The Last Annual Slugfest (6 page)

He glanced around, assessing the room and its occupants. Then his eyes rested on me. “I might have known,” he muttered. “Miss Haskell, I’m surprised you get invited out anywhere.”

I could see Curry Cunningham staring questioningly at him. But I knew what the sheriff meant. In the two years I had lived in Henderson, I had been involved in two murders. He had suspected me of one. When he’d come out to investigate the second killing and found me there, he had said, in the same tone he used now, “Does no one die in this town without your attention?”

“The body was found in the kitchen, is that right?” he asked.

“By the stove,” Bert said.

He strode toward the kitchen. Hesitantly, Bert followed. After all, it was his kitchen. The rest of us shifted in our seats but didn’t stand. A uniformed deputy and a camera-laden man in rain gear walked past us and into the kitchen. I suspected that they would be photographing the scene and preserving what was left of the vomit. I could do without seeing that.

Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed, not so much by Edwina Henderson’s death as by the manner of it. Edwina had been a nuisance much of her life. Despite the enormity of her devotion and energy, her achievements had been scant and of importance to few but herself. She was like a Fourth of July sparkler sending her flashes of light out to die in the dark. She needed to be told to relax; she needed an arm around her shoulder. But she was too prickly for anyone to come that close.

She did not deserve having to force down offensive food and die in her own vomit.

I hesitated, then, taking a deep breath, pushed myself up and walked to the bar, hunted around for the brandy bottle, and poured myself another drink.

It was at that point that the sheriff walked back into the room. “I’ll need to talk with each of you.” Eyeing my glass, he added, “Keep yourself in shape to tell me what’s happened, Miss Haskell. I’ll start with you, Mrs. Rudd.” Turning to Bert Lucci, he asked, “Is there a private room we can use?”

Bert looked around the room. It was clear from his expression that privacy had never been a request at Steelhead Lodge. “My office, I guess. It’s not very large, and I haven’t straightened it up—”

“That’s fine. That door there?” The sheriff indicated a door at the back of the room.

“That’s it.”

Nodding to Angelina Rudd, the sheriff ushered her through the door. A deputy settled himself on a chair across from the half circle the rest of us formed. Still holding my brandy, I settled back down in my seat and took a swallow.

No one spoke. It was like a doctor’s waiting room, where you’re afraid to ask the most impersonal question for fear it will lead to a disclosure you don’t want to hear. So we sat, occasionally shifting in our seats. Bert coughed now and then. Once Curry got up and paced toward the table on the stage, until the deputy called out, “Please don’t go near the evidence.” Then Angelina emerged, and, without comment, left. The sheriff called in Curry.

Bert got up and made a show of counting the folding chairs, pointing his finger at each one and mumbling the number. Chris looked as nervous as he had on stage. I took another sizable swallow of my brandy, and, feeling the sacrifice, handed Chris the glass. He hesitated, almost spoke, then took it and emptied it.

I thought Chris would be next to be interviewed, or possibly me. Leaving Bert till last would have made sense. He had to be awake until the last of us left anyway. But it was he whom the sheriff called in.

And when Chris’s turn came twenty minutes later, he looked as if he could have used another whole glass of brandy. As I waited, now alone with the deputy (Bert had gone into the kitchen where the sheriff’s team had finished), I wondered why Chris Fortimiglio was so nervous. Was he thinking that the poison had to be in his pizzas? Was he wondering if the sheriff had heard of the flap over Donny Fortimiglio and the tobacco? Was he afraid that the sheriff would discover that Edwina had still been piqued with Rosa, and that Rosa had made the pizzas but purposely steered clear of the Slugfest? Even if the sheriff knew it all, it was hardly incriminating enough for murder.

But if anything, Chris looked even worse when he emerged. As he passed me he paused and gave me such an open, frightened look that I had the sensation of peering through his irises into the hollow of his fear. Then he was gone.

“Miss Haskell?” the sheriff called sharply from the office doorway.

Suddenly I realized that it was the second time he’d called my name. Maybe I wasn’t in such hot shape either.

