Murder, Ken Kesey, and Me: A Mystery Laced with Humor

MURDER, KEN KESEY, AND ME

A Mystery Laced with Humor

By Diana Deverell

Published by Sorrel Press

www.sorrelpress.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Excerpt: A bad odor strong enough to name

Praise for Diana Deverell’s international thrillers

DEDICATION

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER EBOOKS BY DIANA DEVERELL

COPYRIGHT

A bad odor strong enough to name

I reached the site at ten forty-five. A battered stepvan was parked in the drive, fifty feet from the shack. I rumbled slowly by it. No one sat in the driver’s seat. I parked a yard in front of the vehicle and climbed off the motorcycle. The clouds had turned darker and the willow branches shivered in the cooling breeze.

A lanky dude came out of the shack. He and trotted toward me. The guy was my age and had on a dark blue oil-stained coverall reminding me of a garage mechanic. He stopped when he reached the van and looked at me inquiringly. You the lady wants to make a movie in the cabin?

I am. I peered at the stitching on his coverall but read only the name Harvey.

Are you from Triple H? I asked.

Right. He leaned into the van and pulled out a clipboard. Sign my work order and I’ll get started. He sounded as though he was reciting from a script. He grinned as he passed me the paperwork.

I got a whiff of stale sweat and a glimpse of big gaps between his remaining teeth. Which appeared no cleaner than his vehicle.

Harvey inspired no confidence in me.

I glanced at the work order, scrawled my name next to a red X, and handed it back.

He glanced down at my signature and back at me as he brushed stringy hair off his forehead. The back of his hand was greasy, his little finger ended at the last joint, and all his nails were black.

Star Stevens, he muttered.

Man, I was tired of the disbelieving reaction to my hokey name.

Right. Star. I’m the one needs the toxicity test. I got a movie company coming this afternoon to shoot some scenes.

I waved a hand toward the shack. Are you finished?

No. I was just checking to see what tests I need to run. Harvey’s words came out faster and smoother, as though he’d returned to his script.

I’ll go pinpoint the spots which most concern us.

He stared at me dumbly for ten seconds and shrugged. Whatever, he said, turning back to the van.

I hurried toward the shack. Traffic yesterday had crushed the ground cover around the building, giving the area a bombed-out appearance.

Under the darkening sky, the place looked forlorn and spooky. Willow leaves still gave off the strongest scent but today something noxious lurked beneath.

Had the corpse left permanent traces?

The bad odor was stronger when I reached the porch steps. Strong enough to name.

Cat urine.

I hadn’t smelled the stink yesterday.

A loose end of yellow and black crime scene tape fluttered like a butterfly wing in a gentle breeze. Harvey had broken it going in.

As I reached for the doorknob, I heard an engine start. Twisting to look behind me, I saw the van backing down the drive. Damn, what was Harvey doing?

I turned the knob and pushed open the door.

A shiny one gallon can sat beside the wood stove. The can was the familiar forest green color favored by a leading manufacturer of camping products. The orange warning label pictured a portable camp stove.

I stumbled back from the open door. Whirling, I leaped from the porch and hit the ground running.

The shack exploded with sudden and intense noise, like a thunderclap when the lightning’s directly overhead.

The tin roof shrieked as the burst shredded it.

PRAISE FOR DIANA DEVERELL’S FICTION

Nora Dockson legal thrillers

A great character, a great series—I highly recommend it to people. (Stephen Campbell, CrimeFiction.FM)

Deverell has a gift that grabs the reader so one cares about what happens to every character in the story. Once one starts Nora’s clear sighted and brilliant pursuit of justice it’s hard to put the book down! (Amazon reader review)

The series is great; it’s got the theme of the hard scrabble up-from-poverty Nora doing her battle of wits against a scheming, social-climbing assistant attorney general, laced with tons of good detective work. (Amazon reader review)

Help Me Nora is a compelling gritty novel. I could not put it down and found the legal background fascinating. (Goodreads review)

Bella Hinton political thrillers

Bitch Out of Hell could be a story on the six o’clock news - the outsourcing of America’s military functions, shady corporate dealings, the suspicious death of a whistleblowing board member, and a special prosecutor’s investigation. (iBooks reader review)

Helluva read! I really enjoyed this. I hope there are more books coming. The characters are intriguing, Bella is intelligent and sassy, and the plot is entertaining. (Amazon reader review)

. . . a delightfully humorous and suspenseful read with realistic characters . . . and the plot twists and weaves itself into a satisfying conclusion. For a fun thriller read, check this out. (Kings River Life review)

Casey Collins international thrillers

12 Drummers Drumming

Chilling suspense and heated passion—A brilliant debut. (Barbara Parker, Edgar-finalist author of Suspicion of Innocence)

Night on Fire

Deverell’s solid second Casey Collins novel [has] engaging narrative, gripping mystery, and wily plot twists. (Publishers Weekly)

East Past Warsaw

. . . a tale that makes you pray it’s fiction. (S.E. Warwick, mystery reviewer)

China Box

an intricate chess match of espionage, international wheeling-dealing, and love plays out in Washington and Silicon Valley. (Amazon reader review)

DEDICATION

For Carol and Jim Deverell

1

Two minutes after I stumbled over the body, the Federales showed up.

