The Last Annual Slugfest (23 page)

“We’re not at the sheriff’s department, Joey. She can make her own decisions here.”

He didn’t move. Behind him, in the living room, I could see the Greshams, who ran Gresham’s Hardware, and Sam Danielson, the soccer coach at the high school, and Heather Howard, who ran the travel agency near Guerneville. The room was packed. Rosa’s daughter Katie, the one who’d known Angelina in high school, stood talking to another daughter whose name I couldn’t remember. Behind them was a clutch of fishermen, some Chris’s age, many his father’s. But I couldn’t spot Rosa.

Suddenly, in the warm safety of Rosa’s house, all the fear I had pushed away while I was climbing around the fish ranch caught up with me. I felt myself shaking, exhausted. I leaned against the door-jamb. “If you want to guard me, Joey,” I said, “that’s fine. Rosa won’t be away from the kitchen long.”

Joey released my arm. I pulled out a chair and sank down onto it.

“You don’t have any right barging in here,” Joey said. But his words sounded like the face-saving growl of a dog as it backs off. I didn’t bother to answer.

In the living room, by the stairway that led to the more recently created rooms downstairs, stood Father Calloway and Faith Boord, one of Henderson’s resident eccentrics. She had inherited land from St. Agnes’s along the river. She could speak at length about the stock market and what her shares of Genentech or General Foods were doing. But her awareness apparently didn’t extend to her appearance. Her clothes were ill-assorted, nowhere near new, and none too decent smelling.

The stairway was cut almost to the middle of the living room floor. It, and a few odd nooks created in one of the other remodellings, made the walls as irregular as books on a shelf. It was from those stairs that Rosa emerged. I was surprised; in the last few years the basement rooms had been closed off in winter. Rosa paused to exchange a few words with the priest and his be-caped companion, then, putting a hand on his arm, she propelled him into the kitchen.

Inside the doorway, Rosa stopped dead. She stared.

I pushed a clump of hair back out of my face.

Father Calloway’s brow wrinkled with concern.

Seeing that round, ruddy face, the kind expression, the white hair, the portly frame, it was virtually impossible to imagine him seducing a young parishioner. Father Calloway seemed born to deliver forgiveness. The closest he came to evil was betting on the 49ers—and that with Maxie Dawkins. But if he had had a mind to seduce Leila Katz, it would have been so easy. He could have seduced her and absolved her all in one session.

“How are you, my dear?” he asked. “Rosa has just liberated me from a test of Christian patience. We’re taught not to speak ill, but Faith Boord moves one to override such injunctions. She must be the most tedious woman in the whole river area. She was just telling me, at great length, that she’s come into some money—some more money, she might have said. Sold some timber harvest rights. But apparently wealth hasn’t given her airs.” He grinned, casting a look at Faith Boord’s magenta cape and green rubber boots. When none of us responded, his smile faded. To Rosa, he said, “What’s the matter here?”

Rosa glanced at Joey, but didn’t speak.

I wasn’t about to answer him. I tried to catch Rosa’s eye, but she looked over my shoulder at the steamy windowpane. I didn’t have time to wait for things to settle themselves, for her to reconsider her decision to avoid me. But I could hardly ask her about Leila’s lover in front of Father Calloway. I couldn’t even tell her about the treaty being a phony with Joey Gummo standing there. All I would need would be for him to decide I knew something important enough for the sheriff to hear. I said, “Rosa, I have to talk to you.”

“No, Vejay.”

“Rosa, Leila Katz is missing. She’s not at home. She wasn’t at her store this afternoon. She was expecting a reporter to come there to do a story about her. When the reporter arrived, Leila was gone. The store was dark, and the door was open.”

“Oh, Vejay.” Rosa shook her head, but she still didn’t look at me.

“Rosa doesn’t know where Leila is,” Joey proclaimed. “Rosa’s been right here after she left the department, after she saw Chris there,” he added pointedly.

I waited for Rosa to say something, but she just stood. She looked like she’d been running on coffee and worry since last night.

“Rosa,” I said, “Chris is already in jail. What more harm can I do?”

She swallowed, then turned to look at Joey. Joey concentrated on the tomato sauce cooking on the stove.

“Dammit, Rosa, look at me! I nearly drowned trying to help Chris. Leila may be dead. Edwina
is
dead. Don’t you care at all?”

Joey started to speak, but Rosa held up her hand. She sighed, then slowly walked to the table and sat down next to me.

