The Last Annual Slugfest

by Susan Dunlap

  “So you told Edwina Henderson that?” Obviously the sheriff had heard of the incident.

  “I went down to the store the next day. I figured she should know.”

  “And what happened?”

  “She got all up on her high horse about Donny being old enough to look out for himself, and her not being responsible for the illnesses in my family.” A flicker of a smile broke through Rosa’s taut expression. “Edwina realized she was wrong. She just couldn’t bring herself to say so.”

  “Did you think Edwina Henderson would have barred a Slugfest entry with your name on it?”

  “Well, no. But I knew this was a big event for her. I wouldn’t have considered making an entry, but Donny made such a fuss about it. He said it would pay for his nose drops. They’re prescription—Estrin—and they’re expensive. So I agreed to cook the pizzas. I just didn’t want to create more turmoil for Edwina by turning up myself. But really, everyone who knows us knew that I cooked those pizzas. Chris doesn’t cook.”

  “Sheriff,” I said, “are you telling us that the poison was definitely in the pizzas?”

  “Everything suggests that.” The lines around his mouth had softened as he’d listened to Rosa. Now they stiffened again.

  “But you don’t know.”

  “No, I don’t have evidence. The pizzas were eaten completely.”

  “Then why have you arrested Chris?”

  “Because,” he said with deliberateness, “the poison was almost certainly in his dish.”

  “Any of the judges, or Hooper, or Bert Lucci had access to that dish when it was on the table. Hooper told me that when they circled the table, every one of the judges had his back to him at some point. Why not arrest them?”

  The typewriter stopped. The buzz from the air grate seemed louder.

  “Miss Haskell, Chris Fortimiglio had strong reason for wanting to keep that treaty secret.” He paused to see if I could rebut that, then said, “He had access to the poison.”

  “What was the poison?”

  “Liquid nicotine.”

  “Nicotine!” Rosa and I said together.

  “Chris doesn’t smoke,” Rosa said.

  The sheriff nodded to her and shifted his gaze back to me. He seemed to be balancing between the sympathetic tone he would have chosen had she been here alone and the supercilious one he’d been using with me. “Nicotine, as you ladies may know, is a pesticide. In the past it was very popular in dealing with aphids and flying insects. Chris helped his father when he worked in town, cleaning people’s yards and doing repairs, didn’t he, Mrs. Fortimiglio?”

  “In off season, when there were no fish, he did, and before the floods, when there was a lot of work needing to be done.”

  The sheriff nodded. He made a notation on his pad. The typewriter started again with a rush of electronic pips. “So then, Mrs. Fortimiglio, Chris knew where local people kept pesticides.”

  Rosa seemed to crumble from within. I put my hand on her arm. “Rosa, it’s okay. Everyone knows Chris helped his father. You didn’t tell the sheriff anything new.” Glaring at Wescott, I said, “All sorts of people have pesticides. Saying Chris is the only one with access to a pesticide is ridiculous, particularly when you’re talking about nicotine. For Christ’s sake, Edwina ran a tobacco store.”

  “Miss Haskell,” he said, with ill-concealed triumph, “the only reason to have pure nicotine in a tobacco store is if you want to kill someone.”

  “You can boil down smoking tobacco,” I said.

  “If you have the time and are willing to run the risk of being discovered with the evidence burned into your equipment. Why would you do that, Miss Haskell, when liquid nicotine is already available?”

  “That still doesn’t point to Chris. They’ve got pesticides at the fish ranch, for instance.”

  “Are you suggesting the killer drove all the way out to Jenner and back?” he asked.

  “I’m just saying that access to nicotine is widespread. It’s not reason enough for arresting Chris.”

  “True.”

  “Then why?” Rosa asked in a barely audible voice.

