by Susan Dunlap
“There’s always next year.”
A woman with long dark hair caught at the back of her neck—Angelina Rudd—made her way in front of us, nodding curtly to Curry. I knew her by sight. She wasn’t much older than me, maybe thirty-five, but already she managed the fish ranch at the mouth of the river and had a house near the top of the hill in Jenner by the Pacific. She was rarely home when I read her meter, and at the fish ranch it was the guard who unlocked the gate and accompanied me to the meter and back. So even if my face looked familiar to her, it probably fell into that uncomfortable category of those that couldn’t be readily placed. And she was clearly too preoccupied to bother finding my niche at the moment. Looking past me, she took a long swallow from her glass.
“Don’t ruin your appetite,” Curry said to her, grinning. “We judges have to have fresh palates.”
She scowled. “I hope Crestwood Industries appreciates this. If they hadn’t insisted—if you hadn’t told them about this—I wouldn’t have set foot in here or have done anything to help that old witch out of a bind.”
When she had moved on, Curry Cunningham shrugged uncomfortably. Both Crestwood Logging and the Russian River Fish Ranch were parts of Crestwood Industries. There had been speculation that Angelina, who had run the fish ranch since the property had been purchased a year and a half ago, would be given charge of all Crestwood’s area industries. She’d even been called to the Crestwood headquarters in Baltimore to be interviewed. When Curry had arrived from there, six months later, with that job in the bag, Angelina hadn’t hidden her irritation. Apparently, time hadn’t diminished her bitterness.
“How come Bert is center stage here and not Edwina?” I asked, partly to fill the silence Angelina had left.
“Good sense on her part?” Curry replied.
“When she rushed out here this afternoon, she left him with enough work to keep him going till Wednesday. I’m surprised even she could get him to do anything else.”
Curry grinned again. “Don’t worry about Bert overdoing it. He called Hooper at the tobacco store. I dropped Hooper off here at five-thirty. So you can guess who’s done the hauling and lifting since then.”
I laughed. Clearly Bert had gotten to Hooper as soon as I had left, and well before Edwina had had a chance to get back to the tobacco store and intercept his call.
A scream went up by the table. “Sluggo,” Bert announced, had triumphed. After a break, he added, the gourmet judging would begin.
I headed inside. At the left, a table was set up for a bar. Most of the crowd was either making their way to or from it. A few were settling on folding chairs by the stage. On the platform five chairs were positioned behind a long table. At each place was a soup spoon, the de rigueur utensil of the Fest. Cooks of the slug-filled entrees would hold their dishes in front of each judge while he dug in with his spoon. The dishes wouldn’t be moved until he had taken his share.
I glanced to the right of the stage, at another long table where some of the entrees were already waiting. Hooper, Henderson’s self-pronounced Pomo Indian leader (and probably the town’s only full-blooded Pomo), seemed to be guarding them—not that I could imagine anything that could adulterate a slug dish. Next to the folding table was Edwina’s podium. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find Edwina up there already, assembling notes, preparing for whatever she planned to present to the television cameras. But her podium was empty.
I made my way through the crowd to the bar and bought a brandy and soda. Perhaps the receipts from the bar were the inducement Edwina had used to convince Bert Lucci to turn out the weekend’s fishermen in favor of the Fest.
Inside the kitchen Leila Katz bent over a container of red sauce that smelled so enticingly spicy that I was almost sorry I wouldn’t be offered any. Next to her stood Chris Fortimiglio—not the first person I would have expected to see here tonight. Chris, like his father and grandfather, was a fisherman. Now, with salmon season only three days away, I would have expected him to be at the dock in Bodega Bay, checking his lines or drinking with the fleet, listening for a hint of where the coho might be biting.
The Fortimiglios had been good friends to me when I moved up here from San Francisco two years ago. Chris’s mother, Rosa, had fed me often, and I’d spent many an evening in their living room, listening to the Fortimiglios and their numerous relatives and friends (who comprised almost all the winter population of Henderson) passing the word of who was doing what. Gossip was as integral to the Fortimiglio household as pasta—but there was no malice in that gossip. If someone in town had a problem, they wanted to be there to help. They had pulled my pickup truck out of the mud; they had brought me a kerosene lamp the first time the lights went out, knowing that I, a new arrival from the city, wouldn’t be prepared to deal with a power outage. They had made me feel a part of the town. And when we had all been caught up in a murder and it had separated us, I felt the loss. Chris was still friendly, but awkward about it, as if he was betraying a trust he didn’t quite believe in. As for Rosa, it was as if the sight of me brought it all back.
But if Curry Cunningham had left my questions unanswered, I didn’t expect that worry with Chris Fortimiglio. I glanced down at his tray. It held five small pastry shells, each filled with a suspiciously lumpy mixture in red sauce, topped with cheese, and sprinkled heavily with black olive bits. He was adjusting their positions on the tray. “What are they?” I asked.
“Slug Pizzas. They’re good.”
