccino was concocted across the cafe. Then Hester’s breath erupted in a
braying laugh reminiscent of one of the donkey-boys from “Pinocchio.”
    She covered her mouth. “Oh, my
lord, Karen, what are you saying?” Hester wheezed, then caught her breath. “What
do you mean you’re Teri June! I don’t know who could write all those god-awful
stories, but I know you well enough to know that – ”
    Karen glared at her.
    “That is, I mean, c’mon, Karen,
quit kidding around, what’s this really all about?”
    Karen sniffed and furiously
crushed out her cigarette in her coffee saucer. She bit her lip through a long,
pouting silence and then spoke quietly. “Hundreds of thousands of girls across
the country don’t seem to think they’re so god-awful.”
    It was Hester’s turn to stare. “Oh,
sweet Jesus, you’re serious.”
     “And no, it might not be great
literature, but it says something to girls that I think is important,” Karen
said, a defiant note entering her voice. “It lets them know that what they’re
going