  Still looking at me, Wescott said, “We found the container the nicotine was in. It’s a tiny plastic squeeze bottle. An Estrin bottle.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I TOLD THE SHERIFF that Maxie Dawkins, the guard at the fish ranch, and probably any number of other people, took Estrin, but he cut me off with the remark that Maxie had not been at the Slugfest. When I suggested someone could have used his bottle, the sheriff actually laughed, then caught himself and stopped abruptly. Did I, he asked, as he stood up, assume the killer had somehow discovered the treaty in the locked drawer of Edwina’s podium, then excused himself from the festivities at Steelhead Lodge, driven half an hour to the fish ranch and half an hour back, for the pleasure of using an obscure nose-drop bottle? The bottle, he pointed out, was a convenience. It was not the entire focus of the crime. And it was easily accessible only to someone like Chris, whose nephew, Donny, used Estrin. With that, the sheriff took a step toward the door.

  At least, I thought, standing up, this discovery was not my fault. Or so I assumed, until Rosa asked Wescott where he’d found the Estrin bottle. He’d uncovered it in a garbage can that he’d spotted at the lodge when he came out to examine the treaty!

  I walked out of the building with Rosa, waiting for her to say something. But her silence was as total as it had been before, and now it seemed final. I waited as she got into her truck, and only moved on when she shut the door.

  Without bothering to avoid the ankle-deep puddles, I walked slowly across the parking lot to my truck, and climbed in. The cab was cold. I didn’t touch the ignition. I sat staring into the rain. It was heavier now, blowing across the parking lot in waves. I looked through it at the building. Glass and metal, it had the appearance of the bottom two stories of a skyscraper, suitable to Los Angeles, not Guerneville. The old sheriff’s department was a beige stucco building that slumped back against the beach. It had looked like a place you could feel safe explaining why you hadn’t paid your parking tickets. But this razor-edged building was one you would be called to by a computer notice; where, rather than being presumed innocent until proven guilty, you’d be held until you could show the computer had erred. It was a building where innocent men were held for murder.

  I didn’t consider going home now. I didn’t consider whether to keep clear of Chris’s dilemma. The sheriff hadn’t handled the interview professionally or fairly. He’d let his anger with me overwhelm the sympathy he’d felt for Rosa when she walked in. He was a decent man, and by now, I felt sure he was even angrier with himself, and me. He wasn’t out to get Chris. In the twenty hours since Edwina’s murder, he probably hadn’t done any more active seeking for clues than to interview those of us who had had access to the food. He probably hadn’t looked for evidence against Chris per se. It had just piled up in front of him—thanks, in large part, to me. Regardless of what Rosa wished, by now I was too culpable to just walk away.

  Nicotine, I thought. Anyone could get it. But for someone to bring it to the Slugfest meant that that person was planning to kill Edwina. And if the motive was to keep the treaty secret, that meant the killer knew about the treaty. And according to Hooper, the only one besides Edwina who knew what she was going to say was himself.

  Why would Hooper admit to knowing about the treaty? Surely he would realize how incriminating it was. But with moody, volatile Hooper, the normal logic didn’t hold. I couldn’t predict how Hooper would react. All I knew of Hooper was what he had told me—assuming that was true—and that he alone benefitted from the treaty. As I would have admitted to the sheriff, had he asked me, that was hardly grounds for an arrest.

  I turned the key in the ignition. I needed to know more about Hooper—background that Rosa could give me. But I couldn’t ask her now.

  Leaving the lights off, I stared into the empty parking lot. Then I noticed it wasn’t empty. A man in tan rain gear was
making his way toward a beige sedan. As I focused on him, I realized it was Mr. Bobbs.

  Mr. Bobbs! What was he doing at the sheriff’s department today? Sheriff Wescott himself had told me they’d interviewed Mr. Bobbs last night. Why had they called him in for a second go around? Was he a more serious suspect than I had imagined? Or did he know something I hadn’t considered?

  He got in his car and drove toward the exit of the lot. He hadn’t even warmed his engine. How rattled was he to forget or forego that? I had seen him sit in the PG&E lot for ten minutes warming the engine of a vehicle that had just been used. Now his car sputtered as he pulled out of the sheriff’s department lot. I followed.