“Did you make them?” I asked in disbelief.
“Well …”
“Rosa?” Rosa’s culinary renown was unequaled in Henderson.
Chris looked away. He was one of those blond Italians—tall, already tanned from working on his boat. “Well …”
“How come she’s not here then?”
“You remember my nephew Donny, Vejay. Well, he bought some tobacco at Edwina’s store last fall, and he got sick. You know how bad his asthma is. We had to take him to the emergency room. Afterward, Mama told Edwina, and well … Mama’s forgiven Edwina, but Edwina’s still on her high horse. I was kind of surprised that she didn’t find some reason to throw out my entry.”
“I’m surprised you made an entry.”
Chris hesitated, then grinned. “It was Donny’s idea. His nose drops were pretty expensive. We could really use that fifty dollars. And you know, with Mama’s cooking, we’re hard to beat.”
Behind us, Leila Katz spooned her spicy sauce into long-stemmed crystal dishes. The kitchen had a festive atmosphere, more relaxed than I would have imagined anyplace with Edwina Henderson in charge. I glanced around. “Where is Edwina, Chris?”
“Isn’t she outside?”
“I haven’t seen her. Her podium is empty.”
Chris put down the tray. “She hasn’t been in here. I don’t know where she is. Have you seen her, Leila?”
Leila Katz was another person I wouldn’t have expected to see here. She was Edwina’s niece, though no one would have guessed by looking at her. Her short black hair hung in unruly curls, and her nose and cheeks were as soft and wide as Edwina’s were sharp. Only in shortness did she resemble her aunt. She ran the Women’s Space, a bookstore and general gathering place for women, straight and gay. It was no secret that lesbian rights was not one of Edwina’s causes. As the creator of the town museum (a room connected to the tobacco store), Edwina was nothing if not traditional. The last I had heard, she and Leila weren’t even speaking. “I thought she’d be here all day,” Leila said. “Bert was afraid she’d commandeer one of his bunks at night.”
“It’s almost nine o’clock,” I said. “She should have been here an hour ago. You don’t think something’s happened to her, do you?”
“Like she had a few too many to fortify her for her meal here?” Leila suggested.
All three of us stood silent, putting off the inevitable question. Finally, it was Chris who said, “Maybe someone ought to call her house and check.”
There was another silence. Le
ila, the obvious candidate, was waiting for one of us to offer. Chris shifted his weight.
In the main room I could hear Bert Lucci beckoning judges to the platform. The shuffle of feet suggested a concerted effort by the audience to get one last drink before sitting down.
Bert Lucci stuck his head into the kitchen. “Almost ready?”
“Are you going to start without Edwina?” I asked.
“No. She’s in her place. Looks a little green, but that’s not unusual for a judge, or for Edwina at any time.”
As one, Chris and Leila sighed.
I hurried out, and after a quick survey of the audience to spot Edwina’s curly-haired visitor—he wasn’t here—plopped down in the one remaining seat in the first row, right in front of Edwina. Bert Lucci had been right about her looking green. Unlike the Edwina of this afternoon, who could barely stand still long enough to give orders, now she slumped in her chair, noticing neither the audience nor the procession of platters from the kitchen. Maybe Leila had been right about her aperitifs. In the sticky heat of the crowded room, a number of drinkers were beginning to look sleepy.
The other judges seated themselves. Bert Lucci stood behind them demanding the audience’s attention.
“Why doesn’t he use the podium?” I asked Leila, who had come in and squatted beside me.
“Edwina told him to stay off. For herself only.”
“How come?”
“Who knows with Edwina? Bert said he wasn’t about to ask.”
“… Bobbs of our own Henderson PG and E office,” Bert announced. Mr. Bobbs looked every bit as green as Edwina. He tried to force a smile. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile, and this evening he didn’t break that record. The crowd applauded first his introduction, and, more heartily, his vain attempt to look cheerful.
Curry Cunningham was next. At his name, he stood and bowed, holding his stomach. It was clearly a crowd pleaser.
Angelina Rudd did smile. “If my fish can eat worms, I can eat slugs … I hope.” She was greeted by laughter. It seemed to surprise and please her. She hardly looked like the same moody woman who had snapped at Curry Cunningham.
The fourth judge was Father Calloway, the white-haired priest from St. Agnes’s. His was the parish of the fishing families. Many of his flock were in the audience, and they applauded him with enthusiasm. Father Calloway shook his head. “I’ve taken vows of chastity and obedience, not tastelessness. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Reward in heaven,” someone called from the back.
“And, taking the last seat, the traditional Slugfest host’s seat,” Bert Lucci said from behind Edwina Henderson, “is the lady who brought this auspicious affair to Henderson. And after the judging, if she can still speak, she tells me she’ll have an announcement of importance to make.”
I poked Leila. “Aha!”
The crowd applauded, but Edwina barely looked up.
