The Sourdough Wars (20 page)

“Cool it, Rebecca,” was all Anita said.

My teeth were chattering and I was perspiring at the same time. I wondered if I had malaria and realized my mind was off in left field again. “This is hardball, Rebecca,” I reminded myself. “Get back to the mound.”

I hated baseball and couldn’t think why my brain was playing this trick on me. But it was, and I heard myself thinking, “We need a hit, need a long ball, a homer, gotta slide over the plate. Come on, no batter, no batter.” I knew I was muddling things, but it kept my spirits up. I almost giggled, imagining Rob’s reaction when I told him what my tiny mind was doing just before I—before I what? I didn’t know, but I didn’t allow myself to get the idea I was never going to be telling Rob anything again.

Rob. I said, “Rob knows we came to see you.”

“So what? You never got there. You took a wrong turn and had a nasty accident on the way.”

All of a sudden I got her drift. I realized why she’d been driving us over every hill in the neighborhood. We were going over a cliff, and she was going to walk back home, which would be just a few hundred feet if she planned the thing right.

I grasped at any old straw: “How are you going to explain the bullet holes?”

“What bullet holes?”

“The ones in your study.”

“Like I said, what bullet holes? Did you ever hear of Fix-All? Stop the car.”

“Here?”

“Stop, dammit.”

I braked on a steep ravine that dropped a long way without so much as a eucalyptus tree to stop a falling car, a car that had skidded in the rain and gone off the road.

Anita got out, still keeping the gun on Chris. “Get in the front seat.” Chris did, and Anita stood in the rain, holding the gun to Chris’s head.

“Okay, Rebecca. Drive over it.”

I didn’t move.

“Drive over it or I’ll shoot her.”

I shifted gears, not quite as skillfully as I usually do, and the Volvo stalled. That gave me a minute to pray, which I hadn’t done since the time I got arrested for drunk driving while rescuing a state senator from a bordello raid.

“Geronimo!” I said to myself. Aloud, I hollered, “Duck, Chris!”

And I slammed the car into reverse. Firecrackers went off as I hit the hill on the opposite side of the road, and I noted with relief that Chris had taken my advice. She’d ducked before Anita recovered enough to fire. We were both alive, and Anita had now fired five of her six shots. Also, we were straddling both lanes horizontally and a car was coming at us. Anita was between it and us, her face a jig-is-up mask.

The other car’s brakes screamed, and it started to skid. Anita flew over our hood and landed running. There was a nasty crunch as the other car hit the side of the hill. I didn’t waste time surveying the damage. The occupants would have to fend for themselves. Me, I had a murderer to catch. Adrenaline hit the system like a shot of diesel fuel and I poured it into straightening my wheels. Then I let it drop to my gas foot. Anita glanced over her shoulder, staggered, and lost her balance.

I was going so fast it took me a few seconds to stop, but by the time I did, got out of the car, and looked over the ravine, I could still see her rolling in the glare of my headlamps.

The driver of the other car was the irate blusterer I’d hoped for a few minutes before. His steed was a Mercedes, and he didn’t like getting it scuffed up. He got out loaded for rhino, but the sight of Chris and me stopped him cold.

She was just stumbling out of the Volvo, crying and shaking as if she were the one with malaria, and my composure was slipping, too. I wasn’t yet at the crying stage, but my voice was a mouse squeak. Also, we were both bruised and, in one case, hair-singed.

I pointed down the ravine and squeaked something about an ambulance, though I didn’t really imagine there’d be much left of Anita. The guy looked panicked. He was one of those slick, full-mustached dudes you meet at parties who say they’re “in real estate,” which is Marin code for “Back off. I’m a coke dealer.”

“Where’s the gun?” this one said, and I remembered he must have seen Anita shooting at us.

“I don’t know,” I squeaked. “Anita fell down the hill.” I gestured aimlessly in the general direction but couldn’t think of a single other word to say. I fell into Chris’s arms, leaving the slick dude staring after Anita.

He stared for eight or nine millennia, give or take, before he finally said, “I think I see her. My house is just up the road. I’ll lead and you follow.”

“I… no.” What I meant was that I couldn’t have driven if he’d pointed another gun at my head, but I couldn’t say it.

He seemed to take the situation in. “Okay, give me your key.”

“It’s in the car.”

He got the Volvo out of the way, and then we got into the Mercedes and drove about another two hundred yards. His house was much like Anita’s, except he had tan couches instead of shrimp ones. Everyone in San Anselmo must have the same decorator.

Chris and I sank into the couches, numb, staring into space, while he made phone calls and poured brandy. When we could hear the reassuring sound of sirens and had help on the way to our bloodstreams, our host said, “I’m Michael Watt. Do you want to call anybody?”

I did. I wanted Rob, but I didn’t want the working Rob, with a photographer in tow and his mind on getting a story. So I shook my head. Chris didn’t answer at all. She seemed to be in mild shock.

But pretty soon feeling returned to our fingertips and brain cells, and cops came in to get our stories, and I did bestir myself to call Rob. I didn’t ask him to join us; I just told him what had happened and said I was going to spend the night at Chris’s. Then I called Mickey and told her to call Mom and Dad—I didn’t have the strength.

I didn’t want to see or be with anyone but Chris that night—I think this is often the way with people who’ve been through a disaster together. But I couldn’t drive to her house.

We ended up checking into a motel. We could have gone to my parents’ house, which was near enough, but on the other hand, we couldn’t have. Not in our condition.

Before I sank into my rented bed, I made one more phone call—to Rob, who was still at the
Chronicle
, still batting out his story, to let him know where we were, and to find out something. I had to know if Anita was dead. Miraculously, she wasn’t. But she had a broken neck and wasn’t expected to live.

