The Sourdough Wars

you’re disgusting!”
    “Hey, everybody does it—you ought to try it sometime.”
    “What I meant was, was there any gossip about Peter at the theater? Like there was about Nick Dresser, remember? The one who was married to a lady named Carla but always turning up with a cute boy named Bob.”
    “Oh, Nick. He was bi, no question about it. Once he asked if Mickey and I wanted to—”
    “Alan! What about Peter?”
    He was silent for a minute, thinking about it. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem out of the question, does it? But I always thought he was just a loner.”
    “He didn’t go out with women much?”
    “Hardly ever. Hey, I think I see what you’re getting at—you think he had a gay lover, huh? And the guy got jealous of Chris and perpetrated a crime of passion. That’s it, isn’t it?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.” Once again I whipped past him, doing a fair imitation of an imperious boss putting an upstart in his place.
    “Hey, employer.”
    “What is it now?”
    “There’s something fishy about that starter theft. I think the cryogenics firm might be up to something.”
    I sighed. “And what, pray tell?”
    “Well, look. If you’re going to pay a bunch of money to have your starter frozen, shouldn’t there be some guarantee? I mean, what if the warehouse burned down or something?”
    “You’d be out of luck.” I started walking toward Chris’s office.
    “Rebecca, listen to me a minute.”
    He sounded so serious, for once, that I did.
    “A firm like that ought to have a control.”
    “A control?” I was beginning to see what he was getting at. “You mean, not one but two frozen starters—in two different places?”
    “Go to the head of the class.” And he went back to typing.
    Chris came out of her office. “Did I hear what I think I did?”
    Alan smirked. “Hee-hee. Idiot-child only one with smarts.” He scratched his armpit and made gorilla noises. Chris and I retreated.
    “What,” asked Chris, “is Pigball’s name again? I’ve forgotten.”
    “Fail-Safe,” I said, understanding instantly. Chris used made-up words when she couldn’t remember real ones—which was often. Fortunately, her memory never seemed to fail her in court, but her close friends had to be good at interpreting.
    She swung a phone book over to her side of the desk, turned to
F
, and dialed the cryogenics firm. The manager apparently was a
Chronicle
reader. From what I could gather, he was very sorry Chris had lost her client but awfully hungry for details of the murder. Chris gave him a few and then reeled in her reward.
    “I understand the starter has been stolen … I was wondering about a control…ah. I see.” A couple of other questions, then good-bye.
    When she hung up, the spark had returned to her eyes for the first time since Peter’s death. “There
is
a control. Apparently, the underling who helped Anita didn’t know about it. Panicked when he discovered the loss. The manager, having heard that Anita is not being held for murder, has been trying to get her to tell her. It seems he was out of town, only got back a few hours ago, and couldn’t be sorrier for the inconvenience.
If
he’d been there, it certainly wouldn’t have happened.”
    “Where’s the control? In San Francisco or somewhere else?”
    “He wouldn’t say. I don’t really blame him, do you?”
    “I guess not. I just got back from playing tennis with Anita. I expect that’s why he couldn’t get her. It seems she hated Peter, but now she misses him, and even though she’s glad he’s dead, she’s sort of sorry.”
    “How disappointing. She’s supposed to be the sort of woman who knows her own mind.”
    “There’s more.”
    “I can’t say I’m thrilled about your tone of voice.”
    “It’s not pretty.”
    “I’m sitting down, okay?”
    “She’d already guessed you and Peter were together, but before she talked to you, she thought you might be a man.”
    Chris stared, unbelieving. “Peter was bi?”
    “Anita doesn’t really know; she just had a feeling.”
    “Oh, God, I should have had the same feeling! What was I thinking of?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He just—I don’t know. He wasn’t that interested in sex.”
    I breathed a little sigh of relief, glad that was all. “I guess lots of guys are like that.”
    “I guess I better get tested.”
    “Didn’t you—uh—”
    “Use condoms? Yes.” She shrugged. “Last I heard they weren’t