The Sourdough Wars (14 page)

“What’ll you tell your boss?”

He shrugged. “I’m on special.”

I already knew that meant special assignment—newspaper jargon for get out of the office and don’t come back till you’ve got a story.

“Let’s go check into the Sonoma Mission Inn,” he said. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

We stopped at his apartment for some clothes and at mine for the same thing, plus bruise camouflage and a phone call.

I couldn’t get Chris, so I left a message with Kruzick, knowing he’d forget to give it to her as usual.

We hadn’t yet finished our bottle of wine, so we took it with us, along with a couple of paper cups. This is illegal, but I didn’t want Rob to think me prissy, so I went along with it.

Over the bridge and through Marin, to Sally’s place we went. This time, since it wasn’t dark, we could see the vineyards. The vines in February are like squat black sculptures, and the mustard, in full, canary-colored bloom, billows about them. What with the wine and the spirit of adventure and Valentine’s Day and all, my head felt billowy, too. Pleasantly billowy. I thought maybe I’d have a massage at the inn’s famous spa.

We were just entering the town of Sonoma when Rob said, “Look—it’s Thompson.” He honked his horn but got no response.

I opened my eyes, which I admit I’d been resting, and saw a brown car going the other way: West. Clayton Thompson was driving it, and there was another man with him. “Who’s' the other guy?”

“Don’t know him,” said Rob. “Where’s Sally’s bakery?”

“On the plaza, I guess. Just about everything is.”

There was another bakery on the plaza—Sonoma French Bakery—and we wasted some time there before we found the authentic Plaza Bakery. It was tiny, and there seemed to be no one there. Some peculiar things were lying on the counter—a pack of matches, a can of lighter fluid, and a tiny ball of dough, all scorched.

We could see the ovens and some tables back in a light airy space behind the counter, but it didn’t look as if there were any other rooms in the place.

“Sally,” I called. No answer.

“There must be a bathroom,” said Rob.

I called Sally again. Again, silence.

Rob said, “Let’s have a look.” He stepped behind the counter and gasped. “Rebecca, don’t come back here.”

But I was already there. Sally was lying on the floor, near enough to the counter so she was out of sight if you were on the other side of it. She had a bread knife sticking out of her chest.

“The phone,” said Rob. “Call the cops.”

I nodded and glanced around. At first I couldn’t see a phone. But there it was, in the back of the room. Rob stood still, staring at Sally, and then he bent down and picked up her hand, feeling for a pulse, I supposed. I walked past them, on very shaky legs, to get to the phone. I picked up the receiver and started to dial 0. But there was no dial tone. Impatiently, I pulled on the cord, and it hung loose in my hand. It had been cut, just like in the movies.

“I can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t do it.” I said it the second time to help myself understand. I
should
call the police; the situation cried out for calling the police; but I couldn’t call the police. That was all I meant, but Rob apparently read more into it.

He glanced over at me, stood up, and started walking toward me, speaking in a voice that was ever so slow and understanding, the kind you use with a person standing on a ledge twenty stories up. “Rebecca, it’s all right. Everything’s okay. Maybe I could call the cops instead? How would that be?”

I held the cut end of the cord up and made a face at him. Sally was dead, and somewhere inside I was sure I was upset about that, but at the moment all I felt was annoyance at Rob. My only thought was to show him I had my wits about me—I was today’s woman. Today’s Action Woman, able to call the cops when necessary, do whatever had to be done. I stepped past him, thinking to walk out the door and find a phone booth somewhere, not noticing I hadn’t told him what I was about to do. Not even noticing that a car had just squealed to a stop outside and two uniformed cops were even now coming in the door. I bumped smack into them.

I would have fallen, but one of them grabbed my arm, and not just to steady me. “Just a minute, young lady,” he said. Even in the state I was in, I was glad he hadn’t said, “Not so fast.” That would have put me over the edge, and I would have disgraced myself with a giggle fit.

But everything was all right now, just like Rob said; the cops were there, and all I had to do was explain the situation in a calm and collected manner. Rob stole my chance. “Rob Burns of the
Chronicle
,” he said.

“Oh, foot!” I blurted.

“Foot?” The cop holding my arm looked confused.

