The Sourdough Wars Read online

  She called Peter’s again. No answer. “I’m going over there.”

  “Chris, you can't—”

  “Rebecca, this is no time to be cool.”

  Rob looked baffled, but I had to give Chris credit. She’d put her finger on the very thing I was thinking—when your boyfriend stands you up, you shouldn’t go spying on him or he might get the idea you like him. Maybe I’d never grow up.

  “I guess not,” I said. “I think we should all go.”

  She didn’t protest.

  Peter didn’t answer his doorbell, and the manager didn’t answer hers. But just as we were about to give up, a woman who recognized Chris came in from walking her dog and let us in. We climbed the two flights of smelly stairs to Peter’s apartment and knocked. He didn’t answer. Chris tried the door—and jumped back when it opened.

  Rob pushed it wide enough to see what police call “signs of a struggle.” A lamp was knocked over, and one of Peter’s charcoal drawings hung askew, as if someone had fallen against the wall. The furniture was like that, too—sort of pushed around and out of place. Peter was sitting on the couch, staring at us. He was wearing a white terrycloth robe with a number of bullet holes in it. Peter’s blood had run out of his chest and turned the robe a nasty rust color.

  If I’d been alone, I’d have closed the door and run like crazy, but Chris is made of sterner stuff. She yelled Peter’s name and ran over to him. She touched him on both shoulders, as if to embrace him. His body fell forward.

  It fell against Chris. She recoiled and swayed. Rob rushed forward, held her, maneuvered her into a chair. I stepped into the room and stared at Chris and Rob, not looking at Peter’s body and not knowing what to do. I thought I should call the police, but I was worried about messing up fingerprints. It’s funny what you think about at a time like that. “Stay with her,” said Rob, already headed toward the bedroom. He came back in a minute. “There’s no one here. And no gun. I’ll call the cops.” He asked for Inspector Martinez, a homicide cop we’d met a year or so earlier.

  “Rebecca,” said Chris. “I think I’d better lie down.” She was awfully pale.

  “Put your head on your lap.”

  She sat doubled over for a moment, and then I heard her start to sob. I figured she couldn’t faint if she had the strength to cry, so I got a pillow and put it on the floor. She lay down while I went to get her some of Peter’s brandy. It was a few minutes before she could sip it.

  Peter’s body was lying sideways on the sofa now. None of us wanted to look at it, but we were afraid to cover it up. Rob looked at me sheepishly. “I’ve got to call city desk.”

  “No. They’ll send a photographer.”

  He nodded, easily persuaded. I knew him well enough to figure out what was in his mind. Technically, he wasn’t really doing his job if he didn’t call for a camera, but he didn’t want to look at his paper the next morning and see a picture of Peter’s covered-up body being carried to a coroner’s wagon. Any more than I did. And neither one of us wanted Chris to see it.

  We heard sirens, then clomping on the stairs, and then some uniformed cops came in. One of them took us downstairs to wait for the homicide inspectors.

  It didn’t take Martinez very long. He was accompanied, as usual, by his partner, Curry, who always seemed to keep quiet while Martinez blustered. Both of them wore rumpled brown suits, as usual, and Martinez had on a blue tie with little pigs all over it. It was probably meant to be funny, but it suited him. He had wispy dark hair and a pale, washed-out face that always wore an impatient look, as if he wished you would just shut up. And yet he kept asking you questions and more questions and complaining that you weren’t telling him enough. As for Curry, he had no visible moles, scars, or other distinguishing marks, so it’s hard to describe him. But I’ll try: He had plain features, brownish hair, and ordinary eyes. He must have been great at undercover work—no one alive could remember a face like that.

  Neither of them liked me much either.

  Rob explained the situation, and they went upstairs and came down again. Martinez spoke to Chris: “What happened, Miss Nicholson?”

  “Didn’t Rob tell you?”