  He drove slowly. I had never ridden with him, but I wasn’t surprised that he kept the car exactly at the speed limit. If he had been on company time, he would have been intent on upholding the unimpeachability of his position, lest anyone should suggest that the manager of the Henderson PG&E office was a scofflaw. Now, after five, on Saturday, with the office closed and the week’s route books safely on their way to the computer in San Francisco, there was no reason to rush. He was just filling time till Monday morning.

  He slowed as he passed the curve by the W in the river, where the Pomo rancheria would be. I looked to the left, but if Hooper was still there, he was invisible from the road. There was no car or truck parked there, but that didn’t mean anything. Hooper didn’t have a vehicle.

  The rain hit sharply on the windshield. Overhead, the California laurel branches hung low. The redwoods pushed up above them. This patch of road, right before the Henderson line, where River Road became North Bank Road, was one of my favorites. The canopy of trees reminded me of being a child, of suspending a blanket over the tops of folding chairs and making a secret passage. The redwoods and eucalyptus and laurels didn’t quite meet across much of River Road, but they crowded to the sides of it all the way to St. Agnes’s, well beyond Henderson. The charm of the road, its unspoiled quality, was one of the things that had clinched my decision to move up here. “Nature’s high-rises,” my ex-husband John had called them on his one unexpected visit after I settled in Henderson. He had looked appraisingly at those redwoods that had been standing longer than the white man had been on the continent, and said, “Someone could make a fortune from this lumber.” When I had reminded him that stripping the riverbanks would create a public outcry, he had smiled and said, “And someone else could make a fortune with a good PR campaign. Of course, it would have to be very good.”

  After John had left, I had been angry, but more than that, puzzled by his reaction. John was the perfect public relations man. He knew how to assess what customers wanted. He knew how to adapt it into a workable and appealing campaign. He was a master at getting along with people. His ability to appear agreeable had so permeated his views and reactions that I had found it increasingly difficult to ferret out any substance beneath his smile. In the end, I had felt that I was living with a facsimile of a husband, created from public opinion polls. We hadn’t argued; John hadn’t been offensive; he simply hadn’t, in reality, been there at all. And that day when he arrived unannounced in Henderson, his attitude had been so unlike anything I’d seen before that I’d been more stunned than irritated. But I hadn’t wanted to dwell on John’s character—the time for that was long gone. Instead, I had focused my concern on the redwoods, and had been comforted by running into Curry Cunningham and having him assure me that no one could come along and decimate miles of riverbank. “You need a Timber Harvest Permit for anything over three acres,” he had said.

  Ahead, the Henderson traffic light was green. I stepped on the gas. It would be a long wait if the light turned red. Mr. Bobbs slowed. In my rearview mirror I counted six trucks and cars. The light turned yellow. Mr. Bobbs stopped. I jammed on my brakes. A red Mustang screeched to a stop inches from my bumper. The truck behind him looked like it was coming through my rear window. Obviously, all six of them had planned on making it through the light.

  My fingers were pressed white against the steering wheel. Deliberately I flexed them. As we sat, waiting long after the cross traffic had passed, the Mustang driver raced his engine. When the light changed, Mr. Bobbs continued straight on North Bank Road, at exactly twenty-five miles per hour. The Mustang driver honked. I threw up my hands. He honked again. In the heavy rain, the sidewalks were empty. The doors to the shops were closed and the lights were on inside. I knew Mr. Bobbs didn’t live out this way—I read his meter. Where was he going?

  He slowed down to twenty.

  The Mustang driver hit the horn and the gas, and pulled around me into the left lane in front of an oncoming semi. I hit the brakes. The semi swerved right. Behind me tires squealed. The Mustang barely squeezed back in front of Mr. Bobbs.

  Mr. Bobbs put on his righthand turn signal and pulled into the lot of Davidson’s Plant Shop.

  I found a spot at the other end of the lot, and sat till the blood stopped throbbing in my head. Then I turned off the engine. Should I go over and see if Mr. Bobbs was all right? After being interrogated at the sheriff’s department, maybe this near miss on the road was too much. He might be much more upset than I was. Still, I hesitated because, among other reasons, having tailed him for six infuriating miles, I didn’t want him to pull himself together and drive off while I was walking across the parking lot.