“That’s what my law partner says when she’s mad. She’s Southern, see, and that’s why she talks funny.”

The cop let go of my arm and scratched his head. “
You’re
a lawyer?”

Rob came over and put an arm around me. “Rebecca, I think you’d better sit down. Officer, I think you should have a look behind the counter.”

The cop went for a look and I did sit down, right on the floor. Rob sat with me, either to humor me or because his legs had given out, too. The second cop stood over us, making sure we wouldn’t make a break for it. She had a very pretty face, but her body armor was more functional than flattering.

I remembered to tell her the phone cord had been cut, and then the male cop came back, pale as paper, and there was a great flurry of radioing for an ambulance and more cops.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I asked, but no one answered me. And then I said, “Thompson! Clayton Thompson!” No one answered me that time either.

The cops finally introduced themselves: Officers George Williamson and Stella Tripp. I managed to tell them about seeing Thompson on the way into town, while the ambulance arrived and then went away, its occupants unable to revive Sally. I told the cops they should pick up Thompson, better get out a bulletin right away, they could probably find him before he got too far. But they wouldn’t listen.

Finally, Officer Tripp could stand it no longer. “You stay here,” she told her partner. “I’ve got something to do.”

She left and came back with four cups of coffee, black, that we sipped while we waited for the coroner and more cops. Eventually, the first two took us to the police station and we told our story. The coffee had a calming effect—that and Rob’s arm around me—and I was able to contribute in a coherent manner. In fact, I pretty well had to carry the narrative thread, because Rob seemed to have lost the power of speech. Somehow, this had been a lot worse than finding Peter. That time, we knew something was wrong, because Peter hadn’t shown up for the auction. And somehow, the sight of that bread knife sticking out of Sally’s chest was a lot more final and terrible even than the sight of blood all over Peter.

Once we were restored to near-sanity and Officers Tripp and Williamson were satisfied that we really were who we said we were, they did, per my very intelligent suggestion, put out a bulletin on Thompson, and even as we talked, someone came in and said the highway patrol had him.

Eventually, Officers T and W even trusted us enough to answer a couple of questions we had. They told us they’d turned up at Sally’s bakery in response to an anonymous tip, and they hadn’t turned on their siren because they thought it was a nut call. Just a routine check on a nut call. Nothing ever happened in Sonoma.

Just as things were going along fine, or as fine as they get when someone’s been murdered, I remembered Robert, Jr., and Today’s Action Woman burst into tears. “She has a kid,” I blubbered.

Officer Williamson nodded. Apparently, Sally was well known in Sonoma. “We’ve already checked on him. He’s in San Francisco with his father.”

They asked us a few more questions and then said we could go. “What about Clayton Thompson?” I asked, but the nice officers only shook their heads.

We were getting into the car when Rob suddenly came alive, like a man coming out of a coma. “My story! Jeez, my story!”

“Your what?”

“I’ve got to get to a phone.”

* * *

The resulting story was on Page One, of course. He certainly has a nose for news, I thought, a little bitterly, and then I repented. It wasn’t his fault that all this had been unleashed by the Great San Francisco Sourdough Auction. I wished we could run the last few weeks backward like a movie, and start again with all of us sitting at the Sherlock Holmes pub, talking about anything but sourdough.

Mom called on cue, just as my English muffin popped out of the toaster. “Your father didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m fine, honest. Rob stayed with me.”

“Rob! I thought you were done with him, and then he leads you off to some
hinterland
, where you get in more trouble.”

I was buttering my muffin as we talked. Now I took a bite, and it tasted like fish food. “Gosh, Mom,” I said. “I forgot to feed my fish.”

And I hung up with a great rush, as if my finny pals were about to give up their collective ghost. Surely one mother would understand another’s need to feed her family.

But the phone rang before I could do my maternal duty. “Listen, Mom, really—”

“It’s Rob. Thompson’s been released.”

“He didn’t do it?” I hadn’t really thought about whether he’d killed Sally or not. I guess I’d just assumed he had.

“Apparently not. He found the body before we did.”

“Ah. He was the anonymous tipster.”

“Right. The brain’s back in gear, I see.”

“But why not wait for the cops? I don’t get it?”

“Neither do I, but I’m hoping to find out. He’s agreed to an interview.”