  “He told us he left you with Martinelli last night. Did you spend the night with the victim?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “Let’s put it this way. Did you kill him?”

  “How dare you!” She was taller than he was, and standing very straight.

  He waved a placating hand. “It’s my business to know when you last saw him alive.”

  “I left at nine this morning. He said he had a ten o’clock appointment.”

  “Who with?”

  “That was none of my business. Peter got a phone call sometime last night. He took it in the living room and talked a long time. He didn’t mention till this morning that he had an appointment at ten.”

  “You think the caller made the appointment?”

  “Yes. And kept it and murdered him.”

  “So who was it?”

  “I told you I didn’t know. Can’t the phone company…”

  Martinez made a face. Cops hate it when you ask the questions. “Where was his appointment—here or somewhere else?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Okay. Do you know who his next of kin is?”

  “His parents are dead. He has a sister—Anita Ashton.” They talked a few minutes more, but I didn’t listen. I was thinking of Anita Ashton—I’d known her for quite a while.

  Chapter Four

  Chris and I went back to the office, leaving Rob to get his story. We sent Kruzick home, after having him cancel the rest of the day’s appointments. Then Chris found a bottle of bourbon and made herself a drink. I declined—I think you have to be from Virginia to stand the stuff.

  For a while she stared out the window, and I let her. When she was ready to talk, she said, “I’m going to find the sucker who did this.”

  I nodded.

  “Will you help me?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Revenge may not be the most uplifting theme of the human psyche, but it can be comforting sometimes. Of course I was going to help her.

  The phone rang. Chris reached for it automatically. “Chris Nicholson. Yes, I’m his lawyer, but—oh. Mrs. Ashton. I have no idea whether he left a will or not. I was representing him on another matter. Yes… may I ask why you want to know? Very well. It’s at Fail-Safe Cryogenics. Their number’s listed.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Peter’s sister thinks she’s inherited the starter.”

  “You got it. She wants to go and look at it.”

  “Weird.”

  She shrugged. “Understandable, I guess. She’s wanted it for years.”

  “Why didn’t she just offer to buy it from him?”

  “He offered to trade it for the house, but she wouldn’t go for it. Seemed to think he couldn’t be trusted with a chunk of money of any size. He got mad and they had a fight. He swore he’d see she never got it. Years later, when he was really broke, she did offer to buy it—for $5,000. Can you imagine that? Tried to pull a fast one on her own brother.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me. I know her.”

  “You know Anita Ashton?”

  “I took her course a few years ago. Do you know who she is?”

  “Sure. She’s an internationally known time-management consultant. Her book was on the best-seller list for seventeen months or something. Celebrity clients up and down the state. Movie stars, execs, you name it.”

  “Not to mention Rebecca Schwartz, Jewish feminist lawyer. She’s kind of a hard case, but likeable—you know the type? Underneath the first steely layer, she’s sort of vulnerable. But she’s so worried somebody’s going to take advantage of her she tries to do it to them first.”

  Chris sighed. “I guess that’s how you get rich.”

  “Tell me something. Was Peter ever married?”

  “No. He was forty-one and never even engaged.�
��

  “In that case, assuming he didn’t make a will, there probably isn’t anyone else to inherit the starter. That gives Anita an excellent murder motive.”

  Chris looked excited. “She must have made the threatening phone calls. Maybe she tried to stop the auction and it didn’t work, so she killed him.”

  “Let’s not overlook anything. Maybe one of the bidders made the phone calls to get everyone else to withdraw. Then when it didn’t work, that person killed him.”

  “At any rate, he must have been killed to stop the auction.”

  “Well, for now Anita’s the best suspect. It couldn’t hurt to go down to City Hall and look at the Martinelli will.”

  “Okay.” She perked up at the prospect of doing something.

  We walked down to the Montgomery Street BART station (that’s Bay Area Rapid Transit) and took the train two stops to Civic Center. The station’s a block or two from City Hall, and the whole area is full of wind tunnels blowing close to the buildings. It was February, and that meant they were fierce. So we walked across Civic Center Plaza, which was sunny and pleasant.