I hadn’t paid attention to the light, but now I noticed the hot bright lights necessary for filming. Glancing back into the room, I spotted a hand-held television camera, but I couldn’t see the logo on it. Still, getting attention from any television station, no matter how small, was quite an accomplishment, one Edwina didn’t seem to be taking advantage of.
But Bert Lucci certainly was. Thrust into the limelight, he blossomed as an emcee. “Let’s hear it for the Grand Promenade,” he called out.
Curry Cunningham got up and stood back. “Ladies first.” He motioned Angelina and Edwina forward. Taking Father Calloway by the arm, he said, “Clergy second.”
“Fools rush in, eh?” the priest retorted as he headed toward the display table.
Mr. Bobbs was still in his chair. Mimicking a head waiter, Curry pulled the chair back, assisted him up, and gave the chair a shove back in place.
On the food table, each dish sat on its tray by the front edge, ready for its creator to pick up the tray and carry it the few steps to the left and offer it to the seated judges.
“Take a good look, judges,” Bert said. “Breathe in the aroma of garlic, and tomato sauce, and sautéed mollusk. Look for the best, the most slug-filled portions.” He clapped his hands slowly, starting the audience off on the rhythmic accompaniment to the halting pace of the judges as he led them around the front of the table, stopping them in front of each dish, so that each judge stood before a dish, then moved a step and paused by the next dish. The funereal pace of this enforced march was popular with the audience, which added foot stomping to the clapping. Clearly, it was not with Mr. Bobbs. Bert had to grab his arm to keep him from sailing past the last two dishes and back to his seat. And even when he did make it there, he nearly knocked over his chair in his haste to get in it.
When the rest of the judges were back in their seats, and the audience quiet, Bert picked up the first tray, of what appeared to be shrimp cocktails in long-stemmed crystal, and held it out for the audience to see. “Looks pretty tasty, doesn’t it? And that’s just from a distance. If you were up here where these judges just were, or where I am now, you’d be able to see those scrumptious little feelers on each head. Leila Katz”—he beckoned her onto the stage—“tells me she boiled the slugs, cleaned them, and put them in her special spicy slug sauce. Leila, here, you can serve the judges, so you can enjoy every one of their eager expressions. They’ve had time to look forward to this dish now.”
To the background of laughter, Leila Katz took the tray and held it before each of the five, as they took a cocktail.
“One bite,” Bert Lucci directed. “Just enough to pass judgment. All together now. Get those tasty little fellows on your spoons, judges. Wait. No cutting! You can handle a whole one, right, folks?”
The audience applauded.
The three middle judges held their filled spoons up. Curry Cunningham glanced at his and rolled his eyes. Father Calloway took a deep breath. But Angelina Rudd now looked no more apprehensive than if it was indeed a shrimp awaiting her. I recalled she was a fisherman’s daughter. She had probably eaten plenty more questionable things than this when playing around the docks. Edwina Henderson raised her spoon and held it steady, eyeing it with the expression from American Gothic. But it was Mr. Bobbs who garnered everyone’s attention. His hand shook as he lifted the laden spoon. Swallowing hard, he stared at it as if face-to-face with an infinity of Missed Meters.
“All right, judges,” Bert Lucci announced. “Down the hatch!”
Four spoons entered four mouths set in four faces filled with stoicism or disgust. The fifth spoon—Mr. Bobbs’s—remained unmoved.
“Pretty tasty, eh, folks?”
Mr. Bobbs lifted the spoon up in front of his mouth.
“Oh, look here, one of our judges is savoring the moment. Well, we’ve got time, Mr. Bobbs. You probably just wanted everyone’s attention, right?”
Mr. Bobbs stared at the spoon. His nostrils drew back from the smell.
“Ah, yes, the aroma of fine food, right, Mr. Bobbs?” Bert Lucci sounded more like an emcee and less like a handyman with each comment. Mr. Bobbs didn’t move.
“Let’s give him some encouragement, folks.”
The audience began to clap rhythmically.
“Down the hatch!” someone called out in time with the clapping. The rest of the audience picked up the chant. I could make out the voices of two meter readers, loud and gleeful. “Down the hatch! Down the hatch!”
Mr. Bobbs opened his mouth.
“Down the hatch!”
He swallowed hard, shut his eyes, and shoved the spoon in his mouth.
The room shook with applause and stamping of feet.
Mr. Bobbs’s eyes opened wide. Then he gagged. He clutched his throat, stumbled off the platform, and staggered into the bathroom.
Buy The Last Annual Slugfest Now!
A Biography of Susan Dunlap
Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of c
rime writing.
Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.
One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book, Karma (1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.
After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published Pious Deception, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.
Dunlap concluded the Smith series with Cop Out (1997). In 2006 she published A Single Eye, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is No Footprints (2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.
In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.
Dunlap and her father at the beach, probably Coney Island. ”“My happiest vacations were at the beach,” says Dunlap, “here, at the Jersey shore, at Jones Beach, and two glorious winter weeks in Florida.”