Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (22 page)

“Yes. If you can keep a victim breathing, he’ll probably be all right.”

“You’ve studied the cases from Full Fathom Five?”

“Certainly.”

“And is that what happened?”

“In six of the eleven cases, yes. Mr. Baskett didn’t respond to treatment. But six people were easily revived, and four had eaten only one or two or three of the mussels—they had seen other people get sick, had begun having symptoms themselves, and had stopped eating. They were not seriously ill.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

When the judge called the morning recess, I headed for the ladies’ room to wash my sweaty hands. The previous two had been damaging enough, but Liz’s next miracle was twenty-three-year-old Alice Jones, the very picture of Pepsi-generation wholesomeness. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, and a slight Oklahoma twang. She’d been in San Francisco on her honeymoon when she’d found herself in a restaurant suddenly transformed into a Bosch landscape; I was awfully glad I didn’t have to cross-examine her.

Liz went through the honeymoon business (establishing that though the witness had ordered mussels, her new husband had had a perfectly harmless fillet of sole), and then asked Alice if she’d seen anything unusual that night.

“My mussels had just come,” said Alice, “and Bob and I were talking about what color to paint the house. I ate one and then stopped for a minute to listen to Bob; he had some art courses in school and knows a lot about color. Bob wanted to paint the trim terra-cotta and cobalt blue. I wasn’t sure exactly what color that was—the blue, that is—and it kind of gave me the creeps. Cobalt, I mean—it’s sort of dangerous or something”—she looked confused—“at least I thought so. My fingers started to tingle. I thought it was my imagination at first; but Bob took both my hands and held them—kissed them, you know. Then he said, ‘Your mussels are getting cold.’ So I picked up my fork, but I dropped it—I didn’t know why, I just couldn’t seem to hold it. I was going to ask the waiter for another, but then someone got up and started walking—toward the men’s room, I guess—and he was staggering; we thought he was drunk. He fell down and some people went to help him, and then I heard a scream—”

Liz asked, “Was it a woman who screamed?”

“Yes. I looked and saw she was flinging her hands about, as if she were shaking water off them—” Here, Alice demonstrated. “She was yelling something about electricity. I got real scared then, because that was the way my fingers felt—like I’d gotten a shock, or maybe hit my crazy bone. I started to feel sick.”

“What did you do then?”

“I told Bob I was going to throw up. I knew I ought to go to the ladies’ room, but I was too scared to move. The woman at the next table, who’d just been sitting there up till then, all of a sudden fell out of her chair.”

“In a faint?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t like that. She moved her chair back and tried to get out of it, but—I don’t know, it just seemed as if she’d lost her balance or something. She kind of fell over on her side. Bob went to help her, but she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her. She couldn’t get up at all, so finally her husband and Bob helped her lie down.”

“Let’s reiterate a minute,” said Liz. “At this point, a man and a woman had collapsed and another woman was screaming about electric shock. You yourself were experiencing tingling and loss of coordination—”

“And nausea,” said Alice.

“And nausea. How would you describe the overall scene in the restaurant at that point?”

I half expected to hear her intone, “Fear stalked Full Fathom Five!”

But she said, “It was real quiet. Then this young man on the other side said something about poison in a loud voice and it seemed as if everyone started talking at once. It got loud as anything.” She paused, looking very white. “I was really scared—and feeling terribly sick. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. Bob helped me lie down on the floor, and after that, people started running around like crazy. People in white jackets—from the kitchen, I guess—were trying to help the sick people. A man who said he was a doctor came and started to take my pulse, but then he heard someone sort of trying to catch their breath—I mean, we both heard it—and he left me. After that, Bob held my hand and kept saying to take it easy, that they’d called some ambulances. And I just kind of closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see any more.”

“What happened after that?”

“The next thing I remember, they put me on a stretcher and took me to the hospital.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Jones.”

It was Dad’s turn. He said, “Not a very good way to spend your honeymoon.” He smiled at Alice and she smiled back. “No,” she said. The color started coming back to her face. “I think you’re a very brave woman.”

“You wouldn’t if you’d been there that night.” Dad had her chatting like an old friend.