  City Hall is an old-fashioned gray stone building, trimmed here and there in blue and gold. When you walk in, you’re standing in a wonderful rotunda in front of a sweeping stairway. Unfortunately, the effect is ruined by the presence of a guard who makes you walk through an unsightly metal detector.

  We took the elevator to the clerk’s office on the third floor. It’s a place of musty ledgers rather than crisp microfiches, a picturesque anachronism in the computer age. The people who work there, many of them elderly ladies, are friendly and unhurried. I always enjoy going there.

  We found the Martinelli will without any trouble. It was exactly as Peter had said: The house had been left to Anita; the starter to Peter. There were no provisions for the disposition of the estate in the event that either of the younger Martinellis died. In other words, Peter was free to leave the starter to whomever he chose. If he hadn’t made a will, it looked as if it would go to his closest relative—his sister, Anita. So that was that.

  “What,” said Chris, “do we do now?”

  “I can’t think of anything. If Anita did it, I’m sure the cops will figure it out.”

  She looked very downcast.

  “Let’s go to my house for dinner.”

  “It’s only four o’clock.”

  “So go home and change.” I reached out and touched her arm. “Look, Chris, there’s nothing else we can do right now, except maybe have our own private wake for Peter.”

  She nodded. I could see tears in her eyes. I figured she’d have a good cry while she was home.

  We went back to the office, got our cars, and I drove my old gray Volvo to Fisherman’s Wharf to pick up a couple of Dungeness crabs. Chris wouldn’t be able to eat much, and I figured cracked crab, which gives you a lot to do with your hands, ought to be about right. I got a loaf of Bob Tosi’s sourdough to go with it, and a bottle of white wine. Then I headed toward my apartment on Telegraph Hill.

  I was glad, as always, to be home. My apartment is white and red mostly; it cheers me up. Besides, I don’t live alone. I have so many pets I can’t even count them. They live in a hundred-gallon saltwater aquarium. I’ve got fish, shrimp, sea anemones, sea snails, and at the moment, a sea horse. I say at the moment because he wasn’t the first one I’d had—I can’t seem to get them to live very long, but I keep trying because they’re so cute. This one’s name was Durango.

  I fed Durango and his friends, and then I showered and changed into jeans. There was plenty of time left and no dinner to cook, so I played the piano awhile, Vivaldi to cheer me up. I like something baroque at the end of a long hard day.

  Chris turned up around six-thirty, rosy and refreshed. She had on jeans—skinny ones with about a forty-inch inseam. She is one long, tall drink of water.

  “You look a lot better.”

  “I went jogging.”

  Of course she had. I felt momentarily guilty. If I jogged, maybe my legs would get skinnier, but it was no good wishing they’d get longer. I am a five-feet-five endomorph who does well to get in a little tennis now and then. The sight of Chris can make me envious and guilty and admiring all at once. At the moment, since she looked as if she might pull through, it made me happy.

  “I’ll get us some wine. You put on a record.”

  She picked some noncommittal jazz, neither happy nor sad. When we were facing each other, her eyes overflowed. “I’m going to miss him.”

  “I know you are. I wish—”

  I was going to say I wished I knew something comforting to say, but the phone rang.

  “Rebecca, it’s your mother. I’ve just heard the news. On TV, I had to hear it.”

  “We’re okay, Mom. Chris is here and everything’s fine. I’m sorry I forgot to call you.”

  “It’s nothing, darling. Your father had to go and lie down, that’s all.”

  “Oh, come on, Mom. It takes more than that to upset Dad.”

  “Rebecca, answer me something, will you? Why must you always get involved with people who kill each other?”

  “Mom, please. Peter was Chris’s boyfriend. Your very own younger daughter’s paramour, Alan Kruzick, introduced them. Blame it on Kruzick for a change.”