It was too much to hope that Joey and Father Calloway would leave us alone. Joey stationed himself by the tomato sauce, stirring it silently with a wooden spoon and glaring at me. And Father Calloway continued to stand inside the living room door.

I couldn’t ask about the treaty, or about Leila’s lover. That left the niece Edwina had gotten the treaty from. Leaning toward Rosa, I said, “Hooper told me that Edwina got the treaty from her niece in Washington. That would be the daughter of her other sister, the one who moved away, right?”

“That sister had a son, not a daughter. I told you that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, let me think. I’m trying to remember how I know. They were here that summer when we drove East, the sister’s family. So I never saw the boy. But I’m sure it was a boy, or at least pretty sure. Why do you say it was a girl?”

“Hooper told me that Edwina said so. Her name is Meg.”

“Named for her aunt, no doubt; Leila’s mother, Margaret,” Father Calloway said. He had moved toward the table, so that the three of us were huddled near the window, and Joey, by the stove, was at the farthest point of the small kitchen, where he could listen and observe, but still remain detached.

“I take it you didn’t see him or her the summer the family visited,” I said to Father Calloway.

“I’m trying to recall. It would have been like Edwina to bring her family to Mass. She never missed. But from what I’ve heard, that sister was something of a black sheep, the type for whom coming to Mass would not be a habit.”

I sighed.

Two of Chris’s friends, tanned, dark-haired men in gray fisherman’s sweaters, wandered in from the living room. One stared at me.

For a moment I was afraid he would yank me up and shove me out the door.

He looked away, embarrassed. He didn’t know me, didn’t realize I was the Vejay Haskell who’d gotten Chris arrested. He’d just been taken aback by my bedraggled appearance.

His friend put a hand on Rosa’s shoulder. “We’ve got to be going. But tell Chris we were here. And tell him not to worry about his boat. His friends will see she’s ready to go.” He forced a smile. “Maybe she’ll even be in better shape than if Chris was out there himself, huh, Pete?”

Pete grinned.

“You’re not leaving,” Rosa said, standing up to face them. “The sauce will be ready in just a few minutes.”

“We’d like to stay. I had two helpings earlier, so I’m not going to starve. But if I could stay, I’d have more.” Pete smiled at Rosa. “I’ve got to take another look at the bilges. With this storm, you can’t tell what will happen overnight. We may have plenty to do tomorrow.”

“Won’t hurt us to keep an eye on our slips at the dock, either,” the other said. “When you look at Bodega Harbor, you can’t believe there is a boat left anywhere else. Every salmon troller in California must be there. There are guys I haven’t seen in five years.”

“And those tugboats banging around. They shouldn’t let boats that size in. One of those gets washed into you and you’re in trouble. But we’re keeping an eye out for Chris. Nothing will happen to the
Rosa.
You tell him.”

“He’ll be grateful to you, Peter. You’re good friends to Chris,” she said, sitting back down.

As they headed out the door, Father Calloway started to push himself up. “I should be going, too. My day starts early tomorrow.”

“Oh no, Father. You can stay a little longer.”

He started to protest, but Rosa hushed him. “Vejay may need your help. You hear about things no one else does.”

He smiled uncomfortably, and sat back down. Next to Rosa, Father Calloway was the best source of information in the river area. He was always embarrassed when people mentioned that. Now, though, I wondered if his discomfort were solely caused by Rosa’s acknowledgment.

Rosa looked toward me, expecting me to go on. I hesitated, watching Father Calloway rub his forefinger nervously on the edge of the table. With him right there, I had avoided mention of Leila’s lover, the person Edwina had consigned to a life of second best. Now, for the first time, I wondered why Father Calloway had remained a parish priest outside a little town all these years. He was a personable, intelligent man. He could have been a monsignor by now, maybe even a bishop. Keeping my eyes on his face, I said to Rosa, “I asked you earlier about that affair Leila Katz had when she was in high school. Today, she left something on the chair in her store, to tell me that she had gone with that lover, or had been forced to go. I have to find out who that lover is.”

Father Calloway’s forehead wrinkled. Rosa sat with her eyes half closed.

“That was the summer of our trip,” Rosa said. “If there was any fuss, it must have died down before we got back.”

“Did anyone seem to be acting peculiar then? Not being where you’d expect them to be?” I looked from one to the other, but both shook their heads. There was a lull in the conversation in the living room. In the void, I could hear Joey stirring the tomato sauce. The spicy aroma reminded me that it had been a long time since my tofu sandwich.

