The Last Annual Slugfest (19 page)

I said nothing.

“She didn’t
give
us the money for that deposit. She bought a basket cup, for the price of our deposit. Do you know how much a double coil Pomo basket cup was worth even then? We Pomos were known for our baskets. The coiled baskets were woven so tight they could hold boiling water without leaking. Edwina didn’t do us any favor, she took advantage of our poverty.” He walked to the front window and back. His face softened. “Edwina felt bad about that, though. She never let on—Edwina never admitted she was wrong. But it’s why she hired me at the store. And when she got ready to announce the treaty, she rearranged the museum and moved that basket cup to a special stand. That’s what she was doing yesterday afternoon, right before she left to go over to the lodge and nudge Bert along.” He swallowed. “She was so excited. She dropped the basket twice.”

“But she certainly wasn’t happy when she got to the Slugfest. She looked awful then.”

Hooper nodded. “I couldn’t even catch her eye.”

“What happened in those two hours?”

He leaned against the bookcase. “I don’t know. Edwina went over to the lodge. And by the time she came back, I only had a moment to tell her that her visitor was there, and then I caught a ride to the lodge to help Bert.”

Edwina’s visitor! Harry Bramwell! I’d forgotten all about him. He’d expected me at his room an hour ago! “Hooper,” I asked, “did Edwina say anything when you told her he was there?”

He shook his head.

“She knew he was coming. He had an appointment. Did she seem pleased?”

“Pleased? No, that’s not it. She seemed excited—nervous-excited. She was holding the basket cup when I told her Harry Truman Bramwell was there. She dropped it.”

“Did she know him?” That wasn’t the impression I had gotten from him.

“Just by name, and reputation. I’ve heard enough of Edwina’s lectures. Even I recognize his name. It’s not one you’d forget. He’s pretty well known in the field of Native American history.”

I drove down Zeus Lane, slamming on the brakes at North Bank Road. Traffic was heavy, even for Saturday night. I turned right and drove the eighth of a mile to Genelle’s Family Cabins. The blue Volvo was parked in front of a cabin at the back. I felt rather like Edwina had—nervous-excited—but mostly apprehensive. I was tempted to check in the rearview mirror, to see how I could touch up my appearance, but I knew it would be a mistake. After an entire day under a wool cap, my hair would not only be greasy, it would be pressed into odd curlicues. Letting it down now would only change my appearance from unappealing to ridiculous. I jumped down from the cab and ran across to Harry Bramwell’s door and knocked.

Harry Bramwell opened the door. Behind his rimless glasses his dark blue eyes widened in a double-take. He was dressed as he had been when I first saw him in Edwina Henderson’s driveway, in a brown herringbone jacket and a black turtleneck. He was dressed for dinner.

“Apparently, I had in mind something more formal than you did,” he said.

“I can’t go. I’m sorry. I just stopped by to tell you that.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m not as flaky as this looks. I really wanted to have dinner with you. I just can’t.”

“You could have let me know earlier, instead of leaving that note about being here at seven.”

“I planned to come. I really thought I could get ready by then. Look, I’m really sorry. But when I left the note I was on my way to the sheriff’s department.”

The eyebrow lifted again.

“When I got to the sheriff’s department I found out they had arrested one of my friends for murder. And now another woman in town is missing.”

“One person was murdered, one’s in jail, and another’s missing? Some town you’ve got here!”

“I know it sounds crazy. Right now you’re probably thinking that you had a narrow escape from having to spend the evening with a lunatic.” The water was dripping off the porch roof onto my back.

“It wouldn’t have been dull.” He smiled—a noncommittal smile.

“If you get up here another weekend … I’m not like this when things are normal. But this is a small town, and when a woman is murdered here, it preempts everything.”

He nodded. “Well, either you’re telling the truth, or you’re loony enough to have been a judge at that Slugfest of yours.” He stepped back, then he smiled. His beard wriggled. Anxious as I was, I almost laughed. And I wondered how many coeds (if Harry Bramwell was indeed a professor) had been charmed by that odd little twitch. He put a hand on my wet shoulder. “Come on in and tell me what you’ve been doing.”

