The Sourdough Wars (4 page)

“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.”

“Come on. I’m on the edge of my chair.”

“The starter wasn’t there.”

Sometime—who knew when?—the starter had apparently been stolen. Whether before or after the murder was anybody’s guess. Or whether this year or last year. The starter had been freeze-dried very fast, in small pellets, in a vacuum—that was the only way you could be sure of keeping both microorganisms alive. It was stored in little vials in a chest freezer charged with liquid nitrogen to keep it extra cold. Anyone could have taken it out in a liquid-nitrogen vacuum bottle, the type used for transporting bull sperm. These, Rob explained, were aluminum and stainless steel containers about the size of large thermos bottles. You could keep the starter frozen indefinitely as long as you kept the thermos charged with liquid nitrogen. So maybe someone had taken it recently, and maybe not.

As for Anita, she’d become the number-one suspect in Peter’s murder. Rob said the cops were still talking to her but hadn’t booked her yet. He figured they probably would, sometime that night, and the
Examiner
, the afternoon rag, would get the story first. He was pretty mad about that. It was one insult right on top of another, because it was already too late for the
Chron
to get the missing starter story in Wednesday’s paper. That meant that was the Ex's story, for sure, even if the cops let Anita go. But they wouldn’t, said Rob, not in a million years. Airtight case, he said. Some cop buddy had told him so.

Next morning, about ten-thirty or so, I raced out to get the first edition of the
Ex
. I was surprised they were playing the missing starter story below the fold—I guess they’d decided it was a
Chron
extravaganza, a bit beneath their dignity. I scanned the story quickly, looking for news of Anita. But there wasn’t any.

I called Rob for late-breaking details. She’d been released.

* * *

It was this way. A divorced lady, she’d spent Monday night at her house with her long-term lover. He’d driven her to her offices. At about nine-thirty, just as they were leaving, a neighbor came over to borrow something. The boyfriend dropped her off to teach a class at ten o’clock. Since she lived in San Anselmo, across the Golden Gate Bridge, there was no time for her to have killed Peter between nine-thirty and ten. Even if the boyfriend were lying for her, she had other witnesses to support her at both ends of the half hour.

Much as I hated to admit it, it looked as if she was innocent. Chris was in court, so I took matters into my own hands. I phoned Anita, wondering whether she’d remember me.

She did. “Rebecca Schwartz. Have you licked it yet?”

“Have I licked what?”

“Procrastination. You’re a terrible procrastinator.”

“No, I’m not. I mean—I guess I have licked it.” I hadn’t procrastinated in so long I hardly remembered doing it—Anita’s course had done me a lot of good.

“Good work. What can I do for you?”

“I’m Chris Nicholson’s partner.”

“Oh, you’re that Schwartz.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Let’s see….” I could almost see Anita consulting her digital watch. “It’s eleven-thirty now and I was planning to play tennis at lunch—I was hoping to pick up a partner, but you’ll do. That is, if you play. Do you?”

“Am I from Marin County?”