“Did you have difficulty breathing?”

“No. I was lucky, I guess.”

“Did you ever throw up?”

“No—I just felt as if I were going to.”

“It must seem kind of like a bad dream in retrospect.”

She looked at Dad as if he were the only person in the world who really understood her. “Sometimes I can hardly believe it really happened.”

“Tell me, Mrs. Jones—have you ever had the flu?”

“Oh, sure. It gets me about two or three times a year.”

“Would you describe the way you felt at the restaurant as something like having the flu?”

“Oh, not at all. Like I said, I was lucky—it only lasted a little while, and sometimes I can’t even remember it too well. But of course if I’d eaten more mussels—”

“Are you absolutely sure you had paralytic shellfish poisoning?”

“Well, sure—everybody else did.”

“Did they do any tests at the hospital?”

“Oh, no. They were real busy with everybody else; I was the lightest case, so they hardly bothered with me at all.”

“They didn’t do tests to make sure you had it?”

“I don’t think they really needed to.”

“You’re from Oklahoma, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you were willing to come all this way to testify?”

“Bob and I thought it was important.”

“Do you by any chance have a lawsuit pending against the restaurant?”

“I don’t see—Why do you want to know?”

She looked at Liz, then at the judge, who said, “Answer the question, please.”

“Yes,” said Alice, now slightly less the helpless victim.

“No further questions,” said Dad. He hadn’t demolished her, but he’d taken some of the shine off.

Next up was Hallie Baskett, wife of Brewster Baskett, the man who died at Full Fathom Five. She gave her age as seventy-two, but she looked ten years younger, with excellent color and a good, stout, small-town woman’s figure. She looked so strong I figured she could probably have ordered mussels that night with impunity—but she’d had prawns.

“Was this your first visit to San Francisco?” asked Liz. “Last spring?”

“Yes. Our son and his family moved here six months before, so we decided to visit. It was like a dream come true.”

“How’s that?”

“We’d always wanted to come here.” A brief sadness crossed her face, but she didn’t cry; instead, she set her lips in a hard, unattractive line, not nearly as good for Liz’s purposes as tears would have been.

“Had your husband been ill for a few days before you went to the restaurant?”

“Yes. He caught the flu—from the fog, I guess. But he said he wasn’t going to leave without eating at a fish restaurant.”

“I know this is hard for you, Mrs. Baskett, but can you tell me what happened the night you went to Full Fathom Five?”

“Well, Brewster had to have mussels. Never had had them and said he was damned if he was going to go to his grave without trying them.” Her voice was getting a little unreliable. “Said he’d have ordered cockles, too, if they’d been on the menu.” She reached in her purse for a handkerchief, dabbed at her eyes, then looked bravely back at Liz. “Well, he thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. Tried to get me to try one, and our son and daughter-in-law, too. But we wouldn’t do it. I said, ‘Everybody to their own taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow.’ Ugly things.” She made a face. “Brewster always was a fast eater. He ate all of ’em before I’d hardly started my prawns.”

“Did he complain of tingling or numbness in his mouth or his fingers?”

“Nope. Just sat there looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. He liked doing adventuresome things, you know—things people his age don’t usually do. I could tell he was real proud of himself. Then I noticed his breathin’ started sounding funny—real gaspy. I said, ‘Brewster, what is it? That flu’s got you again?’ But he didn’t answer; just sort of toppled over on the floor.” Her words had come out in a great burst, and now her sobs did. Liz asked if she wanted a recess, but she shook her head.

In a moment, she said, “I’m a lifelong Presbyterian and I know what happened was God’s will. I don’t want you to think I’m a crybaby.”

“Can you tell the jury what happened to your husband after he fell on the floor?”

“He couldn’t catch his breath. Just struggled and struggled to breathe. And I couldn’t do nothin’ to help him. Then the ambulance came, but he was quietened down by then; I don’t know but that he was already dead. ” Her voice was firm again, the voice of a woman doing what she knew she had to do.

Taking a leaf from Dad’s book, Liz said, “I think you’re very brave, Mrs. Baskett. I have no more questions.”