I stepped in, feeling the welcome warmth after the rainy night outside. There was a sweet, rather homey smell to the room. It took me a moment to place it—witch hazel. The cabin was almost as large as Hooper’s entire house, with a double bed and a single bed, two chairs, and a coffee table. The walls were pale blue, the carpet tweedy blue, and the bedspreads a dark blue flowered print. On the table was a vase of daffodils—Genelle’s special touch. Taking off my slicker, I sat in one of the chairs. “Let me ask you one thing first. When you saw Edwina Henderson yesterday, was it about the Pomo treaty?”

“Right.” He took off his jacket, laid it on the single bed, and sat in the other chair. “It was one of the best works I’ve seen.”

“The treaty?”

“I get a lot of calls about documents of that sort. I did my dissertation on the litigious relations of the Hoopas and the State of California. While I was involved in that, I studied a number of other Native American treaties, and the court briefs that followed. Now when someone has a question I’m the one they call.”

“You sound important:”

“You’re not just buttering me up now?” He grinned; his curly beard quivered infinitesimally.

“ ’Fraid not. Hooper, the guy who works for Edwina, recognized your name. He said anyone who had heard her lectures would. So, if you’re famous here in Henderson, you must be a star in the larger world.”

His grin grew larger. “I’m an expert in a rather small field. There’s not much cause for people to question treaties anymore. Most of them have been tested in court well before now. And new treaties don’t just pop up.”

“Except in the case of Edwina’s.”

He laughed, then looked embarrassed. “I shouldn’t laugh. She was so appalled. I don’t even think I’ve seen historians that abashed, and their careers depend on their work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t she admit it?”

“She didn’t say anything. She’s dead.”

“What? Do you mean Edwina Henderson was the woman who was murdered?” He jerked forward in his chair. He must have been the only person in Henderson not to know about Edwina’s murder.

I told him what had happened. I answered his questions. Then, I said, “What was it Edwina didn’t say?”

“I suppose this could be important,” he said. “The treaty, it’s a beautiful job, one of the best I’ve seen. But it’s a phony.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, amazed.

He nodded slowly. “No question. I’ve spent years in the field. I would have loved to be in on the discovery of a new treaty, to go through the setting up of a rancheria firsthand. I can’t tell you how fascinating that would have been, to say nothing about what it would have done for my career—papers to write, lectures, consulting, a full professorship. I wanted it to be real, but it wasn’t.”

“How do you know?” I insisted.

“Specifically? Well, the paper wasn’t quite right. It was close. If
you
looked at it you’d never know the difference, even if you had a real treaty from the same period right next to it. Forgers are pretty sophisticated about aging paper, but it would have taken a real craftsman to manage this. The thing that tipped me off, though—it’s a classic failure with forgers like this—was that he preserved everything that would make the treaty appear to be legitimate, but he put age marks over the things he couldn’t be sure of copying right, like the chief’s mark. He probably couldn’t find a copy of it. So far as I know, none exists for many of the village Pomo chiefs. But the forger couldn’t be sure, so that’s the place that has a brittle age hole in it. You see?”

I nodded. “Are you positive about this?”

“No question. I’m the authority. If the newspapers need an opinion, I’m the one they call. That’s probably how Edwina Henderson knew my name.”

“Did she believe you?”

“She didn’t want to. But she had a good background in local history. When I pointed out the flaws in the document, she understood.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she guessed I had to be right.”

“Was that all?”

“Pretty much. Then she just went on about the television cameras. It seems she planned to make an announcement of the treaty at some function that night.”

“The Slugfest.”

“The one you were telling me about Friday?” He raised the eyebrow. “Well, it would have made an interesting juxtaposition.”

“Didn’t she say anything else? Like something about how the treaty could have been a phony? Or who could have made it? Or why?”

“I asked her, before I looked at the treaty, how she came to have it. She said she had a niece in Washington, or maybe Virginia, I don’t remember. In any case, she worked for a senator, maybe in connection with a consulting firm. But the story Edwina got was that she had to check something in the senate files and came across the treaty.”

“And didn’t mention it to anyone but Edwina?” That was what Hooper had told me.