  “It’s not Alan’s fault, darling. You’re the one who found the body.”

  “Believe me, Mom, I wouldn’t have if I could have helped it.”

  “Just tell me, Rebecca. Why must you go on doing this sort of thing? You’re nearly thirty years old.”

  “Mom, I’ll tell you what. I'm going to stop it right now. I’m never finding another dead body, and that’s final. I’m changing my ways and I owe it all to you.”

  “That’s right, make fun of your mother.”

  “Mom, I didn’t mean it that way. Honest. Can I talk to Dad a minute?”

  “No, dear. He’s gone out for ice cream. He overeats when he’s worried.”

  “Oh, poor Daddy. Tell him I’m sorry, okay? I have company so I’d better go now.”

  “Give Chris our love. Poor baby, losing a boyfriend like that.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  I let out a yell of frustration, but Mom’s good for Chris. She was laughing her head off.

  “My mom said to give you her love. Apparently, I’ve been a bad girl for finding Peter’s body, but you’re a poor baby.”

  “Your mom’s a riot.”

  Mom didn’t amuse me at the moment. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I snapped, and started melting butter to dip the crab into. Chris got out the crab and arranged it on plates.

  “I wish I could have another chance,” Chris said.

  “With Peter?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s only natural to feel that way.”

  We sat down, and Chris picked at her crab while I made quick work of mine.

  “I know he liked me a lot,” she said, “but…”

  She couldn’t finish her sentence. I didn’t know if it would help or not, but I blurted out what I felt: “Listen, Chris. Here’s what I think about Peter. A man his age who’d never been married probably wasn’t about to change his ways.”

  “What makes you think I want to get married?”

  “Sometimes you say you do. Then again, sometimes you say you don’t. So sometimes I think one thing and sometimes the other.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about marrying Peter. Yet, I mean. I just wish we’d had a little more time to—I don’t know—understand each other.”

  “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

  She started crying again. “He’s dead!”

  “I’m sorry. I meant something was already bothering you—when he was alive.”

  She looked very unhappy. “He was a little… distant.”

  “You mean cold? Sexually cold?”

  She nodded, sobbing. “It wasn’t only that—he was so hard to get to know; if we’d had more time, I might have—”

  �
��Oh, Chris, it wasn’t your fault. All the time in the world probably wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No. Some guys are just like that.”

  “You really think it wasn’t me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You’re so lucky to have Rob!”

  I was lucky to have Rob and I knew it. He had a million good qualities I could have enumerated, but Chris was feeling sorry for herself, so I belittled my own good fortune, zeroing in on the one thing about Rob that bothered me. “He’s not perfect, you know. Being a newspaper reporter is an odd job. Every now and then he gets his priorities mixed up and his stories get to be more important than real life.”

  “Really? But we’re all very involved with our work.”

  “This is different. Reporters aren’t like you and me. On the other hand, he’s always around when I need him. He doesn’t nag me, and he doesn’t press me to do things I don’t want to do. And he doesn’t have to be babied.”

  Chris smiled. “Any more like him at home?”

  “Thank God! The fever’s broken. You’re going to live, aren’t you?”

  “I’m probably going to have a few bad days, but that’s okay. Knowing Peter was worth it. I just wish he’d had the chance to get over what was bothering him. I don’t think he really felt loveable; I think that’s why he was so alone.”

  Rob called then. “How’s Chris?”

  “Better. She thinks if she can’t have Peter, someone like you might do.”

  “Little does she know.”

  “That’s what I told her. Thanks for calling—it was sweet of you.”

  “Wait. There’s a development. Peter’s sister went over to Fail-Safe Cryogenics to look at her inheritance.”

  “I know. She called Chris to find out where it was.”

  “When she got there, she didn’t mention Peter was dead. Just said she was his sister and asked to have a gander.”

  “And they showed it to her?”

  “They tried. It seems there was a technical difficulty.”