The Last Annual Slugfest (17 page)

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—”

“Made no deposit.”

I stared. “Hooper’s family didn’t have to pay a deposit?” Hooper had described his family as transients, with his stepfather escaping a couple of yards ahead of the sheriff. They were hardly people Mr. Bobbs would trust without a deposit.

“It was paid for them,” he said.

“Closing,” the woman at the counter called. “Please bring your purchases up here.”

Mr. Bobbs pushed around me and trudged toward her. Coming up by his side, I said, “Who paid the deposit?”

He put the bag on the counter.

“Six forty-seven with the tax,” the woman said.

Mr. Bobbs handed her a ten-dollar bill.

I stood between him and the door.

He took the change, pocketed it and the receipt, hoisted the bag on his other shoulder, and took a step forward.

I didn’t move.

But my trick didn’t work twice. He shifted around me and headed out the door.

I ran after him. “Who, Mr. Bobbs?” I demanded as we crossed the parking lot.

He lowered the plastic bag next to the back of his car. “Edwina Henderson.”

“What? Edwina Henderson paid his family’s deposit? Why did she do that?”

“I don’t know, Miss Haskell. It seems to have escaped you that it is not the function of Pacific Gas and Electric to inquire into the motives of accounts when they remit their required fees.” He opened his trunk, hoisted the bag, and set it in. The trunk was otherwise empty, and spotless.

“Well, did she make a habit of helping poor people with their deposits?”

“No, she did not. The Hooper family was the only deposit she ever paid.”

“Mr. Bobbs—”

“Miss Haskell, I’ve told you company business. I shouldn’t have. But having done that, I’ll tell you now that that is everything I know about the Hooper family. If it is your intention to keep yourself standing in my way until you drown, you can do so, but there is not another thing you’ll be able to ascertain from me. Is that clear?”

“Just one more thing, Mr. Bobbs.”

He shook his head in disbelief.

“It’s not about that. It’s about your garden. Do you use liquid nicotine to kill your aphids?”

“Certainly not.” He slammed the trunk.

“Why not?”

“Miss Haskell, nicotine is a poison. I don’t want that near my vegetables. The only place you can safely use that is where there’s no danger of it getting into the soil, at least not unless you’re sure there’ll be a good month for it to wash out. And, Miss Haskell, the aphids aren’t so accommodating as to move on a month before I’m ready to harvest my lettuce.” He opened his car door and got in.

I was still thinking about those odd little beds of roses at the fish ranch when he pulled out.

A
FTER
M
R.
B
OBBS HAD
driven out of sight, I wondered why the sheriff had called him in for questioning again today. Had it just been a double check? Or was the sheriff zeroing in on Hooper’s visit here years ago? I could have gone after Mr. Bobbs. I knew where he lived. But I couldn’t face that any more than he could. Instead I drove across North Bank Road and onto the town beach.

In summer, the beach was two levels. The lower tier was near the river where the sunbathers shared the sand with beached canoes and paddle boats, and grandparents and grandchildren grouped around the wading pool the town made by shovelling a U back into the beach and allowing the river water to fill it. In summer that area was thirty yards wide. Now, with the river almost at flood stage, it was under water.

The second level, where I was parked, was used for cars in summer, too.

I sat, watching the brown water tumbling toward the ocean. Each spring the summer dams were erected. Without those dams, the water wouldn’t be deep enough to swim in. In places it wouldn’t cover your knees. But now it tossed whole branches like they were twigs. The rain smacked down on my windshield. Suddenly, I realized how cold the truck was. I reached for the heater, but didn’t turn it on. The damp cold was fitting.

What I had found out, after an entire day devoted to Edwina’s murder, was nothing more than a slew of questions. Who was Hooper? I had wondered why Edwina chose to hire him to work in her store. Now I had the answer: she knew him before. She had paid the family’s PG&E deposit. Why did she do that? Nothing suggested that Edwina was financially generous. From what I had heard, her commitments were limited to time and enthusiasm only; her money was reserved for herself. I recalled Bert Lucci complaining that she wouldn’t even pay for the cleaning service at Steelhead Lodge. So why would she come across for a transient family’s utility deposit? Because they were Pomos? If so, why, in all the following years, had she never helped another Indian family? Or an Oriental family? But she hadn’t. On that, Mr. Bobbs’s recollections were the word of God.

And nicotine. Again, I trusted Mr. Bobbs. There was no reason for him to lie. If it wasn’t applied near vegetables, then one place it was safe to use it would be at the fish ranch. The outside area of the fish ranch was all cement, all except the flower beds. Even the ditches where the young fish would swim were cement. Maxie Dawkins had explained to me once, at length, that they would be filled with a layer of pebbles before the little fish were allowed out in them. So, beyond the flower beds, the nicotine had no soil to spread in.

And that brought the question back to Angelina Rudd. Even if she had access to nicotine, it still meant that she had to have known about the treaty long enough in advance to stop at the ranch and pick up the poison. And Hooper had said Edwina told no one but him.

But if Edwina had gotten the treaty from her mysterious niece Meg, mightn’t Meg, who was Leila’s cousin, have told Leila, and Leila have told Angelina?

It all pointed back to Leila. It was time she gave up protecting her lover and told me if that lover was, indeed, Angelina.

I put the truck in reverse, swung around, and headed back for North Bank Road.

The Women’s Space Bookstore was dark. No one was visible inside. Where was Leila? She had insisted she had to be here all day. The store had been closed when I drove by two hours ago.

I pulled into a parking spot in front, got out, and walked to the door. I had hoped to find a note saying “Back at 6:00,” but there was nothing tacked to the door. I reached for the handle. The door was unlocked!

For the first time I was more worried than annoyed. I tried to think of a reasonable explanation for her absence. Could she have run across the street to the café to fill her thermos? But she wouldn’t have turned the lights off in the bookstore for that. Could she—

A car door slammed. A woman—tall, blond—ran across the sidewalk toward me. She was carrying a camera bag. “Hello. Are you Leila?” she called out. “I’m Anna Martin.” Looking at her watch, she added, “Right on time, too.”

“You’re from the
Chronicle,
aren’t you?” I asked. “Doing the feature article?”