  But he didn’t. It was he who got out of his car and trotted across the lot into the plant shop, as if nothing had happened. I hurried after him.

  The oblong building was divided into three sections, with the counter by the glass door at one end, potted house plants in the middle, and bags of fertilizers at the far end. There, Mr. Bobbs was hoisting a two-cubic-foot bag of potting soil onto his shoulder. It was far and away the most athletic thing I had ever seen him do.

  As he turned toward the counter end of the building, he spotted me. “Miss Haskell.” He gave me a small, acknowledging nod and kept walking. Drops of water fell from the brim of his tan sou’wester. If the near accident he’d caused distressed him, he gave no indication. He merely looked irritated and preoccupied—normal for him.

  Not bothering to mask my anger, I said, “I saw you coming out of the sheriff’s department. What did he want with you today?”

  “Miss Haskell?”

  “The sheriff had a man talk to you last night. Why did he need to see you again today?”

  He glared at me. This was hardly the kind of demand he expected from an employee. But my relations with him were so strained normally that this couldn’t make them much worse. And despite my near-the-limit Missed Meter count, I did my job too well for him to find reason to fire me.

  Mr. Bobbs’s normally sallow complexion took on a tint of orange as he nervously looked around the shop. There was a woman behind the counter, an elderly couple assessing a fern in the middle of the room, and Grant Quistle, a lawyer from Guerneville, looking at fish emulsion. Mr. Bobbs lowered his voice. “It’s none of your concern, Miss Haskell.”

  I stepped in front of him, blocking the aisle. He moved back quickly. The potting soil bag jerked with the motion and looked for an instant like it was going to fall and carry him with it.

  “Mr. Bobbs, what do you know about Edwina Henderson’s murder? She died an awful death; Hooper may not get his Pomo rancheria; and Chris Fortimiglio is in jail. What is it you told the sheriff?”

  Mr. Bobbs swallowed; his neck was as orange as his face. “I have no knowledge of Miss Henderson’s death. I was not aware that she had died until the sheriff’s deputy arrived at my door last night.”

  “But you were at the judges’ table. You walked around the food table in the Grand Promenade. You saw what the other judges did before any of you ate a bite. What do you know about the judges, or Bert Lucci, or Hooper?”

  Mr. Bobbs rebalanced the plastic bag on his shoulder. Had he been in the security of the PG&E office, he would have stalked by me. But here, amidst strangers, in the ungainly position under the potting soil bag, he looked
around warily. The white-haired couple was at the counter paying for a four-inch potted fern. Grant Quistle had abandoned the fish emulsion and was reading the back of a box of snail pellets.

  I wanted to grab Mr. Bobbs by his orange neck and shake his secret out of him. Instead I took a breath and said, “You’ve been in Henderson for years, in a position of importance. It’s only reasonable that you would be aware of things that others might miss.” For a moment, I wondered if I had laid it on too thick, but Mr. Bobbs only nodded. And just when I thought that nod was all I was going to get, he said, “Hooper had his power on four years ago.”

  That was hardly the type of disclosure I had hoped for. But it was just like Mr. Bobbs to recall the month a customer—an “account,” as he called them—had the electricity turned on, and to find it significant. I waited, hoping there was some connection between this bland fact and Edwina’s murder.

  Lowering his voice, Mr. Bobbs said, “He complained about the deposit. Said it was a hardship.”

  Aha! I knew Mr. Bobbs’s opinion of accounts who didn’t want to pay a deposit—low-lifes who would suck the wires dry and skip town, leaving months of non-pay on the records of the Henderson office; deadbeats, who would ruin the office statistics and nullify all Mr. Bobbs’s efforts in fighting us over Missed Meters.

  “He must have had a record of deposit somewhere. Did he have previous service?”

  “Not in his name.”

  “His family was here when he was in high school. That wasn’t so very long ago—maybe fifteen years. He wouldn’t be able to use that deposit, of course, but—”