But Dad wasn’t about to be outdone. He said, “I think you’re very brave, too. You must miss your husband a lot.”

“It’s the Lord’s will,” she said. She looked straight at Lou. “I don’t bear no one any ill feeling.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Baskett,” said Dad, having, through some magic he did with those blue eyes of his, evoked what amounted to a plea of leniency from the state’s star witness.

But leniency would be poor comfort to an innocent man. Even Dad’s good work with Hallie Baskett and Alice Jones wouldn’t offset the horror of their testimony. We were still getting killed.

Liz rose and said, “The prosecution rests.”

The ball was in our court.

I couldn’t bring myself to go home. My apartment is uncluttered because I relax better when my surroundings are simple. My office is exactly the opposite: It’s busy, and I catch its mood. So I went there and sat staring out the window, trying to think of something—anything, no matter how outlandish—that would help me salvage the case.

About nine o’clock, Chris came in. I heard her go into her office and rummage in her desk. Then she came into mine with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and two coffee mugs in the other. She knows I don’t drink bourbon, but she poured two stiff ones, straight up, into the mugs and thrust one at me.

I started to shake my head, but she took my hand and curled the fingers around the mug handle. “Auntie says drink.”

I lifted the mug and sipped. For once, the bourbon didn’t taste too bad.

“Old Weller,” said Chris. “I do my best thinking on it, which doesn’t happen often because it costs too much, but this is a clear emergency.”

I took another sip. “Makes you want to holler ‘hidey-ho.’ ”

“Sip slowly, now. The point is not to drown sorrows, but to plot strategy.”

“Does that mean you’ve got an idea?”

“Not yet. But I feel one coming on. We’re desperate, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“We’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

“I mean we. Now. Are we desperate?”

“Unquestionably.”

Chris touched a long elegant finger to her long, aristocratic schnoz. Which meant she was feeling creative. I felt better already.

She said, “So desperate measures are called for.”

“If I could think of any, I’d have already taken them. The only possible way out is to find Les. Or at least Miranda. And we’ve already tried everything.”

“Everything normal people would try. But don’t forget—we are two desperate women, solely responsible for saving an innocent man from a cruelly unjust fate.”

“I think you’ve had enough Old Weller.”

She took a mammoth gulp. “Nonsense. We’ve got to loosen up our minds and make them do somersaults. We can’t think like lawyers. We’ve got to have innocence. We’ve got to be two kids who haven’t yet learned the word ‘impossible.’”

I sighed and sipped. “Okay. Let’s go over what we’ve already done. First Rob, a trained reporter, went to the Tenderloin to find Miranda. He got mugged. Next we hired a pro to find her. He struck out. So what’s left?”

Chris’s nostrils quivered, as they did when she was upset. She was silent and so was I, which made the sudden ringing of the telephone all the more strident. Chris looked at her watch. “Nearly ten o’clock—who’d call this late?”

“Probably a wrong number.”

“Maybe it’s your dad—he might have had an idea.” Sighing, I picked up the phone. Rob said, “Rebecca. Thank God.”

“Rob! You’re alive.”

“For heaven’s sake. You sound like your mother. Listen, I’ve found Miranda.”

“You’re kidding!”

“You know what I did? I got this idea—I got mugged the first time I went to the Tenderloin, and our private eye couldn’t get anywhere, so I decided to make a last-ditch effort. I mean things were going so badly and I felt so helpless. I decided to dress like a bum and kind of move into the Tenderloin, live there for a few days. I checked into a flophouse and started hanging out in bars. I wasn’t picking up anything, so I just started exploring—you know, dirty book shops and whatever there was. Anyway, I finally found Miranda working in this place where you can talk to a naked woman for a buck. I followed her to her hotel—I’m calling from there now—but this guy went in there with her and I had to wait for him to leave. Which took five hours.”

“What did you get out of her?”

“Nothing yet. She’s dead drunk—passed out and I can’t wake her up. I need your help.”

“Where are you?”

He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “Omigod. Oh, Jesus—” The phone went dead.

Chris shoved some more Old Weller at me, which I drank while I stammered out what Rob had told me.