The first cop through the shack door had dark hair and wore a windbreaker. He flashed his shield at me as he barked out his name. Special Agent Brian Kennedy. FBI. And you are?

Estrella Stevens, I answered. Stevens Location Scouts.

Kennedy’s gaze traveled from my face downwards, headed toward my feet and what I’d first taken for a pile of rags beside them.

I blurted out my perfectly innocent explanation for being in the shack. Look—

The FeeBee stiffened, cutting off my speech with a hand motion. He’d realized the mess on the floor had once been a living being. In one stride, he was beside me, gripping my elbow, maneuvering me to the side.

A second man, his graying locks covered by a ball cap, crowded in after Kennedy and headed immediately for the body. He knelt, placing two fingers on the victim’s neck.

He’d detect no pulse beneath the cold skin. I’d tried to find one—before I caught sight of what had been done to his face. To keep from seeing him again, I focused on deciphering the words on the back of the kneeling man’s jacket: DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY

A shiver twitched down my spine. The shack huddled in the shade of a stand of overgrown willows and only scattered sunlight reached the tin roof and crept through the four grimy windows. The air in the gloomy room was cold and smelled of mildew and decay. Despite the warm June afternoon, goose bumps pimpled my bare arms.

A black woman in a Lane County Sheriff’s Department jacket appeared on the threshold, peering into the murk. She held her pistol in a two-handed grip, pointed down as though playing a part in a TV series.

Kennedy acknowledged her and jerked his head in my direction. I’ll deal with this young lady outside. Here’s what you do. He snapped out terse instructions.

Old lessons, learned from my eternally protesting father during countless demonstrations, kicked in. I carefully noted the key words I was hearing—suspicious death; need to know; full investigation; your shop; keep a lid on it. And I considered the implications of every move the law enforcement personnel made. The effort took my mind off death.

The FBI. The DEA. The sheriff. Together, they made a Joint Narcotics Task Force. The locals and the feds working together to make a bust. The FeeBee giving the orders, the sheriff’s deputy dealing with a potential homicide, DEA sniffing for controlled substances.

No wonder our film director client thought this shack the perfect setting for a scene in a drug lab. It was a drug lab.

Kennedy tugged me through the open door, across the sagging porch, and out into the sunshine where he demanded to see my driver’s license. I handed it over along with my business card.

My father’s 1977 Honda Gold Wing was three steps away. I’d climbed off the bike a dozen minutes before and my helmet still rested on the seat. Since then, a black van with smoked windows had snugged up beside it. I angled toward the van and leaned against the driver’s sun-heated door. Despite its warmth, I was still cold. I untied the hooded sweatshirt looped around my waist and slipped it on, hugging myself.

The digital camera in the pocket bumped against my left hip bone. By reflex, I patted the pocket on my other side to reassure myself my father’s lightweight and very expensive electronic geo-tagging device was still safe. I’d taken half a dozen shots before the flash revealed the wax-like gloss of human skin among the rags. I’d shoved the camera into my pocket as I bent to help.

The image of the ruined face appeared in my mind. I blanked it out and filled my lungs with fresh air.

The pungent scent of full-blown willow foliage replaced nastier odors in my nose. A stab of sorrow pierced me for the man inside the shack who’d never know another Oregon summer.

I felt weak and wan, yet the van’s oversized side mirror flashed a reflection as brown skinned and ebony haired as the day I was born in El Salvador.

My American father, Joseph Conrad Stevens, had been in Central America opposing US policy when he fell in love with my Salvadoran mother, Luz de Maria Selva. Estrella Stevens y Selva—me—arrived less than a year after they met. When I was little, the three of us lived in the Salvadoran seaside village of La Libertad and everyone called me Estrellita. Then, Mom’s political outspokenness attracted dangerous interest and overnight we relocated to the Willamette Valley of Dad’s native Oregon.

Today, because I’d ridden the Honda, I’d worn my heaviest black jeans and boots for protection. The van mirror made me look taller and thinner than my five feet four inches and one hundred and ten pounds, a lean and mean biker chick with a butch haircut. An image not likely to endear me to this law enforcement officer.

Kennedy stepped closer, waving my license. Says ‘Estrella’ here. He held up my card in his other hand. But professionally you go by ‘Star’ Stevens?

His skeptical cop tone made the Anglo version of my name sound like a porn actress. Right, I retorted. Now you show me your ID.

