Free The Last Annual Slugfest by Susan Dunlap Page A

observations, and everything we said strengthened the case for her killing Edwina. But there had to be others with motives. I asked, “Who made the two middle Slugfest dishes, Chris, the ones that were served while I was in the bathroom with Mr. Bobbs?”
    Chris laughed. Even Rosa smiled. “The first one,” he said, “was the Camp Fire Girls. The second was from Esther Grimes.”
    “Who’s she?”
    “You know her, Vejay,” Rosa said. “She’s the woman who does for Father Calloway. You’ve seen her.”
    I had. She was devoted to the priest. Her only complaint was that he refused to have a full-time housekeeper, as she felt someone of his station should. Under her care, his house sparkled and his larder stayed full. I couldn’t imagine her having so secular an interest as the Slugfest. “Did Father Calloway ask her to cook?”
    Chris nodded. “Edwina told him she was low on dishes. So Father Calloway asked her to make one.”
    “I guess we can leave her and the Camp Fire Girls out of our considerations.” I forked a bite of pie. Despite her concern for Edwina, and for Chris, Rosa had managed to make the best pie I’d had in months. “The only people who had access to the food were the cooks, the judges, Hooper, and of course, Bert Lucci.”
    “Oh, not Bert,” Rosa said.
    I’d forgotten Bert was a distant relation. “He did grumble about Edwina.”
    “Oh, that,” Rosa said. “Bert’s grumbled about Edwina for as long as he’s known her. And she’s complained about him. It just seemed sudden because they had to work together on the Slugfest. Most of the time they didn’t run into each other, so they didn’t have the opportunity to moan. But I know they liked that, complaining.”
    “Well, Bert did give her mouth-to-mouth. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so anxious if he knew there was poison in her mouth,” Chris said.
    “What about Curry Cunningham?” I asked.
    Rosa finished her pie. “The man who runs the logging company? I don’t know much about him.”
    That was another sign of how things had changed for the Fortimiglios in the last year. Before that, any new winter person would have been invited to one of their dinners. They wouldn’t have rested till they had made him feel part of the community, and till they knew everything about him. But Curry Cunningham had moved here just over a year ago, when the dinners stopped.
    “He was transferred from one of Crestwood’s other companies,” Chris said. “You know about Crestwood, Vejay. It’s run by that guy James Drayton, the one who’s so right-wing. He’s against almost everything—drinking, sex, even dancing. That was in the papers last year, when he came here for the opening of Crestwood Logging.”
    “I thought at the time it was lucky he wasn’t going to be in the river area long,” I said. Guerneville, Henderson, and the other towns around, with their sizable gay populations, would hardly have been comfortable for one with Drayton’s narrow beliefs.
    “But Curry’s not like that,” Chris said. “I did a little work up at the logging site before Christmas. He was hiring anyone who could lift fifty pounds then. You know Curry’s so careful about his safeguards that the government has brought guests there. And that’s saying a lot. There was a time a few years back that some guy—Opperman, wasn’t it, Mama?”
    Rosa nodded.
    “Opperman clearcut an entire hillside in one day. He brought in maybe a hundred guys and just went crazy.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “Not much. Once the trees are down there’s nothing you can do. The timber industry has a lot of power in this state, much too much. They’ve got so much clout that environmentalists aren’t even allowed to photograph the cuts from the air! They have to make an appointment to inspect! That’s how it is when you clearcut the hillside. But if you’re a fisherman, Vejay, the government can board your boat any time, with no warning, and go through everything