The Bohemian Connection (27 page)

“… Bobbs of our own Henderson PG and E office,” Bert announced. Mr. Bobbs looked every bit as green as Edwina. He tried to force a smile. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile, and this evening he didn’t break that record. The crowd applauded first his introduction, and, more heartily, his vain attempt to look cheerful.

Curry Cunningham was next. At his name, he stood and bowed, holding his stomach. It was clearly a crowd pleaser.

Angelina Rudd did smile. “If my fish can eat worms, I can eat slugs … I hope.” She was greeted by laughter. It seemed to surprise and please her. She hardly looked like the same moody woman who had snapped at Curry Cunningham.

The fourth judge was Father Calloway, the white-haired priest from St. Agnes’s. His was the parish of the fishing families. Many of his flock were in the audience, and they applauded him with enthusiasm. Father Calloway shook his head. “I’ve taken vows of chastity and obedience, not tastelessness. I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Reward in heaven,” someone called from the back.

“And, taking the last seat, the traditional Slugfest host’s seat,” Bert Lucci said from behind Edwina Henderson, “is the lady who brought this auspicious affair to Henderson. And after the judging, if she can still speak, she tells me she’ll have an announcement of importance to make.”

I poked Leila. “Aha!”

The crowd applauded, but Edwina barely looked up.

I hadn’t paid attention to the light, but now I noticed the hot bright lights necessary for filming. Glancing back into the room, I spotted a hand-held television camera, but I couldn’t see the logo on it. Still, getting attention from any television station, no matter how small, was quite an accomplishment, one Edwina didn’t seem to be taking advantage of.

But Bert Lucci certainly was. Thrust into the limelight, he blossomed as an emcee. “Let’s hear it for the Grand Promenade,” he called out.

Curry Cunningham got up and stood back. “Ladies first.” He motioned Angelina and Edwina forward. Taking Father Calloway by the arm, he said, “Clergy second.”

“Fools rush in, eh?” the priest retorted as he headed toward the display table.

Mr. Bobbs was still in his chair. Mimicking a head waiter, Curry pulled the chair back, assisted him up, and gave the chair a shove back in place.

On the food table, each dish sat on its tray by the front edge, ready for its creator to pick up the tray and carry it the few steps to the left and offer it to the seated judges.

“Take a good look, judges,” Bert said. “Breathe in the aroma of garlic, and tomato sauce, and sautéed mollusk. Look for the best, the most slug-filled portions.” He clapped his hands slowly, starting the audience off on the rhythmic accompaniment to the halting pace of the judges as he led them around the front of the table, stopping them in front of each dish, so that each judge stood before a dish, then moved a step and paused by the next dish. The funereal pace of this enforced march was popular with the audience, which added foot stomping to the clapping. Clearly, it was not with Mr. Bobbs. Bert had to grab his arm to keep him from sailing past the last two dishes and back to his seat. And even when he did make it there, he nearly knocked over his chair in his haste to get in it.

When the rest of the judges were back in their seats, and the audience quiet, Bert picked up the first tray, of what appeared to be shrimp cocktails in long-stemmed crystal, and held it out for the audience to see. “Looks pretty tasty, doesn’t it? And that’s just from a distance. If you were up here where these judges just were, or where I am now, you’d be able to see those scrumptious little feelers on each head. Leila Katz”—he beckoned her onto the stage—“tells me she boiled the slugs, cleaned them, and put them in her special spicy slug sauce. Leila, here, you can serve the judges, so you can enjoy every one of their eager expressions. They’ve had time to look forward to this dish now.”

To the background of laughter, Leila Katz took the tray and held it before each of the five, as they took a cocktail.

“One bite,” Bert Lucci directed. “Just enough to pass judgment. All together now. Get those tasty little fellows on your spoons, judges. Wait. No cutting! You can handle a whole one, right, folks?”

The audience applauded.

The three middle judges held their filled spoons up. Curry Cunningham glanced at his and rolled his eyes. Father Calloway took a deep breath. But Angelina Rudd now looked no more apprehensive than if it was indeed a shrimp awaiting her. I recalled she was a fisherman’s daughter. She had probably eaten plenty more questionable things than this when playing around the docks. Edwina Henderson raised her spoon and held it steady, eyeing it with the expression from
American Gothic.
But it was Mr. Bobbs who garnered everyone’s attention. His hand shook as he lifted the laden spoon. Swallowing hard, he stared at it as if face-to-face with an infinity of Missed Meters.

“All right, judges,” Bert Lucci announced. “Down the hatch!”

Four spoons entered four mouths set in four faces filled with stoicism or disgust. The fifth spoon—Mr. Bobbs’s—remained unmoved.

“Pretty tasty, eh, folks?”

Mr. Bobbs lifted the spoon up in front of his mouth.

“Oh, look here, one of our judges is savoring the moment. Well, we’ve got time, Mr. Bobbs. You probably just wanted everyone’s attention, right?”

Mr. Bobbs stared at the spoon. His nostrils drew back from the smell.

“Ah, yes, the aroma of fine food, right, Mr. Bobbs?” Bert Lucci sounded more like an emcee and less like a handyman with each comment. Mr. Bobbs didn’t move.

“Let’s give him some encouragement, folks.”

The audience began to clap rhythmically.

“Down the hatch!” someone called out in time with the clapping. The rest of the audience picked up the chant. I could make out the voices of two meter readers, loud and gleeful. “Down the hatch! Down the hatch!”

Mr. Bobbs opened his mouth.

“Down the hatch!”

He swallowed hard, shut his eyes, and shoved the spoon in his mouth.

The room shook with applause and stamping of feet.

Mr. Bobbs’s eyes opened wide. Then he gagged. He clutched his throat, stumbled off the platform, and staggered into the bathroom.

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Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of crime writing.

Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.

One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book,
Karma
(1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.

After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published
Pious Deception
, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.

Dunlap concluded the Smith series with
Cop Out
(1997). In 2006 she published
A Single Eye
, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is
No Footprints
(2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.

In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.