Kennedy yanked out his badge case, flipping it open again. He extended his arm, exposing the French cuff on his white shirt. A University of California golden bear grinned at me from the silver cufflink, a taunting reminder of my post-college wrong turn into Silicon Valley, a hotbed of false values and false lovers. The worst heartbreaker had been a smartly dressed Berkeley grad too.

I squinted at Kennedy’s photo. Did this man really have a cleft in his chin? I had to tilt my head back to check. He was a good ten inches taller than I was.

My glance met steely blue eyes, the skin around them a shade darker than his tanned face. A wayward lock of dark hair fell over his right eyebrow. And the dent was there, so tiny it might have been made by a baby’s thumb.

I felt as if I knew him, the same reaction I have when I run into a local newscaster at my bank. Yet, I didn’t recall seeing this man on television. I waved away his ID.

So, Star Stevens, he began in the sneaky conversational interrogation style I hate. You know the dead man?

I shook my head. Don’t think so. Hard to tell.

You want a second look?

No. Something had crushed the man’s forehead and nose, leaving behind a bloody mass of protruding bone and torn flesh and no distinguishable eyes. But his mouth had still been intact, open to show more inflamed gum than teeth. The mouth of a poor old man, though his scrawny torso was youthful. Probably no older than I am, little more than thirty. I don’t know him.

Kennedy continued in the same offhand manner. What brought you out here?

Work, I said, testing to see if my voice would do the job. When it didn’t break on one word, I felt safe trying for more, yet paused a moment longer before continuing. I’ve lived in the US since I was five years old and my English has no accent. But when I’m upset, I sometimes hear myself using overly complex sentence structures from my mother’s elegantly polite Spanish. The one now forming in my head was, Had I been aware of your special FBI interest in this locale, I would not have brought my fine Latina ass within a hundred miles of it.

Not likely to be helpful.

Instead, slowly and precisely, I explained. You heard a movie’s being made in Eugene?

Right, Kennedy answered. About Ken Kesey. He glanced at my card before tucking it into the pocket of his windbreaker. Your company is scouting locations for the film?

My father’s company, I corrected. I’m doing some legwork for him. I pointed to the farmhouse on the other side of the fence line. We signed the house to stand in for Kesey’s childhood home. I sent photos to the director in LA. He spotted this shack in the background. Wrote a new scene which has to take place in it. I rushed here to make sure the shack is usable.

It’s not. Kennedy raised his voice to emphasize the negative. This is a crime scene. The homicide investigators will cordon it off.

I widened my eyes. Surely, the homicide investigators won’t make it off limits for long?

They might finish quickly. His shrug was indifferent. But somebody’s been cooking meth in the shack. The toxic residues would poison your cast.

You sure they were making meth? Isn’t there supposed to be a telltale odor of cat urine? I lifted my nose and sniffed the air. I don’t smell any. Of course, I’d heard chatter our Lane County meth cookers had wised up and changed their recipe to get rid of the stink. But maybe the FBI hadn’t gotten the message.

Kennedy laughed knowingly. Forget cat urine. He waved a hand toward the overflowing trash can at the side of the shack. What you should notice are those empty Suda-Fed boxes and dirty coffee filters in the garbage.

Look again, I challenged. The trash sat out through last week’s rainstorm. Nobody cooked drugs here recently. Besides, we have at least three local companies competing to clean up old meth labs. Won’t take more than a day’s hard work to make the shack safe as a neonatal intensive care unit.

Kennedy snorted. "Money Magazine never mentions this stuff when they put Eugene on their ‘Ten Best Places to Live’ list. But shack cleanup is beside the point. Once Homicide is through with it, the DEA will take possession as a narcotics trade asset. They won’t want you messing with their property."

I gave Kennedy my sunniest smile. Bet the DEA would like the good publicity which would come from helping tell the story of our most famous local author.

Right, DEA will love a movie featuring a counterculture dope smoking hero. Kennedy eyed me. You say you’re scouting locations on behalf of your father. How long has he been in the business?

Since the sixties. Lucked into it when he was a student at the U of O. I didn’t know why Kennedy was asking about my father, but answering in detail was an easy way to cooperate and ease his suspicion of me. "You ever see Five Easy Pieces?"

With Jack Nicholson, Kennedy confirmed.

Right. My dad signed up the Denny’s restaurant in Glenwood for the scene where the waitress pisses Jack off.

And he clears the table onto the floor. Kennedy laughed as though he was visualizing the mess.

I added, "When Nicholson came back to Oregon to shoot One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he recommended my dad to the director."

Milos Forman, Kennedy interjected.

Hey, you know your movies. I heaped admiration on my tone. "Dad worked on Animal House too."

A cult classic. Kennedy nodded sagely. Probably gave his career a boost.

Sure did. My head motion matched his. And this project is another big one.

Kennedy gave me an inquiring look.

I recited the