She did live, though, and is currently awaiting trial for the murder of Sally Devereaux. She is paralyzed from the neck down and will have to stand trial in a wheelchair. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I hope she will be spared her evil chauffeurs the next time around.

Rob, of course, was furious that we didn’t take him with us to Anita’s, brushing aside our explanation that we felt the presence of a reporter might have been inhibiting. I expect he’ll forgive me sometime in the next century or so.

My mom wrung her hands and cried, but my dad just hugged me, which was what I needed.

Mickey took everything in stride, and Kruzick confined his remarks to my new hairstyle. My workaday pageboy, gutted by fire, had to be exchanged for a do that he said would have looked good on John Travolta. For about a week after I got it, he discoed around the office every time I came in.

Tony Tosi arrived at my office one day with a giant gift box from I. Magnin. It proved to contain a black gabardine suit, which I exchanged for one that cost half as much plus a new rose-colored one for spring. I bought a frilly pink blouse to go with the rose one, hoping it would distract from the Saturday Night Fever look. Tony didn’t bring up the matter of the starter, but he looked at me so wistfully I said I’d think about it before turning him in.

In fact, I discussed it with Chris. “Have you got any proof?” she asked.

“No. I just made the accusation and he confirmed it.”

“Then it’s really your word against his.”

“If he denied it, yes.”

“That starter won’t do Anita any good now.”

“But if he hadn’t taken it, Sally might not have been killed.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t really think anything could have stopped what happened. Why don’t you just let it be?”

That went against my legal-eagle grain, but I didn’t honestly think Tony was a criminal at heart. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to think he’d gotten away with something. I decided to let it go, on the condition that he sign a full confession, which I would lock in a safe-deposit box. I told him it would stay there till I died, with instructions that it be destroyed if I did, unless I found out he’d been involved in further criminal activity. Of course the statute of limitations on the burglary would run out soon, but the confession could embarrass Tony any time it came to light. He signed it gladly. I think he was genuinely penitent and happy to have it as a reminder to stay clean.

Clayton Thompson went back to New York, told his wife he wanted a divorce, quit Conglomerate Foods, and moved to San Francisco to start a bakery—one that does not specialize in sourdough. From all reports, he and Ricky are very happy, once again proving what they say about ill winds.

Since it turned out Clayton never knew Peter before the auction, and since we know that Peter was killed by his ex-girlfriend rather than a gay lover, I think it’s safe to say that Peter wasn’t bisexual. He was attracted, in his way, both to Sally and Chris, so I guess you’d say he was heterosexual in a limited way. As Chris put it the day he died, he was distant—distant from all his fellow human beings. I’ve known other people like him—New Englanders, mostly, and one, a roommate I had in college, who was English. He didn’t gossip, he didn’t volunteer information, and he liked knowing things that other people didn’t know, I think; he was just a very private person. If he had a passion, I believe it was maintaining his separateness from the rest of us.

The week after Peter’s death, Chris went home to Virginia for a few days. She said something about it being the season for the dogwoods and the redbuds, but I think once she’d found Peter’s killer, she simply needed a mourning period.

When she got back, Bob Tosi, who’d been phoning every day, was finally able to ask her to lunch. To my surprise, she accepted. They’ve been dating ever since, and Bob is getting smarter every day. He even joined a men’s group, the kind where guys sit around and discuss how insensitive they’ve been to the needs of women. I thought that was a bit much, but at least it showed sincerity. Eventually, Tony and Bob made up, too.

I think Anita was right when she said she and Sally were a lot alike, but in a way she and Tony were, too. They’d always suffered from the feeling that they weren’t as good as their siblings. It’s too late for Anita, but I think Tony has a good chance of getting over it.

As for me, I’m more confused than ever. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what philosophers call the nature of reality, though really it’s the nature of illusion that has my attention. I had just watched a bunch of people turn a frozen doughball into a reason for committing burglary and murder. But the crime they were really guilty of was fraud. Clayton Thompson had wanted to defraud people into believing he was just like everyone else in his circle. Sally, Anita, and Tony had wanted to defraud themselves into believing they were different, they were special, they were better. Or anyway, just as good. They probably
were
just as good, or at least capable of being just as good, but they’d hung their value on a doughball. When you thought about it, it was nuts. Then there’s Rob—to him, a story feels like real life. I don’t think it’ll always be that way, but that’s the way it is now.

And of course there’s Rebecca. Does
she
kid herself? Why does she think she’s too good to spend a night in jail? Why shouldn’t a Jewish feminist lawyer, as she’s so fond of calling herself, have to bear all the hardships anyone else has to face? Why is Today’s Action Woman always bursting into tears like a scared little kid?

I think about these things as I go about my business, trying to catch up on all the work I didn’t do while I was out being Today’s Action Woman and also trying to handle all the new clients I got as a result of the publicity. Which brings up another question. I now have a hot practice because the media unwittingly, in telling my story, defrauded people into thinking I’m a better lawyer than others of my age and experience. But am I? I know damn well I’m not. However, when I’m paying attention to my practice, I think I’m just as good.

I have one fault, though—I let things get to me. For about a month after that night with Anita, I couldn’t stand the sight of sourdough.

THE END

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The Rebecca Schwartz Series

DEATH TURNS A TRICK

THE SOURDOUGH WARS

TOURIST TRAP

DEAD IN THE WATER

OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

The Skip Langdon Series

NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ

JAZZ FUNERAL

DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

HOUSE OF BLUES

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
(formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)

82 DESIRE