Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

asked.
    “I think so. I skidded in the rain and pulled too far back.”
    “Let’s see your driver’s license.”
    “I—uh—had an emergency. I don’t have it.”
    “You’ve got your keys. They must have been in your purse with your license.”
    “No, they were already in the car.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Rebecca Schwartz.”
    “You been drinking, Miss Schwartz?”
    “A little. That’s not why I hit the car, though. I skidded.”
    “How about parking the car over there on the curb, Miss Schwartz? I’ll be with you in a minute.”
    I don’t do my best parking jobs in situations of stress, but I don’t think the cop noticed. He was doing something with his partner in the patrol car.
    He joined me in a minute. “You got any ID at all?”
    “I told you I didn’t.”
    “We just ran this car through the computer. It’s registered to an Elena Mooney.”
    “I know. I borrowed it from her.”
    “Does she know you’ve got it?”
    “Certainly.”
    “Miss Schwartz, I’m going to have to ask you to take a roadside sobriety test. Would you mind just stretching your arms out horizontally? Good. Okay now, put your head back a little, close your eyes, and touch your nose with the tip of your index finger.”
    “Left or right?”
    “Both. Three times.”
    I never have been good at silly games. I hit my nose three out of six times, and that’s as well as I can do cold sober. I know, because I’ve tried it a million times since. But I don’t have to tell you the attractive cop wouldn’t believe it was just a personal idiosyncrasy. I have to say he was nice about the whole thing, though. He seemed almost apologetic: “I hate to ask you on a night like this, but do you think you can walk a straight line, toe-to-heel?”
    “I’ll get wet.”
    “I’m sorry, ma’am.” He was really nice, that fellow, especially considering I wasn’t looking any too respectable.
    The rain pelted into my cleavage as I got out of the car. I got up on the sidewalk, put one shoe in front of the other, and kept on doing it until the cop told me to stop. I wanted to go on, because I knew that line would straighten up as soon as I got the hang of it, but the cop wasn’t convinced. I’d meandered pretty far off course.
    “I’m afraid that emergency of yours is going to have to wait, Miss Schwartz. You’ve just had an accident in a car that’s not yours, and you got no driver’s license and no ID, and you can’t pass your sobriety test. And the car’s got 200 dollars’ worth of traffic warrants on it.”
    “But…”
    “I don’t think you’d better drive the Mustang. Just lock it, please, and get in the backseat of the patrol car.”
    “Wait a minute. I can explain what I’m doing with the car.”
    “All the explaining in the world’s not going to convince me you’re sober.”
    So I locked the Mustang while they inspected the parked car for damage. Then we sat in the patrol car, the cop with the mustache and me, while his partner made out an accident report. I never did figure out why that had to be done at the scene instead of at the Hall, but it did give me time to pour out my story.
    I said I’d been to a costume party—which I had hoped might explain my get-up—and that a friend had been suddenly taken ill. I was driving him to the hospital when I hit the parked car.
    “So where is he now?”
    “He got frightened when I hit the car and ran away.”
    “How sick was he?”
    I lowered my eyes. “I don’t know. He was acting very strangely. I think he was having some sort of nervous attack.”
    The cop came to the conclusion I wanted him to. He raised an eyebrow. “Were there drugs at that party, Miss Schwartz?”
    I said there were, and he didn’t ask any more questions.
    On the way to the Hall, I assessed the situation. I was dressed like a hooker, so they probably thought I was one in spite of my lame little explanation; no one has costume parties three weeks after Halloween. So there was no use protesting that I was a lawyer without an ID to back it up. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, since they thought I was drunk.
    I figured Elena and the others would be at the Hall. We could straighten out the ownership of the car and maybe establish my identification. Then we could call my partner to get us out.
    But I wondered if she could. It might just be that Rebecca Schwartz, Jewish feminist lawyer, was about to spend a night in jail. I prayed I would pass my breathalyzer test. And when I