“Today? But you don’t work on Saturday.”

“Dammit, I’m on special. Want to come or not?”

Of course I wanted to come.

Thompson had asked Rob to meet him, not at his friends’ place in the Castro, but the Stanford Court Hotel. Its lobby bar looks like a St. James Street men’s club, and during the day the guests use it for business meetings. It’s one of my favorite places in San Francisco—elegant without being snooty. Thompson, suited and tied even though it was Saturday, looked as if he belonged. He said, “Mornin’, Rebecca. I’m glad you could join us. Once I started working again, I moved back here—the baby was keepin’ me up.”

I was sure Rob hadn’t asked permission to bring me, or even mentioned that he intended to. Thompson was a gent, and I had a momentary pang of guilt for thinking him a murderer.

“Sit down, sit down,” He gestured as if the lobby were his own living room. “Glad to see you, Mr. Burns.”

We made ourselves comfortable and ordered coffee. “I guess you’re wonderin’ why I agreed to this interview.”

Rob said nothing.

“It’s just that I felt kind of stupid about what I did and I wanted to kind of explain. Sort of make a public apology.” We nodded. “It was a dumb-ass thing I did—cowardly. My daddy wouldn’t have been proud of me.”

“Finding the body must have been pretty nerve-wracking,” I said. “I know, because we did it, too.” Thompson shook his head. “You don’t understand. I didn’t exactly find the body.”

“But I thought you phoned in the tip.”

“She was still alive when I got there.”

Rob took charge of the interview: “I think you’d better begin at the beginning.”

“I’ll be glad to, Mr. Burns. You see, I went there because it looked as if the Martinelli starter had slipped through my fingers—Conglomerate’s fingers, that is. But I’d heard Miss Devereaux’s sourdough was better than any other on the market, so I told the folks in New York about it.”

“Your bosses?”

Thompson nodded. “They thought maybe this was a great opportunity. We could ‘discover’ Sally Devereaux, you know? She was a pretty gal, and we thought she might be promotable. We could have her do our TV commercials and talk about bakin’ bread, and we could call our bread Sally Devereaux—it would have been like our competition, Sara Lee, only Sally was a real person.”

My stomach turned over as I realized how much Sally would have loved that. If she’d lived she might have had the kind of success she never even had the nerve to wish for.

“So, anyway,” continued Thompson, “I went up to Sonoma to taste her bread and talk with her. I didn’t make an appointment—didn’t want to get her hopes up until after I was sure the bread was really as good as folks said it was.

“When I got there, I didn’t see anyone in the place. But there was a funny smell, like somethin’ was burnin’. And there was somethin’ that looked like a burned ball of dough on the counter.”

“We saw it, too. Along with some lighter fluid and matches.”

“Yes. I could still smell the burned smell, so it seemed as if someone had been there pretty recently. I thought they still were—in another room or a bathroom, maybe. I was still tryin’ to get my bearin’s when I heard a moan. So I stepped behind the counter and”—he turned up his palms in a helpless gesture—“there she was.”

“What did you do next?”

“I bent down over her. She had that big knife stickin’ out of her, so I knew I had to get help right away, but—I don’t know, your first instinct somehow isn’t to go to the phone first thing. So I bent down and she took my hand. I don’t know if she knew who I was or not; maybe she didn’t care. She just knew I was a person. She told me she had to go to the bathroom.” His eyes filled up and so did mine. There she was dying with a knife in her chest and her last conscious thought was that she had to go to the bathroom. It didn’t seem fair.

“Did she say anything else?”

“Yes.” An odd look came over Thompson’s face. “She said she needed a gun.”

“A gun!”

“Strange, isn’t it? I think she wanted to kill the person who stabbed her. She didn’t say that, though. She just said she needed a gun and a bathroom. Oh, and she mentioned Peter’s name, too.”

“In what context?”

Thompson shook his head, looking very sad. “None. She just said his name and then she died. I was so shook up all I could do was get out of there. I got in my car and started drivin’.”

“You’re sure she was dead?”

If Thompson sometimes struck me as a bit of a wimp, he didn’t then. His eyes were marble-hard. “
Dead
sure, Mr. Burns. Her hand came out of my hand, and her breath left her. It wasn’t something you could mistake.”