“What about Edwina?” I asked. “Was she on the outs with anyone after that summer?”

For the first time, Rosa smiled. “Vejay, Edwina was piqued so much of the time that I couldn’t begin to recall who she was miffed with and when.”

I looked toward Father Calloway, but he merely shook his head.

“Isn’t there anything you can think of?” I asked. “Leila is the only person who knows her lover’s identity. If that person killed Edwina—”

“But why would he?” Father Calloway asked.

Rosa looked up.

I hesitated. I certainly didn’t want to bring up the treaty in front of Joey Gummo, but there was no alternative now, except to tell Father Calloway that I couldn’t explain and then slink home. I said, “Edwina’s Pomo treaty was a fake. Someone got hold of a fake treaty and gave it to her.”

“But how? Why? How do you know?” Their questions all came at once.

I explained about the treaty coming via Edwina’s niece, and about Harry Bramwell’s assurance that it was a phony. “Someone put a lot of effort into humiliating Edwina. But once Edwina found out about the treaty, she was determined to denounce it and, doubtless, the person who foisted it on her.”

Father Calloway nodded. “I heard her talk about finding a treaty like that. She would have been in Sacramento with the experts by now. To have announced it on television, and then have it turn out to be false …” He looked truly distressed. Of course, he had had years of practice looking concerned.

Rosa nodded. “You know Edwina didn’t have a sense of humor. It would have been awful for her.”

I leaned in toward Rosa. “And what she said when she found out the treaty was a fake was ‘And Leil protecting her!’ Who could that
her
refer to?”

Rosa shook her head.

“Maybe the niece,” Father Calloway said.

“But even if she
has
a niece, that niece wasn’t on stage at the Slugfest. The niece couldn’t have murdered her.”

“You think she meant Angelina, don’t you, Vejay?” Rosa asked sadly.

“I did. Now I don’t know. But I do think that her murder has to be connected with Leila’s disappearance, and that’s connected with her lover. And I need to know who that is. Think, Rosa, isn’t there anything you can recall that seems odd?”

She half closed her eyes, but said nothing.

“Think about the Slugfest judges,” I prodded.

For a moment her eyes stayed half closed. When they opened, she looked down at the empty table in front of us, then jumped up. “I should have gotten you some wine. And Father, where is your glass? I’m sorry; I’m forgetting myself.”

Before either of us could respond, she rushed to the cabinet and extricated two glasses from the rear of the shelf. Idly, I wondered how many wine glasses she had, if everyone in the living room was drinking, too. As she reached for the bottle, Joey muttered something to her. She smiled tentatively.

The kitchen was steamy warm from the cooking, but a draft from the living room chilled my legs.

Rosa set the glasses down in front of us, stepped back for her own, and sat down.

“What about Bert Lucci?” I asked.

For the first time Rosa flushed. “Bert? Well, Bert is what Bert is.”

“Bert knew Edwina for years. He certainly voiced his opinion of her—and it wasn’t good.”

Rosa nodded. She was definitely flushing now. She looked more uncomfortable than Father Calloway. I wondered what she knew, or didn’t want me to know.

“Where is Bert?” Father Calloway asked. “I figured I’d see him here.” He meant that, as a relative and friend, Bert would have been expected to be at Rosa’s now.

“He had a group of loggers booked at the lodge for tonight,” Rosa said. “But he was here this afternoon. He left just before the sheriff came. He’d been here patching the porch roof where it started to leak.”

“Good of him to help out,” Father Calloway said. “Good man, Bert Lucci.”

Rosa nodded, but she added nothing more. I waited. In the living room I could see Faith Boord talking to Jim and Sara Pasti, who owned a small family winery near Sebastopol. The word about Chris had spread fast.

What could Rosa know about Bert Lucci? Bert, as emcee of the Slugfest, had had his opportunity to poison the pizza. But Bert was a distant cousin of Rosa’s. I couldn’t believe he would choose her dish to put the poison in, even if no other was so suitable. For Bert to do that, he would have to have been nursing a hatred of Edwina that was much greater than the annoyance his carryings-on about her taking over the lodge indicated. And if he had been that angry, why had he done anything that would make life easier for her—why had he allowed her to commandeer the lodge? Even though she owned it, there had to be restraints about her tossing out parties that had booked a year ahead.