He nodded. “Even as she said it, it sounded peculiar, but I was so anxious to see the treaty that I didn’t ask about it then. And afterwards, since the thing was a phony anyway, it didn’t matter.”

“But it does matter. Edwina’s dead. She was poisoned before she could announce the treaty.”

“No. She was poisoned before she could
de
nounce the treaty. The one thing she did tell me was that she would have to go before the television cameras and explain that she had been boonswaggled—her word.”

“Edwina was going to tell them that the treaty was a phony,” I said, mulling over the thought. “Was she going to say who the perpetrator was?”

“I think so. She seemed to know.”

“Who was it?” I held my breath.

“She didn’t tell me. By that time I’m not sure she even remembered I was there. She was pretty much muttering to herself. She was carrying on about not being surprised, that she shouldn’t have been surprised, that she had no one but herself to blame, and that at least she’d had the sense to check, so it wasn’t any worse than it was, but that she should have known. It went on like that.”

“Did she say anything else,” I asked, barely able to conceal my disappointment. “Even something that didn’t seem important to you? Maybe something that you didn’t connect with the treaty?”

He ran his fingers down his beard. Outside, a car drove by, then stopped several cabins down. Harry Truman Bramwell continued to stroke his beard. “The only other thing I can recall is Edwina Henderson snorting”—he snorted in imitation—“and muttering, ‘And Lyle protecting her!’ ”

“A
ND
L
YLE PROTECTING HER
!” Of course that was Harry Bramwell’s interpretation of Edwina’s lament. What she really had said was, “And
Leil
protecting her!” So, again, it all came back to Leila. And to the person—the woman—who was responsible for the phony treaty. There might have been many women who could have come up with a fake treaty, but only one, besides Leila, who could have sprinkled the poison on Edwina’s pizza. Only one whom Leila was in the habit of protecting. And Angelina, Leila’s former babysitter, might have met Meg through Leila, or, failing that, found out enough about her from Leila to impersonate her in letters to Edwina. Maybe she even knew Meg well enough to convince her to help out in the scheme herself.

So I had been right about Angelina all along. “I have to go,” I said to Harry Bramwell. I jumped up, raced to the door, and stepped out onto his stoop.

“What?” He followed me to the door.

“Time is vital. I can’t stay. I’ll explain later.”

“Don’t bother,” he said in disgust. “Do you think I have nothing to do but hang around? Like you said, there may not be much to do here at night. But there have to be better things than waiting for you.”

“I—”

“Forget it.” He slammed the door. I wasn’t even tempted to knock again. Harry Bramwell was the most interesting man I had met in months. But I’d blown whatever chance there was, and in high style.

I didn’t have time to hang around and mope. I ran to my truck and started the engine. As sorry as I was about losing Harry Bramwell as a potential lover, I was almost more frustrated at not having anyone to tell about his key discovery.

I drove the truck over the gravel to North Bank Road and waited for a chance to turn right, toward the ocean, and the fish ranch. In the rain, the traffic moved slowly. I could see a logging truck at the head of the line, moving like a Slugfest contestant.

In my excitement, I had almost forgotten my fear that Leila was in danger. I had lulled myself into thinking that Angelina was her friend. But for someone who had gone to the trouble of obtaining a phony treaty, of stringing Edwina along as Hooper had said, and then killing her, friendship wasn’t likely to be a deterrent to another murder. Cutting off a sportscar, I pulled onto North Bank Road.

I drove with my hand poised on the horn, hitting it at each straight stretch of road. The rain slapped the windshield. I turned the wipers on high, and blew the horn again as we came to a straightaway. I pulled around the car in front, and the truck in front of that, and back into line as we came to the next curve. The overhanging redwoods and laurels made the road darker. I passed another car, and two more, and finally the logging truck itself, then hit the gas and raced ahead.

The wind gusted stronger as I neared the ocean. I clutched the wheel tighter. Even with the wipers on high, the rain curtained the view half the time. The occasional passing car seemed to come out of nowhere, hit me with its blinding lights, and be pulled back into darkness.

As I neared the fish ranch bridge, I shivered. In this storm, the isolated fish ranch was the perfect place to imprison Leila Katz.