When I walked into the office, he was already sitting in Bert Lucci’s ripped and discolored Naugahyde lounger. The wide window behind him dominated the tiny room, and I could picture Bert relaxed in his lounger in the late afternoon, staring out into the stands of laurel and eucalyptus. There was a desk under that window, but it was clear that Bert never did any sustained business at it. The desk was nearly hidden under newspapers, flyers, magazines, paper plates, and crumpled beer cans. There was no desk chair, and the lounger was hardly suited for sitting up and keeping accounts, even if Bert had excavated a place to work on those accounts. Sitting on the hard wooden chair opposite the sheriff, I shivered in the chill of the closed-off room.

“Tell me about the events of this evening, Miss Haskell,” the sheriff said.

There had been a time last summer when he had invited me for a drink at the bar in town, half to warn me to stay out of his case and half, perhaps, for more personal reasons. Then he had called me Vejay. For those few minutes while we sat drinking our beers, we had talked like a man and a woman, choosing each word, trying to be agreeable, but still just teasing enough to keep things rolling along to a more intimate connection. The potential had been there. I had seen it in the nervous way he fingered his mustache; I’d heard it in my own voice. And then the murder—what he viewed as an accident, and I saw as a murder—took over. The attraction between us was transformed into antipathy. His few moments of openness had made him resent what he viewed as my betrayal all the more. And when the investigation was over, the intensity of our meetings settled back not into promise but rather a brittle distrust. I had seen him around town, on duty, since then. We had been cautious, polite. It had always been “Miss Haskell.”

“Edwina Henderson was inside when I got here this afternoon,” I said.

“What were
you
doing here this afternoon?”

“Reading the meter. I
am
a meter reader.”

“A coincidence?”

“You could say that.”

“So, it wasn’t chance.”

“Well, the lodge was on my route for today, but normally I read it in the morning, before Bert’s guests have time to get too lively. That can save a lot of hassle. But today I left it till last because”—I almost said because I wanted to know whatever had possessed Edwina Henderson to use this place for her Slugfest. But I had learned to be circumspect with the sheriff. I didn’t want to offer any information until I knew what he planned to do with it—“because,” I said, “I wanted to see how the preparations for the Slugfest were coming.”

“And Edwina Henderson was here?”

“She was standing at the bottom of the ladder Bert was on, giving him orders. She acted like she always did.”

“Did anything else happen then?”

“No. It was just the three of us. Just a couple minutes. I had to get back to the office and explain my reads to Mr. Bobbs. I suppose you’ve already heard about him getting sick.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think his reaction is connected—with Edwina’s death, I mean?”

“Until I know more, everything’s connected.”

“Do you have someone out interviewing him?”

The sheriff jerked forward. The backrest of the old lounger bounced, then sagged back. “Miss Haskell, I’ve seen to Mr. Bobbs, Father Calloway, and Hooper, too. I can manage this investigation without your help. Is that understood?” Without waiting for a reply (which wouldn’t have been forthcoming), he said, “Now back to your movements. After you left here …?”

“I drove back to the office, turned in my route book, went home, had dinner, and got here about eight-thirty. I talked to Chris and Leila in the kitchen before the Grand Promenade and the tasting started.”

“What were they doing?”

“Leila was just standing. Chris was arranging his pizzas on the tray.”

“What do you mean by ‘arranging’?”

I knew what he was asking. Was Chris aligning the five pizzas with four in the corners and one in the middle? Did he realize that the one in the left rear would, in all likelihood, be the only one left when he offered the tray to Edwina? “He was just putting them on the tray.”

It had taken me too long to answer. I could see him noting that. I could see him reassessing his next question. “Then what?” he demanded.

“Bert called us in. The judges circled the food table. Leila served her Slug Cocktails. Mr. Bobbs gagged and ran to the bathroom. Bert called me to deal with him. And by the time I got back, Chris was serving his dish. Then the judges ate it. They all, every one of them, including Edwina, said it was the best of the dishes. I was right in front of Edwina. She didn’t look any different after she ate it.”

He nodded curtly. I had explained too much.

“Then the judging was over,” I added. “The judges left the stage.”

“Where did they go?”

“Bert suggested they have a drink. I passed Father Calloway by the bar later. But the others … I don’t remember if I saw them then or not. The next time I specifically recall seeing any of them was when Angelina screamed when she found Edwina’s body.” I hesitated, then went ahead and added, “Of course, Chris and Bert were on the stage with the prize money.”

He nodded again, making notes in what must have been his own brand of shorthand.

I leaned forward. “Couldn’t Edwina have been poisoned after she left the stage? Maybe she ate something by accident! She could have wandered into the kitchen and picked up anything.”

“Any small item so soaked with poison that it would kill her in ten minutes?” The sarcasm was clear in his voice. “I would assume, Miss Haskell, that after being a judge at this affair, eating would have been the last thing on Edwina Henderson’s mind.”

Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t disagree. And that brought suspicion right back to Chris’s pizzas. “Anyone could have poured a few drops of poison onto any of the dishes,” I said. “This place was a madhouse before the judging.”

“But, Miss Haskell, you have just told me that at least Mr. Fortimiglio and Miss Katz were working on their dishes until the judging started. At that point, if I understand it correctly, the trays were placed at the front of a long table on the stage. So it would have been rather obvious if the killer had stalked up and doused one dish with poison, don’t you think?”

“Unlikely, but not impossible. People were still getting seated, the television camera was—The television camera!”

“Before you instruct me, we’re getting the film.”

I sat back. It was late, and suddenly I realized how exhausted I was—too tired to spar with the sheriff, particularly when I was losing. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

He put down his notepad and leaned an elbow on the arm of the lounger. “I don’t have any further questions. But, can we be straight with one another for a change, Vejay?”

I lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m not pleased to find you here. I’m sure you realize that. I would like to think that you were just a member of the audience who happened to stay late. I would have preferred you not to have been in the kitchen next to the food. And mostly, I would like to think that you will not try to do my work for me. Murder is a very dangerous affair. Someone has given a lot of thought to this murder. That person has arranged things so that Edwina Henderson could be poisoned in front of over a hundred people and a television camera. This is no ordinary spite murder. The person we’re—
I’m
—after is clever and ruthless. You
don’t
want me to tell you what happened to Edwina Henderson between the time she ingested the poison, the time she threw up three times, and the moment she died. Corrosive poisoning is a very painful death. Am I making myself clear?”

My first reaction was to remark that his patronizing attitude was unappreciated. But that would have escalated things into just the type of sparring I wanted to avoid. I sighed. “I saw her there.”

“The point I want you to understand is that anyone who did that wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. So do me a favor and just stay away from this one, huh, Vejay?” His eyes opened wider; his face softened. I knew he was sincere—if overbearing about it.

“I’m headed right home.”

“Good. Do you want one of the deputies to accompany you to your truck?”

I stood. “No. I don’t think I’ll be in danger walking across the yard. I didn’t see anything. I spent half my time in the bathroom with Mr. Bobbs. I’m the least likely person to be a threat to the murderer.”

“All right. Keep it that way, okay?”

I turned and walked out across the main room to the door, aware of those familiar mixed feelings, annoyance and attraction. I never met the man when I didn’t feel a pull; I never had a conversation with him that didn’t irritate me. Only the balance between attraction and anger varied. But tonight I was too tired to consider what the ratio was.

I pulled on my jacket as I stepped outside. It was raining harder now, and the parking lot was muddy from all the vehicles backing out and turning around. I was at my truck, reaching for my keys, when someone grabbed my arm.

S
TIFLING A SCREAM,
I spun around. “Donny! Geez, you scared me.”

Donny Fortimiglio bore not even a familial resemblance to his blond, boyishly handsome uncle Chris. Donny was a stocky kid with shoulder-length brown hair that bushed out in all directions. It was only when he spoke that his earnestness characterized him as a Fortimiglio. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, releasing my arm. “I guess I just didn’t think.”

“That’s okay. The sheriff was trying to frighten me in there.” I indicated the lodge. “I guess he succeeded.” I shifted my purse strap on my shoulder. “But what are you doing here, Donny? It’s after midnight.”